Raised to Transformed Bodily Life
Today’s devotional
A seed gives Paul an image for something we cannot fully picture. What is sown does not display the full form of what comes from it, yet there is a real connection between them. In 1 Corinthians 15, this image helps us attend to both continuity and transformation in God's promise to raise the dead.
The person God raises is not an unrelated replacement for the person who lived. Nor is resurrection simply a return to the same mortal conditions. God gives transformed bodily life, no longer held under corruption and death. Paul's language of a spiritual body does not discard the body. It points to embodied life under God's life-giving power.
John 20 brings that hope into encounters with the risen Jesus. Mary hears him, the disciples meet him, and his wounds connect the living Lord with the one who was crucified. Recognition and relationship belong within these meetings. Resurrection is more than a cherished memory of Jesus, and more than an ordinary recovery that merely postpones another death.
We are not given a detailed picture of every future capacity or difference. The promise should not become a program for imagining an ideal body. A person with a disability belongs now, before anyone can describe their future life. God's promised restoration never gives us permission to withhold present respect, justice, companionship, or practical care.
Receiving care and awaiting resurrection both challenge the belief that we can sustain ourselves alone. They remain different gifts. Human care can help, comfort, and support participation; it cannot raise the dead. Resurrection comes through God's faithfulness in Christ. Neither independence nor an impressive record of growth can purchase the life only God can restore.
This hope invites a gentler and more truthful regard for embodied life. We can honor a person's limits without reducing that person to them. We can acknowledge harm without calling it a hidden gift. What we do not know about the future can remain with God, while the bodily person before us receives the love already due to them.
Adapted from chapter 31, “Resurrection: Receiving Again,” in Becoming Fully Human by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice a word, question, or invitation that asks for your attention.
1 Corinthians 15:35-44 · WEBU
35But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?”
36You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies.
37That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind.
38But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.
39All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
40There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial differs from that of the terrestrial.
41There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
42So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable.
43It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
44It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body.
John 20:11-29 · WEBU
11But Mary was standing outside at the tomb weeping. So as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb,
12and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
13They asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.”
14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and didn’t know that it was Jesus.
15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him, “Rabboni!” which is to say, “Teacher!”
17Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold me, for I haven’t yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”
18Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.
19When therefore it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were locked where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the middle and said to them, “Peace be to you.”
20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore were glad when they saw the Lord.
21Jesus therefore said to them again, “Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
22When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit!
23If you forgive anyone’s sins, they have been forgiven them. If you retain anyone’s sins, they have been retained.”
24But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, wasn’t with them when Jesus came.
25The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26After eight days, again his disciples were inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, the doors being locked, and stood in the middle, and said, “Peace be to you.”
27Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.”
28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
Pause and respond
For reflection
How would resurrection hope change my attention to a body I have been treating as an inconvenience or a measure of worth?
A practice for today
Make one ordinary space more welcoming to a person's bodily needs today: allow more time, offer a comfortable place, or ask how they would prefer to participate.
A prayer
Risen Jesus, you give hope to the embodied lives we cannot restore ourselves. Help me honor people without measuring their worth by ability. Keep my imagination humble about what you have not revealed, and make my present care attentive, respectful, and faithful. Amen.
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