Unprecedented

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 and Luke 24:1-12.

We are currently in the middle of Passover, in which our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate God saving them in a meal with a spiritual significance. We just celebrated Maundy Thursday where we remembered the meal at which Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body,” and wine, saying, “This is my blood.” We are also in the middle of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during daylight hours for a whole month. We just finished Lent, which commemorates Jesus fasting for 40 days in the wilderness while resisting temptations. Fasting and sacred meals are not unknown in religions other than Christianity.

Nor is the idea of a central religious figure who gives moral instructions from God unique. Moses brings us the Torah, God's covenant which includes the Ten Commandments. Muhammad recited the Quran which Muslims believe is God's final revelation. Jesus summarizes the moral law as loving God and loving other people. Almost all religions have some form of the Golden Rule, treating others as we want to be treated.

So are all religions the same, as some say?

Certainly there is a large overlap when it comes to moral laws. No religion approves of treachery or theft or murder or adultery or lying. All approve of justice and helping the poor and the sick and the hungry. Although only Jesus said we must also love our enemies.

And while all hold their central religious figure in the highest esteem—Muslims disapprove of depicting not only God but his prophet Muhammad—only followers of Jesus say he is not just a prophet but God himself. All 3 religions agree that it would be blasphemy to say that of Moses or Muhammad.

All 3 men suffered opposition, often while dealing with unbelievers. But only Jesus was arrested, whipped and killed by his opponents.

Both Moses and Muhammad turned their followers into armies and led them into battle to conquer the Transjordan and Mecca, respectively. But Jesus never led an army. When one of his followers cut off a man's ear while defending him against arrest, Jesus healed the man. And told his followers to put away the sword.

All 3 religious leaders died. Moses was buried somewhere on Mt. Nebo. Muhammad was buried in Medina, over which they built a Green Dome. Jesus was buried in a tomb owned by a wealthy follower, Joseph of Arimathea.

Moses and Muhammed remain where their bodies were laid. Jesus does not.

Judaism got its start from the liberation of the Jews from slavery, and Islam from Muhammad preaching in Mecca. Christianity got its start with the resurrection of Jesus.

You may say, “Wait! Didn't Christianity start with Jesus' preaching and ministry?” Yes, but it would have ended with his crucifixion. As we said last Sunday, when he died on the cross, he was seen by all as a failed Messiah. And he didn't die peacefully of old age, having conquered his enemies. A young man, he died a painful and humiliating death at the hands of his enemies. He didn't even go down fighting. Nobody found his being nailed to a tree, flanked by criminals, as either heroic or inspiring.

And then on the morning of the third day, something happened. Something so unprecedented that all of the gospels stop quoting prophesies from the Old Testament that foreshadowed the other events in his life. This is new.

It's so unprecedented not even his followers believed it at first. When the women, who went to his tomb and found it open and empty, reported that he is risen, the men dismissed it as hysteria. When the men encounter the risen Jesus, they are afraid that he is a ghost. Even when most of them have seen him and believe, one follower who wasn't there at the time refused to believe until he touched him. After all people don't just come back from the dead. Everyone knew that. Except, apparently, Jesus.

It's so unprecedented that no other historical religious figure has been alleged to come back to life after being dead—not Buddha, not Moses, not Muhammad, not Baha'u'llah, not Guru Nanak, not Zarathustra. Only Jesus.

But how do we know he really rose? For one thing, Christianity would have been easy to smother in the cradle, so to speak, if Jesus stayed dead. The officials knew where his body was. All they had to do was produce it. Nobody ever did.

But what if the disciples stole it? To what end? They all died for their faith. None recanted and said, “No! Don't kill me! I'll tell you what we did with the body.” Charles Colson, who served under Nixon, pointed out that the most powerful men in this country couldn't keep secrets about Watergate for 3 weeks and they weren't facing torture and death. He couldn't believe 12 men could keep a secret for 40 years and then die for a lie. Colson became a Christian.

Michael Grant in his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, said that as an historian of the Roman empire, he can't state that the resurrection of Jesus happened. But he also said that without the resurrection, he can't explain the persistence and growth of Christianity in the aftermath of Jesus' execution. It's pretty obvious that all the disciples believed that Jesus rose and that he spoke to, touched, ate with and coherently taught them for 40 days. Again there is no precedent for a palpable and not ghostly experience of someone known to have died.

So what difference does it make? Dead men have left us a lot of good moral instruction and wisdom. Why is it essential that Jesus rose from the dead?

There are at least 2 good reasons. One is precisely that there are so many people with so many ideas about God, and yet only one whom God chose to resurrect. Whom out of that number would you believe? Wouldn't it be the one who says, “I am the resurrection and the life,”—and then proves it? (John 11:25)

But secondly, most of the morality that Jesus teaches depends on the reality of resurrection. Just as his mission as a Messiah would be a failure had he stayed dead, so would his instructions likely result in failure if death had the last word. Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28) That's brave. Some would say that's a good way to get yourself killed. It only makes sense if death is not to be feared. And it is not to be feared if it is not the end of you.

And in fact Jesus says, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34; cf. Matthew 16:24; Luke 9:23) He even says, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27) We don't see people nailed to trees outside the entrances to cities as his original audience did, so to us it might sound like Jesus is demanding we wear a tasteful cross around the neck. But in his day, under the heel of a ruthless military empire, the cross was a fearsome, horrible instrument of death. Giving your allegiance to Jesus above everything else, including the “divine” emperor, could get you executed. Which again only made sense if death was not the very last thing you would ever experience.

Fear of death often stops us from doing what we know is right. Why do people go along with injustice and oppression if not for the fear of dying? Timid people do not change the world for the better. But from prison, contemplating the possibility of being executed by Nero, Paul writes, “For me living is Christ and dying is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) He had met the risen Jesus and death no longer frightened him. So essential is Jesus' resurrection that Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone.” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19) If you only live once, living a self-sacrificial life makes no sense.

The resurrection also gives us the courage to do the right thing even if it means failing in the eyes of the world. As Jesus appeared to do when he was arrested and executed. Along with fear of death, fear of failure and fear of looking like a failure often hinders us from doing what we should. No one wants to be a loser. So we play it safe. We don't go against the tide of popular opinion; we don't stand up to the powers-that-be which can crush us; we don't say, “There is a better way” if the results will not be of immediate benefit to everyone. Every day people go along with the way things have always been done because they fear that if they don't and insist on much needed changes, they will not carry the day and they will look like failures. Jesus stood up to the religious and political establishment of his day and said, “You're wrong! This is how you should act: with love and mercy and forgiveness.” And they killed him. He would have been just another idealistic loser—if he hadn't risen again.

We would never have heard of him, either. Moses was a former prince of Egypt. Muhammad was a successful merchant. Siddharta Gautama, the Buddha, was a prince. Jesus was a poor working man. Almost all the history we have was written by and about the educated and the rich and the successful. What we know about the lives of women and slaves and the poor has to be pieced together from passing references in the histories of great men. What does it take for us to not only remember a poor working man executed as a criminal but to see him as more than just a man? His unprecedented resurrection from the dead. Which galvanized his followers to face off against one of the most ruthless empires in history and proclaim until their deaths that Jesus Christ is the risen King of kings and Lord of lords.

Jesus is the Lord of Life. His last enemy is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26) The gates of the grave tried to close on him and he blew the doors off. His tomb became the womb of eternal life. The valley of the shadow of death will one day be flooded with the light of his life. And it started in cemetery nearly 2000 years ago. The dark night of death and decay is almost over; God's new creation is dawning. The Son has risen.

The Lord is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!