"...the resurrection of the body..."

When you are standing at the bedside of a young man, Kevin, who is in hospice care. Standing next to Kevin’s bed, holding his hand which clings to your own…for life.

When your presence there is meant to bring comfort to Kevin’s wife and children, grandpa and grandma, sisters.

When your words are, perhaps, among the final words Kevin’s mind will cling to for hope in his last breath.

At such a time, what can you say? What dare you say?

“I believe in…the resurrection of the body.”  It takes faith to offer such hope to Kevin, and even greater faith for believers, like Kevin and those surrounding him, to accept those ancient words of hope as ‘gospel’, as good news.  If there ever is a time to pray that the souls speaking the Creed with you understand it, accept it, believe it, it is when you are holding the hand of a dying man.

Christian hope is not just a pious bromide of optimistic blather.  Christian hope is accepting by faith that because God has done something in the past he is certain to do it again in the future. Our Future Hope is in a future event guaranteed by God, the belief in which moves the Creed’s faithful reciters from faith to hope to knowledge to sight to celebration.

So it is that believers confess, first, “On the third day he rose again.” And then, since we know by faith that Jesus arose and lives, we can say by faith that Kevin arises and lives, body and soul.

That, in his flesh, with real eyes, arms, legs, Kevin will see his wife, hold his children, run with the wind; that his new body possesses a promised place in the New Heavens and New Earth.  With you.