The Practice of Resurrection

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) was a pastor and teacher who dedicated his life to teaching women and men to live the whole of their lives before God. A Presbyterian pastor for nearly 30 years, he then taught at Regent College in Vancouver. Peterson revelled in God’s creation. He was at home in the breadth and depths of the Christian tradition. He dwelt long in Scripture, letting it shape his life with God, and much of his writing takes the form of extended meditations on Scripture, emphasising just how down to earth and fit for purpose Scripture is for our everyday spiritual formation. Above all, in his pastoring and writing, he sought to hold open space for people to encounter God and for each to embark on what he called “A long obedience in the same direction”, a life following Jesus. He was a remarkable servant of the church. Unsurprisingly, he’s also good company—we recommend you seek him out in his books.

Peterson is best known for his transposition of Scripture into contemporary American English, The Message. But he wrote many other books as well. One of those is Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life, first published by NavPress in 2006. In this short book, Peterson explores how Christ’s resurrection, and the Christian confession of the resurrection of the body, frames and animates our daily life now. The resurrection is not some mystery that happens over our heads; it is the event in the middle of everything, the event that reveals that, despite appearances, God is already on the move: in Christ, God is making all things new. The presence of the risen Christ—in the life of believers by the gift of the Holy Spirit—should, Peterson writes, illuminate all of life. He calls us to recover our resurrection identity and our ability to live in the light of Jesus’s resurrection from death.

The following article is excerpted from the final chapter of Living the Resurrection. In it, Peterson describes this resurrection life as a practice—that is, as a way of being in the world. He’s asking: what should mark my life now that Christ has been raised from the dead? What might this look like? And here, he focusses on holy baptism—and all baptism entails—as the doorway into life with God.

We’re grateful to NavPress for their permission to republish this excerpt here (it’s a faithful reproduction, so some of you will notice the US spelling). And if you enjoy this article, we recommend reading Living the Resurrection as a whole: you can find a copy here at the NavPress website -Ed.

Physicians don’t practice on sick people. They enter the practice of healing. We use the word practice similarly in phrases such as the practice of law, the practice of diplomacy, the practice of prayer. This is the sense in which we practice resurrection—we engage in a life that is permeated by the presence and companionship of the resurrected Jesus in the company of friends.

I’m interested in recovering this comprehensive sense of the Christian life under the conditions of our dailyness and ordinariness—our practice. It’s not something that we go to retreat centers and conferences and special gatherings to practice but rather the life of resurrection that is practiced in the dailyness of home and workplace. So I’ve tried to locate a few simple, focal actions that keep us in touch with these immense but easily unnoticed intersections where the risen Jesus appears and is recognized and then engages us in resurrection. You will notice that I’m using the present tense. This is happening now. This is what Jesus does. He is here, risen. The practice of resurrection is noticing and entering in and engaging.

We observed in chapter 1 that rest and leisure—the disengagement from responsibility and necessity—allows us to see the primacy of God’s presence and work in all of life. In other words, we enter conditions in which we are capable of being surprised by what is other than us, other than what we do or don’t do. And we are then in a place where we are capable of wonder and astonishment at what is—and who God is. Sabbath-keeping is the sacramental act that our people-of-God ancestors have employed, under commandment, to preserve a reverent and worshiping capacity to be aware of and responsive to what is other than us, so that we are responsive to formation-by-resurrection.

And then we observed in chapter 2 that the eating of meals is an activity in which we all engage; it enacts the sacrificial exchange between life and death, giving and receiving. That provides our access to formation-by-resurrection. We observed that Jesus’ meals held a central place in the exposition of his life and that two of these meals were primary events in the recognition of resurrection. The Eucharistic Table—The Lord’s Table—then becomes the sacramental practice for Christians that maintains our resurrection focus in the dailyness of life. The Table and the Meal engage us in the sacrificial exchanges of life and death that cultivate formation-by-resurrection.

Now, in the practice of resurrection friends, I want to note that naming and being named is the act that sets us apart as unique image-of-God creations—souls. In the company of all other souls, it asserts the dignity of our personal identity in formation-by-resurrection. The sacrament of holy baptism is the practice that keeps this in focus. In baptism, we are personally named in the context and in the company of the named and three-personal Trinity. As a consequence, we are irreducibly personal. Holy baptism is the sacramental act that maintains that identity and keeps it in focus as we are engaged in formation-by-resurrection.

Difficulties in the practice of this resurrection life—cultivating this life that honors the Spirit who raised up Jesus and now raises us up with Jesus [see Ephesians 2:5–6]—occur sooner or later, usually sooner for most of us. Some of us who have been given this new life soon want to take it over and run it more or less on our own. Others of us who are unsure of ourselves and inexperienced in such high and holy matters revert to old habits of calling in a professional and paying him or her to tell us what to do and think so we can give our full attention to the things of immediate concern. Most of us do a little of both. We have lived a long time in this culture of autonomy and professionalization. It’s hard to break these old and culturally reinforced habits and assumptions.

So what do we do to maintain our essential identity as souls in the image of God in a company of resurrection friends? How do we sustain our unique identity as a company of resurrection friends against the isolating and professionalizing forces of our culture? The answer is very clear and quite simple: We submit to holy baptism, and then we remember our baptism. This is where we were named, and this is how we were named. This is the company in which we are named. What we’re after is an understanding and a living out of our true identity—this resurrection identity that requires living in company with men and women whom Jesus calls to follow him. Holy baptism is the focal practice of the resurrection community that once and for all tells us who we are in the company we seek as we follow Jesus.

Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan was marked by the descent of the Spirit on and into him, the announcement of his intimate Trinitarian identity—“my beloved Son” (Mark 1:11)—and the launch of his public work of proclaiming the kingdom of God. In Matthew’s account, as the resurrected Jesus gives his final instructions to his disciples from the Galilean mountain for the continuation of his work to all the people all over the world, he commands them to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The baptism of the first community of Christians in Jerusalem was similarly marked by the descent of the Holy Spirit among them, at which time they began to speak the language and do the work of God’s kingdom in the world.

Paul fuses the resurrection stories of the four evangelists into the language of personal participation articulated in baptism. The Christian life is a Jesus-resurrection life, a life in us that is accomplished by the Holy Spirit and given focus in baptism. In this way, holy baptism becomes the focal practice for understanding and living as resurrection friends, that is, in the holy company of persons likewise defined by and included in the operations of the Holy Trinity.

Just as Jesus’ birth and death come together and become resurrection, so our birth and death come together and become resurrection. Holy baptism marks and defines us in a life of formation-by-resurrection. Holy baptism is a radical step away from our culture and a total redefinition of who we are. Every Christian tradition, with the exception of the Society of Friends, marks the resurrection life with the ritual of baptism. Given the many and different and complex ways in which Christians have understood and taken their stand on nearly everything, this is a remarkable consensus. Not everyone believes the same thing about what it means or how to do it, but they all do it—marking the beginning of the new resurrection life in Christ.

Two imperatives are implicit, across the board as far as I know, in the practice of baptism. Neither is difficult to understand, but it takes a lifetime of attention and discipline to be formed by them. The two words are repent and follow. Repent is the no and follow is the yes of formation-by-resurrection. The two words have to be worked out in changing and various conditions through the life of the community in each personal life. We never master either command to the extent that we graduate and go on to higher things. They are basic and remain basic.

Repent is an action word. It means to change direction: “You’re going the wrong way, thinking the wrong thoughts, imagining everything backward.” The first thing we do in a company of resurrection friends is quit whatever we are doing. Regardless of what it is, it is almost sure to be wrong, no matter how hard we are trying and no matter how well intentioned we are. We all have been tainted by these assumptions of autonomy and professionalization. We think we’re in charge or should be. We’re the measure of all things. Everything depends on us. We’re traveling a broad road paved with good intentions, expertly engineered, and with the latest technologies to get us where we want to go efficiently and quickly and with the least inconvenience. There are impressive experts lined up at nearly every turn to tell us how to get there even more efficiently and more quickly. It’s a heavily trafficked road—noisy, polluted, with many accidents and fatalities. But it gets us where we want to go, so we put up with almost anything to get there.

Then the Gospel word comes: repent. Turn around; change your way of thinking and your way of imagining; leave the noise, the pollution, the clutter, the depersonalizing efficiency, the technology-enabled hurry, the professionally enabled nonparticipation, the community-diminishing autonomy. You are on holy ground in the company of holy people. You need to protect it from profane stomping and trampling.

We cultivate the resurrection life not by adding something to our lives but by denouncing the frenetic ego life, clearing out the cultural and religious clutter, turning our backs on what we commonly summarize as “the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” Our lives are too busy and our schedules are too busy and our churches, which are supposed to be our allies in this business, are far, far too busy.

The second command activated in holy baptism is follow. Follow Jesus. Following Jesus is the yes that comes after the no. We have renounced self-initiative for Jesus-obedience. We have renounced clamoring assertions and replaced them with quiet listening. We watch Jesus work. We listen to Jesus speak. We accompany Jesus into new relationships, odd places, odd people. We pray our prayers in Jesus’ name. Keeping company with Jesus, observing what he does, and listening to what he says develop into a life of answering God, a life of responding to God, which is a life of prayer. Following Jesus is not a robotic lockstep, marching in a straight line after Jesus. The following gets inside us, becomes internalized, gets into our muscles and nerves. It’s much more like a ramble, and it becomes prayer.

Prayer is what develops in us after we step out of the center and begin responding to the center, to Jesus. That response is always physical—a following with other followers. For Jesus is going someplace with a company of people. He is going to Jerusalem. He is going with baptized or soon-to-be baptized followers, and he is going to the Father. We follow Jesus by cultivating a life of prayer in Jesus’ name, finding that his Spirit is praying in us and through us to the Father. And in our following, we develop conversations with our resurrection friends, practicing the noticing and appreciating and loving the Trinitarian life of God-in-relationship. We are in the world of the Trinity where all is attention and adoration, sacrifice and hospitality, obedience and love.

Because we do not baptize ourselves—it is always something done to us by God in the community—the resurrection life begins and can only begin as previous to us, beyond and other than us, so that we can, for the first time, enter into and become our true God-defined selves—selves in relationship with resurrection friends. It is always done with the assent, participation, and affirmation of a company of faithful men and women who are likewise defined by holy baptism. It is at once naming, repentance, death, resurrection, and following Jesus.

In holy baptism, our lives are defined by resurrection. We know and are known by knowing and known by the living Jesus Christ. This is where we begin. It’s a beginning that invites reenactment every day of our lives. Remember your baptism, for we cannot be trusted to do anything on our own in this business. As Karl Barth insisted so strenuously, we are always beginners with God.¹

Notes

¹ Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV:4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 79-80.

(Second Image by Matt Brown, CC Zero)