Epiphany 7 / Ordinary Time 7
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
... you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
-- 1 Corinthians 15:37
There is always the danger that we will push an analogy too far, but Paul was trying to speak of a mystery beyond our experience. He may well have been contending with Corinthian forbearers of his contemporaries who believed that we are immortal souls captured in a physical body. Paul believed that the resurrection of the body preserved the physicality of our current body in some manner that reflected continuity with who we had been during our life here on earth. While the seed was transformed through its death, we know that there is a direct physical continuity between the seed that was sown and the plant that emerged. A seed does not contain some inner spiritual essence that escapes its outer husk. The body or plant that is produced is directly connected with the actual seed that is planted.
Our current society prefers to believe in an immortal soul encased in a physical body that can be discarded at death. Paul spoke of our body being transformed: "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." Also, it was not something automatic but depended upon God: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." What takes place at our death depends on God and not on some inherent characteristic of our own being. "But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body." Paul also spoke of our bearing the image of Christ in our resurrection.
The reports of Christ's resurrection suggested both continuity and discontinuity as well. He was able to be touched by his disciples and to digest food that was given to him. At the same time, the gospels suggested that he was not bound by time and space in the same way that he was before his death. He seemed to enter a room with locked doors and to move about without the constrictions that we normally assume. When we seek to understand the resurrection, we are entering into a dimension of eternity but retain our touch with time. Analogies are useful, but in the end we return to our capacity to trust God who is good and is not defeated by death.
-- 1 Corinthians 15:37
There is always the danger that we will push an analogy too far, but Paul was trying to speak of a mystery beyond our experience. He may well have been contending with Corinthian forbearers of his contemporaries who believed that we are immortal souls captured in a physical body. Paul believed that the resurrection of the body preserved the physicality of our current body in some manner that reflected continuity with who we had been during our life here on earth. While the seed was transformed through its death, we know that there is a direct physical continuity between the seed that was sown and the plant that emerged. A seed does not contain some inner spiritual essence that escapes its outer husk. The body or plant that is produced is directly connected with the actual seed that is planted.
Our current society prefers to believe in an immortal soul encased in a physical body that can be discarded at death. Paul spoke of our body being transformed: "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." Also, it was not something automatic but depended upon God: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." What takes place at our death depends on God and not on some inherent characteristic of our own being. "But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body." Paul also spoke of our bearing the image of Christ in our resurrection.
The reports of Christ's resurrection suggested both continuity and discontinuity as well. He was able to be touched by his disciples and to digest food that was given to him. At the same time, the gospels suggested that he was not bound by time and space in the same way that he was before his death. He seemed to enter a room with locked doors and to move about without the constrictions that we normally assume. When we seek to understand the resurrection, we are entering into a dimension of eternity but retain our touch with time. Analogies are useful, but in the end we return to our capacity to trust God who is good and is not defeated by death.
