Unitarian Free Christian theologian David Doel wrote (in ‘The Man they Called the Christ’ UCA books) that: ‘…resurrection invites us to consider that personal transformation, awakening, is an authentic and ever present possibility…’
Doel quotes ancient gnostic scripture which teaches that resurrection is ‘the revealing of what truly exists … and a transition into newness’.

Now, setting aside the problems that the concept of resurrection might inspire in us if we can’t sustain the metaphysics necessary to believe that a person can literally come back from the dead, (which is what the concept is freighted with), if we set that aside, which might admittedly be easier said than done, but if we set it aside, we might be able to hear in resurrection the same root word as we hear in insurrection, and remember that in the writings of St Paul where we first encounter the term in Christian scripture, Resurrection is anastasis ‘standing up beyond one’s self’. Resurrection is not only a transformation from our old self towards a higher aspiration, but also perhaps a sense that we might intentionally participate in a self greater than our own.

The possibility of this congregation and this denominational context within which it sits is participation. A spirituality of participation and a theology of participation is its background and its context …

We recognise that we can participate in the divine and sacred not as onlookers looking in from the outside or devotees gazing in adoration – but as ‘disciples’, that is practitioners of a discipline, practitioners is maybe an easier word to swallow: like practitioners of breath work, breathing in the breath of the sacred. Inheritors of the breath of creation (as one of our hymns puts it 150 Purple hymnal ‘Spirit creeping through this place’, A. Hill).
But this isn’t a quest to be holier than thou, the discipline doesn’t result in becoming best at it; because we are no longer driven by the competitive spirit of puritanism to say that only one way is holy, instead we know that to participate is just that, it makes one a participant. It is more like a simple fact of our being.

At our Light of Remembrance event last night I was reminded of this as I listened to holy songs from the Muslim and Christian traditions; we no longer expect exclusivity of spiritual truth but all participate in the sacred from our own cultural perspective: I may know the way of the sacred through Jesus, this is why, despite all the problems of Christianity, and there are many, this is why I consider myself a Christian – not because I think that Jesus Christ was one and very God, but because his way took that form of participation in the divine to its finest expression. We may be inspired by his expression of living in God to attempt to emulate that close relationship in our own lives, and some of us by diligent and disciplined practice of the presence of the divine may become, as Christian saints and mystics were said to be, closer to our target; (not me by the way, I’m useless at it), and some of us will grow closer, and some will fall further. Unitarians used to set store by the phrase ‘different in degree not in kind’ and that’s what they were talking about; degree of closeness to the divine, and in our cultural tradition Jesus was considered to have become closest, he attained closest proximity to the divine. (A good example of this theological insight can be found in William Ellery Chaning’s 1828 sermon ‘Likeness to God‘).

That leaves plenty of space it seems to me to have high regard for other ways and other traditions, and other persons each in their degree.
I’m speaking of a restoration of the individual to a living relationship with the inner (and outer) creative power.

This is not only a past event, but an awakening, now, to the presence of the Christ in the soul. The resurrection is happening now.