All it requires is an Anglican archbishop.
Here is Archbishop Linda Nicholls taking a simple historical fact and miring it in mushy obfuscation.
This starts well but quickly descends in treacly vagueness:
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the event that defines Christian faith. It is the unique event that affirms Jesus’s identity; and confirms, with power, all that Jesus taught about the love of God. It changes everything for the disciples, who must reframe all they expected through the lens that God is acting in life and even through death into new life. Without the resurrection, as St. Paul says in 1 Cor 15:13-14, 19, our faith is useless and we are to be pitied. With the resurrection we enter the lifegiving possibilities that God opens to us through Jesus Christ in every situation and moment of our lives. We share in the resurrection as the principle of God’s life in and through us.
[……..}
The gift of the resurrection of Jesus is the promise that—whether embraced slowly or quickly—the power of God’s love is stronger than the pain, sin and sorrows of what we see. Since Jesus lives, we will too, by entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past.
After emerging coughing from the fog of “entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past”, I consoled myself with the thought that I am a simple soul and, as such, merely cling to the hope that Jesus came back to life along with a real, improved body as evidence that he had overcome sin and death and reconciled us to the Father. Not only that, He a demonstrated that we, too, will rise from death with real bodies to join him. Just like it says in 1 Cor 15:13ff in the bits that Nicholls missed out.
The trouble with being an Archbishop is that one feels obliged to make statements …
This year, Ascension Day falls on May 13. Our knowledge of Jesus’ resurrection body is scanty. His resurrection body affirms the goodness of God’s original creation of humans (Genesis 1:31). Forty days after the first Easter Day, the risen Jesus “was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51). We cannot now say exactly where heaven is. God is in a different dimension of reality. The transition from here to there requires not merely a change of place, but of state. Jesus has exited this four-dimensional space-time continuum. Otherwise, His physical resurrection body is still flying around in the four-dimensional universe.
Here are two sermons of mine where I discuss this at length: Nicene Creed VIII: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nicene-creed-viii-christian-hope-pdm-turner-dr-priscilla-turner/
Nicene Creed IX: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nicene-creed-ix-christian-hope-part-two-pdm-turner-turner/
These are published in the volume of Holy Trinity, Vancouver sermons on the Nicene Creed, which you may download and read for nothing in .pdf form from my little site so kindly hosted here.
A fundamental problem these days it that many – and I have met many. as fellow churchgoers, as students of mine, and quite a few clerics I have known – who are not able, due to lack of training in and exercise of the needed critical thinking skills, to see the difference between what you quote and describe as “starts well” and what you quote as being “treacly vagueness”. In essence, you are challenging us to think critically about those two selections from the Archbishop’s article and come to our own conclusions: do we agree with you that the first four sentences, at least, of the first are simply a restatement of the message of the Gospel, whereas what follows and into the second quote, the “we enter”/”entering into” stuff, is what I would characterise as Christian-flavoured psychobabble. That challenge cannot be validly met by many because their primary focus is on what they “feel” about the language. Orwell in his classic essay addressed the use of language in politics. We need an Orwell to do the same with theology. Or is it the case that there is not that much difference now ?
Very sound remarks.
She wants to connect the historical resurrection of Jesus with the way we might live a Christian life in our current age. Always pushing toward application, without spending enough time exploring foundational doctrine.
The physical resurrection of Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith. It guarantees the Christian believer his future resurrection in a similar body. Not only did Jesus rise, but one day we too will rise. We will face resurrection with calmness and joy. Bishop N. T. Wright said: “What really matters is resurrection – life after life after death” (Christianity Today, May 2003, p. 66).
The Resurrection is the sine qua non of Christianity.