The Resurrection Life of Christ

Pennsylvania, 1882

Sermon by Rev. P. H. Mowry

Note: The Rev. P. H. Mowry was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chester, Pennsylvania.

The preacher taking his text from John 20:17, said:

In the words of Christ to Mary Magdalen, which properly translated read, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say unto them, I am ascending unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God." He indicates that in the forty days that lay between the Easter Sunday and the Pentecostal Sunday, his life was of a different character than the ordinary human, and that His body was in a state of transition tending toward its highest spiritual form.

The scene of the incident mentioned in this chapter, was in the garden surrounding the rock-hewn tomb, where His body had been deposited. On the morning of the first day in the week, Mary Magdalen came to look for the body of the Master. When the Lord said to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" she thought the form before her was the gardener. This, however, gives us no right to suppose that physical appearance of Christ had changed to such an extent, that even Mary Magdalen should not recognize Him, but with her eyes dimmed with tears, her mind preoccupied, and perhaps prevented from seeing Him distinctly by the posture assumed, it was only when another sense was touched, when He said, "Mary!" that she recognized Him. And immediately following Christ adds, as if to prevent an embrace or the grasping of His hands by Mary Magdalen, "Touch me not."

Various reasons have been given as explanations of this, but the most reasonable is this, that the touching of his body was not essential to her for recognition and faith as it was later for Thomas. The special point is that the Lord tells her that He is ascending. That is in other words that he is in a state of transition or transformation from the temporal and physical state to the eternal and spiritual.

Christ's is the first instance of resurrection as distinct from resuscitation or reanimation of those who were dead, as for instance Lazarus. Lazarus was reestablished to the same condition of things out of which he had passed, to live the same life and be subject again to death. This was not the case with Jesus. When he rose, he was risen in triumph no more to die. The transitions through which Christ passed are therefore essential to us. He was the first resurrected, the first born of death and when he returned to the realm of the visible and tangible he had a body. Mary and Thomas did not see a spirit. In some respects it was the same body which is seen by Christ challenging Thomas to put his hands on the marks of the nails.

It was the same body that had hung on the cross, but had changed mysteriously in several respects. It was a palpable body that might be touched, yet it was above the limitations of space, as proved by his appearance in the midst of the disciples through closed doors and afterwards vanishing from their sight. It was a body, which could eat, but did not need it. Christ manifested himself on ten different occasions between his resurrection and ascension. They all indicate that some change had taken place in his body, while still preserving its identity. From this we may reasonably infer that the 40 days constitute a period, measuring the beginning and consummation of the glorification, where at last he assumed the perfect spiritual body in which he was taken from the vision of the disciples.

Of the ten manifestations, five occurred on the day following the resurrection, the five others were distributed over the period; we do not know exactly how, but one was towards the close, that at the shores of the lake of Galilee, where He spoke to the despondent disciples from the shore, and when John said to Peter, "It is the Lord," Peter threw himself in the water and swam ashore. But some awful change was wrought in him, and while the disciples recognized him, they felt that he was not the same who wandered through Galilee with them, but that this was a life of manifestations. And thus he progressed, leaving behind gradually the old earthly relationships, and gathering and lifting up himself into glory everlasting.

The whole subject of Christ's resurrection life is a personal revelation of life and important for every one of us. The heart of the world was aching for this doctrine of resurrection. It is the consolation of the world, the sure, immovable corner-stone whereon to rear the glorious superstructure of our own immortality. It teaches us that there is a continuity of our own existence; that death is only apparently a chasm, and shows most surely the fact that life goes on continuously, preserving individuality. Death in the naturalistic sense of the word is the disintegration of the body, and when it does not break the chain nothing can.

Jesus arises unharmed from sin and death and hell. Behold him, the same who hung on the tree, the same as the one who held familiar converse with the disciples, indestructibly the same yesterday, today and forever. This is the truth of continuity of life in this story, redolent and fragrant with the blossoms of eternity. If Christ's life triumphed over death, ours will. And his process through new faculties of existence to the possession of a spiritual body, the spiritual element evermore assuming the ascendancy until the ascension will be a pattern of ours.

In order to participate in anticipation or reality in this, there must be a oneness of life with Christ, which will be part of us on our passage through the portals of death. Oneness with Christ is the link. Life without a personal union with Christ, how can it expect to share in the benefits he marked out for his children? The question is, are you with Christ? Then all that life of Christ from his birth — the cross, burial, resurrection and ascension — will be to you a grand object-lesson — a picture where you may read what are constituent elements in your own fate. Yours will be similar.

—Chester Times, Chester, Pennsylvania, May 8, 1882.