Resurrection: Proof or Power?
This week for Christians around the world is Holy Week.
Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday, commemorating the entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem amid the laud and jubilation of the people gathered there in
anticipation of Passover. At our church, we also observe it as Passion Sunday
as well, in preparation for Easter. During this week we will also gather on
Thursday to celebrate the Last Supper Jesus celebrated with his disciples, and
on Friday will celebrate Good Friday with a Tenebrae Service of Shadows. All these
prepare us for the central celebration of the Christian faith – the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection is one of those
doctrines of Christian teaching that seems to be central to the Christian
faith. But for many contemporary people, it is hard to square with our everyday
experience. I once had an extended Facebook conversation with a friend about
whether the actual physical resurrection of Jesus was necessary to the
Christian faith. 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.
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 after 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 two 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 struggled
with this question. I once asked an adult youth counselor if he believed that
Jesus was resurrected. 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 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.
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 have 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, and it can make a difference in yours. That is what Easter is all about,
and every day since.
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