Jesus’ Resurrection

Summary: There is more than enough evidence to support believing in Jesus’ physical resurrection.  But will this be enough for us?  Is it enough for Jesus?

Scripture focus: John 20:1-18

Date: Easter Sunday, 4 April 2010 (St John’s Sutherland, 7pm)

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Seeking the Truth

In early March of this year, “2500 hardcore believers in the absence of religion packed into the Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne to give a hero’s welcome to the high priest of belief in unbelief, Richard Dawkins”.[1.My thanks to Melanie Phillips, a Jew, for her useful critique of Richard Dawkins in Australia, “Dawkins Preaches to the Deluded Against the Divine”, The Australian, (http://tiny.cc/i1jbg, accessed 30-Mar-2010).] So wrote Melanie Phillips, a reporter for The Australian newspaper.  Dawkins, as you may know, has gained notoriety not only for being Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University but for being an outspoken promoter of Scientism, “the ideology that says everything in the universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of empirical scientific evidence; to believe anything else is irrational”.

If it seems to you that Dawkins is particularly angry perhaps “a clue lies in his insistence that a principal reason for believing that there could be no intelligence behind the origin of life is that the alternative —God— is unthinkable [...] To stamp out the terrifying possibility of even a divine toe peeping over the threshold, all opposition has to be shut down.  And so the great paradox is that the arch-hater of religious intolerance himself behaves with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist and, despite [denouncing] religion for stifling debate, does this [himself] in spades”.

If I were to be honest with you, I’d have to admit that I almost can’t blame Dawkins for being so upset with Christianity.  Dawkins prides himself on his intelligence and capacity for clear reasoning whereas the stories and teachings of Christianity can sometimes seem rather incredible.  We all agree that Jesus was pretty remarkable, but some of the things that he did may appear, to our enlightened minds, to be just a little too hard to believe!

What Did Jesus Do?

Let’s consider first a detailed story in The Gospel of John that relates how Jesus, quite publicly, cured a man born blind.

This man given sight was quite right when he stated to the religious leaders of his day: “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:32–33).¹ This is just as true today as it was then.  While there have indeed been advances in medical science to bring some level of sight to persons born blind, this medically-enhanced sight will always remain merely synthetic and never achieve the quality of the sight of a person born seeing.

The account of Jesus giving sight to this man born blind is, if true, nothing short of a wonderful miracle.  God intervened in the natural affairs of human physical development and gave sight where once there was none nor could there ever be sight.  This could be a powerful validation of Jesus’ ministry and identity.  However, there is more.

There is another reported miracle in which Jesus resurrected a man that had died.  Note that this was no mere resuscitation!  Lazarus had already been dead for four to five days … his body had been washed, wrapped in linen and placed in a cave sepulchre tomb.  He should be thankful that he was not an Egyptian, because they practised primitive embalming!

Like the giving of sight to the man born blind, Jesus demonstrated his divine power over the physical world by doing the unthinkable: he brought a dead man back to life, in view of a large crowd, thus leaving no room for scepticism.  Not surprisingly, some people in the crowd converted to Jesus’ teaching after witnessing Lazarus’ resurrection whereas others plotted to kill Jesus after this miracle because of their envy over his power and teaching.

At Easter, this emphasis on physical miracles is taken to its most extreme in the recounting of Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead.  Like Lazarus, Jesus was thoroughly dead —the spear pressed into his side by the soldier, which resulted in an outpouring of water and of blood, is conclusive proof of his death— and like the man born blind, not since the beginning of the world has it been heard of anyone bring themselves back to life after having died.

By way of comparison, consider that the illusionist, David Copperfield, has astounded live and television audiences with the disappearance of the Statue of Liberty, walking through the Great Wall of China and levitating across the Grand Canyon.  While Mr Copperfield has escaped death on many occasions, he has yet to die and bring himself back to life.

Imagine what would happen if Mr Copperfield did die during one of his stunts?  Let’s imagine that in 1993, when he was hanging from burning ropes 13 stories above the ground, he didn’t actually escape from his bondage, but instead plummeted to his death.  Surely, doctors standing by would have done their “DR ABC” routine to ascertain his condition.  But, upon realising that his breathing and pulse had stopped, would they have stepped back and waited for him to ‘do his hocus-pocus’ and ‘astonish audiences worldwide’?  Of course, not!

There really is no comparison between anyone, living or dead, and the miraculous power demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth.

What Did The First Converts Say?²

Interestingly, by the time the Gospels were written, the Christian mission to non-Jewish people, otherwise known as “Gentiles”, was well underway and quite successful —indeed, The Gospel of Luke was clearly written for a Gentile audience.  With the Christian message extending itself to a Gentile audience, why did the Gospel writers and the early Christians choose to promote the physical nature of the resurrection of Jesus?[4, That the early Christian leaders were conscious of not unnecessarily offending the Gentiles is evident in passages such as Acts 15, which describes the decision of the Jerusalem Council regarding new Gentile converts.]

