the resurrection of Jesus:  what does it mean?

Easter Sunrise

            Students in Christian and Jewish parochial schools were asked to write about the Bible.  Here's what some of them had to say:

            "Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark."

            "Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night."

            "Samson slated the Philistines with the axe of apostles."

            "Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients."

            "The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.  Afterward, Moses went upon Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments."

            "The first commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple."

            "The Fifth Commandment is humor thy mother and father."

            "The Seventh Commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery."

            "Joshua led the Hebrews in the Battle of Geritol."

            "The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still, and he obeyed him."

            "St. Paul . . . preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage."

            "According to the Bible, a Christian should have only one wife.  This is called monotony."

            And about the resurrection of Jesus, one youngster wrote, "It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance."

            We laugh at what kids come up with about such things as the resurrection of Jesus.  But, don't you wonder, what if we needed to explain the meaning of the resurrection to someone else?  What would we say?  What does the resurrection of Jesus mean for you and me today?

            Is the meaning of the resurrection that his tomb was empty?  All four of the gospels in the New Testament tell of Jesus' empty tomb being discovered that early Sunday morning.  Is the empty tomb where we would point for the meaning of Jesus' resurrection?  Well, the problem with the empty tomb being the foundation for apprehending the meaning of Jesus' resurrection is that the empty tomb doesn't explain itself.  In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene was the first to come to the tomb and find that the stone door had been removed from its opening.  So what did she report to one of the disciples named Simon Peter?  "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."  The empty tomb, without some further explanation, does not disclose its meaning.  It is ambiguous.

            Maybe the meaning of Easter is found in those early appearances of the risen Jesus.  Those appearances prove that Jesus was risen from the dead.  Even so, according to the biblical witness, there were people who saw the risen Jesus and yet didn't recognize him.  In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene sees the risen Jesus and supposes him to be the gardener of the area around Jesus' tomb.  At the end of the Gospel of Luke, two disciples of Jesus—after the resurrection had been broadly announced!—could be found walking away from Jerusalem toward Emmaus, away from the place of Jesus' crucifixion, away from where they had heard of Jesus' resurrection, and, it would seem, away from faith in the crucified Jesus.  Listen to the text:  It says, "Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him."  What makes the scene even more pitiful is what the disciples say about this Jesus they had been following.  "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."  Past-tense faith.  How sad!  And right there in the presence of the risen Jesus himself!  As you can see, according to the biblical witnesses, some people saw the risen Jesus, but didn't recognize him.  What's more, our reading from the book of Acts makes it clear to us, when it comes to Jesus' appearances, it was "not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead."  Certainly there is more to the meaning of Jesus' resurrection than that he appeared to certain people but not to others.

            What made Mary Magdalene recognize Jesus?  What made those two downcast disciples recognize him?  In John's gospel, Mary recognizes the risen Jesus only after he speaks to her.  In Luke's gospel, it is what the risen Jesus says and does that causes those two dejected disciples to recognize him.  Listen to the text:  "Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures."  Jesus preaches a little sermon to them!  And then he does something else.  "When he was at table with them," the text says, "he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him."  You will recognize "took," "blessed," "broke," and "gave" as actions that are associated with the Lord's Supper.  In the case of these two dejected disciples, it is through word and the sacramental meal that they are able to recognize the risen Jesus.  According to the biblical witness, for some people, seeing the risen Jesus wasn't enough for them to recognize him.  Recognition came by his word, or his word connected with the sacramental meal.

            There is another way people have experienced Jesus’ resurrection and recognized him.  Such events were not connected with those who had first experienced the risen Jesus, but came later on.  Even so, they were truly life-changing experiences.  One such experience is recorded in the New Testament.  Another took place in the twentieth century.

            We begin with the dramatic conversion of the apostle Paul.  He testified in his Letter to the Galatians, "I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it."  So what stopped him?  In Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, he testified that he had met the risen Jesus.  Paul said simply, "he appeared also to me."  That experience of the risen Jesus was for Paul life-changing.  The once enemy of the church was now testifying as an apostle of Jesus Christ!

            Closer to our own time, in the twentieth century, a Russian church leader named Anthony Bloom speaks of the life-changing moment he recognized the risen Lord.  He testified, "I met Christ as a Person at a moment when I needed him in order to live, and at a moment when I was not in search of him.  I was found; I did not find him."

