This series of Reflections focuses on one of the key elements of Christianity: the Resurrection of the Christ. It is what Easter is really about. Over the next weeks, until Pentecost, we will explore this subject together.
I know that these Reflections are not short. Understanding faith in depth cannot be a series of sound bites. I try to write them in such a way that all readers can understand them as a form of their own spiritual reflection, allowing for both thinking about the subject but also allowing time to feel the meanings of faith.
I hope that those of other faiths, or those who are searching on their spiritual journey, can get value out of learning about one of the central tenets of Christianity.
In this Reflection I would like to accomplish three things. First, I want to summarize my thoughts on the importance to a Christian of belief that the resurrection is true.
Second, I would like to share with you some conclusions which I have come to after years of study of the resurrection.
And, third, I would like to lay the groundwork for understanding the importance of the appearances of the Risen Lord after his resurrection.
I would like us to review briefly my Easter Reflection on the resurrection of Jesus, called "Resurrection Faith" because no other part of Christianity is more crucial to the faith.
If, at some point in a Christian's life he or she cannot believe that the resurrection of Jesus is true, then that person's faith is incomplete. What distinguishes Christianity from all other religions is the truth of this event: the raising by God of Jesus of Nazareth from the grave. [Thanks to Mike Rodgers for giving me reason to clarify this point.]
I know something about trying to skirt around, to rationalize, this issue. I did it for years; telling myself I really was a good Christian, going through all of the right motions, and all that. But I really doubted that a resurrection happened. I desperately wanted to believe it, but I couldn't truthfully say that I did.
And, as I told you, I desperately tried to study my way to that belief; but I couldn't get there that way. Finally, after much anguish and prayer, literally for years, God gave me the faith to believe.
Having finally, after years of struggle, come to believe in the truth of the resurrection I was able then, after God gave me the faith, to study and to better understand some of the basis of that faith. It is that understanding that I would like to share with you in this series.
I do this with two goals in mind. First and foremost, I wish to share it with those Christians who may still be struggling with the truth of the resurrection. I know the struggle you are going through, because I have been there. Yet, it seems to me wholly possible that the Holy Spirit can convict you of the truth of this most important event in history, even as I was eventually convinced.
Secondly, I would like to share with those who believe the truth of the resurrection some of the conclusions I have come to that shore up my own faith. I do this in the hope that your faith might also be further strengthened.
In order for us to intelligently review the appearances of the Risen Lord after the resurrection, I need to lay out some of my basic conclusions upon which the Reflections I am sharing with you about the resurrection appearances are based. I have come to these conclusions after years of intensive study of this issue. These are my conclusions which you may or may not decide to make your own.
Each one could be the basis of a seperate Reflection in itself and I believe each to be true; and each conclusion is backed by the Biblical witness. But, for now, in this series, I can only give you the conclusions.
I know that offering these conclusions so starkly opens myself up to considerable argument on any or all of them. I would only ask that you wait, if you can, and see how they play out in the series.
I believe I will answer most of your questions as we go along. But if you cannot wait just ask away and I will try to elaborate a bit in my replies to your comments.
First, a conclusion that you already know: that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a primary necessity of Christianity. If Christ be not raised, then we are fools.
Second: that the Risen Lord attested to in the Bible is the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, dead and buried. In other words, that the Risen Lord is not some abstraction, some hope, some ghost, some result of group hysteria, or a vision or a dream; but is, in fact, the person, Jesus of Nazareth.
Third, that there can be no resurrection without death. That is, that Jesus of Nazareth really died, that nothing was faked, that this was not some resuscitation of a person who was in a coma or deep sleep, or other such nonsense.
Fourth, that death is the total, complete and irreversible sundering of human and divine relationships; not only with the living but also with God. That is, that Jesus' death was not different than our own, and that it was a complete, absolute, final ending to Jesus' earthly life.
Fifth, that resurrection is a pure gift from God, a pure grace, which overcomes even the finality of death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, that anyone does, beyond having faith, modifies that grace in any way. No amount of good living or good works affect any individual's resurrection.
Sixth, that death has absolutely nothing to do with the freeing of an immortal soul from a finite and evil body; the concept that the soul is immortal is a Greek idea and is foreign to the Biblical idea of resurrection.
Seventh, that resurrection has to do with the raising of the entire being who has died. That is, body and spirit, or "soul," are integrally united in what we call today, the "self" or the "person." In other words, that an individual, identifiable, discreet, conscious person is raised, not an abstract, ethereal wisp, a mere shade or shadow of the whole person.
Eighth, that the resurrection of Jesus cannot be understood apart from the cross. That is, that the resurrection apart from the death of Jesus and his atonement is at best a meaningless anomaly, a one-time-only curiosity which holds no useful insight for us.
