On Maundy Thursday we relived the Last Supper by taking the Lord’s Supper. Then we reenacted the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus in a creative presentation. Stuart Smith played a Roman guard behind the silhouette screen in the play. Acting out the drama made it all the more real to him, to the point that he told his family they had to go to early services on Easter because he didn’t want to wait longer than necessary to get Jesus out of that grave.

I love that spirit. And I love Easter for just that release we all get to feel from Jesus’ release from the jail of death. But after the high emotion of Easter, you get to thinking sometimes, don’t you? Just what really happened at Easter, anyway? Was he really raised from the dead physically, or was he more like a ghost or a spirit?

I love the way John tells us the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples and then to Thomas. It’s Easter evening. That same morning James and John and Peter had all rushed to the tomb at the word from the women that it was empty. They hadn’t seen Jesus yet: they had only seen for themselves the “no one dead there”; they hadn’t yet seen the “someone alive here.” They were like so many people whose religion somehow stops at the point of head-scratching curiosity over the empty tomb. They never get on to the mind-blowing conviction of the risen one himself.

Jesus showed himself alive to Mary Magdalene in the garden. She mistook him for the gardener at first, because she was there looking for a dead body, not a live one. Maybe it was the early morning mist in the garden that obscured her recognition. Maybe it was still more like the twilight of daybreak before the brilliance of sunrise. Maybe Jesus was half-turned toward her and partially hidden by a fig tree. Who knows? But John doesn’t go there. He only tells us that Mary didn’t recognize him right off; it took his speaking her name before something stirred deep inside of her and saw sees it is he and held on to him for dear life. When Jesus told her not to hold on to him that way, it wasn’t not because she was grasping at air and getting nothing because of his ghostly substance. She was really touching his body, such as it was. Whatever changes he had in his resurrected body at that point, they were not evident to her.

So after first appearing to a women, which has scandalized the church since day one and shamed us for how long it took us to realize the way Jesus ennobled women as the first witnesses to the resurrection, he moved on to his disciples. They were in a room locked for fear of the Jewish authorities that would probably blame them for moving the body. They were in their own small version of hell, a hell of their own making—which is, of course, what hell always is, don’t you know?! They locked the doors only from the inside, shaking in their souls and sandals both. Even though Christ had been raised, they had not yet comprehended what that might mean.

Just then, Jesus appeared to them. John doesn’t say Jesus knocked on the door and announced his presence with some secret password. And it’s not like John Lennon, who told his son that when he died, the boy should just look for a feather blowing in the wind: that would be John telling the boy that he was okay. Okay, well, how about actually walking through a door that was locked without opening it and appearing in person?

Peace be with you, Jesus said to them. Any time angels appeared to people in the run-up to the Christ story, the thing they first said to frightened people was, Be not afraid. Jesus offered something more. Shalom. Peace. A gift of the new world to the old. Shalom is the way the world is going to be after all things are put to rights, when justice and fairness, and abundance and love, rule the day. Jesus breathes into them the air of heaven to fills their souls.

But before he does, he shows them his hands and side. It’s as if John is telling us that Jesus knew he had to prove that they weren’t seeing a ghost. He was there in the flesh, such as that new flesh might have been, considering he had just walked through a locked door.

Thomas wasn’t there with the other ten, we are told. And when they told him about it, he promised that he would not believe unless he could touch those nail-scarred hands and sword-pierced side. This is no softheaded, ignorant ancient man liable to believe anything because he hasn’t had a good modern science education in biology, physics, and chemistry. These men and women were not sitting around waiting for the expected resurrection to take place. This was as new to them as to us, none of us having seen a dead person come back to life.

This time, a week later, they were back in the house with the doors shut, John says. Note now the doors were not locked. Maybe the threat of the authorities had lessened, but more likely John is telling us that Jesus’ appearance a week earlier had had an effect. They weren’t afraid like they had been seven days before. Maybe they still didn’t feel all the peace Jesus promised, but they were different. Except for Thomas. Like all the rest of us, he wanted to have his own experience with the risen Christ. Testimony of other people is fine to open the door to belief, but sensing the presence of the Christ himself for yourself is the thing that allows you to walk through the door to belief.

