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The Resurrection of Jesus Christ The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This event is foundational to our faith and without it Christianity loses both its integrity and its potency. In 1 Corinthians 15 St Paul reasoned, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith….We are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” Yet the resurrection is not an easy concept with which to come to terms and many ‘would be’ Christians find they trip up or over this strange event. Perhaps because of its difficulty and its importance as a foundational principle of the faith, we tend to do with it what we do with most difficult and controversial concepts, we avoid talking about it for fear of offending or confusing or raising controversy. In evangelical churches especially, it is almost taboo to question the resurrection or to express one’s difficulties with it. See Crosstalk and the day I admitted I found it difficult to believe in the Resurrection. However, if we are to take seriously our relationship with God; with Jesus; and with the Christian faith, then the fact that it is difficult to understand in a logical way just how Jesus rose from the dead, should not put us off from engaging with the mystery of and the significance of his resurrection. Much has been written about the concrete evidence of the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection. I don’t propose to explore all of that today. Should you be interested in this aspect of the resurrection then I urge you to read ‘Who moved the stone?’ by Frank Morrison. Rather I would like to look at three different questions: How do we know what happened on Easter Sunday? What do we mean when we say that Jesus rose from the dead? What is the significance of the resurrection? So….. How do we know what happened on Easter Sunday? The main sources which directly attest to the fact of Christ’s resurrection are the four Gospels and the Epistles of St Paul. Though the Gospels provide differing accounts of the resurrection on Easter Sunday, all four canonical Gospels agree that the empty tomb was discovered by a group of woman who were the first of Jesus’ followers to realise he had been raised from the dead. The Gospels are also in agreement that the risen Christ appeared to many people and St Paul whose writings occurred within 25 years of Christ’s death, reports that the risen Christ appeared to more than 500 people! In spite of evidence given by all of these people, there were then as there are now, those who were cynical and sceptical about the resurrection of Jesus, especially because the believers could not present the risen Jesus in a public demonstrable way that would erase their scientism. However, it is somewhat ironic that the sceptics seemed equally unable to produce Jesus’ body as evidence of his continued death. So it seems that everything we know about the resurrection has been left to faith and to the testimony of the disciples. This may surprise us but it is consistent with how God has worked since the beginning of time. God is a relational God and he works through and with the relationships he has with his people in most everything he does. Amazingly, that is how the church has continued to this day. Still the church relies on the personal experiences of its believers as witness and the communicating of that experience as evangelism to spread the Gospel of the risen Christ. The passage we looked at today in our Gospel reading is the third resurrection passage in Luke. Luke 24: 1 -12 tells of the empty tomb. Luke 13 – 35 presents an appearance of Jesus which stresses that his resurrection had been prophesied in Scripture. Luke 24; 36 – 53 which is the passage we read today reveals that God and his son Jesus intend to work through his people the Church for in this passage the risen Christ commissions his disciples to go and witness to the world that he has risen from the dead. What do we mean when we tell others that Jesus rose from the dead? From this last account in Luke of the appearance of Jesus we learn that the risen Christ is no mere apparition. In the story he makes it clear that he is not a ghost. His hands and feet are visible and he can be touched. He has flesh and he has bones. He also is able to eat a piece of broiled fish in their presence. In other words the resurrection is a physical reality. However, we see evidence in both Luke and John that though Jesus appeared in a bodily form which was solid and natural, his body does not seem to be subject to ordinary physical restrictions. He can pass through doors and make multiple appearances all over the land. Thus the resurrected body of Jesus is both the same and yet also different from the physical body. His body retained its physical aspects but exists in a glorified condition. Paul seems to concur with this view. He maintains that Jesus’ resurrected body was a glorified spiritual body which could be seen and recognized as the actual body of Christ. During Jesus ministry on earth, he had brought a number of people back to life including Martha’s brother Lazarus . But the resurrection of Jesus Christ was different. It was not just resuscitation as was the case with Lazarus who would later die again. On the third day Jesus was raised from the dead with a transformed body that was clothed with immortality and glory. His resurrected body could appear and disappear, go through material objects and ascend to and descend from heaven. Also Jesus was not raised by some other holy person’s miracle as Elijah had raised the widow’s boy. God himself had raised Jesus from the dead never to die again. This brings us to the most important question of all…. What is the significance of the resurrection of Jesus? 1. In the crucifixion and the resurrection we see the two faces of Christianity which are vital to our faith. The crucifixion presents a hard reality of suffering, service and sacrifice, while the resurrection marks the reality of reconciliation, restoration and victory over death. 2. The appearance of Christ after his death had a profound effect on the disciples and renewed and strengthened their faith. The resurrection brought them peace and hope because it ended their anxiety about what had happened to Jesus. They now understood that he was alive and because he was alive all would be well. It is consistent with the way God works in that they understood as we do that God’s plan was and always will be to promote life and salvation for the world. Had Jesus merely died and never risen that would not have been the case. 3. The resurrection shows us that God is clearly in control and has a plan. In the resurrection of Jesus we see the clear demonstration of the power of the true God. Jesus reminds us of this in the passage by pointing out that he had predicted everything that had taken place. This included his death and resurrection. He challenged his enemies: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” He had said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life”. A crucified and raised messiah was not an adjustment to God’s plan but was integral to it. In fact the resurrection had been promised as the main proof of Christ’s divine mission and thus it has greater dogmatic importance than any other fact. The resurrection proves that Jesus Christ is God. 4. How was it part of God’s plan? Paul believed that Jesus had conquered sin because he had conquered death. Thus in Jesus God had worked to conquer the evil forces that control the world. By his death Christ freed us from sin and by his resurrection he restored to us the most important privileges lost by sin Romans 4: 25 “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification”. 5. Our own resurrection depends completely on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus resurrection proves that there is an afterlife 1 Corinthians 15. The bodily nature of the resurrection shows the continuity between who we are and what we will be. Death is not an end but a transition. The Gospel of Luke is essentially about this transition and the choice it imposes. Death can be a transition either into eternal life through Christ or into a second more permanent death. The choice is essentially ours. The resurrection proves that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God who became man. He is very God and very man. He was crucified, he died and was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures. This same Lord Jesus Christ ascended into the heavens is ruling and reigning even now and will come again to judge the living and the dead. This is the mystery of our faith. Some of this is easy to comprehend and some of it will remain mystery for all our lives. Yet we are called to respond to this gesture of love from God. Will we walk away from the resurrected Christ or will we bow down before him knowing that in him we will find our salvation and eternal life? |
