Tough Easter questions for every Christian.
Also for every other-than-Christian:

Why was Jesus Christ resuscitated by angels
after His death on the cross, in a way He could return here with a super-spiritualized yet touchable physical body?

Hadn’t He gone through enough suffering?
Wasn’t God satisfied with how much He’d accomplished in one life already?
Wasn’t God satisfied with how much symbolic yet very bloody, very painful, very shattering penance He’d done on behalf of humanity?
Hadn’t Jesus earned the right to exit this earthly stage permanently? To “dwell up in Heaven at God’s right hand”?

What mission did He have left to accomplish in our gritty world?
He’d already preached with an infinite wisdom and sense of the value at stake in every situation in His earlier life.
He’d already healed enough impossibly sick people, raised the dead, and touched the hearts of enough Jewish people to reawaken them to God’s promises for them.
He’d already given every last drop of His strength.

So, why return?

I’ll suggest a possible answer by introducing another set of harsh questions:

Why, as the Scriptures say, did Jesus after returning here, then descend into the afterlife place known as Hell to preach to the dead?

If those fallen souls were in a place of total darkness and unconsciousness, why would God temporarily revive them just for Jesus’ inspirational speech?

If they were meant to be judged at some unknown future time, but upon death their soul’s consciousness had shifted from active to inactive, and their any further deeds (as if they could do anything “down there”) had shifted from having the new consequences and learning value natural to life, to having absolutely none–what good could He do?

If they were stuck in Hell for eternity as some misguided people believe, why would Jesus waste His energy teaching those unteachable souls, those unreachable souls, those unforgivable souls–stuck in an unalterable doom?

Since Jesus never uttered a negative word or wasted his breath–even His expressions of anger were rightfully aroused–surely He wasn’t in Hell to raise false hopes or mock those dead who supposedly were only conscious & free enough to suffer as painfully as Jesus had on His own cross?

Honestly, why would He return to the comparative hell of physical life after ascending to Heaven, only to descend into Hell beyond physical life again?

Let’s look at the parallels:

Humble Earthly existence could be seen as far below Heavenly existence, as Hell-bound existence could be seen as below Earthly existence.

Jesus having transcended the Earth, must have passed through a Great Mystic Initiation from God. Yet remember that years before His crucifixion, He’d already said that the greatest leader of all must be a servant of all.

Not being a man to waste words or time, Jesus must have come back here–to Earth and to Hell–out of devotion to one truth: SUPREME SERVICE CHANGES HEARTS, SOULS, and LIVES.

It must be that, though enmeshed in our own humble plane of life, we in the living flesh each can move towards our own higher level of mystic initiation. By returning to earth with greater Power and Fulfillment from God, Jesus then acted not only out of supreme compassion to ease our pangs, but also out of supreme desire to CHANGE us–to help bring us back up into more ACTIVE LIVING experience of our forgotten divine birthrights.

In that same light, by descending into Hell, Jesus then acted not only out of supreme compassion to ease the dead’s pangs, but also out of supreme desire to CHANGE them–to help them back up into a more ACTIVE LIVING experience in the direction of their forgotten divine birthrights.

He initiated both levels of humankind–the living and the dead–into waves of new, real, vital–and unexpected–HOPE.

He made clear that a REVOLUTIONARY ENERGY CHANGE had rocked Earth by His own Mystic Initiation. He above all desired to fulfill His new Initiation–by working to fulfill God’s desire for us to have our own uplifting Initiations.

Jesus demonstrated that EVERY ONGOING STEP of humanity’s UNBROKEN CYCLE of existence–whether within or without one’s fleshly body–holds intense potential for ACTIVE, LIVING CHANGE.

How?
By giving REAL SERVICE to others.

Isn’t that worth coming back for?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
God bless you, Happy Easter & Beyond,
Make life a wonderful thing.
Do your very best & leave the rest to God!
Rev. Scott Ufford, Spiritualist minister
Copyright 2011