Daily Reading for April 6 • Tuesday in Easter Week
Resurrection of the Easter-kind is not regeneration, but re-creation. A new miracle of creation establishing Jesus physically as Jesus. The physical body of Jesus. Oh, the implausibility of it all!
Could it be that Jesus’ body no longer belonged to this universe? That his physical cells had been translated into a type of body that would be fit—ready to live—in some other world? Some other universe? Another dimension? Visible and tactile in ours, but not of our world? Otherwise it makes no sense, right? This resurrection makes no sense if something atomic didn’t happen. Universes—our world and God’s world—standing completely apart. Yet, because of Jesus new constitution these two worlds—God’s and ours—appear standing side by side like a Kenmore refrigerator. That makes you this close to the world that is God’s, only you can’t access it, at least on your own. . . .
Scientists, however, have reported the detection of dark matter, dust, if you will, belonging to another dimension. Matter here, in our world, actually owned by another. The evidence of this matter is Dark particle annihilation, meaning they can’t quite see the matter, but they know it is there because of evidence left behind. . . . And the question is no longer whether dark matter exists, but rather, what is it? Where is it? Where does it come from? . . . Imagine—and this is how it appears—dust of some other world is translated from some other dimension, or universe, into ours. Cosmic dust.
Which begs the question—if dust from another universe can find its way here, can dust from our dimension or universe find its way there? Universes existing side by side like the refrigerator, elbow to elbow, with translation impossible by design, but, perhaps. . . .The body of Jesus is somehow different, now. Physical yes, you can touch and see him—but different. Peculiarly different. . . . Later, this same Jesus appears physically to the disciples behind locked doors, suddenly and impossibly, flowing through earth like air through a screen door. And when the two on the Road to Emmaus—check out this fun story in Luke’s Gospel —when the two men finally recognize Jesus he instantly disappears from sight.
I’m not saying that the resurrected body of Jesus is made up of what we call dark matter, particles from another dimension, but I’m not saying he isn’t, either. If the news reports from the disciples are to be believed—and why shouldn’t they be? —it suddenly makes sense: Jesus is resurrected physically in a body that can move easily into God’s dimension.
At the very least, what I believe is this: God is right here, this close, that heaven is located even in your breath—and that Jesus as the Christ somehow broached an impenetrable barrier. And if fledgling physics theory explains the phenomenon, so be it—or if the theory simply provides a metaphor, so be it.
The point is this: the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom at the moment of crucifixion, as if to say the river of life—from God’s dimension—finally can flow freely into this universe of death. . . .
Ironically, Richard Holloway points out that Jesus has now gone to heaven—and has already taken some of our dust with him. Some of you. A part of you extant in heaven. . . . You are made holy dust, elements of some other world, even while you are dust of this world.
From a sermon preached on Easter 2009 by the Reverend Robert K. Gieselmann, Christ Episcopal Church, Sausalito, California. Used by kind permission of the author.