Jesus has already restored life

By John Pearring

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081520-day.cfm
Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10
Luke 1:39-56

We get again this theme of God stepping into creation and fixing things. Not as we’d expect. Not even as we might hope for, considering our earthly attachments. One of the Blessed Mary’s four holy days, the Assumption, typifies and projects our own bodily resurrection. She died, but was assumed into heaven body and soul. This is our promise. But, this is aggressively foreign to the rules of death that we expect. 

Jesus may seem like he’s talking our language, but what he did by resurrecting, and what his Father did with Mary's body at her death, are fully disassociated with how we look at things. We need to reset our perception of death in the face of Jesus’ promise for our resurrection.

God took on our life form as one of us in order to be our divine and holy permanent king. That’s a fairly cool thing to do. Not all of us fully believe it, much less grasp the consequences of his incarnation because it changes everything, and yet hasn’t seemed to change anything at all. 

By dying and rising he restored creation’s glory, which means the kingdom of heaven will be connected to earth in such a way as to return eternal life status to everything. What, however, do we see around us? The same things the Hebrews saw.

Scholars tell us that the Hebrews expected the Messiah to be a conquerer of other nations, not a kingdom bearer of the sort that allowed the Pharisees to call for his execution and the Romans to comply. Can you blame the Jewish leaders inability to imagine their Messiah as divine, especially if he could be killed?

This skepticism remains. Those of us who do believe Jesus is God and did ascend to heaven do so with a conviction that most people see as nonsense. We must admit that we are not fully keen on the continued existence of suffering. We’re not thrilled about despots able to still take control over the last 2,000 years. Everyone still dies. Most folks die too soon, and too often in horrible and frightening ways. Even with our firm beliefs, the allowance of evil disturbs even the holiest of us.

We’re still caught up, I think, in Jesus being a benevolent leader who’ll come back soon to affirm our political hopes. We’re looking forward to his radical and revolutionary takeover of the world. To operate from the position that Jesus is our physical and spiritual king with a plan that takes thousands of years to implement ... well ... a mental shift must take place. Otherwise, we’re like the Hebrews of Jesus’ time. “Where’s the resulting proof of Jesus’ power?”

Many different answers can address this problem. I’m going to offer just one possibility. My daily attachments to the world have often caused me the most difficultly in seeing the kingdom of God “at hand." The difficulty goes away, though, when I treasure my attachments for what they witness to me. They are not "worldly," in truth. They are bits and pieces, mirrors and clues, of the permanent attachments of eternal life.  This process is never ending, because attachments come and go.  I can shift my life right now, though. I can live with these temporary attachments because I have attached myself to the things that are permanent.  

We’re not wrong in having worldly attachments. Attachments make a lot of sense. We have careers, projects under our authority, children we birthed, homes we’ve built, food we prepare, cars we care for, and so on. The daily stuff of life attaches to us much like we’re attached to it. That’s to be expected, isn’t it? We’ve got systems to operate, machines to run, duties to perform, and laws to uphold. We’re pretty busy. 

Yet, rather than seeing attachments as distractions to Jesus’ kingship and our membership in the Kingdom of God, it makes more sense to embrace the world as a constant reminder of its passing, it’s temporary nature. Our attachments keep reminding us of the impermanence, the fluid nature of everything in this life, like ancient decaying castles. Things break and we repair or replace them. Maybe we give up on a whole category of things because its existence is too fragile. Like our garden, or a screen door that rips on an annual basis. To heck with it. No more screen door. That garden, though, was fruitful. That screen door opened the house to fresh air. My constant maintenance reminds me that God repairs me constantly. His care of me and my family will never stop. He loves me beyond understanding.

The same with our career. Many of us have had several careers over our lifetimes. Some disappeared due to technology upgrades. Others became too difficult as our bodies couldn’t keep up. We had to train up on something new, out of hope or desperation. Maybe that new career didn’t work out. Or, a hobby ended up as a career. We got incredibly lucky, or just smart about how to make an enjoyable skill pay off. Careers, though, offer no guarantees. God's presence, though. His indwelling Spirit is indeed guaranteed.

Our children stay within a boundary of expectation for very short periods of time. Eventually, even though we are two, three, or even four decades older than they, our authority fades into dismissive respect. Or worse, we’re rejected altogether. Our attachment to the ones we raised can become fully disconnected for very long periods of time. We did nothing at all, really. Our children changed. God does not change. I get to know him more and more every day. This discovery will never end, even through my eternal life with him never ends.

I know my favorite foods have remained rather similar over the years. The ingredients and recipes, though, have changed drastically. I helped Joanne make a spaghetti dinner that had more vegetables than meat, and the meat was ground turkey. The noodles were gluten-free. The parmesan cheese came in a big square container full of pre-graded real cheese. Not the slender tube of dried flakes of my youth. The meatballs were mostly spices. Yet, it was delicious. Even though my taste buds struggle to grasp each thing, I savor the comfort of spaghetti now as much as I ever have. In fact, every part of food — meals, shopping, refrigerating, our tastes, and product variety — has morphed and shifted continuously. God participates in every part of my life, too. The mind-blowing expanse of what is coming will continue to feed my curiosity and gratitude.

The impermanence of everything shines light on the joy of life. Mary, assumed into heaven, has appeared to children all over the world over the last 500 to 1,000 years. Her message has been strikingly similar across all those appearances. None are identical. All, however, remain consistent in their emphasis upon prayer, service, holiness, worship of her son, and so on. We may not believe any of it. Yet, the faith we have chosen and adopted, no matter how we’ve come to it, tells us her visits are real. So, I, like so many others, allow God this wondrous revelatory intersection between the Communion of Saints and our fading world. I choose to attach myself to that community, and to await the restoration of everyone in the new heavens and the new earth, even if it sounds ridiculous.

Are we so different from any person ever born? Filled with awe, yet rattled with skepticism. We can know with certainty, and still worry about God’s capabilities. Perhaps, we just need to step into the revelation of God's presence.

For thousands of years — millennia, if you count our ancestral origins — suffering and death and trauma took place before Jesus arrived. Upon his resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into the Body (us) of Christ, another two thousand years of suffering and death and trauma transpired. Should we be surprised at the path of God’s involvement in his creation? Can we figure out the end game as it will play out? In bits and pieces, we can calculate some roadmap, but we eventually realize that God allows us to discover his plan according to his timetable. 

For me, the answer has been to reconsider and review my attachments. They are a part of me as responsibilities, duties, and even life-long projects. They will all pass away, though. The growing attachments, the ones that builds to a crescendo, include the Kingdom where the Father sits upon his throne, my King, Jesus, my brothers and sisters in Christ, and the Holy Spirit dwelling within me. These are the attachments that will not pass away, and the ones that will are pointing me in the right direction.