Faith Works 4-28-23

Faith Works 4-28-23
Jeff Gill

Rising to the occasion, including resurrection
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Yes, I affirm bodily resurrection as the heart of what I celebrate in the wake of Easter.

I don't just say that because fellow Christians expect it. In fact, there are Christians who have a variety of views on the nature of resurrection. This bothers me less than I'm told it should.

There have been people who've dismissed belief in a bodily resurrection as . . . well, I'm not quite clear what the inference is, and some have said this minister's views have been mangled or misrepresented. The line "My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife" seems sum it up well enough.

What's kept this going in social media is the question of whether or not one can be a Christian and not believe in the actual resurrection of a dead Jesus. Now, as a congregational pastor, I've had this conversation many, many times. And will again. People tell me that, while they honor Christ, they just can't quite accept the idea of Jesus's resurrection from the dead. And I'll tell you what I've told them all: I believe that faith in God's ability and willingness to raise up Jesus from death should be our goal as Christians. You may not be there yet, but if you are following Jesus, you're likely to end up there, so just keep on going. But I also come from a tradition that has historically been very unwilling, and I believe wisely so, to spend time telling other people they are not Christians.

I've been tangled up in these sorts of debates around all sorts of variants of Christian belief and practice. Christians do have internally substantial disagreements with other traditions, and that includes my own. Two of our movement's key founders, Barton Stone & Alexander Campbell, debated back and forth from 1821 to 1827 their view of trinitarian and unitarian understandings of Jesus Christ, and while many called on Campbell to reject Stone's "Socinian" views, his response was to go out of his way to say to Stone "I will call you brother."

So if someone affirms that they would follow Christ, intend to fellowship with others as a Christian, and will grant me the same, I'm not going to say they aren't Christian just because their beliefs don't track exactly with mine. Of course, I'm right, and they're wrong (#irony), but if I only claimed fellowship with people who agree with me on everything, I'd have a quiet time of it on Sunday morning praying by myself.

I think a casual statement that "you don't have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian" is problematic, but it doesn't make me mad; a parallel line I've seen is that since this is the majority view, it's important to affirm for those on the outside looking in that there's room for those who believe differently. Perhaps belief in the bodily resurrection is still a majority belief within most fairly orthodox Christian bodies, but my push-back is more because I think such a faith is, in fact, NOT the majority view in the world at large. I think most people in general don't believe that resurrection is possible, has happened, or could happen in any meaningful way for the rest of us at some future point.

Hence my belief that it's important to speak up in defense of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. I do think it's at the heart of my faith; saying that isn't my way of saying someone without it has no faith at all, nor do I believe such a person isn't a Christian. What I'd like to do is keep teaching and preaching and discipling such a person into why this counter-intuitive, improbable, unlikely event is, in truth, a way to understand this world, let alone the next . . . and our place in it.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a number of non-majority beliefs, but you probably knew that already. Tell him your odd affirmations at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.