Nondual Resurrection

In the previous episode I interpreted the Cross as an expression of nonduality. I argued that the meaning of the Cross is the death of the physical and psychological self, not the theories of sacrifice and substitutionary atonement that came to dominate later Christianity. 

In this episode I talk about the other half of the story, which is the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection also points to nondual reality. I uncover the three layers of the biblical Easter tradition – visions of the risen Lord, the empty tomb, and bodily resurrection appearances - and show how each communicates nondual awareness. 

Transcript

Last time I interpreted the Cross – the death of Jesus by crucifixion – as an expression of nonduality. I argued that the meaning of the Cross is the death of the physical and psychological self, not the theories of sacrifice and substitutionary atonement that came to dominate later Christianity. The cross is just half of this greatest story ever told. Today I am going to talk about the other half of the story, which is the resurrection of Jesus. It also points to nondual reality. 

To understand the resurrection of Jesus you have to know that there are three layers to the biblical Easter tradition. It will come as a surprise to many Christians that the earliest accounts of Easter come not from the gospels but from the writings of the apostle Paul, who wrote in the 50’s and early 60’s. The gospels were written later in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. 

The earliest – and the only firsthand account of a resurrection appearance of Jesus in the Bible – is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which was written in the early 50’s, more than twenty years after Jesus’ death. Paul starts off chapter 15 by listing the appearances of the risen Christ to the first apostles. This list, by the way, is different than the appearances that are mentioned in the gospels. It includes an appearance to Jesus’ brother James and a mass sighting by 500 people at once, which is something you would think was important enough for a gospel writer to mention. Then Paul says that “as to one untimely born” Christ appeared also to him. 

Paul’s account of Jesus’ resurrection is important for what it omits as well as what it adds. There is no mention of angels or the women at a tomb, who play such an important role in the gospel stories, most significantly no mention of Mary Magdalene. In fact there is no mention of an empty tomb at all. The empty tomb tradition arose later, as did the idea of a physical resurrected body. More about that in a moment.

The earliest resurrection appearance of Jesus in the Bible is a visionary experience, not a physical encounter. In fact Paul explicitly speaks against a physical understanding of resurrection. In First Corinthians 15, Paul relates these Easter appearances and then moves on to explore the nature of resurrection in the longest discourse about resurrection in the Bible.  Paul asks rhetorically:  

 “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” … What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. … I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

You cannot be much clearer than that. For Paul the resurrection is not physical, but spiritual. That is affirmed in the Acts of the Apostle, written by Paul’s traveling companion and physician Luke. Three times in the Acts of the Apostles the appearance of Jesus to Paul on the Damascus Road is described.  Once in the third person by the narrator Luke and twice in the first person by Paul himself. 

In all three cases Paul’s traveling companions, who were present at this resurrection appearance, did not see Jesus or hear Jesus. This appearance of the risen Christ was something only Paul saw and heard. Yet Paul in his letter to the Galatians adamantly insists that this was a genuine resurrection appearance like the Easter appearances to the original eleven apostles. So the earliest Easter tradition about the resurrection of Jesus is visionary.

What is the meaning of this earliest resurrection tradition? Paul tells us in the resurrection chapter. “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “The perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality.” The death of this mortal form is not the end. Life goes beyond the death of the human body. The essence of the human is the “life-giving spirit” as Paul describes the risen Christ. That is the earliest message of Easter.

The second layer of the Easter tradition is the empty tomb. The Empty Tomb is found first in the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest of the four gospels written in the 70’s. The original ending of Mark’s gospel included no resurrection appearances of the risen Christ. There was only the announcement by a young man at the tomb to the women that Jesus had risen. Then it says that the women who heard that announcement told no one about it! The gospel itself is telling the reader that the empty tomb was not known in the earliest years of the church.

What is the meaning of the empty tomb? It is obvious! The empty tomb symbolizes emptiness. Emptiness is symbolic of nondual reality. Jesus referred to Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” In other words Jesus was saying that the hypocritical Pharisees were like full tombs, full of death. A full tomb is the symbol of death. An empty tomb is a symbol of life. 

The empty tomb points to the same nondual reality as the Chinese concept of the Tao, which is depicted as an empty circle. In fact the symbol of the Tao looks like the entrance of an empty tomb. The Tao Te Ching compares the Tao to an empty cup that is useful because of its empty space or a house or window or door that are useful because they are empty. An empty vessel is the symbol of Tao or Eternity. The empty tomb is in that tradition. It symbolizes the Divine that is at the heart of existence even after the body dies.

The third and latest Easter tradition is physical bodily resurrection. This is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke written in the 80’s, and it finds its fullest form in the gospel of John written in the 90’s. The later the gospel, the more physical the resurrection appearances become. This risen Jesus is touched by Mary Magdalene, eats food with the disciples, and his wounds are touched by Thomas.

Yet even in these traditions, this is no ordinary physical body. It does not walk out of the tomb, but is simply not there when the tomb is opened. The risen Christ is able to walk through walls, appear behind locked doors, and disappear instantaneously and appear somewhere else. Clearly this is no ordinary body. 

Another refrain in the gospels is that Jesus’ followers did not recognize this resurrected Jesus.  Mary Magdalene did not recognize him in the Garden. The two disciples walked with him for miles on the Emmaus Road but did not recognize his voice or his face. The apostles did not recognize him in the upper room or on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The Easter Jesus was different than the pre-Easter Jesus. He takes physical but unrecognizable forms. Jesus taught this in his parable of the sheep and goats, when he said that he is the poor, the hungry, the stranger and the imprisoned. “When did we see you poor and homeless and hungry and not minister to you?” people ask in the parable. “As you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done to me.” In other words the risen Christ is physically present in those in need. 

I think the later theological development of making the resurrection physical was also meant as a corrective to the over-spiritualizing of the gospel. We know that Docetism was already gaining strength in the first century. Docetism said that Christ was not really incarnated as a human. It taught that the pre-Easter Jesus was not really physical. He only appeared to have a physical body. The said he did not leave footprints in the sand. He was just a spirit who appeared to be a physical human. The physical resurrection stories are designed as a corrective to this theology. 

In the same way nonduality today can be easily over-spiritualized. I hear nondual teachers stress the idea that this physical world is not real. That it only appears to be real. That it is an illusion. When properly understood that statement is true. This physical world is not ultimately real. It is simply a creation in space and time, a display upon our senses. Yet to these physical bodies this world is very real. That means that relatively speaking this temporal physical world is still important. It cannot to be dismissed out of hand.

You cannot say that the material world doesn’t matter. What happens to people is important. How people are treated is important. The temporal world is important even though it is not permanent or eternal or ultimately real. We can’t dismiss all the suffering and injustice in the world. That is why compassion is so important in spiritual traditions. That is why the idea of physical resurrection of Jesus arose. It is a way of saying that the physical world is important. 

I also think that the story of the physical resurrection of Jesus is a symbolic way of saying that the nondual life can be lived in this physical human life. We do not have to wait to die to be spiritually liberated. We can be free now in this physical life. We can be awake to nondual spiritual reality now. As Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Like Ram Dass, “Be here now!” So all three layers of the Easter tradition point to nondual truth. Together they are the nondual meaning of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.