He is Risen?
As part of his answer, Gerry quoted from the Articles of Religion of the United Methodist Church, found in the Book of Discipline:
Article III—Of the Resurrection of Christ
Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day.
In my response I shared the following:
Greg, your question prompted me to reflect upon what I understand and believe about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Your question revolves around whether Jesus physically rose from the dead. And your comments indicate that it is important to faith. “How important?” is one response to that question. Is it central to faith? Does faith in Jesus rise and fall on that question? Is it one question among many? The Christian journey is made up of just such questions, and I find that as I go along that journey, the questions I asked in times gone by get new answers, or better answers, or the answers I once thought I had now present even more seemingly intractable questions. Who knows, maybe Wes at that time was asking some questions himself as part of a sincere quest for deeper faith, and came to the conclusion, at least for that week, that the proof for a physical resurrection of Jesus Christ was at that time an insoluble knot. But maybe he still believed in Jesus Christ, and whether or not he could untangle the proof of the resurrection was not going to stand in the way of believing in Jesus Christ.
I can’t speak for the pastor whose comment was unsettling, but I recognize that we get into trouble if we stake our faith on neat and elegant proofs and solutions to the messy problems and puzzles of life – faith among them. I have found the business of faith often to be messy. People I know, love and respect in religious circles are less than perfect, can be deeply flawed, can betray me, and yet I have to acknowledge that Jesus died for them as well as for me. The people who hung around Jesus day by day were the ones who were most surprised at his resurrection. The Gospels are even a bit messy on the details: how many women actually went to the tomb? When did Peter and John go to the tomb? Were there two figures in the tomb or just one? In Mark the women only find the tomb empty and run away in fear (at least in the earliest authentic version, Mark has gained to other endings over the years). That just comes from reading each gospel as it is, and taking each of them seriously.
When I was in high school, I was struggling with this same question. I asked another adult leader, Max, if he believed that Jesus was resurrected. I’m not sure if I put it in the same words as you did, Greg, but I was wrestling with the same basic idea. I will never forget his answer. He thought for a moment and then said, ”Resurrection hasn’t happened until it happens in me.”
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer at the time, but it has remained with me to this day. I was wanting, as a modern person, some sort of intellectual certainty defined by physically verifiable and demonstrable proofs. I was, like all of us have been for the past 300 years, a product of the scientific enlightenment. The only real and true thing in the world is that which we can perceive with our 5 or 6 senses, and can be verified or repeated empirically. You remember the wild and crazy 60s and 70s – “if it feels good, do it?” Well, that same thing applied intellectually. If we can experience it or demonstrate it physically – feeling it – then it must be real, must be true.
Max’s answer took a little more digesting. I came to understand it this way: What is significant about the resurrection is not how it happened 2000 years ago, nor what the details precisely were. What matters is how it has made a difference in the lives of millions of people around the world, mine included. The power of the resurrection to me is how after two failed marriages, I still believe in the possibility of love. The power of the resurrection to me is in the many, many parishioners who have tragedy visited upon them and yet find courage to get up and face each new day and proclaim that God is good and life is worth living. The power of the resurrection is the profound peace that comes over the families of people who have just died, who have faith that death is not the final curtain, but the scene change between acts.
Until the resurrection and its power happens inside my own heart and soul, it is simply a mind game, a curious intellectual exercise. Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “for the Jews demand signs and the Greeks desire wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” There are limits to what humans can know, and what we can prove and demonstrate conclusively beyond dispute or doubt. I wish I had a time machine to go back and personally witness the resurrection. But Barbara Brown Taylor says this: "Resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth. No one has ever seen it happen, which is why it helps me to remember that no one saw it happen on Easter morning either. The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact.”
We all arrived after the fact. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ still grabs me, not because it makes perfect sense, but because it assures me that there is a Power and Purpose and deeper reality beyond the feeble stumbling struggles of our messy everyday lives. A deeper assurance has been placed within our hearts and souls, and that comes from the Holy Spirit, which bears witness to Christ. The church has always affirmed that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, who is Jesus Christ, who is present everywhere, in the way that Jesus the physical person couldn’t be. That this Jesus Christ can be present to me now and every moment is more important to me than any intellectual assurance about the physical resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is real. He’s alive. It makes a difference in my life.
