Sunday, April 15, 2007
Does it Matter?
Dear Friends,
So James Cameron thinks he has found the tomb that contained the bones of Jesus and is to make a film about it. Does it matter? It matters more than any other single thing in all the history of the universe.
Jesus said he would die to ransom people from slavery to life without God to enjoy life for eternity (starting now) in the presence of our soul-satisfying Creator, who has promised never to stop doing us good. He also said he would rise from the dead. If James Cameron is right then our only solid source of hope for the future is destroyed. The earliest Christians knew this. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.’ But if Jesus is right, if he did rise from the dead, how can our lives go on as before, as if it didn’t happen?
So did it? Was the tomb empty on Easter Day? All we can do is consider the evidence. There are only four options.
1. The authorities stole the body. Having killed Jesus to stamp out his growing influence, why not then, as the explosive growth of the Christian church took place, produce the body and put an end to the whole thing there and then?
2. His friends stole the body. Would those who, days earlier, for fear of their lives, had denied him and abandoned him, begin to proclaim that Jesus was alive, and go on proclaiming it even though it was to meanimprisonment, beatings and even death, knowing where his body was?
3. Jesus was not dead, only unconscious, when they laid him in the tomb. Would someone who had endured a flogging that often killed the victim, then spent six hours nailed to a cross and been stabbed in the side with a spear really be able to remove a stone too heavy for several women together to move, overcome a squad of armed soldiers, and then meet with his disciples and convince them that he had actually risen from the dead to new, unending life?
4. God raised Jesus from the dead to new, unending life. This is what he said would happen. Before we dismiss it with integrity, we need to account for the empty tomb, the dramatic transformation in his followers from men hiding behind locked doors for fear of their lives to bold and joy-filled witnesses of the resurrection, and for the existence of a thriving, empire-conquering early Christian church.
So much is at stake over this one historical claim that whilst we don’t want to be gullible, neither do we want to reject it just because it is strange. If Jesus is who he says he is, we should expect strange and wonderful things to happen. He said he would rise from the dead; if he did, if it is true, then everything else he said is true as well. If he did what he said he would do, why would we then want to reject the beautiful, people-serving nature of his life; the people-affirming, life-giving nature of his words? Why would we want to dismiss from our lives the one who said, ‘I have come that they may have life in all its fullness’?
Happy Easter!
Tim Ling