Life, Interrupted

Historical studies of the life of Jesus leave us with the enigma of the end of his life - that his followers believed that he had risen from the dead:

Much about the historical Jesus will remain a mystery.  Nothing is more mysterious than the stories of his resurrection, which attempt to portray an experience that the authors could not themselves comprehend.  But in the midst of mystery and uncertainty, we should remember that we know a lot about Jesus.  We know that he started under John the Baptist, that he had disciples, that he expected the 'kingdom', that he went from Galilee to Jerusalem, that he did something hostile against the Temple, that he was tried and crucified.  Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the 'resurrection': the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died.  They believe this, they lived it, and they died for it.  In the process they created a movement, a movement that in many ways went far beyond Jesus' message.  Their movement grew and spread geographically.

E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus

The early Christian communities soon began to ask their leaders how they would share in the resurrection experience of Jesus; Paul writes:  'But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”' (1 Corinthians 15:35).

The artist Stanley Spencer, in paintings such as The Resurrection with the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter or The Resurrection, Cookham, pictured this resurrection experience in terms of the every day.  The dead clamber out of their tombs in much the same condition as they entered them, dressed in contemporary clothes.  Life, interrupted, appears to continue on much the same terms.  For Spencer, resurrection seems to be less transcendental and more part of our present, lived experience.