'THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY'

(Easter Sunday, April 8^th, 2012, PODCAST)

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http://accm.ncf.ca/images/12.04.08.wma

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‘The Resurrection of the Body'

 

The Bible says: “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” (John 20: 1-2).

 

INTRODUCTION

Of all people, the Easter story opens by focussing on Mary of Magdala. We should always keep that at the front of our minds when trying to come to terms with the strange and mystifying reports about the resurrection of Jesus. Here she is, the supremely forgiven sinner, utterly devoted to her Lord, determined to be near the body of Him who had made her feel worthwhile and significant despite her questionable past, whose feet she had already anointed with her tears, coming early in the darkness before dawn to the tomb. Whatever may have been going through Mary’s mind, we cannot know. How did she handle the death of Jesus? Why was she at the tomb before dawn? What had she planned to do? Or had she just wandered there because, even in death, Jesus still filled her whole consciousness? Immediately, Mary notices that something has happened to the tomb. The great stone which had closed the mouth of the tomb had been removed. Without examining the tomb, without looking inside, Mary jumps to two conclusions. First, the body of Jesus is no longer in the tomb. Second, someone has stolen it.

Who moved the stone and who removed the body have been questions asked for more than nineteen hundred years, ever since this remarkable series of events took place. We should not be surprised, therefore, that the Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, should have raised the question in the newsletter of his northern England diocese, Easter of 1985.

Forty or more years ago, the Bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, also caused a furor by raising the same question. A friend of mine, from Guildford in Surrey, wrote about the new “renegade Bishop”, whose appointment thrust the church into one of its biggest theological disputes in decades. Jenkins denies the resurrection and other miracles were real events and saw them as mere symbolic stories. He makes three points about the account of the empty tomb. First, “the empty tomb cannot prove, does not establish and may not even mean the resurrection.” Second, it is possible that Christ’s body was still in the tomb, the disciples having forgotten where his tomb was, or that the disciples may have stolen the body. Third, the story of the tomb being empty may have been concocted by the early church in the same way “people all over the world rapidly believe appropriate stories to support their religious beliefs.”

What in the world, some asked, was the Bishop trying to do? Had he lost his marbles? Was he not biting the hand that fed him? Had he no concern for the simple believer who has a difficult enough time living the Christian life without the Bishop pulling the rug from out under him so far as his faith is concerned? Certainly I could sympathize with the ordinary person’s reaction to the Bishop, as well as that of the majority of the House of Bishops. Indeed, some enthusiastic critics attributed the fire in Yorkminster Cathedral to a bolt of lightening sent by God as a warning to the church not to consecrate too many more like the Bishop of Durham who had himself just been consecrated there! This whole episode pointed up the rather sad fact that the church and its faith have always had much more to fear from its internal critics than they ever have had from external critics. That is why Principal Jowett of Balliol College, Oxford, once warned his niece, “My dear, you really must go on believing in God despite what the clergy tell you!”

On the other hand, there may have been some benefits arising from the Bishop’s bombshell. So far as I know, there was no reason to criticize the Bishop’s motives. He was not trying to destroy the church. On the contrary, he was attempting to interpret the Easter faith to the modern mind. The title of his controversial article was, “The meaning of Easter.” He obviously believed there was something about Easter he could commend to the enquiring mind. He didn’t want people put off by what he thought are complicating and unnecessary factors, like tombs empty or otherwise. I have personally heard David Jenkins on several occasions at Oxford in the 1960’s and there was nothing in what he had to say then that could be attributed to bad motives. He may, indeed, have been wrong despite his very creative mind, but we should try to understand what his was attempting to say.

In a more recent radio interview another Bishop made the point that faith is based not on the historical resurrection of a body but on the ‘meta-historical’ reality that Christ who died is very much alive in a spiritual way today. And, in one sense, he was right. Resurrection, in Biblical terms, is much more than bringing a dead body back to life. New and different conditions obtain. A whole new reality is introduced. The risen Jesus has a somehow different relation to time and space than he had while engaged in his earthly ministry. Whether or not resurrection in this sense can occur without the tomb being emptied is another question. The Bishop’s concern seemed to be that if our faith is based on the historical, it runs the risk of being disproven by historical evidence that runs contrary to Biblical claims. The category of ‘meta-history’ avoids that problem. Nothing can be proved, but also nothing can be disproved.

At any rate, the Bishop raised some provocative questions. As Christians we should know what we believe and why we believe it.

