This is a good question for church officers to consider, especially at Easter. But what does it really mean? If we preach Christ raised from the dead on the third day, do we have a concrete sense that he still exists and is vital in our midst? Or are we thinking in symbolic terms, “He lives in our memories” or on a more pedestrian level that we encounter at funerals, “I just know that Uncle Fred is looking down at us right now”?
How alive is Christ in your congregation?
This is not a trivial query but one that stands at the heart of our life together. In Col. 1:26-27 Paul says that the mystery hidden for all ages is now revealed, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This “in you” must mean that Jesus is alive to the church in the city of Colossae, that his presence is felt, that he actually guides the members, not a memory of him or even some driven purpose or long range business plan. It means that when the church assembles for worship in a specific place, when two or three are gathered in his name (Matt. 18:20), when the Lord’s Supper, a baptism, or a funeral is celebrated, people really feel his presence. Indeed, when Paul writes about death he makes the promise explicit (1 Thess. 5:10). God has destined us so that “we may live with him,” whether we are dead or alive,
The question about whether or not Jesus is alive in our churches is especially important right now because there are several attempts to undermine resurrection faith in modern culture. In his best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s clear purpose is to strip away the center of Easter faith by alleging that Jesus did not die on the cross, that he had children with Mary Magdalene, that their progeny still exist. Some people wonder what all the fuss is about–it is only fiction, after all! But the assertions raised are stated to be historically accurate, not fictional. Any objective examination of the story line clearly demonstrates, nevertheless, that the “evidence” presented is distorted and warped. Yet many people who read the book or watch the movie made from it, despite their scientific training, are no longer able to distinguish between fact and fantasy. Some of them are so superstitious that they would rather chase modern religious myths than struggle with the more reliable (and often conflicting) witnesses of the gospel writers.
Recently this same kind of distortion was presented as fact on a Discovery Channel presentation during the first week of March entitled, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” Ironically, although it illustrates how provocative and powerful the gospel stories of the resurrection still are on their own, “The Lost Tomb” raises difficult questions for viewers. Reporting that a Jewish bone box (ossuary) may have contained the bones of Jesus, his wife Mary, and a son named Judah, people are left to wonder if the church’s central message is nothing but an elaborate hoax. Many people overreact to programs presented in technologically sophisticated ways because they do not have enough knowledge to test the testimony of so-called experts and sort out deliberately distorted arguments from evidence that would be convincing to the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists.
And it is not just the man or woman in the street who is disturbed by questions about the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the March/April issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, the editor, Hershel Shanks, questions four respected Christian and Jewish biblical scholars and archaeologists about the ways their research has changed their faith (“How Scholarship Affects Scholars, Losing Faith, 2 Who Did and 2 Who Didn’t”, 50-57). One of them, Bart D. Ehrman, admits that he has abandoned his evangelical faith because he can no longer believe that God intervenes in the kind of violent world in which we live. “And I got to a point where the historical claims about Jesus seemed implausible, especially the resurrection. Not the crucifixion- I think that Jesus was crucified like a lot of other people were crucified, and I think that, like a lot of other people he stayed dead. And so, for me, that had a damaging impact on my faith.”
But believing in Jesus’ resurrection does not require the acceptance of something that science proves to be false. Although Ehrman is a respected biblical interpreter, his rejection of the resurrection appears to be more connected with his inability to reconcile his fundamentalist upbringing with the gospel writers’ different Easter morning accounts than with credible evidence that might contradict the resurrection.
Other scholars come to very different conclusions. William Herzog II, for example, professor of New Testament at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, is an ordained pastor in the American Baptist Church and writes with confidence that the resurrection is a real event that cannot be historically discredited. For him, Easter is important not only because it indicates what happened to Jesus in the first century but because it teaches us how to act with compassion and justice in a violent world today. “…The resurrection is indeed an event that happened to Jesus. … Resurrection is the raising of Jesus by the power of God into a transforming existence beyond our reckoning. … [ I]t is God’s way of validating what Jesus incarnated and embodied in his life. … Therefore the choice to become a justice people is … a Christological decision informing our discipleship as we align ourselves with the way of God revealed in the historical Jesus and the will of God confirmed in the Risen Christ. … To confess ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to confess a desire to pursue the vision of justice that informed Jesus’ work. “ (Jesus, Justice, And The Reign of God, A Ministry of Liberation, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000, 250-251).
Beyond the historical questions raised about Jesus’ resurrection, the experience that people have with Jesus’ presence in their own lives cannot be dismissed either. Experiential knowledge of the risen Jesus that goes beyond historical research to personal encounter provides powerful proof to millions of believers. It may be less entertaining than a nationally syndicated television program or a movie based on a best-selling book. It may be less dramatic than Paul’s encounter on the Damascus Road (Acts 9), but it is still convincing. People who have met Jesus are able to say with certainty that something actually happened that first Easter because they have experienced it, too. It was more than wish fulfillment, an appearance in a dream of a loved one, mass hallucination, or a hoax concocted to justify the creation of the first church, but a real encounter of another kind.
Perhaps it is time for us as Presbyterians to confront what is being written or presented in popular culture about Jesus’ resurrection to certify that Easter really is the central fact of our lives and the building block on which our mission is built. Paul warns in 1 Cor. 15 that resurrection is not a belief we can take or leave as Christians. It is the critical component of our faith that provides power and gives us hope. To paraphrase Paul, it would be a pity, if we celebrated Easter without living or believing it, if we preached sermons at the funerals of loved ones that were merely designed to quiet the anguished and give them false confidence in the face of life’s finality.
When Paul’s fellow Christians made assertions that have a very modern ring, “there is no resurrection of the dead,” he reminded them that new life in Christ is what makes congregations real. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. …”
EARL S. JOHNSON JR. is pastor of First Church, in Johnstown, N.Y. and adjunct professor of religious studies at Siena College.
