"On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus," by Denise Levertov

It is for all
‘literalists of the imagination,’
poets or not,
that miracle
is possible,
possible and essential.
Are some intricate minds
nourished
on concept,
as epiphytes flourish
high in the canopy?
Can they
subsist on the light,
on the half
of metaphor that’s not
grounded in dust, grit,
heavy
carnal clay?
Do signs contain and utter,
for them
all the reality
that they need? Resurrection, for them,
an internal power, but not
a matter of flesh?
For the others,
of whom I am one,
miracles (ultimate need, bread
of life) are miracles just because
people so tuned
to the humdrum laws:
gravity, mortality —
can’t open
to symbol’s power
unless convinced of its ground,
its roots
in bone and blood.
We must feel
the pulse in the wound
to believe
that ‘with God
all things
are possible,’
taste
bread at Emmaus
that warm hands
broke and blessed.

+ Denise Levertov

Christians approach the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection from a wide range of angles, and Levertov offers an intriguing option. Just as she can’t accept that Jesus’ resurrection is “just a symbol,” she also declines to say it’s “just a fact.” For her, it’s a mysterious blend of both: a stirring symbol, a sign that “with God all things are possible” — and also an event rooted “in bone and blood” for our sake, since many of us, Levertov reasons, will only be persuaded if we feel the wound, taste the bread. We are physical creatures who live in a physical creation; not only physical, of course, but not less than physical, either.

And after all, is it any less astonishing that God became flesh in the first place? Or for that matter, that atoms can cohere and become conscious as a living being? Or that God made and makes the world? Or that God, Poet of Heaven and Earth, said “Let there be light” — and there was light? Symbol and fact, poetry and prose, indivisible, wonder of wonders to behold and contemplate, mouths agape, stunned into praise. Hallelujah!