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Why We Should Believe in the Resurrection Acts 17:22-34 Our passage from Acts is about Paul’s sermon to the Athenians. To the original Athenians. 2,000 years ago, Paul was trying to proclaim the Crucified and Risen God revealed in Jesus Christ to a bunch of wised-up, sophisticated people in a world saturated and infatuated with divinity. Greece was the homeland and hotbed of ancient philosophy. The Greeks – especially the Athenians – loved philosophy – especially religious philosophy. They talked about it about as much as people in Indiana talk about basketball. They were deeply infatuated with religion – so much so that they were attracted to every new spiritual fad. Deepak Chopra, Shirley MacLaine, and the Psychic Friends Network would have been gone over big. And so, Paul begins to preach to this sophisticated, world-wise crowd, who dabbled a lot with spirituality, but who knew nothing of Jesus Christ. 2,000 years later, like Paul, I am here to preach to Athenians: specifically, Crawfordsville Athenians. Time has passed, but not much has changed: today we are, by and large, a group of wised-up, sophisticated people. We live in a time saturated with spiritual fads. But we also live in an age that has largely divested itself from God We are materialists. We live in a scientific age. If we see it, then we believe it. If we can scientifically observe and verify something, then we believe it is real and true. Faith – belief in something that cannot be verified or seen or measured – is hard to come by. Science, by and large, has made faith very tough to hold onto. If I was in Paul’s shoes preaching to a bunch of wised-up, sophisticates in a scientific age skeptical of faith, then I guess the thing I would have to address would be the resurrection. That is the central claim of the Christian faith. If that doesn’t hold up – if the resurrection is not true – then why bother believing at all? Did the resurrection happen? That is the question Jonathan Brant and David Yapp tackle in their book Downloading the Bible. To counter-intuitively strengthen our faith, they invite us to examine three, main arguments against the resurrection, which are: One, Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Second, the disciples stole the body. And, third, the disciples made it up. So, let’s explore these. For starters, let’s consider the possibility that “Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. He just passed out from pain and fatigue. He wasn’t actually left on the cross as long as was usually the case. Once he had a chance to recover, he presented himself to the disciples, who, still thinking he had died, assumed that he had risen from the dead (Whole People of God Adult Curriculum, April 7, 2002, p. 21).” Does this seem plausible? Not really. First of all, the Romans, who were in charge of the execution, were experts in crucifixion, a form of state torture, which they invented. Jesus, being a high profile enemy of the state, would have undoubtedly received special attention. Since the indigenous religious authorities, the Sanhedrin, and the Roman occupational government both wanted to crush any upstart movement, the possibility that Jesus wasn’t really killed by his enemies is highly unlikely. If I had been in command, I would have assigned my best execution squad to kill this so-called messiah. With rumors of his predicted resurrection, I would have explicitly ordered that this man be publicly tortured until he was universally recognized to be dead. The gospels tell of Jesus’ flogging, which was to weaken the victim before being crucified. And the gospels report that the Romans pierced Jesus’ side with a spear to speed things along. Piercing the side – severing the diaphragm muscles to hasten the process of suffocation – and accelerating blood loss, would not only hasten the result, but also unmistakably demonstrate to the crowd that Jesus was dead. All sides of the debate – both Christian scholars and non-believing academics – agree there was a historical person named Jesus. Both the New Testament and ancient pagan accounts document this fact. Everyone – skeptics included – agree: There was a preacher named Jesus. He had some followers. And the Romans killed him. So, even for skeptics, that argument against the resurrection – that Jesus suffered, but didn’t really die on the cross – isn’t very convincing. Well, if we all agree that Jesus did die on the cross, then what about the argument that the disciples stole the body? That argument goes something like this: “The disciples stole Jesus’ body after it had been placed in the tomb. They achieved this by bribing or overpowering the Roman guards. They stole the body to make themselves seem more important (p. 21).” The renegade New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan argues that the burial of Jesus is a romantic fiction invented by the early church. The whole point of Roman crucifixion – and the terror of it, according to Crossan, was that there was no body left to bury: Victims were tortured to death, then left to rot. Buzzards, crows, dogs, and worms would devour the decaying body until there was simply nothing left. Crossan says the polite Easter fiction – of a burial and a tomb and a resurrection – was concocted years later by Jesus’ grieving followers. Bill Placher, however, disagrees. In his book Jesus the Savior Bill points out that Jesus did have friends in high places. The New Testament records that Joseph of Arimethea was a secret friend of Jesus and also a member of the Sanhedrin. The gospels say that Joseph went to the Romans and asked for Jesus’ body in order to give him a proper burial. Again, employing the logic of an imperial power, if I was part of the Roman hierarchy, I would have thought: Why not have a win-win situation? Why not satisfy the part of the Sanhedrin who wanted Jesus dead and satisfy Jesus’ friends in power by letting