MULLINGS
Easterine Kire
[dropcap]R[/dropcap]esurrection is such a beautiful word. Without it, life would be unimaginably dark and pointless. Why be born if our lot is only to die and be blotted out forever? For many, only resurrection gives meaning to life and puts an end to grief.
Death is so very ugly. Not only is death gut-wrenchingly painful, but it is infinitely ugly as hell. The ugliness is not so much a physical ugliness; it is a spiritual ugliness. And death is ugly because it is not natural. We were made to live eternally, not decay and die away. To live our lives never realising that we were made to last would be such a waste of time and molecular energy. What a terrible loss it would be to live without the hope of resurrection.There were other resurrections immediately following that of Jesus. I love these sidelined stories of Easter. The church doesn’t linger over them because they are the ‘side parts,’ designed to be a backdrop to the main event of Jesus rising from the dead. But the reports during the first Easter tell that “many of God’s people who had died were raised to life. They left the graves, and after Jesus rose from death, they went into the Holy City, where many people saw them,” Matthew 27:52, 53. It is one of those mind-boggling accounts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus.
Who were these people? Obviously they had not been dead very long, they were still in people’s memories. I don’t get the impression they were from the Abrahamic period. People in the society knew them. They are called God’s people, possibly all were Jews. Very likely they still had living family members and then, of course they would have joyously reunited with their families. And they showed themselves in their social networks, in the synagogues and in the marketplaces. If Facebook were around then, that happening would have gone viral. Definitely you would have found them on Youtube if this were set in the 21st century. I wonder what they ate at their first meal with their families, I wonder what they had to say about the time they had spent dead. I hope someone finds a long lost account of those resurrected people in one of those many discoveries they keep making of ancient scrolls. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to stay up late at night receiving friends and relatives from far away who came to see them with their own eyes.
One thing is certain, their families did not complain about an extra mouth to feed. I’m incredibly curious about the bodies in which they were resurrected. Were their bodies a fulfilment of ‘the corruptible putting on the incorruptible’? As a child, when I heard this story of dead people being resurrected after Jesus rose from the dead, with my simple child’s mind I thought they went back to being dead after showing themselves. I thought they crept back into their graves after the showing and that was it.
Resurrection is the ultimate message of comfort in the face of the death of loved ones. And death is the portal for resurrection. I am always reminded of the simple epitaph on a grave in a countryside church. It simply said, “It is not death, but time that parts us.” Resurrection is just as sure as death is sure. And it will be resurrection of all peoples with the sea giving up her dead, but not as in horror movies. More like an exodus of laughing, rejoicing bands of people running happily out of the waters. Resurrection means we will never die again. It also means we will put on new bodies that are not susceptible to ageing.
It is such an inconceivably powerful reality. It is imbued with the power to erase all earthly griefs. I am wordlessly grateful for resurrection morning.
