Keep Your Metaphor. I'm Good.
During Lent, I went to two funerals.
It’s easy to relegate the resurrection to a metaphor when it costs nothing. When it can serve as inspiration or a story about enlightenment. It can be whatever you need it to be when it’s not your hope in the face of death here in real life
During the season of Lent, the time leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection, I went to two funerals. One for close family and another for a close family friend. Both gave me a stark reminder of my grandfather’s funeral which—hard to believe—is approaching five years ago. The sense of grief and loss I felt at these funerals. The anger at death for taking people before their time through covid, cancer, or crash. For destroying families. Death is an intruder. It shouldn’t be here.
I heard a pastor once say about death, “Never call a friend what God has called an enemy.” Death is the enemy. Paul understood that the resurrection isn’t simply the vindication of Jesus’ divinity, though it certainly was that. He knew it wasn’t just a metaphor for God bringing new life from dead things, though God does that too. Paul insisted to us that it’s our only hope in life in death. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”1
The resurrection of Jesus means the resurrection of us. His defeat of death means our defeat of death. When you haven’t felt death’s sting, when you don’t need anyone resurrected, it sure is a fine metaphor. But once the enemy has dealt its blow and you’ve felt the pain of searing loss and looked the intruder in God’s good creation in the face, you need more than a metaphor. You need something real.
This isn’t an argument for why it really happened. This is why it needs to have really happened. Because a metaphor won’t bring people back from the dead and it won’t give you eternal life.
There was a time when I all but dismissed the idea of eternal life as a time in the future. “No,” I would say, “eternal life is here and now!” And of course, it is. Some circles should talk about that more. But to say we don’t need eternal life for, well, eternity shows how little we hate death. How can we endure the sufferings of this life or mourn with those who mourn when our idea of the resurrection can’t hold its weight? Let’s remember who the enemy is.
So this Easter, keep your metaphor. I’m good. I don’t need it. If it didn’t happen, there are other ways and philosophies to live by for a good life. No, I’ll take the real thing. That’s the only thing that has the hope I’m looking for.
1 Corinthians 15:19
Interesting take.