So Jesus enterws the room again, presumably without opening the door again—just walking through the door. Somehow this risen body that has all the look and feel of the old body is not subject to all the limitations of the old body. Somehow, the resurrected state allows the spirit to control the flesh instead of the flesh controlling the spirit, as it did before the resurrection. And when Thomas saw Jesus hold out his hands and side to him, we are told that Thomas didn’t even touch him and test him in order to believe. He just fell down and cried out, My Lord and my God! He walked through the door from unbelief to belief. Just as we all may, because Jesus has walked through the locked doors of our hearts and opened us to hope and courage.

But just saying those things, just talking about what changed in that moment of encounter with the risen Christ leads some people to focus the whole Easter story there—on us, on what happens to us. They can’t allow their minds to imagine that Jesus was really raised from the dead bodily, and so they make Easter all about the spiritual resurrection of the faith of the church.

One religious scholar, John Hicks, says he doesn’t really believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but it doesn’t stop him from celebrating Easter. So for me, he says, Easter is a joyful symbol of a central element of the gospel, God’s gift of renewal, of ever new beginnings, of rebirth, of life transcending death. That it comes at spring time when nature is renewing itself is a happy coincidence. But Easter is our Christian symbol of hope, of the ongoing fact of new life, of freedom from the grip of the past, of openness to the future, to new possibilities, ultimately openness to the Kingdom of God and an intimation of life beyond death. Yes, yes, this is beautiful, of course, and should be accompanied by a great release of butterflies, with a musical score by John Williams. But is that it?

Running the Christian gospel through a strainer of human reason and experience in order to remove any scandalous sediment robs it of its full-bodied implications. People want a spiritual resurrection because that keeps things polite, generalized, and saccharine: truth we can all share but that changes nothing and threatens nothing.

And this is where John Updike comes in. In his poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” this literary lion who knows a thing or two about metaphor and symbolism, says: Let us not mock God with metaphor,/ analogy, sidestepping transcendence;/ making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the/ faded credulity of earlier ages:/ let us walk through the door.

Let us walk through the door, he says. God has walked through the door of space and time to reach us and to liberate us from its gravity, its downward pull to death and despair. Let us offer our proper response, then, and walk through the door to belief that this not only happened but that it changes everything. And by everything we mean not just what we hope and feel in our hearts about life after death, but about what must change in our human relationships and even in our civic life in order to welcome and make known the kingdom of God in our midst.

One Palm Sunday a charismatic preacher was reminding his congregation that Jesus was crucified by the powers of this world that took upon themselves the role of lords. When Jesus was raised, he alone was revealed to be Lord of all or, as Thomas confessed, My Lord and my God. That meant that human authorities of all kinds, including governments, can only let you down and fail you in the end, just as they did Jesus. He ended his sermon with a straightforward call for people to turn to God rather than government: “If God can get a three-day [dead] Jesus up out of a grave, what’s going on in your life that in any way can’t match what God has already done? He’ll abide with you, he’ll reside in you, and he’ll preside over your problems if you take them to Him and leave them with Him.”

Because Jesus has been raised, nothing is now impossible. Nothing is beyond God’s power. You can now forgive your enemies. You can now find healing for your broken spirit. You can now work for social justice instead of only for personal profit. Since God raised Jesus from the dead, you are no longer trapped in a world that is passing away with all its crippling prejudices and promises.

I should want to leave, then, with that and urge you to walk through that door to belief in the risen one. But in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that the words of that preacher I just quoted are words you haven’t heard before on YouTube. But they are the words that directly follow the shocking invectives the Reverend Jeremiah Wright used to condemn America for some of our government’s past failings. I quote it to you knowing that if I had said those things he said about our government from the pulpit, you would have called me on it—and rightly so, and right away. Wright was wrong in some of his statements about America—indefensibly and inexcusably wrong. He wasn’t wrong in preaching about politics, even if you or I might not have agreed with what he said. The prophets of old did that. Jesus did that. The apostles did that. I do that, probably less than I should. You see, if all you have is a spiritual resurrection, then everything in the real world is off limits, but if you have a physical resurrection, then everything is on the table; everything is then subject to the light of the gospel.

Where Wright went wrong is that in a sermon where he made the point over and over again about how governments lie, he was willing to tell half-truths if not untruths in order to make his point. Accountability goes both ways. It’s not all about preaching style; it’s about one standard of truth and truth-telling, equally applied. The chickens do indeed come home to roost. Remember that, Rev. Mason.

But for all that, Rev. Wright was right about Jesus. And at the end of the day, neither preachers nor politicians can save you; only the bodily crucified and bodily raised Jesus saves your bodily souls. You will find hope only when you fix your heart on the living Lord and not on anyone who hasn’t yet been raised from the dead.