We Remember Your Resurrection

BY Claire Gibson

Scripture Reading: Luke 24:1-9, 2 Corinthians 4:14, Romans 6:1-11, 1 Corinthians 15:1-28, 1 Corinthians 15:50-57

When I was ten years old, I moved to a military community in upstate New York called West Point. Home to a college full of cadets, the Army base also included a football stadium, housing for professors and staff, and a medium-sized cemetery. A three-foot stone wall surrounded the cemetery, old masonry on which my peers and I walked to and from friends’ houses, school, and the “PX,” a store where we bought clothes, makeup, and toys. We walked on the wall, arms out, chatting about boys and music and our dreams for the future. The stone wall served as both a balance beam and a demarcation line. On this side, the living. On the other side, the dead. We knew better than to cross to the other side of the wall.

But for the Christian, the cemetery takes on an entirely new meaning. In light of Christ’s miraculous, scandalous resurrection, a cemetery is no longer a final destination but a blade of grass in the vast field of eternity. If Christ has risen from the dead, and we are in Christ, then we, too will be raised from the dead. If Christ is alive and seated with God in the heavenly realms, then we, too, will be made alive to live forever with Him. These are deep mysteries, difficult to understand and hard to grasp in the midst of overwhelming grief, especially when our bodies give out or when evil snuffs out life too soon. Do we really believe in resurrection? Do we really believe in life after death? 

We do.

We really, really do. The facts align with our faith. Scripture tells us Jesus appeared to His disciples and more than five hundred others after his resurrection. Jesus showed His disciples the scars in His hands. He ate, walked, and touched His friends—He was not a disembodied spirit but an alive person, able to live and move in the physical world, as we, too, will again someday.

I must admit that I rarely remember Christ’s resurrection in my day-to-day life. Instead, my eyes are focused on mundane tasks: getting kids off to school, completing work assignments, figuring out (yet again) what’s for dinner. Life moves at a frenetic pace, and I rarely feel alive. More often, I tread water. I look to friends, family, and experiences to bring me to life when really the only One who can fill me with life is Christ himself. Like the women who rushed to Jesus’s tomb on the third day, I often look for the living among the dead.

But one day, the wall will be destroyed, the demarcation line erased. And until that day, I beg God to help me remember the truth: just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, He will give life to my mortal body by the same Spirit living within me (Romans 8:11). Amen!

Written by Claire Gibson