The fact is that Gentiles would not have been particularly attracted to this concept of a physical resurrection.  Consider the rejection that Paul encountered in Athens when he declared that Jesus had been raised from the dead (Acts 17:30-32).  Resurrection was not a typical religious motif for Paul’s multicultural audience; thus it is written that “some scoffed”.

As any reasonable person will agree, if I want to convince you of some opinion that I hold, I should not argue with you about a topic by which I know in advance you will be offended.  Therefore we can imagine that something must have happened to Jesus’ body on that first Easter, and he must have appeared to his disciples, for this notion of a physical resurrection to have been emphasised so boldly and broadly in the early Church.

If it were merely the case that Jesus’ body disappeared at Easter, the first disciples could have more easily promoted the belief that he was taken up into heaven, like Elijah or Enoch.  This would certainly have attracted people to Jesus’ message as Elijah remains quite popular even today.  Even biblical passages such as John 20 admit that an empty tomb was open to a variety of interpretations, including grave robbing.  So why argue for it?

What about the mass vision or hallucination theory that some propose?  This explanation suggests that the disciples were victims of a hallucination or that their experience was simply the ultimate example of wish projections or even that they merely saw visions.  In countering these objections, let us recall that the disciples themselves doubted, deserted, and denied Jesus at the end, with the possible exception of some of his female followers and perhaps John. They were hardly in a psychological condition to produce a fantasy about a risen Jesus. Their hopes had been utterly shattered by his crucifixion less than three days before.

Also, we must remember that Jesus appeared at different times and places to different persons, and last of all to Paul.  There is no basis from which to argue for a contagious hallucination or psychological delusion on the part of the apostles.

It is neither believable that the earliest Christians would have invented this story of Jesus’ material appearance.  Why indeed would they write and promote that he appeared first to some women, given the patriarchal world of the earliest Christians —this story would not have served their missionary intentions at all well.  We find no extended discussion in the Gospels of his first having appeared to Peter or to James the brother of Jesus or to any other of the male disciples, but we do have stories about appearances to the leading female disciples.

Nor is there any basis for the suggestion that these appearance stories were largely generated out of the Old Testament, which hardly mentions the notion of resurrection from the dead at all —and which explains the rejection of Jesus by the Sadducees.  Taken all together, we cannot redefine “resurrection” in any way so as to allow for a different understanding of what happened to Jesus’ body —if, that is, we wish to preserve any continuity with the historical Christian witness on this matter.

Whether we are comfortable with it or not, Christianity does indeed stand or fall on certain historical facts —not merely historical claims, but historical facts.  Among these facts that are most crucial to Christian faith is that of Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead.  The Christian faith is not mere faith in Faith, but rather a belief about the significance of certain historical events.  Paul was quite right to say, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith ” (1 Corinthians 15:14).  We believe in a lie if Christ has not come back to life.

Any position in which claims about Jesus or the resurrection are removed from the realm of historical reality and placed in a subjective realm of personal belief, or some realm that is immune to human scrutiny, does Jesus and the resurrection no service and no justice.  It is a ploy of desperation to suggest that Christian faith would be little affected if Jesus was not actually raised from the dead in space and time.  This is the approach of people who want to maintain their faith at the expense of historical reality or the facts.  A person who gives up on the historical foundations of the Christian faith has in fact given up on the possibility of any real continuity between his or her own faith and that of Peter, Paul, James, John, Mary Magdalene or Priscilla —a the faith for which the early Christians lived and died.  They had an interest in historical reality, especially the historical reality of Jesus and his resurrection, because they believed their faith, for better or worse, was grounded in it.

I, myself, can tell you of an experience I had with the worst kind of believers.  When I was studying for my Bachelors degree at Queen’s University in Canada, I enrolled in an Introduction to Systematic Theology course with 12 other students, eleven of which were studying to be church ministers.  When we came to our discussion about Jesus’ resurrection, the only ones who defended a physical resurrection were I and the other student not training to be a minister —not even the professor believed in a physical resurrection, choosing rather to believe that Jesus was a ghost and the disciples made up the resurrection story!