I want to share with you this story I’ve written about this:
Barbara Brown Taylor says this about the resurrection of Jesus: “What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the gardener said, "Mary!" and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening -- not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.”
The power of the resurrection for me is that back in High School, when I was ready to turn my life over to drugs and stupidity, Jesus came to me at Sawtooth Camp and said, “Craig.” That’s the living Christ I love and serve.
Happy Easter to all.
He IS Risen!
Greg, your question prompted me to reflect upon what I understand and believe about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Your question revolves around whether Jesus physically rose from the dead. And your comments indicate that it is important to faith. “How important?” is one response to that question. Is it central to faith? Does faith in Jesus rise and fall on that question? Is it one question among many? The Christian journey is made up of just such questions, and I find that as I go along that journey, the questions I asked in times gone by get new answers, or better answers, or the answers I once thought I had now present even more seemingly intractable questions. Who knows, maybe Wes at that time was asking some questions himself as part of a sincere quest for deeper faith, and came to the conclusion, at least for that week, that the proof for a physical resurrection of Jesus Christ was at that time an insoluble knot. But maybe he still believed in Jesus Christ, and whether or not he could untangle the proof of the resurrection was not going to stand in the way of believing in Jesus Christ.
I can’t speak for the pastor whose comment was unsettling, but I recognize that we get into trouble if we stake our faith on neat and elegant proofs and solutions to the messy problems and puzzles of life – faith among them. I have found the business of faith often to be messy. People I know, love and respect in religious circles are less than perfect, can be deeply flawed, can betray me, and yet I have to acknowledge that Jesus died for them as well as for me. The people who hung around Jesus day by day were the ones who were most surprised at his resurrection. The Gospels are even a bit messy on the details: how many women actually went to the tomb? When did Peter and John go to the tomb? Were there two figures in the tomb or just one? In Mark the women only find the tomb empty and run away in fear (at least in the earliest authentic version, Mark has gained to other endings over the years). That just comes from reading each gospel as it is, and taking each of them seriously.
When I was in high school, I was struggling with this same question. I asked another adult leader, Max, if he believed that Jesus was resurrected. I’m not sure if I put it in the same words as you did, Greg, but I was wrestling with the same basic idea. I will never forget his answer. He thought for a moment and then said, ”Resurrection hasn’t happened until it happens in me.”
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer at the time, but it has remained with me to this day. I was wanting, as a modern person, some sort of intellectual certainty defined by physically verifiable and demonstrable proofs. I was, like all of us have been for the past 300 years, a product of the scientific enlightenment. The only real and true thing in the world is that which we can perceive with our 5 or 6 senses, and can be verified or repeated empirically. You remember the wild and crazy 60s and 70s – “if it feels good, do it?” Well, that same thing applied intellectually. If we can experience it or demonstrate it physically – feeling it – then it must be real, must be true.
Max’s answer took a little more digesting. I came to understand it this way: What is significant about the resurrection is not how it happened 2000 years ago, nor what the details precisely were. What matters is how it has made a difference in the lives of millions of people around the world, mine included. The power of the resurrection to me is how after two failed marriages, I still believe in the possibility of love. The power of the resurrection to me is in the many, many parishioners who have tragedy visited upon them and yet find courage to get up and face each new day and proclaim that God is good and life is worth living. The power of the resurrection is the profound peace that comes over the families of people who have just died, who have faith that death is not the final curtain, but the scene change between acts.
Until the resurrection and its power happens inside my own heart and soul, it is simply a mind game, a curious intellectual exercise. Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “for the Jews demand signs and the Greeks desire wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” There are limits to what humans can know, and what we can prove and demonstrate conclusively beyond dispute or doubt. I wish I had a time machine to go back and personally witness the resurrection. But Barbara Brown Taylor says this: "Resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth. No one has ever seen it happen, which is why it helps me to remember that no one saw it happen on Easter morning either. The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact.”
(“Escape From the Tomb (Jn. 20:1-18)” by Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century, April 1, 1998, page 339.)
