everyday resurrections

This picture was taken on a crisp autumnal morning in a park on the edge of a busy high street. A group of dancers hold the Jesus figure up in the air. She stands with her body arched, mirrored against the sky. It was a delicate and fragile posture to hold because she was effectively balanced on people’s upturned hands. The tableau suggests that Jesus’ reappearance from the dead was more tentative and hesitant than it is traditionally thought to be. In effect he needed to relearn how to think, feel, behave and engage with the world. He would not have bounced in with a boisterous “I am back”, but would have felt his way slowly, amazed at what had happened to him.*

In practice we must always begin again every day the search for salvation just as every day we have to begin again the actions of eating and drinking... this salvation is not a state one attains once and for all. It is there like a glass of water that quenches thirst for the moment, but thirst comes again, sometimes stronger than before... The moment of the hoped-for salvation comes, sometimes seen, sometimes unforeseen. No sooner it comes than it is gone: it escapes, flying away to prepare another and another. This fragile redemption is what we find in the everyday life of every person. (Gebara 2002: 123)

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*The Resurrection (Dennis Morris/ Diocese of London/ CMS), accompanying words from Diocese of London study pack, available online.

Gebara, Ivone (2002) Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation Minneapolis: Fortress Press