It is not enough simply to believe. Jesus said we should love God with our minds, as well as with our hearts. Here is an opportunity to scrutinize some of the foundations of our faith.

I.                    SOME FURTHER QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED

If we are to be concerned about the difficulty the modern mind might have with the Easter faith in its historic form, perhaps we should ask a question or two about this remarkable phenomenon we call “The modern mind”. What exactly is it? Is it impervious to mistakes? Is it always and completely logical? Does it know about this world? Is it prepared to admit the existence of other kinds of universe that contain kinds of space and time different from ours? Dietrict Bonhoeffer, some several years ago, coined the phrase “Man come of age”, to describe the new world in which now we live. Other scholars agreed with him and began to tailor the gospel to accommodate this marvellous new phenomenon. Some even wrote an obituary for God! Theology was re-written as either psychology or anthropology. Religion, as a subject for study, replaced faith that was once personally held. Group dynamics and yoga became popular. Man was smart and could only get smarter. He didn’t need the supernatural, and any attempt to suggest that events in history could be attributed to the Hand of God were laughed out of court.

The behaviour of this modern man “Come of age” was, however, not entirely what was predicted. People couldn’t get rid of their guilt, however hard they tried to believe it didn’t exist. Universities found they couldn’t prevent students from dabbling in the occult. No matter hoe hard people tried to lay God to rest the “Jesus People” caught the attention of the youth and the “Charismatic movement” erupted in the most tradition-bound churches. Sales of Christian books shot up, and it was publishers of such books that were in least danger of the wave of bankruptcy that threatened to engulf the publishing world. The result was that Harvey Cox of Harvard  who once predicted the demise of the church (the Secular City) , has subsequently written (Religion in the Secular City) about “The unexpected return of religion as a potent social force in a world many thought was leaving it behind” (p.20). The question that needs to be asked, therefore is this: Is the modern enquiring or even agnostic mind really impressed by a devaluation of the Easter claims? Does it really make it easier for the struggling mind to come to faith? Isn’t the modern mind more impressed by an honest attempt to work through the historical assumptions and historical evidence as they apply to the Easter reports in the New Testament? That is what Frank Morison, a tough-minded London journalist, did with the Easter accounts. He was determined to disprove what he considered to be these preposterous claims. He wrestled with the facts and made a surprising and unexpected discovery. You can read the account of his investigation in his well known book “Who moved the stone?”

More than this, we need to ask the Bishop, what exactly is ‘meta-history’? Consider the subject of angels for a moment. Many people find it difficult to believe in angels, let alone demons. We don’t meet too many angels walking down the street on any given day. Despite the popularity of Michael Landon in his TV show, “Highway to Heaven”. And don’t we find it just as difficult to believe in angels even if we are told that they live in a different dimension than we do? If we find it difficult to believe in angels in some ‘meta-historical’ dimension, why should we find it any easier to believe in Jesus risen in a ‘meta-historical’ dimension?

Further, in liberal Protestantism we have always put considerable weight on the importance of the historical Jesus. This has been a major focus of our faith and the inspiration for our ethics. The earliest church always referred back to Jesus of Nazareth who went about doing good (Acts 10:38).

The question we should ask is this: Do the Easter texts belong primarily to the historical tradition about Jesus, or do they belong primarily to those texts that provide mainly theological interpretation? It is clear that for the writers of the Gospels the Easter story belongs primarily to the historical tradition. What is presented as happening on Easter morning is presented in all its diversity and boldness with every little interpretation. It is as though the authors were saying: ‘This is what is alleged to have happened. Now, you make of it what you will.’ There is very little comment supplied. We are left to make our own judgements and interpretation. The Easter story is not an addenda to the account of the historical Jesus. It is an intrinsic part of that account.

One final question: Would the disciples have come to believe even in some sort of ‘Spiritual resurrection’ of Jesus on a meta-historical plane if they had checked out the tomb and found his decomposing body still in its place? Is it likely that they would have been prepared to accept martyrdom for their preaching of the resurrection, if they knew that Jesus’ body was still in the tomb? The Bishop has raised some important questions, but there are other questions on the other side that also need to be raised.

II.         SOME PRESUPPOSITIONS TO BE CONSIDERED

We need to keep in mind that Mary of Magdala, Peter and John, who were the first to find and examine the empty tomb, according to the accounts, were Jewish. They brought with them to their Easter experience, whether of the empty tomb or the appearances of Jesus, a Hebrew mind. A Gentile mind, with its own assumptions of life after death, might have responded in somewhat different fashion. The presuppositions we hold act as a screen, or a filter, through which the data of our experiences passes leading us to certain conclusions about the nature and meaning of what we have experienced.

