What is resurrection? Looking at the last chapters of Mark’s gospel, Phil Fogarty SJ starts from what it recounts and then goes on to give us some idea of what the resurrection of the body might mean for us. “The Good News of Christianity is that for those who die, life is changed, not ended.”
Mark’s account of the Resurrection is brief and to the point. At the crucifixion some women were looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses and Salome. These used to follow Jesus and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem (15:40-41).
Sunday morning
The Sabbath is now over. Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bring spices with which to anoint the body of Jesus. As the sun rises on Sunday morning they go to the tomb (16:1ff). What they intend is not quite clear.
Are the spices simply meant to stifle the smell of putrefaction of Jesus’ body that would take place after some days, or is it that, due to Jesus’ hasty burial, the proper rituals of anointing the dead have not taken place? Whatever the reason, when the women arrive at the tomb they find, much to their amazement, that the big stone in front of the tomb has already been rolled back.
They enter the tomb and see a young man in a white robe seated on the right-hand side, and are struck with alarm. The young man is clearly a messenger from God. He says to them, ‘There is no need for alarm. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has been raised (by God), he is not here. See, here is the place where they laid him. But you must go and tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going before you to Galilee; it is there you will see him, just as he told you”.’
The women come out and run away from the tomb, because they are frightened out of their wits; and they say nothing to a soul, for they are afraid. The women’s reaction is astonishing. They disobey the young man’s command and, like the disciples before them, they flee and speak to no one. And here Mark’s story ends abruptly!
Scholars’ arguments
Why does Mark’s Gospel end so abruptly? Perhaps he is making the point that unless a person is prepared to follow Jesus by carrying one’s cross’ and enduring the pain of discipleship, then the mere proclamation of the Risen Lord is not enough to produce genuine faith.
Some scholars, however, have argued for a lost ending to Mark’s Gospel. Others feel that perhaps he simply assumed that his listeners already knew about Jesus’ various appearances to the disciples, or the author of Mark may have been prevented from finishing his Gospel for some unknown reason!
As it has come down to us there is, of course, an account of the appearances of the Risen Christ (Mk.16:9-20). Scholars believe that a copyist added such appearances to the Gospel some time in the second century, perhaps, in order to fill in what appears to be a gap in the Gospel’s ending.
If this is what happened, the later author may well have drawn on the appearance stories in Matthew, Luke and John. Scholars are definitely agreed that the addendum (16:9-20) differs notably from the usually concrete and pictorial style of Mark’s writing.
Apparitions
Jesus appears to Mary of Magdala. She goes to his companions, who are mourning and in tears, and tells them that Jesus is alive and that she has seen him, but they do not believe her. Then Jesus shows himself under another form to two of them as they are on their way into the country. They, in turn, go back and tell the others, but the disciples do not believe them either.
Lastly, Jesus appears to the Eleven while they are at table. He reproaches them for their incredulity and obstinacy because they refused to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
He says to them, ‘Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned. These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover.’
Finally, Mark tells us, Jesus is taken up into heaven (that is, returns to the Father) while the disciples go out preaching everywhere. The Lord works with the missionary disciples and confirms them in their work through miraculous signs.
Good news
Let me add some final words on the notion of ‘resurrection’. It seems that to experience the ‘joy’ of the resurrection, the disciples had to accept the reality of what preceded it, namely Jesus’ suffering and death.
On a personal level, the greatest fear that most human beings have to face is probably the fear of death. To be human is to die. Death can haunt us like nothing else because we fear annihilation, the loss of self and the loss of our most significant relationships. Either we die into nothingness or we die into the mysterious, incomprehensible reality we call God.
The Good News of Christianity is that for those who die, life is changed not ended. As St. Paul put it, ‘Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died’ (I Thes.4:14).
Unity of body and soul
But is hope of a future life beyond this one at odds with modern scientific thought? People often speak about ‘the immortality of the soul’. For the New Testament writers, however, the hope is not for the continuance after death of some tenuous spiritual component called the soul but the restoration by God of the whole person. As St. Paul put it, ‘God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.’
It is preferable to think of a person, as the Hebrews did, as a unity rather than the Greek divorce between body and soul. Christian hope is not simply for the survival of some tenuous soul, but for the reconstitution of the whole person in some other environment of God’s choosing.
An Anglican priest and former Professor of Theoretical Physics, has this to say: ‘There is nothing particularly important in the actual physical constituents of our bodies. After a few years of nutrition and wear and tear, the atoms that make us up have nearly all been replaced by equivalent successors. It is the pattern that they form which constitutes the physical expression of our continuing personality.
‘There seems no difficulty in conceiving of that pattern, dissolved at death, being recreated in another environment in an act of resurrection. In terms of a very crude analogy it would be like transforming the software of a computer programme (the ‘pattern’ of our personality) from one piece of hardware (our body in this world) to another (our body in the world to come). Scientifically this seems a coherent idea.’ If the essential ingredient of the mind is information then resurrection could well consist of the possibility of re-embodying mind in an environment of God’s choosing?
This article first appeared in The Messenger (December 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