            Bloom's story takes us back to when he was a teenager.  This was a turbulent time in young Anthony's life, so much so that he decided to give himself a year to see whether life had a meaning.  If he didn't find such a meaning, he was resolved not to live beyond that year.

            Months passed and no meaning had yet appeared on the young Anthony's horizon.  One day in Lent, Anthony Bloom was asked to attend a talk by a priest.  It was Anthony's obligation as a member of one of the Russian youth organizations in Paris at the time.  "So I sat through the lecture," Anthony later explained, "but it was with increasing indignation and distaste."  Young Anthony resolved to go home to read the Gospel of Mark to check out what he had heard in the lecture.  Now I want you to listen to Anthony Bloom's own words.

            "I do not know how to tell you of what happened.  I will put it quite simply and those of you who have gone through a similar experience will know what came to pass.  While I was reading the beginning of St Mark's gospel, before I had reached the third chapter, I became aware of a presence.  I saw nothing.  I heard nothing.  It was no hallucination.  It was a simple certainty that the Lord was standing there and that I was in the presence of him whose life I had begun to read with such revulsion and such ill-will.

            "This was my basic and essential meeting with the Lord.  From then I knew that Christ did exist.  I knew that he was thou, in other words that he was the Risen Christ.  I met with the core of the Christian message."

            As in the case of the apostle Paul, meeting the risen Jesus was for Anthony Bloom life-changing, converting him from being hostile to the church to being a leader in it.

            Now let's go back to where it all started.  What exactly was it that happened to Jesus' disciples following his humiliating crucifixion?  What exactly was the event that made them come out of hiding into a hostile world?  To understand the powerful nature of the event that so dramatically changed them, you have to see the disciples the way the writer of John's gospel depicts them.  They are behind locked doors for fear of the religious leaders who had conspired with the Romans to put Jesus to death.  Their bold faith has now become a fading mirage following the humiliating death of their leader.  If Jesus was God's Son, the Messiah, then how did all this happen?  You can imagine their questions at this time.

            And you have to see the hostile environment that faced the early church the way the book of Acts characterizes it.  It was a time of persecution, a time when a Christian could be arrested for simply preaching about Jesus Christ.  Christians preaching a risen Lord could be killed by stoning, as happened to Stephen, or crucified the way Jesus was.  To come out of hiding and preach the risen Lord was to face these kinds of dangers.

            So what would make Jesus' disciples come out of hiding?  Why would they want to go out into the hostile world where they could be arrested and killed as followers of the crucified Jesus?  Why, of all things, would they want to go out into the hostile world to proclaim a risen Jesus?  There can be only one explanation:  They were sure.  They were certain that the same Jesus who suffered a humiliating death was now risen and alive and with them.  They were certain of that.  Otherwise, they would not have come out of hiding.  What made them come out of hiding and preach the good news of a risen Lord was the resurrection of Jesus!

            The resurrection of Jesus is, in short, the only explanation for the existence of Christian faith and the Christian church.  Without the certainty of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, there is no explanation for their proclamation to a hostile world that their crucified Lord was now alive.  Without that certainty there would be no Christian faith and no Christian church.  We're here today having this discussion because of the certainty of the resurrection of Jesus.

            If God raised up Jesus from the dead, then what does that mean for you and me?  The resurrection of Jesus is confirmation, not only for Jesus' first disciples, but for us as well that Jesus is indeed the Son of God.  We now recognize that Jesus was God's own self-revelation on earth in human form.  In Jesus of Nazareth the true God was revealed in human flesh.  So Jesus' words and actions together, including going to the cross, become the definitive way we know God's nature as self-giving, suffering love.

            His resurrection is confirmation for us that Jesus of Nazareth represents God's reaching out to humanity with profound love.  As Alan Jones would have us understand, "There is a cross in the heart of God.  This is simply a way of talking about the extremity of God's love and his risk in loving us."

            Because of his resurrection, Jesus' first disciples were and Jesus’ present-day disciples are deeply interested in what he said and did.  If he is God's self-revelation, what is God saying to us?  The words of Jesus, his actions on earth, plus his death and resurrection, all point to what God is saying to us:  "You are forgiven."  In Christ, God acts to forgive our rebellion against his will.  He restores our broken relationship with him by moving toward us in reconciliation.