I Need a Resurrection, Not Consolation.

I appreciate the comment made recently, via Facebook, to my blog on “Jesus Is No Help At All.” Here’s what was commented: that’s all fine when things are going well, but “when you get to a point of survival, you need Jesus.”

Here is my thinking in response to that.

When Jesus got “to the point of survival,” that dereliction of crucifixion, he needed God and God was nowhere to be found. Jesus is recorded as being very aware of this emptiness, if not abandonment, by, we might assume spewing, from the cross Psalm 22’s “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” There is salvation in this story of a crucifixion not because “misery loves company,” something that goes like this: “We too get or feel abandoned, but see Jesus abandonment? God sees and knows our pain and predicament and accompanies us (remember, “Emmanuel” means “God With Us”) so that we are not alone!” We may be miserable, so the thinking and theology goes, but at least somebody is paying attention as we die.

This accompaniment in the dying is supposed to be our salvation? There is indeed consolation, comfort and compassion, but I’m sorry, there is no salvation on the cross. God was no help to Jesus in his execution, in his time where he was at the “point of survival.”

But I’m thinking that God, being God, one who would have the best interest in mind for God’s creation, including humanity, would actually do what’s best.  So how could this not showing up at the precise moment most needed, “the point of survival,” be in the best interest of the creatures? Maybe it’s that our survival is not what we need most, as illogical as that sounds, and is, to us. Maybe what we need most is a brand new life. And by “brand new” I mean not a resuscitation of the current life. I mean, what…perhaps a resurrection from the dead?  This is, because it is illogical, and indeed maddenly absurd,  abhorrent to what theologians call the “Old Self” (the “self” who cannot not think of the self’s projects and perpetuation). The “Old Self” will not tolerate being finished off, put out of the game, benched, and left to languish and disappear, totally thus dependent on an outside decision and force and action to start up a new life in us where there is no life.

The larger, deeper, point of all this is not that we don’t need God, or Jesus, to save us, but that we do! But we don’t want salvation, a total reboot if you will. What we want is the consolation and comfort aforementioned. When I say that “Jesus is No Help at All” I am saying he is so much more. As I did say in my initial blog, he is “Lord and Savior.” To be sure, “help” is not nothing. Consolation and Comfort are not nothing. But they are mere child’s play when it comes to the thing that plagues us: our temporal and eternal separation from God because we will not (not cannot, but will not) trust God to have our best interests in mind. God must intervene and save, not accompany and console.

The point is that we “need Jesus” in every time and place, not in the only thriving or the only surviving. But what we need is a resurrection from the dead. And, behold!

So, Dear Lord Jesus, please do hold my hand now and when I die. Comfort me please. But do not stop there. Raise me, and all creation from the dead!

I’ll wait. I will wait.