We all arrived after the fact. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ still grabs me, not because it makes perfect sense, but because it assures me that there is a Power and Purpose and deeper reality beyond the feeble stumbling struggles of our messy everyday lives. A deeper assurance has been placed within our hearts and souls, and that comes from the Holy Spirit, which bears witness to Christ. The church has always affirmed that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, who is Jesus Christ, who is present everywhere, in the way that Jesus the physical person couldn’t be. That this Jesus Christ can be present to me now and every moment is more important to me than any intellectual assurance about the physical resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is real. He’s alive. It makes a difference in my life.
I want to share with you this story I’ve written about this:
A young novice had just entered monastery and was about the experience his first Holy Week and Easter vigil as member of the order.Now, this novice was a “modern-thinker,” who wanted to “de-mythologize” the faith, do away with all the superstition.
It so happened that his monastery was famous for its Easter tradition of the sequestered Christ candle:
Final act of the Good Friday Tenebrae service was extinguishing the Christ candle.
The candle was then taken out and locked in a symbolic sepulcher, which was a door just off of the chancel area.
Then there was a continuous vigil from that moment until Easter morning at sunrise.
At sunrise the abbot, accompanied by two or three of the monks, would make his way through the crowd of faithful pilgrims and townspeople gathered inside and outside the church and go up to the sealed door. The door would be unsealed and he would step inside, along with one of the monks.
Everyone breathlessly waited to see if the candle would have been lit miraculously during the night. If the Abbot found a lit candle, he would bring it out and announce in Latin, et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
A great cheer would go up, people would drop to their knees in prayer, people would come forward and request prayers for healing or overwhelmed with joy would give their lives to God. This miracle had occurred year after year for centuries now.
This year, everything proceeded as usual. The church was crowded with people for the Tenebrae service, and many remained during the all-night vigil Friday night, all day Saturday into that night. Then Sunday morning, before dawn, the Abbot roused the novice and two other monks to accompany him to the church. How exciting! The novice could hardly contain his excitement. Now he would see firsthand whether this candlelighting was truly a miracle or not.
As they made their way through the crowd, he recognized many of the faces. This man with an eager tear-stained face was an alcoholic whose life was in shambles. This woman’s husband had just died and she was near despair. This young person struggled with faith, and had come to church to see if there was anything to believe in.
They went up to the sealed door, and unsealed it. The abbot went in, and motioned for the novice to come as well. And what the novice saw took his breath away. The candle was not lit! Non-plussed by this, the abbot went over to the candle, lit it and presented the candle to the faithful. et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
A cheer went up as usual. There was singing, music swelled, people fell to their knees. People surged up around the chancel rail, asking for prayers, for healing, for a word of blessing. The abbot and monks were busy for nearly an hour. The young novice, however, was thunderstruck by what he had seen, and moved in a daze.
After the service, when they were alone, the novice confronted the abbot.
“How dare you perpetrate such superstitious behavior with such charlatanry! These people rely upon you for spiritual truth, and all you give them is carnival sideshow trickery! This is no miracle!”
The abbot looked at the novice for a long moment. He motioned for him to sit down. “So, do you think the lit candle is a miracle?” “Well, yes, isn’t that the point?” “If you think so, then you are the superstitious one, not the people who come to worship here.” “What do you mean?” the novice asked.
“ The miracle that occurred to day is not that the candle was lit in secret, but that a man who has been bound by an addiction to alcohol placed his life in the hands of God Almighty, that a young widow with several children was filled with new hope for her life, and that a young person who had no faith has met the risen Lord in his heart. The miracle of today is not what happens in this little room, but what happens out here.”
The power of the resurrection for me is that back in High School, when I was ready to turn my life over to drugs and stupidity, Jesus came to me at Sawtooth Camp and said, “Craig.” That’s the living Christ I love and serve.
Happy Easter to all.
He IS Risen!
(Images from: http://rainandtherhinoceros.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/resurrection-singapore.jpg; http://papastronsay.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html; Matthias Grunewald, from the public domain; http://www.rcia.org.uk/blog/uncategorized/easter-sunday-a-reflection/; and http://oneyearbibleimages.com/easter2.jpg; )
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