Over a thousand years ago, a Spanish kingdom was under attack by foreign invaders. For many years, one small fort withstood all assaults, thanks to a remarkable leader called El Cid. When their great leader died, his followers had an idea. They dressed his body in his armor, tied a sword in his hand, and placed his corpse on his horse. With El Cid's body in the lead, the Spanish forces charged. But they were quickly defeated, for this act fooled no one. A desperate trick that collapsed led to despair instead of victory.
There will always be those who insist that this was the strategy of the early church, a dead leader, dressed in armor, propped up on a horse with sword in hand. "Tell people," the chief priests said to the soldiers following Christ's resurrection, "that his disciples came while you were asleep and stole his body. That way if the story of his disappearance reaches the governor's ears you won't get into trouble." (Mt. 28:14) Thus from the very beginning, the explanation was advanced that the disciples had stolen Christ's body in order to invent the story of his resurrection. A dead body dressed in armor, sword in hand, mounted on a horse.
Never has a less satisfactory solution been proposed to a difficult problem. The reason this explanation was not persuasive then is the same reason it is not persuasive now. It simply does not fit the facts. Let's consider some of the facts concerning Christ's resurrection.
IN THE FIRST PLACE, LET'S CONSIDER THE GENUINENESS OF HIS FRIENDS' GRIEF. Never has there been a more demoralized group of believers than that tiny band of followers after Jesus' crucifixion. Only the women were brave enough to mourn him in public. The men were all in hiding fearful that the Roman soldiers would next come for them. They were obviously stunned by the sudden turn of events. In one week's time they had seen their leader go from being cheered on his entrance into Jerusalem to being crucified between two thieves. "We hoped that he was the One to redeem Israel..." (Lk. 24:21) But now he was dead and so were their dreams.
We can understand that. We too have difficulty accepting the death of a loved one. We can appreciate the feelings of a little girl who wrote a letter to God. It went like this:
"Dear God,
"Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you've got now?"
We wish God did work like that. But He doesn't. The undertakers of this world all signed their letters, "Eventually yours." We don't deal with that fact very well, do we?
As Woody Allen said, "It is impossible to experience one's own death objectively and still carry a tune."
Someone posted an article on an obstetrical floor in a hospital which said, "Recent research shows that the first five minutes of life are very risky." Underneath, someone else wrote, "The last five minutes are not so hot either."
In the Broadway play THE BEST MAN, the plot centers around the struggle for the presidency. An aging, ex President asked one of the candidates: "Bill, do you believe in God?"
Bill stiffly replied, "I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church."
"That's not what I asked," said the former chief executive. "I'm a Methodist and I'm still asking you if you believe in God and a day of judgment and a hereafter."
The ex-President confesses he is dying of cancer. "I tell you, son," he said, "I'm scared to death...I don't fancy being just a pinch of dust." The young candidate tried to console him by talking about the immortality of influencethat the good he has done will live onto which the older man responded: "I suggest you tell yourself that when you finally have to face a whole pile of nothin' up ahead." (1)
We don't deal very well with the idea of death. Preservation Specialties, Inc., a Florida company that specializes in freezedrying housepets for $300-$1800, is now getting requests from people who want to be freezedried when they die. A spokesman said that he expects this to happen in 23 years. He envisions...the day of the glass topped coffin in perpetual viewing chapels...so that the family can visit whenever they want. "A freezedried body will last virtually forever." (2)
We don't deal well with the fact of death and neither did those early disciples. They were a disappointed, discouraged, defeated lot on that first Easter morning. It would be difficult to imagine them mounting any kind of crusade at this point in their lives much less, turning the world upside down. Their grief was genuine, almost debilitating.
JUST AS GENUINE WAS THEIR SURPRISE AT THE STRANGE TALE THE WOMEN TOLD. You know the story by heart. Some of the women had gone to the tomb to prepare the body with spices and ointments. Reaching the tomb, however, they found the stone rolled away. While they were trying to sift this through their minds, two men dressed in dazzling apparel appeared to them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. The men asked them the most startling question in all of history: "Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise." The women remembered that Christ had spoken those exact words and they rushed to where the men were in hiding and broke to them the most wonderful headline of all time: He is risen! How did the disciples react? Luke tells us, "But these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them." How's that for a conspiracy? Perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy when he assassinated President Kennedy. Perhaps there are some suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of film star Marilyn Monroe. But it is ludicrous to conjecture as some have done that the disciples made up the story of the resurrection. As a man remarked gazing into the carved deeps of the Grand Canyon, "Something happened here!" And it did! He is alive!
