Easter 3
I'm not actually such a Star Wars fan that it should appear twice in this space, but the readings this week cannot help but call to mind the contrivance that appears in that particular Western. At the end of Return of the Jedi, the highest of the elite Jedi order come back in bodily form, but blue, and glowing, and semi-transparent. Probably one of the few incidents of bodily resurrection in film. It's showy, cheezy, and campy. Pretty much like the gospel lesson this week, where Jesus shows up and eats a fish, even though he's already dead, like it's some kind of party trick.
But let's briefly consider the stranger image from John's first letter. After he affirms that we are children of God, or really that we have been made children of God--so we're adopted, as the language traditionally has it--he says something very odd. "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is."
What we will be has not yet been revealed.
A strange turn of phrase. Normally, when Christians in our era speak of what happens to us in the afterlife, they speak in one of a few categories. In one, they suggest that we become angels, which most of us find enormously dissatisfying because that suggestion gels not at all with any of the ways that angels appear in Scripture. In another, they suggest that we enter a heavenly realm when we die--much like Jesus, under torture, promises to one of the thieves while hanging around on the cross in Luke's gospel. In still another, Christians suggest that we all "sleep in Jesus" (a phrase that comes from one of Paul's followers, the writer of Ephesians or Colossians, I think) until the final judgment, when we all climb six feet up and stand in line until we come before the great Judge.
In all three of versions, angels, insta-judgment, and sleep-till-final-judgment, we pretty much imagine that all of us, at the appropriate time, will become blue, glowing bodies that can walk through walls and eat fish--pretty much exactly like now, but better.
But John here offers another suggestion, one I've never heard popularly defended from Scripture. Perhaps no one uses this passage to talk about the afterlife because it rather boldly proclaims our ignorance, and we (falsely) think that ignorance and ambiguity at the time of someone's death can provide no comfort, and instead we prefer to stick with any explanation that is understandable. Even if we proclaim ignorance, we try to leave Scripture out of it. How surprising that it beats us to the punch.
John believes that we have no idea what we will be. Ever the mystic, he does say that he thinks whatever it is, we'll be able to see God as God is. That strikes me as a little optimistic, but mystics usually lean toward the optimism side of things. But he says that if we have hope in this, it will purify us.
As I watch those around me suffer from cancer, Parkinson's, and the thousand mortal perils that we are subject to, I find myself today siding with John. I like bodily resurrection and the holiness of creation that it naturally implies, but I also understand wanting to be translated into something a bit more robust, something with a bit more vision, something we don't understand yet. Bodies may be resurrected, but I hope Parkinson's isn't. What that looks like, I have no idea--but I can hope.
In John's understanding of Christ's time in the world, Christ held a reality that made ours look like darkness, and Christ has brought us into that lighter reality. That offers us, I think, a unique perspective on a prayer we say at baptism, when we invite the newly baptized to share with us in Christ's "eternal priesthood." We, as members of that brighter reality, are charged as lay priests to carry that light anywhere it can go, to be the connection of the brighter reality of Christ with this dimmer one. Not, as Luke would say, to change the the kingdom of this world into God's. Not, as Matthew would say, that all peoples of the earth might be under one Teacher. But, as John says, simply because we have seen a new light--and although our eyes have not adjusted to it, and we cannot yet see everything it will mean, it has nonetheless brought us life, and life more abundantly, and we are now to be priests between the brightness of God's reality and the darkness of this one.
Perhaps only John invites us so boldly to share in a light that we do not understand but that has brought us to life, anyway--and then to tell everyone about it.