It is important also for our present discussion to recall that this faith of the early Christians was not something conjured up generations or even years later than the time of Jesus’ life.  Paul himself was in direct contact with various eyewitnesses of the life, death, and resurrection appearances of Jesus.  It is striking that in Paul’s letters, nowhere does he have to argue with other major Christian leaders about his views on the resurrection and the risen Lord.  Indeed, he suggests in Romans 10, Philippians 2 and elsewhere that the common and earliest confession of all these first Christians was, in fact, that “Jesus is the risen Lord”.  Furthermore, he suggests in 1 Corinthians 15:1–5 that the earliest Christians also held very particular beliefs about the end of Jesus’ earthly life and the transition to his present heavenly state as risen and exalted Lord.  Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 within twenty-five years of Jesus’ death, while various original eyewitnesses were still around to correct him.  The silence of his Christian peers on this issue compared to their criticism of his views on the law (see Galatians) is deafening.  It shows where the common ground truly lay.

The outline and some elements of these narratives of Jesus’ resurrection can already be found in Paul’s letters, in places like 1 Corinthians 11 and 15.  It was the startling things that happened to Jesus at the close of his earthly career —his shocking crucifixion and then his equally astonishing resurrection— that caused the earliest Christians to race back to their sacred scriptures to help them interpret the significance of these events.  They did not first find these events in the Old Testament prophecies and then create new stories out of the old prophecies.  This is shown most clearly by the fact that many of the texts used to interpret the final key events of Jesus’ life, in their original contexts in the Hebrew Scriptures, would not have suggested such things to a reader who had not heard of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  I know of no evidence that early Jews were looking for a resurrected messiah, and in fact, the evidence that they were looking for a crucified one is also very doubtful.

C. H. Dodd, the Welsh New Testament scholar and influential Protestant theologian,³ once proposed that the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb was one of the most self-authenticating stories in all the Gospels.  In his view, it had all the elements of the personal testimony of an eyewitness.  First, knowing what the tradition said about Mary Magdalene’s past (Lk 8:2), it is hardly credible that the earliest Christians would have made up a story about Jesus appearing first to her.  Second, it is not credible that a later Christian biographer of the saints would have had Mary Magdalene suggest that perhaps Jesus’ body had been stolen from the tomb.  Third, it is not believable that later reverential Christians would have suggested that the first eyewitness mistook Jesus for a gardener.  The portrait of Mary and her spiritual perceptiveness is hardly flattering here.  Fourth, it is not believable that early Christians would have created the idea that Jesus commissioned Mary to proclaim the Easter message to the Twelve.  On this last point we have the clear support of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul records the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, but excludes Mary.  If not totally eliminated from the official witness list, the fact that a woman was the first witness is clearly suppressed.

No one can escape the fact that the evidence and logic supporting the story of Jesus’ physical resurrection are just too substantial and remarkable to ignore, and compelling enough to believe and to accept by faith.

Conclusion

The writers of the Gospels, like other early Christians, were hoping to share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection to the ends of the earth, for the purpose of making more converts, more disciples.  It is written, “but these [stories] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).  A consistent witness to Jesus’ physical resurrection runs throughout our sources, and they provide prima facie evidence that Jesus’ resurrection and physical appearances provide the key to explaining the birth of the early church.

But there is still more to this story:

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” (Jn 20:17)

Why did Jesus prevent Mary from grasping him?  Other than being completely astonished, I am sure Mary would have been bursting to show her affection for her resurrected friend and Saviour.  Why did he refuse her when, as I have just demonstrated, the physical witness is a primary factor in the proof of his power and resurrection?

Despite our opinions to the contrary, Jesus did not place emphasis on the physical testimony.  He knew that it was important; but, throughout his ministry, he downplayed the witness of his miracles, even though the Jews, in particular, repeatedly asked for miracles.  This resistance to rely on the demonstration of his power for validation culminated in a conversation with the apostle Thomas a short time after Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene.  Jesus appeared to the apostles and focussed on Thomas’ doubt when he said,

“Put your finger here; see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting and believe.”  Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”  Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ” (John 20:27–29)

If we sitting here were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that we would prefer the power of a physical testimony.  Our neighbours and society would certainly prefer that type of evidence: “Show us a sign!” we hear them say.  How comforting it would be to rest on such a solid and final assurance of Jesus’ power.  Yet this would require Jesus to die and resurrected again and again, before each and every person that has ever lived.  The evidence supporting the first resurrection is ample, yet still so many of us do not believe, requiring direct evidence for ourselves.

Knowing this, Jesus prefers that we listen to the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit to find faith in God.  He could have taken the David Copperfield approach and demonstrated his God-given authority through the performance of tricks and slight-of-hand.  But this sort of magically-inspired faith does not last and continually requires ever greater validation.

Search your heart.  Listen to the Spirit.  May the evidence and logic compel you to seek God and may you allow him to meet and convince.  Give God permission to prove to you that he is real and allow him to woo you.  In so doing, we may yet all join together to celebrate the love song that is, “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!”

Endnotes