In the Apostles’ Creed we profess, ‘I believe in the resurrection of the Body.’ Isn’t that interesting! Not the resurrection of the Spirit; not the resurrection of the Soul; but the resurrection of the Body.

Hear John Updike on this*:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all,
it was as His Body;
If the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the ­molecules reknit,
the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.

It was not as flowers, each soft Spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
It was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in
the faded credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality
that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day…

Indeed what we get in Jesus’ death and ­resurrection is real—whole Body, whole God. Just like you and me, Jesus Christ is Body, and there is no ­getting around that. He did not disincarnate himself when raised upon the Cross. This was a cross on which Jesus hung pierced and dead, not on which his spirit merely paused. Nor did he disincarnate himself when the Father raised him back to Himself. This was a Resurrection that was no mere healing miracle, but the Father’s plan for You and Me from its beginning. For… ‘in fact Christ has been raised from the Dead, the Firstfruits of Those who have died’ (I Corinthians 15:20).

Baptized, for this

*“Seven Stanzas at Easter” from Telephone Poles and Other Poems, John Updike, 1961