{"id":80757,"date":"2019-04-24T07:30:50","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T11:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=80757"},"modified":"2019-04-24T06:52:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-24T10:52:07","slug":"america-james-martin-the-literal-flesh-and-blood-resurrection-is-the-heart-of-my-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=80757","title":{"rendered":"(America) James Martin&#8211;The \u2018literal flesh-and-blood\u2019 resurrection is the heart of my faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. And I do not see that as any sort of parable or metaphor. This is, frankly, the very heart of my faith. Also, I do not believe that we can or should reduce the great mystery of the resurrection to an experience that occurred within the community. This is what some contemporary theologians have posited: that Christ \u201crose\u201d within the community. Theological approaches differ, but, in essence, some theologians offer the story of how, as the disciples came to reflect on the life and death of Jesus Christ, he became \u201cpresent\u201d to them in a new way, through the Spirit. This, in turn, empowered them to proclaim the good news of his Gospel. Some theologians offer this as a more credible or contemporary way of understanding the \u201cresurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But there is a problem with this idea of the resurrection as the after-effects of a \u201cshared memory.\u201d Certainly, after the resurrection and the ascension the disciples would have \u201cremembered\u201d Jesus, and certainly they may have had powerful Spirit-filled experiences as they did so, often as they gathered in community. But, to my mind, only something as vivid, dramatic and, in a word, real as the multiple appearances by the risen Christ could have moved the disciples from abject fear (cowering behind closed doors) to being willing to give their lives for Jesus. Nothing else can credibly account for the transformation of terrified disciples into willing martyrs.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, for the disciples to have somehow found a body in the tomb would indeed mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead, which would negate the message of Easter. The tomb, as the Easter narratives recount, was empty\u2014something that initially filled the disciples with fear and confusion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/faith\/2019\/04\/23\/literal-flesh-and-blood-resurrection-heart-my-faith\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The \u2018literal flesh-and-blood\u2019 resurrection is the heart of my faith <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/jvdDw3LjhT\">https:\/\/t.co\/jvdDw3LjhT<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 America Magazine (@americamag) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/americamag\/status\/1120781894193430528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 23, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. And I do not see that as any sort of parable or metaphor. This is, frankly, the very heart of my faith. Also, I do not<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=80757\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80762,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80757\/revisions\/80762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}