New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
(Year B: Easter Sunday, 4th
April 2021)
[This blog was already published on this
blog site on 1 April 2018 and has been slightly adjusted and updated here.]
A most puzzling story..?
For such a joyful day the description of
women who were ‘alarmed’ (or ‘trembling and bewildered’ in other versions) and
who could not say anything ‘to anyone, because they were afraid’ strikes the
hearer. Anyone would be shocked and
thrown into the opposite of calm on coming across something not only
inexplicable but so extraordinary and out of this world that he or she would
feel over-awed. What might happen next?
On life’s journey we encounter many surprises. Some of these surprises
can disconcert and upset us and those around us. Easter presents a huge challenge to people
today – at least those who consider these matters carefully and
thoughtfully. Modern-day rational and
empirical ways of thinking and dealing with the world finds the Easter story
puzzling. Even well regarded theologians and clerics find it hard to imagine a
type of ‘bodily’ resurrection. Refuge is taken in the ‘spiritual’ message of
Easter implying new life and hope relevant to people today and not in the
‘actually happened’ event of an empty tomb, clothes neatly tied together (hint
for those in a hurry in the morning!) and a person who turns up like a ghost
and yet can eat fish and bread. All very
fantastical and mythological, some will argue or suggest in the act of
theological dodging.
Dismissing the Easter story as fanciful
post-death imagination and handed-on story telling by the early Jesus movement
is easy but based, ironically, on a particular mind-Set that deals in a limited
set of empirical possibilities.
That Jesus rose form the dead in all the
meaning that this entails is a foundational principle of Christian faith and
living. Writing in a letter to the
church in Corinth some decades after the death of Jesus, St Paul had the
following very relevant things to say about Jesus rising from the dead:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor 15:12-19)
And a very different type of story..
In short, if the resurrection is just a
‘story’ on the same level as a fairy-tale or a piece of fiction then we might
hang up our boots, spend some time on beach on Sunday mornings if in Australia and
find a life (not that Christians shouldn’t do such things as well on Sunday
afternoons!). Something happened on
Easter Sunday that was so shocking, so profound and so capturing that the early
eyewitnesses and disciples could only tell it the way they saw, heard and
experienced it. Thus, Paul tells the brethren at Corinth:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:3-8).
A number of possible understandings are
possible including the following three (at least):
Uncritical
realism – typified by a literalist, maximum reading
of the resurrection narratives. Some
adherents of this approach insist on an objective approach that demands
intellectual assent backed up – in case of any doubt – with historical
‘facts’. Scripture is cited as in a law
court and certainty with regard to ‘what really happened’ is part of the ‘faith
once delivered to the saints’. Moreover,
great stress is placed on the physicality of the resurrection – not just
spiritual rising but a resurrection of the ‘flesh’ .
Scepticism – typified by some strands of radical theology that sees in these
narratives little or nothing more than the early Jesus movement trying to make
sense of the experience of defeat, exclusion and new life in the immediate
aftermath of the life and ministry of Jesus.
The notion of someone ‘coming back to life’ after death is excluded as
impossible. Instead, the focus is on the meaning of resurrection as a story
that inspires the followers of Jesus.
Critical realism – falls somewhere between the above two ‘extremes’. Critical realism does not shy from the highly
improbable ‘historicity’ of many of the details in the resurrection stories.
However, it does not exclude the ‘realism’ of rising to new life which entails
accepting the idea that there are no bones around because the one who died is
now risen. This sounds like physical resuscitation. However, at this point the
critical realist accepts that something extraordinary – supernatural – happened
in the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus. These extraordinary happenings were witnessed
by many people. Something ‘real’, ‘objective’ and ‘historical’ happened and
that something ignited a revolution in the minds and spirits of the first
disciples of Jesus. Exactly what
happened and how it happened remains difficult to access and explain –
especially at a distance of 2,000 years and the intervening world-view sea
changes. Put another way, we are not
sure what a CCTV outside the tomb, at the time, would have picked up. No Gospel account actually describes what
happened during the key moment or moments.
The core issues
Adhering to both an objective and subjective
view of the resurrection leaves the open the following points of doctrine and
belief that are mutually compatible and reinforcing:
- The impossibility of putting limits to the sovereignty of God and the world of rational, direct experience and observation.
- The weight of tradition and wisdom of Christians down the ages who received the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
- The importance of rising from death in the challenge to change an unjust world.
- The importance of hope in life beyond this present sometimes world and with that the promise of fellowship here and into eternity.
- In the words of the Nicene Creed, we say I or we ‘look forward to’ or ‘hope’ or ‘expect’ (expecto). Not that I (or you) have seen, touched, proved, observed or established scientifically – rather I have entrusted my limited understanding to a higher order of truth.
And so what for us now?
Those of us living
through lockdown in some form and those of who cannot celebrate together –
physically – the resurrection await a promising future. Yes, as the
resurrection teaches us, physical realities and togetherness are important.
Just as the resurrection cannot be captured online so also we cannot fully
celebrate it online. Though welcome compared to no celebration, a zoomed
worship is a pale reflection of the real thing.
We may be like people
held in captivity and who have been suddenly released, freedom can be a
daunting prospect. Adaptation takes time. Reconditioning may be necessary. This
may be captured in a few lines of a poem by Gerald McFlynn:
On the morning of the third day I went to the tomb and rolled back the stone. Out came the poor and destitute, the prisoners, Travellers…the old and forgotten… blinking in the sunlight all ready for a new birth.
Therein lies a key to a living resurrection
in today’s world.
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