them bury a dead messiah, who was no longer a threat to me anyway? That way I could partially satisfy and thus pacify both factions, thus consolidating my power over them. Follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion: While I could see the benefit of granting such a request, at the same time, I would not want any rumors beginning which granted legitimacy to local superstition in this so-called messiah’s resurrection. That would weaken my position. Dead messiahs need to stay dead. So, I would’ve deployed my most dependable legionaries with the following order: They were to secure the tomb at all costs, remaining there until the stench emanating from that grave was so strong that it would prove without doubt that the deposed messiah therein was absolutely, irrevocably dead. As Jesus’ prophecy of his own resurrection was publicly disproved, then Jesus’ movement would fail, his followers would disband, and this threat to Roman control would vanish. With the stakes that high, my order to the guards at the tomb would have been backed up with this threat: if that body disappears, then you his place. You mess this up, then you get crucified. Get it? Given the stakes involved, it is highly unlikely that the disciples could have possibly bribed the guards, getting them to look the other way while they stole Jesus’ body. So, too, as an indigenous religious movement within Judaism, it is highly unlikely that the disciples would have had fellow followers – coverts loyal to Jesus – within the Roman forces. So, the possibility of a Roman insider working against the Roman hierarchy to help the disciples steal the body is pretty remote, too. What about the disciples overpowering the guards? Again, highly unlikely. Roman soldiers were like the United States Marine Corps today. Undisputedly, they were the elite fighting force of their day. Again, given the stakes, slouches would not have been assigned to such an important post. Rather, the best-trained, most-loyal men would have been dispatched. So, all possibilities considered, it is extremely unlikely that the disciples could have stolen Jesus’ body. Well, if Jesus did die on the cross and if the disciples didn’t steal the body, then the disciples made the whole thing up. Either intentionally or unintentionally. If their fabrication was unintentional, then it was a hallucination. If this happened, then Jesus did appear to the disciples – but only as a psychological manifestation of their extreme grief: “One or two or the disciples actually began to think that they saw Jesus with them. Once this rumor began to spread, others believed it, too, without any proof, because they wanted it to be true. The disciples encouraged this rumor to spread because it made them seem more important (p. 21).” We all know that hallucinations happen. That is a scientifically documented phenomenon. However, could a mere hallucination have enough strength to serve as the lynchpin to sustain a movement for 2,000 years? And if it wasn’t an unintentional hallucination – if the disciples simply, intentionally fabricated the story of Jesus’ resurrection in order to make themselves important – to set themselves up as leaders of a religious movement so that they wouldn’t have to go back to fishing – would they have fabricated a story predicated on the centrality of women? As Bill points out, women had zero credibility in the ancient world. Women could not legally serve as witnesses. They weren’t even people. They were simply property. Why then, if the disciples made up the resurrection stories, would they have Jesus appearing first to women? If they made it all up, why rest the most crucial piece of evidence on such a flimsy foundation? Why not come up with a better, more-believable fabrication by having Jesus appear first to men? Bill writes: “In a culture where women were not considered trustworthy to testify in court, it is hard to imagine why women would be cited as those who found the tomb empty unless this recalled some historical reality (p. 168).” Thus, the “weakness” of female testimony central to the core New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection leads Bill to conclude that that indeed is what happened. So, if Jesus did die on the cross – not just suffered somewhat and later recovered when he was taken down – if Jesus really did die – and – if the disciples didn’t steal the body – either by bribing or overpowering or having inside help from the guards – and – if the disciples weren’t hallucinating or they didn’t make it up, then it must have happened the way the scripture says: Jesus lived, preaching and welcoming people into God’s kingdom. Jesus was crucified and buried. And on the third day, he rose again from the dead: appearing first to the women, then to the twelve, then to many, many others. If that is true, if that is what happened, then (as Bill argues) Jesus is who he claimed to be: He was God incarnate as a human being. He was – and is – the way and the truth and the life. His way of life – his teachings – are true. And we should follow them. We should follow him. We should believe in the Crucified and Risen One: Jesus Christ. When Paul addressed the ancient Athenians, he argued in the vernacular of the day for belief in a previously unknown God revealed in Jesus Christ. Addressing present-day Athenians in the vernacular of our day – which is skepticism and doubt – I, too, argue for belief in Christ. Ultimately, faith is a matter of trust. But applying skepticism and doubt to these arguments against the resurrection can be surprisingly helpful. The good news is that the resurrection is a more sturdy belief than we realize. Maybe there is something after all to this whole notion of Christianity. Maybe with additional confidence in the ground of our faith, we can reach to new heights of faithfulness in following the God revealed in Jesus Christ, who lived and died and was raised for us. Thanks be to God! Amen. |
