The Lord is Risen Indeed!
From Kim Fabricius, Ten Propositions on the Resurrection
8. It is characteristic for the risen Christ to greet his disciples with the word shalom: “Peace be with you!” He calms their fear – of retribution, perhaps? After all, these were the men who, despite their protestations of loyalty, had abandoned their master to his fate. Perhaps now it was payback time for their betrayal? And what of Caiaphas and Pilate and all who had connived in the murder of Jesus – might we not expect a risen Terminator: “I’ll be back – and this time it’s personal”? Christian pacifists are often accused of arguing their case from the Crucified who refuses the way of violence. But the power of pacifism equally comes from the Risen One who refuses the way of vengeance. “Jesus is judge because he is victim; and that very fact means that he is a judge who will not condemn” (Rowan Williams).
So let us love, deare Love, like as we ought,
– Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
(Edmund Spenser, “Easter Sunday”)
Now for a separate, philosophical/theological question:
Must the resurrected body have total physical continuity with the corpse? I would suspect not--many people who died long before Christ, whose bodies have long since decomposed and whose molecules long since redistributed throughout the ecological sphere will be raised at the eschaton. However, I am not absolutely opposed to the possibility that God will recollect and reorganize our brains and/or bodies using identical matter.
If we answer "no" to the above question, was the absence of Jesus' corpse from the tomb necessary for the presence of Jesus' resurrected body? For if the matter of a fully decomposed body that died centuries ago can stay dispersed and the person raised from the dead, why couldn't the partially decomposed body in the tomb have stayed as it was and the person of Jesus raised from the dead?
Following through on this reasoning, should we say that the body was absent (merely) as a sign? That is, the disciples ought to deduce thus: "If the body is absent Jesus cannot be dead," rather than "If Jesus is alive, then the body is absent."
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
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