Resurrection: what about bodies?
Part two of a series on resurrection highlights the fragility of our bodies. By Terry Young
If you get onto BibleHub.com (other study aids are available), you’ll discover the Greek word for body is σωμα (‘saw-ma’). It’s not one we use frequently, although when we talk about a psychosomatic illness, we are referring to an interaction between mind (psyche) and body (soma).
Paul’s letters to his friends in Corinth contain more than a third of all the references to this word for body in the New Testament, and the great majority of these are in 1 Corinthians. This surprised me, since I’d read how problematic the structure of 1 Corinthians was. It may well be a random set of answers to a church he loved and fought with, but the body motif builds throughout to a climax before he subsides onto housekeeping and final greetings.
As a result, sex surfaces early (chapters 5-7) and although Paul is not there in body (1 Corinthians 5:3, although you’ll miss it in the NIV), he is clear in his views. Bodies are key to marriage – unifying commitment and offering pleasure. The concept of mutual enjoyment without exploitation also emerges. Later on, bodies are also the way we deliver on purpose as we make them do what we want them to do (1 Corinthians 10:27).
If anything, the theme of bodies builds in the second half of the letter as Paul moves to the body corporate, where Jesus’ body is broken in the communion bread (1 Corinthians 11:23-24) and distributed to the members. In the next chapter (12) the metaphor is reversed, and the members come together as a single body.
So, as he winds up to his finale in chapter 15, what is Paul going to write about? Why bodies, of course! But before we follow his line of argument there, let’s rehearse where most of us are. Our bodies are bound to decay and most of us will end our days lacking self-determination and dignity, perhaps in pain. The big question is why we were given bodies at all. Paul addresses that next, but let’s stay with the question for a minute.
It it’s not just academic for me, since the arc of achievement followed by deterioration is particularly clear in my case. Artificial limbs trash your joints. In my early 40s, I realised that my right hip was starting to seize up: I became more dependent on crutches and 20 years later, I’m sometimes aching all over at the end of the day. At my most recent consultation the specialist commented that if she showed an X-ray of my hip to orthopaedic surgeons, they would be amazed that I was mobile at all.
The paradox is that life didn’t grind to a halt with the hip. I kept travelling around the world and earned more in my 40s that I had in my 30s and more again in my 50s. As I write, I’ve cut my hours but I’m still enjoying work. Paradoxically, my productivity surges as my physical condition sinks. It won’t last forever, and one day I will do my final piece of paid work or take my pension if I live that long.
As we saw in the last blog, the paradox of surging while sinking is a spiritual reality too, but let’s return to Paul’s argument here and ask: what should surge into eternity while our body sinks in decay?
The genetics of eternity
But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ How foolish!
What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. (1 Corinthians 15:35-38)
I’m surprised that more is not made of this passage, for a germ of wheat is nothing like the swaying stalk of golden grain it becomes. Paul observed the link between seeds and their later incarnations. We know it’s about coding: DNA.
It looks like whatever form we take in the world or worlds to come, the code that is really you or me will be preserved. Isn’t that wild? I’m no geneticist, but came across this in AN Wilson’s biography of Darwin. Apparently, if you take the gene that regulates eye development in a fruit fly and put it into a frog, it works! The frog doesn’t end up with a compound eye because the code sorts itself out and the frog gets the eye that suits its body. We can do similar things with software and let’s remember that God is even better with codes.
On this reading, what we are doing with this body in this life is writing the code that will flourish in eternity. The skills we acquire, the relationships we forge or fracture, the fun we have and everything we learn goes, somehow, into that code. The real you is meant to have a ball in eternity.
Everything we have experienced, expressed and absorbed in our walk with Jesus will go in there, too. The only things that won’t go into the code are the sin in which we were born and the ways in which we have imperfected it down all our days. Oh! And the way we are programmed to decay, that won’t make the cut either.
If all this sounds like the world to come may not be anything like what you were expecting, it’s probably not.
The mythology of a long and happy retirement at the end of an active and successful life is the story Paul is pulling us away from. It’s the only narrative you have if this world is all you’ve got. In the world of YOLO (you only live once) the best on offer is to fold gently into an eternal sleep. But not for Paul.
So, what were we made for? Let’s turn to that next!
Image | Joseph Pearson | Unsplash
This is a five part series focusing on the resurrection:
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Terry Young is a missionary kid who read science and engineering. After a PhD in lasers, he worked in R&D before becoming a professor, when he taught project management, information systems and e-business, while leading research in healthcare. He set up Datchet Consulting to have fun with both faith and work and worshipped at Baptist churches in Slough for 19 years before moving to the New Forest.
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Baptist Times, 25/11/2023