1 John 4:7-9 (The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart): Beloved ones, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born out of God and knows God. Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love. By this, the love of God was made manifest in us, because God has sent their only Son into the cosmos so that we might live through him.
Arthur Schopenhauer: Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
In the history of humanity, there is perhaps no more shocking an event than the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ by his followers. In a variety of ways, both material and spiritual, his death and resurrection set the world on a new trajectory.
Unfortunately, over time, his message has been weaponized by powerful and influential organizations who continue to tell the stories about Jesus but have, by and large, removed the fang of his rebellious spirit. Which is insanity because lest we forget, Jesus was crucified for insurrection as an enemy of the state.
A radical leader of a Jewish social reform movement, Jesus asked his followers to do no less than entirely overturn their existing power structure—both civic and religious. So, the Romans put him to the cross, a horrific death reserved for the Empire’s most dangerous insurrectionists. Normally, that would be the end of the story.
But this is not an ordinary story, and after a few days, rumors started circulating about Jesus’ return from the grave. As in, I’m back, and I’m coming for dinner returned from the grave, not, I’m a spirit who’s going to haunt you forever. Although, in a way, that is also true.
Whether the Romans, the Sanhedrin, the Gnostics, Thomas, or anyone else honestly believed Jesus rose, the idea that God brought Jesus back from the dead gave the rest of his rebels enough hope to continue spreading his teaching of God’s unconditional love.
By the way, hundreds and hundreds of agitators were following Jesus by the time of his death (Luke 14.15; Mark 5.24; Matthew 8.18; Mark 10.1, etc.). We too often think of Jesus and the 12 disciples roaming the desert, Jesus Christ Superstar style, but this was a movement that was large enough to concern the Roman empire. That kind of unwanted attention requires many more than a handful of tradespeople.
So the idea that Jesus was still alive—in any form—after death, gave his followers enough courage to keep working toward the creation of the kin(g)dom of heaven on earth, a project the power elite in charge today still resist.
Most importantly, the resurrection was proof—is proof—that God wins. Love wins. Over corrupt politics, over rotten religions, even over death, God wins.
Our ancestors attributed many powerful meanings to the resurrection story, but the stories themselves don’t reveal how deeply spiritual was their idea of resurrection. If we look into other writings, though, particularly John and the letters attributed to John, we find fascinating, quantum theology ideas, such as Jesus being sent into the cosmos, back from where we came, back to perfect, loving, Oneness in God.
Let’s look again at this well-known passage from 1 John:
1 John 4:7-9 (The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart): Beloved ones, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born out of God and knows God. Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love. By this, the love of God was made manifest in us, because God has sent his only Son into the cosmos so that we might live through him.
Notice what the author says: Jesus has returned to the cosmos. The cosmos from which he came, the Conscious Universe from which we all have come, and to which we shall all someday return.
Jesus is God’s way of revealing our innate being in the body of a cosmic God beyond understanding, yet whom we breathe in and who tastes, touches, sees, and hears reality through not only us but also all creation.
1 John makes another critical point as well, one to prop up our faith when the world seems on the brink of apocalypse. The author reminds us that everyone who loves has been born out of God.
What if that’s true? What if God is not this detached, alien superbeing whose ego is so fragile he demands the sacrifice of his only son? What if, instead, what the authors of 1 John and the Gospels are trying to tell us is much more powerful and profound?
We can never be separated from the love of God, even in death, because all there is, was, and ever will be is God.
There is no death in God, only constant rebirth.
Resurrection.
I believe that for his followers after his death, Jesus caused a cosmic shift in their perception of reality.
This is what Jesus is supposed to do for us today as well.
Jesus’ resurrection revealed a fundamental cosmic truth (if indeed there are any fundamental truths) we are only beginning to understand: Nothing in the universe is ever destroyed.
All matter, every speck of it, is reformed—resurrected—into new being. Nothing is wasted, and there is nothing supernatural about the process. Resurrection and rebirth are the natural order of the universe.
That Jesus’ resurrection was so obvious was, perhaps, God’s way of reassuring us, letting us know that we, too, are eternal beings.
Jesus’ death is not a cosmic payment for sin—original or merely plagiarized. Christianity has focused on that misbegotten concept for far too long. It’s not in the death of Jesus we find salvation, it’s in his resurrection. There is no sin in death. It’s a necessary doorway to another reality.
From death springs new life. It is the way our universe works. When flowers and vegetables die in the garden, they break down into their basic chemicals, which then energize seedlings to grow into new life.
Life into death into life is cosmic. When a star burns out, it leaves behind an explosion of cosmic detritus that settles into new galaxies and again creates fresh, living organisms. The molecules that form humans were created billions of years ago in the hearts of stars that burned out of the sky billions of years before that. We are, all physically, stardust.
Eternal life is nature’s way. That we perceive death as finite? It’s a perception problem. One Jesus tries to demolish by visibly returning from the grave to let us know there is more—much more—yet to come. For all of us. Without judgment from a superbeing.
The resurrection we remember today is not merely about Jesus rising from the dead as proof of his cosmic kingship (which he rejects every single time it’s offered him, whether from his followers or Satan), or paying an insurmountable debt to a God who charges usury rates (an idea only a moneylender would think of).
Instead, the resurrection reminds us—should convince us—that, like Jesus, we are eternally God’s flesh and blood. In this life, in parallel realities, in anything that comes before and after, every life is God’s life, every death is God’s death, and every birth is a rebirth of God’s very being.
Resurrection is an essential spiritual metaphor about a God who always calls us back to love. All of us.
Amen.
