{"id":25107,"date":"2025-04-23T10:27:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25107"},"modified":"2025-04-23T10:46:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:46:57","slug":"25107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25107","title":{"rendered":"Death into Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Phil Wickham - Living Hope (Lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9f2FXxDVO6w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost!&#8230; The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion&#8230;. That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us. &nbsp;<br>\u2014Pope Francis (1936\u20132025), &#8220;Urbi Et Orbi,&#8221; Easter, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard shares how we can receive the miracle of new life by embracing our own difficulties and \u201cdeaths\u201d as Jesus did.\u202f<\/em>\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Death is not only physical dying. <strong>Death also means going to the full depths of things, hitting the bottom, going beyond where we\u2019re in control<\/strong>. In that sense, we all go through many deaths in our lives, tipping points when we have to ask,\u202f<em>\u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d<\/em>\u202fMany people turn bitter, look for someone to blame, and close down. Their \u201cdeath\u201d is indeed death for them because there is no room for growth after that. But when we go into the full depths and death of anything\u2014even, ironically, the depths of our own sin\u2014we can come out the other side transformed, more alive, more open, more forgiving of ourselves and others. And when we come out the other side, we know that we\u2019ve been led there. We\u2019re not holding on; <strong>we\u2019re being held by a larger force, by a larger source that is not our own. That\u2019s what it means to be saved! It means that we\u2019ve walked through the mystery of transformation.\u202f&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The miracle of it all\u2014if we are to speak of miracles\u2014is that God has found the most ingenious way to transform the human soul. <strong>God uses the very thing that would normally destroy us\u2014the tragic, the sorrowful, the painful, the unjust deaths that lead us all to the bottom of our lives\u2014to transform us. There it is, in one sentence.<\/strong> Are we prepared to trust that?\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection is a statement of how reality works all the time and everywhere<\/strong>. He teaches us that there\u2019s a different way to live with our pain, our sadness, and our suffering. <strong>We can say, \u201cWoe is me,\u201d and feel sorry for ourselves, or we can say, \u201cGod is even in this.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of us crosses over this gap from death to new life by our own effort, our own merit, our own purity, or our own perfection. Each of us\u2014from pope to president, from princess to peasant\u2014<strong>is carried across by unearned grace. Worthiness is never the ticket, only deep desire. <\/strong>With that desire the tomb is always, finally empty, as Mary Magdalene discovered on Easter morning. Death cannot win. <strong>We\u2019re finally indestructible when we recognize that the thing which could destroy us is the very thing that could enlighten us.\u202f&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Friends, the Easter feast is a reminder to all of us to open our eyes and our ears and to witness what is happening all around us, all the time, everywhere. <strong>God\u2019s one and only job description is to turn death into life. That\u2019s what God does with every new springtime, every new life, every new season, every new anything.<\/strong> God is the one who always turns death into life, and no one who trusts in this God will ever be put to shame (Psalm 25:3).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td>APR 23, 2025<br><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Resurrection Means Matter Matters<\/span><\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"auto\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9\/images\/b66516eb-1f2d-8d90-0e02-d4223f78f6f7.png\">Gnosticism is an ancient heresy that is still very much alive today. The Gnostics were false teachers in the early church who were deeply influenced by Greek philosophy and knowledge that exalted the spiritual and condemned the material. They taught that intangible things like the souls, spirits, and wisdom were divine, while the physical world, bodies, and matter were inherently evil. <br>         When this Greek understanding was mixed with Christianity, it led to some troubling ideas\u2014chiefly that Jesus\u2019 incarnation was just an illusion because God, who is spirit, would never inhabit something as evil and corruptible as a human body.&nbsp;Of course, with no body, Jesus could not have died on the cross, and if he never died, there\u2019s no reason to believe in his physical resurrection. <br>           The Apostle John was targeting this Gnostic heresy when he wrote that every spirit that does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh \u201cis the spirit of the antichrist\u201d (1 John 4:2-3). Not only did Gnosticism deny the core message of the gospel, it also permitted all manner of sexual immorality and debauchery.&nbsp;After all, if our physical bodies don\u2019t matter because God is only interested in our immaterial souls, then neither does what we do with them.&nbsp;<br>         Today, Gnosticism remains a common false teaching among Christians, although it manifests very differently. Many Christians <strong>still assume God cares only about souls and spirits, and that the physical world and our bodies don\u2019t ultimately matter.<\/strong> This subtle form of Gnosticism is often reinforced with unbiblical visions of the afterlife occupied by disincarnate spirits in a celestial heaven. And within evangelical communities, <strong>Gnosticism has been supported by \u201cpurity culture,\u201d which spotlights the dangers of sexuality and implicitly communicates the inherent evil of the body and its desires. <\/strong><br>                Taken together, this focus on \u201csaving souls\u201d and avoiding the \u201ctemptations of the flesh\u201d has made pop Christianity into a kind of neo-Gnosticism that celebrates the spiritual and condemns the physical.<a href=\"https:\/\/withgoddaily.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9&amp;id=520986a251&amp;e=f52fc38132\"><\/a>But this understanding contradicts everything the New Testament says about Jesus\u2019 ministry and his miracles. If he were only concerned with saving souls, why did Jesus spend so much time healing bodies? And if physical matter isn\u2019t part of God\u2019s redemptive plan, why does the New Testament aggressively and repeatedly emphasize the&nbsp;<em>physical<\/em> resurrection of Jesus? <br>        Yesterday, we saw that his resurrection is identified as the \u201cfirst fruits\u201d or the prototype for the rest of God\u2019s salvation. Paul says that our bodies will also be raised, transformed, and glorified like his when Christ returns. And the physical creation itself will share in this glory and be set free from its captivity to death and decay (Romans 8:20-21). In other words, the physical reality of Jesus\u2019 resurrection is why we believe in our physical salvation and the physical salvation of the world. <br>         Put simply, the bodily resurrection of Jesus means matter matters.This has huge implications for our lives and callings as Christians. It means we must reject both the overt and subtle forms of Gnosticism that infect our faith, like the <strong>tendency to celebrate vocations that care for souls and focus on heaven, and dismiss vocations that care for bodies and the earth. And uprooting the assumption in many Christian communities that God cares about the next world but has given up on this one, or that a spiritually mature Christian must transcend their body and its weaknesses to occupy a realm of ideas, theology, and knowledge alone.<\/strong> Too many of us live as if God created the heavens and the earth and then retired into full-time ministry. The <strong>resurrection reveals that God cares about all of his creation\u2014both the material and the spiritual\u2014and he is redeeming all of it.<\/strong><br><br>DAILY SCRIPTURE<br><a href=\"https:\/\/withgoddaily.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9&amp;id=fae1cc4a98&amp;e=f52fc38132\">1 JOHN 4:1-3<br>JOHN 20:24-29<\/a><br><br>WEEKLY PRAYER  from Hippolytus of Rome (170 &#8211; 235)<br><br>Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate<br>Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen<br>Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing<br>Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty<br>Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,<br>the first of the sleepers,<br>Glory and power are his forever and ever.<br>Amen.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost!&#8230; The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion&#8230;. That [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25107"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25112,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107\/revisions\/25112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}