Ninth, the resurrected body is not "human" as we know it, but rather is, as St. Paul attests, in a way we cannot perceive, "glorified," all the while maintaining the same personal identity it had before death.
Tenth, resurrection in the abstract is meaningless to us. It is meaningful only as it relates to the specific purposes of God. Just so, Christ's resurrection would be meaningless to us without the purposes of witnessing to the glory of God and instructing the faithful, through the statements of the resurrected Lord, on the intentions of God for the lives of the faithful.
Eleventh, the primary effect of resurrection is to reestablish relationships: between God and humankind and between humans whose relationships were severed by death. If God had no interest in reestablishing relationships with us there would have been no need for any resurrection appearances at all.
Twelfth, that relationship with God is meaningful for Christians primarily in the context of the faith community which the Risen Lord established, the Church, and within the context of His instruction to that community to take the Word of God to the entire world.
And finally, - and this is the most important of all, and also the most difficult to understand, so read this carefully: that the resurrection occurred at the intersection of time, or history, as we know it and eternity.
As such it is what the Church calls an "eschatological event;" meaning that it is an event signaling the "last days."
We are living in a period between the beginning of the last days, signified by the coming of God in Christ, and the culmination of the last days at the second coming of Christ.
We live in what is known in the Church as the "in-between" time; the time of "already" - meaning the breaking in of the Kingdom of God with the coming of Jesus - and "not yet" - meaning the final triumph of the Kingdom of God when Christ comes again.
Just as Jesus left eternity and entered the time and space of creation at His conception, so too, after his resurrection and the appearances he left time and space as we know it and returned to eternity.
That is the main reason we can't "prove" the resurrection. It was an event that moved beyond history as we know it. Certain aspects surrounding the resurrection have been made available to our consciousness by God, in particular the appearances of the Risen Lord.
But, by definition, the very act of resurrection itself lies beyond human understanding. It simply does not fit what we know about how things work.
I would like to conclude this Reflection by giving a brief introduction to Christian understanding of the appearances of the Risen Lord after his resurrection. We will discuss the appearances in detail in the following Reflections.
In my Easter Reflection I told you that there were three basic reasons why people for the first 1800 years or so of Christianity believed the truth of the resurrection.
First, they believed it because the Bible said it was true. But, since the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution that position has been challenged constantly by those who think that we either have to prove the Bible scientifically or explain a lot of it away.
You already know that I believe that we cannot prove almost any important aspects of the Bible scientifically and that there is no reason to try to rationalize away key aspects of the faith.
Second, they believed it because witnesses that they trusted said that they saw the Risen Lord, after His crucifixion and burial. That is, they testified that the Risen Lord, the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, appeared to them after he had died.
And, third, those same disciples and many others, even to this day, testified, and still testify, that the Risen Lord is alive and active in their own lives, even as I testify to the activity of Christ in my own life.
The Christians who make up the Church are living witnesses to the truth of the resurrection. As the body of Christ, Christians within the Church witness today to the truth of the living Christ working in our daily lives. In fact, it is our witness that keeps Christianity alive, and provides the hope for generations yet unborn. Without the witness of his body, the Church, resurrection faith would die within a few generations.
I would like to focus in this series particularly on the appearances after Jesus death by the Risen Christ to the disciples and others. The four gospels, plus Acts and First Corinthians, all attest to these appearances, and they form the basic fabric from which the belief that the resurrection is true is constructed.
It is these eye witness accounts recorded in the Bible that most clearly explain the basis of the faith of the original Christian communities.
It is the trust that the communities of faith placed in these witnesses that allows us to believe the stories of the eye witnesses. In other words, when the Gospel writers write what they do about the appearances, I trust that they, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are writing truth, not lies or fabrications.
And, likewise, when Paul tells me that the Risen Lord appeared to Him on the road to Damascus, and when Luke, in Acts, confirms that event, I trust both Paul and Luke to tell me the truth, and not to lie about it.
And that trust is bolstered by another trust: that the Bible is the inspired witness to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. In other words, Christians believe that the Bible is the primary revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
The revelation of God in Christ in the Bible is the normative revelation of God to us. Upon its words Christians make decisions about the nature of God and of God's relationship to us.
When Christians believe that the Bible offers such a revelation of God to us, then Christians not only trust what the witnesses to the Risen Christ say, but also to trust that what they said is truthfully recorded by the biblical writers.
In a few days we will walk together through an overview of the appearances of the Risen Lord, and see if we can discern some fundamental aspects of these appearances.
May God bless you all.
Monte
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