The Resurrection Life – A Reading List for Easter!

[easyazon_link identifier=”0310318580″ locale=”US” tag=”douloschristo-20″]The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life[/easyazon_link] 

Ann Voskamp

New York Times bestselling author of One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp sits at the edge of her life and all of her own unspoken brokenness and asks: What if you really want to live abundantly before it’s too late? What do you do if you really want to know abundant wholeness? This is the one begging question that’s behind every single aspect of our lives—and one that The Broken Way rises up to explore in the most unexpected ways.

This one’s for the lovers and the sufferers. For those whose hopes and dreams and love grew so large it broke their willing hearts. This one’s for the busted ones who are ready to bust free, the ones ready to break molds, break chains, break measuring sticks, and break all this bad brokenness with an unlikely good brokenness.  You could be one of the Beloved who is broken—and still lets yourself be loved.

You could be one of them, one who believes freedom can be found not only beyond the fear and pain, but actually within it.

You could discover and trust this broken way—the way to not be afraid of broken things.

[easyazon_link identifier=”1481306782″ locale=”US” tag=”douloschristo-20″]Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma[/easyazon_link] 

Shelly Rambo

The Gospel of John’s account of doubting Thomas is often told as a lesson about the veracity and triumph of Christian faith. And yet it is a story about wounds. Interpretations of this Gospel narrative, by focusing on Christ’s victory in the resurrection, reflect Christianity’s unease with the wounds that remain on the body of the risen Jesus. By returning readers to this familiar passage, Resurrecting Woundsexpands the scope of the Upper Room to the present world where wounds mark all of humanity.

Shelly Rambo rereads the Thomas story and the history of its interpretation through the lens of trauma studies to reflect on the ways that the wounds of race, gender, and war persist. Wounds do not simply go away, even though a close reading of John Calvin reveals his theological investments in removing wounds. This erasure reflects a dominant mode of Christian thinking, but it is not the only Christian reading. By contrast, Macrina’s scar, in Gregory of Nyssa’s account of her life and death, displays how resurrection can be inscribed in wounds, particularly in the illumination of her body after her death. The scar, produced in and through a mother’s touch, recalls a healing, linking resurrection to the work of tending wounds. Much like Christ’s wounds and Macrina’s scar, racial wounds can be found on the skin of America’s collective life. The wounds of racial histories, unhealed, resurface again and again. The wounds of war persist as well, despite a cultural calculus that links the suffering of a soldier with that of Christ. Again, the visceral display of Jesus’ wounds, when placed at the center of Thomas’ encounter in the Upper Room, enacts a vision of resurrecting that addresses the real harm of the real wounds of war.

The powerful Upper Room images of resurrection―encounters with wounds, the invitation to touch, and the formation of a community―present visions of truth-telling and of healing that grapple with the pressing questions of wounds surfacing in the midst of human encounters with violence, suffering, and trauma. While traditional accounts of resurrection in Christian theology have focused on the afterlife, this book forges a theology of resurrection wounds in the afterliving. By returning again and again to Christ’s woundedness, we discover ways to live with our own.

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IMAGE CREDIT: Detail from the cover of [easyazon_link identifier=”0664262643″ locale=”US” tag=”douloschristo-20″]The Sign and the Sacrifice: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection[/easyazon_link] by Rowan Williams.