I wonder how many preachers would be prepared to read Peter Rollin’s monologue at their Easter day service. It started….
“Without equivocation or hesitation, I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think.”
Then a dramatic pause……. and continued…
“I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system. However, there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed”.
So then… Jesus: Risen in what Sense?
Surely one sense of true growth of the mature Christian is when they get to the point where they start to trust their own thinking and experience enough to live their response. Mike Riddell once reminded his readers that at the very least the resurrection should be more than something viewed as a magic trick to be applauded from the sidelines.
In some ways it should never really have been a question of how believable or acceptable the resurrection story is to a genuine Christian. The more interesting question is to why Church members are not uniformly transformed by their claimed knowledge of the resurrection. If we look at typical behaviour of Christians today, we should at least acknowledge that by their actions they show they are uncertain as to what it all means. Celebrating in joyful worship we may well be on Easter Sunday but tomorrow is it back to total normality and on to the Easter sales.
Although most Christians are happy to respond to the Easter Greeting – “Christ is risen!” with “He is risen indeed!”, all is by no means clear.
Today I wish to face what some critics say as squarely and as honestly as possible. You should be assured at the outset that although I am aware of these problems, I personally believe there is needs to be very important truth in the “resurrection” that resonates with our experience. This is one I would hope gives a good basis for a life based on faith. Don’t forget any faith worth having it should be sufficiently robust to survive honest doubts.
It is fine to start simply with the gospel accounts, reading each one separately and using the Church three-year cycle of the lectionary almost as an excuse to avoid seeing how the accounts stack up against one another. But as our faith matures, there is also a case for comparing the accounts, allowing ourselves to become open to relevant knowledge from other sources.
So to work….
We start with an observation from Justice Haim Cohn, a prominent contemporary Jewish scholar who draws our attention to some obvious problems in accepting the veracity of the account of Jesus’ evening trial in the house of the High Priest. Justice Cohn claims that the traditional story of Jesus’ trial is inconsistent with custom. First according to Jewish law and custom, the Sanhedrin were not allowed to exercise jurisdiction in the High Priest’s house or for that matter anywhere outside the Courthouse and Temple precinct. No session of the criminal court was permissible after nightfall. Passover or Pesach would not have provided the setting since no criminal trial was permissible on a feast day or the eve of a feast day. In view of the formalistic and rigorous attitude to the law, for which the Pharisees were well known, a conviction must be proceeded by two truthful and reliable witnesses and in fact the charge of blasphemy was inapplicable since it was closely defined as pronouncing the ineffable name of God, the tetragrammaton, which under Jewish law might only be pronounced once a year on the Day of Atonement – and then only by the High Priest in the Kodesh Kodashim, the innermost sanctuary of the Temple.
Next, we look more closely at how the gospel accounts stack up against each other. The gospel accounts are fine if read separately – but downright confusing when assembled. The difficulties are now well known and are standard teaching in many theological training institutions. Both by tradition and the three-year church lectionary cycle the stories are not usually read on the same day in Church. Accordingly, the contradictions are less well known by typical church members apart from the more serious Bible scholars among them. For example, there are different reportedly eye-witness accounts with different Jesus’ last words on the cross. There are different versions of what was encountered at the empty tomb and who the witnesses met there. Right from the outset the gospel writers seem to have struggled to come up with a consistent and clear account of the empty tomb.
Let’s be honest, the gospels lacked the precision and accuracy now expected of national news reporters and now appear closer today with what we might more commonly associate with the tabloids. Matthew, for example has many graves opening and dead people walking around. Matthew 27 verses 52 and 53 says “There was an earthquake, the rocks split and the graves opened, and many of God’s people rose from sleep , and coming out of their graves after his resurrection, they entered the Holy City where many saw them”. Many resurrected? Really?
Strangely the other gospel writers appeared to have missed this earth-shaking scene altogether and contemporary historians seem oblivious to that extraordinary newsworthy event. Mark as the writer most contemporary with the events, far from supporting Matthew’s account, attempted to close off his account before the resurrection evidence was even mentioned. The last twelve verses of Mark are widely believed by scholars to have been added much later by other authors to bring Mark’s gospel into line with the resurrection details mentioned in the other gospels. The earliest complete manuscripts of Mark’s gospel were missing these verses and the style of writing including letter formation suggests that the missing verses were added at least two hundred years after the original gospel was first composed.
Then we get to the gospel detail. At the very least there are difference in the record.
For example: Jesus’ last words were?
Matt.27:46,50: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” …Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”
Or was it: Luke 23:46: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, “Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:” and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.”
Or even John’s version, John 19:30: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished:” and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.”
Well, who did Jesus’ followers actually see at the sepulchre?
Mark 16:5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.
Luke 24:4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:
John 20:12 … seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
Next the accounts of the events following the resurrection.
According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Mary Magdalene was among the group of women who were told by angels at the empty tomb that Jesus had risen “even as he said,” and Luke went as far as to say that when the women heard this, “they remembered his words” (24:9). Such statements as these can be put together with Matthew’s claim that the women encountered Jesus, even held him, and worshipped him as they were running from the tomb to give the news to the disciples. Matt 28:9 This presumably indicates the women were already convinced that Jesus has risen from the dead when they left the tomb. Yet when Mary actually meets Jesus she not only doesn’t recognize him, she tells him that his body is missing from the tomb and she doesn’t know where it has been put.
It is true that some of the minor differences in the accounts eg Was it angels or men in the tomb? How many in the tomb? Who was it who encountered Jesus afterwards? reminds us of the typical versions of reporters struggling to remember what they believed they had been told well after the event, but at the very least it would be dishonest to say there was no room for doubt.
Now for the bit requiring clear thought. I would claim that despite the problems there was something very significant about the resurrection. This to my way of thinking was no matter how confusing the accounts now seem in retrospect, something was happening soon after Jesus’ crucifixion to transform some who had been close to Jesus from being frightened, highly dependent frail humans, into disciples prepared to strike out on their own, passing on Jesus’ teaching and being sufficiently inspirational to draw others to his cause. At the very least, resurrection must have happened for them in some way even if it should be also allowed in a metaphorical sense.
Biologically, I have no idea what “resurrection” literally meant. Was Jesus properly dead when taken down off the cross? Was the story exaggerated through the next few decades? Truthfully, although I know what I would like to believe – I have no way of proving what I hope to be true. Yet what is absolutely beyond question is that death did not finish Jesus and his message. What is also true is that some – notice I say some – not all – were brought to a new dimension of life in the process.
You might well focus on the state of Jesus from crucifixion to resurrection and claim it is important to believe the detail. For what it is worth I happen to think it is far more important to offer the sort of environment to allow Jesus to take root in our life. Simply stopping and celebrating the detail of that first resurrection is not sufficient for me because knowing about it wouldn’t necessarily change me. My experience suggests that some who have passed exams in that sort of detail do not always seem to be allowing what Jesus stood for to take root in their lives.
Should we seek Jesus in the empty tomb? Assuming he was resurrected if he is not perceived amongst the living – and that includes among people like us – then why would resurrection matter? In other words, simply hearing about it won’t necessarily make a difference.
Metaphorically speaking, when I allow the resurrection to come alive for me I should be able to show love for my fellows. How is it for you?
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