Our weekly invitation is to Remember God is with us as a way to help us Trust God’s Love. The “with-us” or presence of God is a constant theme in the lives of those whose writings are preserved in our Bible. For Christians the most significant “with-us” of God occurred between the extreme of the “no-longer-with-us” of God that was felt at Jesus’ crucifixion and the later “still-with-us” of God in their resurrection faith experience. Although “resurrection” is the general term given to that “still-with-us” experience of God, there is an elusiveness as to exactly what that means. The earliest written description of that experience about 55 CE is in the Easter lectionary from 1 Corinthians 15. Paul describes the experience of “God-still-with-us” as “appearing” to many and last of all to him. We will ignore for now the easy way he excluded the possibility of any future appearances. He goes on to say that these “appearances” are not physical but spiritual and therefore internal experiences that are not observable by others. In the Easter gospel reading from John 20 written in the 90's CE the author has Jesus appearing in a way that Mary doesn’t recognize him. In the first reading from Acts 10 written around 115 CE the author acknowledges that the appearances were only observable to certain people who were called to be witnesses. So resurrection may be seen as the celebration of those transformations when we move from feelings of “God-no-longer-with-us” to the feelings of “God-still-with-us.” For some two-universe Christians that transformation requires the assertion that the resurrection meant the actual resuscitation of the physical body of Jesus. For other two-universe Christians the physical body of Jesus is a metaphor for those transforming experiences. For one-universe Christians all explanations are secondary and should be judged by their helpfulness in motivating us to be God’s helpers. The feelings that the highest levels of human meanings are “no-longer-with-us” can also be transferred into that “still-with-us” experience that brings thanksgiving and celebration. Remembering that God and our meanings are still with us is the source of new hope and new strength, a real “resurrection.”
I interpret "divinity" to be a descriptive term of the second universe as the opposite of the humanity of this one universe. Since I am a one-universe Christian who doesn't assume a second universe of "divinity," there is no divinity to assign to Jesus or anyone else. Assuming a second universe of "divinity" creates a dualism between divine and human, physical and spiritual, etc. that I find unhelpful and even harmful. I hope this helps to clarify what I said.
