We know, because we have heard it a thousand times times, that Easter is about new life, new life within life and new life after death. But what manner of experience was it that the disciples had when they said that they had seen the risen Jesus? We want to know this because for the resurrection to indicate a life beyond this one, for all of us, firstly we must have reasonable assurance that it was actually real. Secondly if we accept that the disciples were not lying, and just about everywhere now people think they were honest, not least given the way they influenced others, if we accept this, we must still at least try to obtain an understanding of what it was that they saw. So, for instance, was it merely a mystical, spiritual apparition of a disembodied entity?
We live just after a period in which scepticism about possibilities for reality beyond the ordinary was almost universally present amongst the clever people. Believing in the miraculous was thought a belief for the credulous in all but the theological faculties and even in many of those the faith was being radically rationalised. If there was any Christian belief amongst the educated and cultivated the notion of the resurrection was explained away. There was the usual explanations in terms of some psychological aberration amongst the disciples for whom the crucifixion was so traumatic that their minds collectively bent to the delusion that Jesus had appeared to them after his death. This has troubled many over the years. And there was the already mentioned notion that they saw some mystical apparition that was only for them. It was not an objective manifestation that anyone could have seen.
Some have written that the resurrection and its centrality to the Gospels was some invention of the gospel writers who imposed this layer of crucifixion and resurrection upon stories that were originally accepted as just accounts of Jesus’ sayings, a kind of wisdom literature. Many tried to get behind the traditions of the Church, including the writers of the Gospels, to some so called solid rock of history recounting the ‘true’ Jesus; what he actually said and did as opposed to words that the Gospel writers put in his mouth.
These accounts were mostly honest attempts to understand what happened. The researchers knew that their findings would hurt and upset many of the ordinary faithful but they thought it worse that such people should orientate their lives to lies and their intention was to liberate the faithful from untruth. But over the years none of these explanations of the Jesus of the Gospels, the miracles and especially the resurrection, have been particularly successful, either in converting the faithful or even convincing more orthodox scholars. Many of the latter have since written solidly researched, honest and hard headed rebuttals of these ideas. The debate goes on, but the days in which something like the resurrection of Jesus could not have happened because it does not conform to the laws of finite causality have long gone.
But what of the ordinary man and woman who struggles through life, a life sometimes beautiful and full of joy, sometimes devastatingly tragic and hauntingly, painfully sad? What Messiah do they want? What Messiah have they always longed for? What Messiah did the wretched of Roman occupied Palestine cry out for: shed so many tears before God in inarticulate sobs for?
I must say that for myself, and what I am able to read of the hearts of so many people I’ve met over the years, what is longed for is a Messiah, a God that brings us and those we live to life after death. We want not to be ghosts, we want to live on in our bodies. The most painful matter part of the human experience is the death of those we love; even now I long to see my grandparents again, my departed friends, I would embrace them and cry with joy to see them. As Paul has said, if this is not what the Messiah brings then Christians, millions of them throughout the globe, are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15. 14-19).
In the Gospel of John Jesus says ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he that believes in me, though he be dead, yet shall he live’ (John 11.25), he raises Lazarus from the dead and God brings him from the death of the cross to renewed, physical life. I have no ambition for another teacher of wisdom, there are enough of them. What I long for, with my whole heart, is to know that he is the Messiah, The only Son of God, the Word made flesh, and that he is therefore able to make it that though I be dead, yet shall I live; though my mother, father, beloved spouse or most of all, child, be dead, yet shall they live. There can be no substitute. If there is no resurrection for us to witness to there can be no Church. We would do better to leave them closed.
You are at home now, not in Church. Many are hurt by being denied the right to congregate in Church together on Easter Day; that they will not receive communion. But this terrible disease is teaching us all something of great importance. It is leading us to new life in our understanding of the faith. I know you want for these externals and they are important to you, but they are not of the greatest importance. Wherever you are the most important thing is to give praise to God and believe that he is Love, not your love or mine, but Love in itself, Love that values you in your little lives and all that you love. Believe God is Love, Love that literally brought Jesus back from the dead: embodied, objectively visible like you and I and ready to eat and drink with his friends. And through your tears and pain believe that he will raise you again, and all you love, and that you will take up your lives with them again.
Winter came upon us and in its cold touch it brought us low for everything seemed to be dead and dying. And I laid down upon the lifeless earth to fade without struggle into the long night. But suddenly I did open my eyes and it was spring. The sun warmed my skin and my limbs regained their vigour. I looked around and all that had seemed dead had been returned to life; for Love could not bear the loss of His children. So, he stretched forth His arms into the cold, winters night, He picked them up and brought them trembling and tearful home; warmed and enlivened again by His heart. Amen and amen.