my Roman Empire is resurrection
(Roman Empire: ie, what keeps me up at night)
MAR 29, 2024
“Roman Empire” is what the kids on TikTok (which I am now also on, God help me) say as a way of asking, what is the one out of the box thing that keeps you up at night?
My Roman Empire is resurrection.
In 2019, I thought I was at the tippy toe point of the end of a season of prolonged grief, counseling and healing. I had “done the work” and I was good to go.
2019 was wonderful. I traveled to Iceland and Northern California, was coming into my own as a theology scholar and was having great conversations with others, sharing dreams of the future. I started investing into myself and others in unprecedented ways as finally I had lots of energy.
I was coming alive.
That year, I became deeply impressed by resurrection.
During a systematic theology class, I started meditating on the resurrection of Christ… who healed people and raised them from the dead -before- doing so himself…
And in this meditation on resurrection my life changed for the better.
I realized something cataclysmic had shifted in the marrow and bone of the world around us.
It’s the moment where the Witch’s stone table cracks and death runs in reverse. Aslan has broken the back of the thing. There is no stopping the inevitable reversal of every curse, every thing that binds us back.
I see this truth and this law of spiritual reversal around me, every single day. It is in the faces of people who use nutrition to heal their body, or who stumble into miraculous healings. It is in the stories of women who now give birth without pain. It is in the stories of near-death experiences. I see these as rumblings of a greater truth.
Resurrection is now in our atomic structure.
As I pondered, I was pleased with this revelation, especially since my life felt like it was blossoming and I attributed it all to Jesus.
This year of reflection and triumph where I somewhat smugly thought that I had found a way to conquer it all with Christ set me up for success in what was to follow.
In late 2019, I had a traumatic encounter with a family member that set off the physical-mental-emotional avalanche again… and then 2020 happened.
What I Forgot
The main issue I find with resurrection is the before part… the death part.
No one likes to talk about that little bit.
The depth I plummeted to in 2020 was an unfathomable, slightly apocalyptic ocean floor depth. I can’t recommend it.
I didn’t die, but I did come close. Physically, my organs all tried to shut down together, which was not a nice experience at all. Towards the end, I barely left the house between August and mid November because I couldn’t fight the nausea long enough to even take a walk. It was pretty bad.
You’ve heard me say it before, but when Gandalf fights the dragon and falls to his death to defeat the thing, he travels to a land outside all space and time.
There is a horrible finality about resurrection, which comes in the gut-wrenching, “yeah, Lazarus is dead as a doornail and is now comfortably rotting in at least 300 degree oven/tomb out in the desert.”
Everybody grieves. Everybody’s lost you.
The whole community is distraught,
because death affects everyone, even God.
Let’s say for a hot second that you are a rotted corpse in desert. In order to get you moving again, air, blood and electricity moving through your body, several systems have to get back online. Flesh has to be re-formed, re-created and re-surrected.
Which was about what I needed in my organs by the end of 2020.
Then let’s say that you have gotten moving, breath and air flooding your systems, but you have to learn how to eat. How to think. You’ve been brain dead and cooking in a stone tomb. Movement is slow. There’s not enough black coffee in the world.
I thought resurrection was sort of this instant process. It’s not.
I thought resurrection would leave me scar-less. It didn’t.
I thought resurrection was linear. It’s not.
RESURRECTION IS INCREDIBLY MESSY AND IT TAKES TIME.
The whole business of resurrection is just sort of a disaster but also it’s not.
But the good news: death is now running in reverse.
Very pleased to say that I experienced a death-running-in-reverse miracle in my body… a few fervent prayers and a few moments with Jesus later…
My organs are back, baby.
Resurrection Will Cost You Everything (and You Will Never Be the Same)
When I say that I had to change my name because I am literally not the same person, I mean it.
Some people do not recognize and will not like the resurrected you, because you have changed molecularly, yourself. Atomic change doesn’t make people feel cozy about you.
Lazarus did not make good friends with his community after he came back from the great beyond. Everything had changed and nothing could ever be the same.
Post resurrection, there will be a force and fire that may move quiet, but that gives a grit that you feel down to your bones.
Who can stop those who are back from the dead?
Dry bones do live again.