Hi Chris —
"Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me."
John 14:6.
Without His death, we'd never have seen it ... ?
I think an answer might be found in John 20:11-15
"But Mary stood at the sepulchre without, weeping. Now as she was weeping, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, And she saw two angels in white, sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid."
I say an answer because this is, as far as I am aware (others may have said it) my speculation:
I think the two angels are the two Cherubim of Genesis 3:24 — "And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" ... we gave up the way to the tree of life when we fell, we chose death.
For Mary, He is gone, she knows not where:
"They say to her: Woman, why weepest thou? She saith to them: Because they have taken away my Lord; and I know not where they have laid him."
The angels know. The flaming sword, the Pillar of Fire that led Israel in her Exodus, has become the light of life, and still we comprehendeth it not. This is the human condition. In entering into our own being, we have lost sight of God, and in so doing lost sight of our own true nature. This unknowing is the fear that binds us, that outside us there is nothing. We can only rely on ourselves because there is nothing else. We don't know what happens when we die ... and we fear extinction.
"When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing; and she knew not that it was Jesus."
This is the good person, who 'turned herself back' from the way of Adam, but the reality remains ... she does not know Jesus even now.
"Jesus saith to her: Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, thinking it was the gardener, saith to him: Sir, if thou hast taken him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."
The gardener she thought is the Gardener of the world — He who planted the garden, and planted man therein, to care for it, and nurture it ... and in man's failing to obey that commandment, He has been caring, and nurturing it, and us, ever since. It is a prayer to the unknown God.
"Jesus saith to her: Mary. She turning, saith to him: Rabboni (which is to say, Master)."
So Mary turns again ... which way now does she face now? First she faced into the sepulchre, and saw it empty of that which she sought, then she turned away to the gardener, to ask the way to that which she seeks — now she turns — again — (to the sepulchre?) and sees Him whom she seeks.
In saying her name, He revealed Himself to her, he revealed His inner nature, His interiority — this goes beyond the 'good man' — both know God, but the Christian knows in person — she is in God, but God is in her also, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
And she sees life beyond the veil. He had to die, because we need proof, from the 'other side' that life here is worth it.
That's what His death and resurrection says: 1 Corinthians 13:12 "We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know I part; but then I shall know even as I am known."
How can man understand God? How can man comprehend the Eternal, the Absolute, how can man talk of 'union' — for union can only happen by what we share in common ... And what we share in common is 'being', and that being encompasses a nature (which is general and invisible) and a person (which is particular, and visible).
So He had to die, not that we might live, but that we might believe, and thereby live.
He rose from the dead ... and not as an idea, or an ideal, or a myth, or a metaphor, not even as a spirit, not even as a God, but as a God-man, by which we may know that, for us, there is a continuity of being from this side of the veil to the other ... not some abstract idea of an anonymous soul or as something other in another mode of being, but as us ... Mary saw it, Thomas had touch of it ...
... Life not in the sense of a drop-let absorbed into the ocean — a wonderful image, but one in which the droplet ceases to be, it loses its identity.
In that Resurrection, as John was to see so clearly, we can live in Him now, we can be transformed, not only to live in the Way and the Truth of Life, but in the Spirit which illuminates and animates that Life ... and in so doing we might transform the world, if only because we shape the world in which we live.
He had to die, and come again, so that we might believe there is life after death.
+++
He could have died an old man, in bed, surrounded by His friends, a happy man ... but that would not encompass our human state, an easy death is not given to all.
But that's not the point.
He did not bear the brunt of death, He bore the brunt of sin, the crushing burden that breaks us ... the privation of every human good, the stripping away and flaying of everything that we are, to its eventual finality in death, and not just death but everything that accompanies it — the sense of betrayal, doubt, fear, pain, trial, condemnation, victimisation, suffering, abuse, thirst, ignomany, destitution, abandonment, extinction ...
His last words say it all "And Jesus crying out with a loud voice, said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And saying this, he gave up the ghost."
Luke 23:46
In the depths of His abandonment, He gave up the very last thing He had, the only thing He had left, because, God forgive us, we had stripped Him of everything else. He surrended the very last fragment of his being, the only thing left He could call His own, to God.
And he came back that we might have faith, and thus life, in Him.
Thomas