For over thirty years the principal speaker on the International radio program The Lutheran Hour has been Dr. Oswald Hoffmann. He is an outstanding speaker with a dynamic personality, but the real mark of his brilliance is the simplicity of his message. When asked, "What is the difference between Christianity and all the other religions of the world, Dr. Hoffman replied, "Jesus Lives!" That is the good news. Jesus lives!
A Norwegian pastor on a visit to this country told the story of a devout, old fisherman who lived alone and, when he was physically able, walked 14 miles to church on Sunday. One Sunday there was a terrible storm and the old man arrived at the church very late. In fact, he was so late that all he heard was the final phrase of the pastor's benediction: "Now, and forevermore." His friends tried to console him and tell him how very sorry they were that he had been disappointed after his difficult 14-mile walk. He replied, "Disappointed? Never! It is worth walking 28 miles just to hear those three words: NOW AND FOREVERMORE." (3)
We are confronted with the genuineness of the disciples' grief and the genuineness of their surprise at the idle tale of the women. EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE, HOWEVER, WAS THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHANGE THAT CHRIST'S RESURRECTION MADE IN THEIR LIVES. From defeated to dynamic, from heartsick to heroic, from doubting to death defying, the radical change that took place in the lives of those who followed Jesus is not the kind of change one will find among persons who are perpetuating a fraud. One does not die defending a fairy tale. The disciples were witness to an event that divides all of human history into before and after. Jesus Christ had risen from the dead!
There has been much interest of late in the subject of life after death. Researchers have found that reports of persons who have been revived following near-death experiences tell amazingly similar tales about bright lights and about such things as out-of-body episodes. Are their reports to be believed?
J. B. Phillips is universally esteemed for his translation of THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN ENGLISH and for his books such as YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL. Phillips vows and declares that a few days following the death of the great writer C.S. Lewis a few years back, Lewis appeared to Phillips sitting in a chair only a few feet away. He testifies that Lewis spoke a few words of particular relevance to a difficult situation through which Phillips was passing. What shall we make of this? Either Phillips is a liar and practically no one will accept that or he was hallucinating or Lewis was alive after his death. Those are the only three possibilities. You may take your pick.
I do not believe that J.B Phillips, however, would have been willing to have been thrown into the gladiator's ring to support his contention that he really had seen Lewis.
The disciples, however, were willing to give up every thing they had including their lives in defense of their contention that Christ was alive. Why? Because they now knew without a doubt that death no longer had dominion over them. Christ was alive and they devoted the rest of their lives spreading the Good News. And, my friends, that is our task, too.
In his book, THE CHRISTIAN WAY, Maxie Dunnam tells an interesting story about the great Canadian photographer, Yousaf Karsh.
According to Dunnam, Yousaf Karsh only took one portrait of a person's back, that of Pablo Casals in a small French abbey in 1954. Karsh writes that as he was setting up his equipment, Casals began playing Bach on his cello. Karsh was so enthralled by the music that he almost forgot why he was there. He took his portrait of Casals with the little bald-headed man bent over his cello, frozen in time against the plain stone wall of that chapel. Karsh said that he took it that way to capture the loneliness of the truly great artists and the loneliness of exile.
Years later, when the portrait was on exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, another old, bald-headed man came day after day and stood for long moments at a time in front of the portrait. The curator of the museum noticed him and, when his curiosity got the best of him, went over, tapped the man on the shoulder, and asked why he stood so long before the picture. The old man, with obvious irritation, turned on the curator and said, "Hush, young man! Can't you see I'm listening to the music!" (4)
Somehow in our witness to the world in which we live we need to present a picture of Christ - his life, his death, his resurrection and his continuing presence with us. We need to present a picture that has authenticity, that is real and vibrant.
In one of his writings, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said these startling words: "There are no proofs for the existence of God: there are only witnesses." He is right. I cannot open a text and prove to you scientifically that God exists. I can only testify to my own experience and the experiences of others. My own experience is that Christ is alive because I have experienced him in my own life. That was the testimony of the early church, but they were more credible, more dramatic. Why? Because their experience of him was more dramatic. They had known him before his crucifixion and they had encountered him after his resurrection. No wonder they turned the world upside down. People who heard their testimony were convinced that they were telling the truth. Their words rang with authenticity. Something had happened not only to Christ but to them. Their Lord who was dead was now alive. The testimony of the women had not been an idle tale but had been eternal truth, and the best evidence of that truth was the changed lives that occurred in those who knew him then and those who know him now!
Do you know him? Is the good news of Easter still an idle tale to you? Or are you among those who have encountered him in their own lives and who proclaim today, "He is alive. He is alive. Now and forevermore!"
1. Jerry Hayner, YES, GOD CAN, (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press).
2. OMNI, January 1988.