One set of Hebrew presuppositions, which we know from a study of the Old Testament and the intertestamental Jewish literature, are these: Man is considered to be an animated body, not an incarnate soul. The anthropological focal point in the Old Testament is not an ethereal soul, but a physical body quickened by the breath of God. Death occurs when God withdraws his spirit (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Genesis 2:7). For this reason, which corresponds to the general Biblical notion that matter is good because it has been created by God, when the Hebrews developed the expectation that there would be life after death they did so in terms of resurrection of the body, not as the Greeks did in terms of the immortality of the soul. For the Hebrew, the Kingdom of God will come in history, not in some super or meta-history. There is a realism, we might say an earthiness, not only in Biblical history but also in Biblical revelation and eschatology (doctrine of the ‘last things’). And the Hebrews were fussy about the rules of juridicial evidence. There had to be two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). And female witnesses would not be taken very seriously.

There were other presuppositions that prevailed in the Hebrew mind. First, there was no place in Old Testament thinking for the resurrection of an individual. Resurrection was expected to be corporate, the resurrection of a righteous nation. Second, resurrection would occur not immediately upon death, but only at ‘the last day’ when God would fulfill his purposes. This means that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus would need to be overwhelming if it were to convince his Jewish disciples, for his was a single resurrection and the day of the Lord had obviously net yet arrived.

The evidence for the resurrection is often criticized on the grounds of the lack of trustworthiness of those so-called primitive Jewish disciples. They are criticized for being ancient, gullible, easily influenced, and therefore unreliable. Some ancient peoples may have been gullible in these matters. But Israel had already done its demythologizing within the framework of an historical mind set. Israel’s monotheistic faith had helped them overcome the mythological conception and influence of the local fertility gods. And, Israel’s juridicial system emphasized the importance of the memory in passing on with accuracy what it has heard and seen.

We need to recognize the importance of Jewish presuppositions and trustworthiness of judgement in assessing the evidence of Easter.

III.          THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EASTER ACCOUNTS

Let us turn now to the question of the empty tomb. The narrative belongs to the earliest tradition of the church.

It is clearly implied in the epistles of Paul (1 Corinthians 15:4; Romans 6:4). And of this passage in John’s Gospel, William Temple writes: “It is most manifestly the record of a personal memory. Nothing else can account for the little details, so vivid, so little like the kind of thing that comes from invention or imagination” (Readings in St. John’s Gospel, p.376).

But what of the accusation that the body may have been stolen? Who had a motive? The Jews might have wanted to prevent the Christians from stealing the body and claiming Jesus had risen as he had predicted he would. The Romans might have wanted to prevent such an event from happening, whether undertaken by Christian or Jew. And certainly the Christians might be suspect. But, again, the Christians were proclaiming the resurrection fifty days after the event and were prepared to die for their faith. You aren’t prepared to die for an obvious hoax which you yourself have perpetrated. No, the Christians didn’t steal the body. And neither did the Jews or Romans, otherwise one or other would have made short work of the Christian preaching by producing the body. They couldn’t, because they didn’t have it. And, further, it is highly unlikely that the tomb was confused with another one which happened to be empty. After all, there is evidence that a guard was placed at Jesus’ tomb (Matthew 27: 62-66). And anyway, surely someone from among the Jews, Romans, and Christians would have remembered where it was.

The Bishop of Durham is correct when he argues that we need more than an empty tomb to prove the resurrection. That is what ‘the appearances’ provide. But resurrection cannot be claimed apart from the tomb being empty. The Hebrew mind could never have accepted that for one moment.

What the empty tomb does, along with the appearances is to force us to debate the issue on the resurrection on the level of the historical. It forces us as Christians to expose our views to historical criticism. It is good to have to answer the critics on their own ground without introducing the fictional category of the meta-historical. That is to revert to the mythological, the very thing we must avoid.

Add to the empty tomb the reality of the appearance of the risen Christ. First to a woman, which no Jewish church would ever have dreamed of doing, if it wanted to make up a story. No, that forced its way through because it was authentic. Second, to numerous groups of disciples, at different times and under varied circumstances, with the reports totally unharmonized. There is no sign of invention and no opportunity for hallucinations. So impressive was the evidence that it overcame several Hebraic assumptions the disciples would have held. Yet it met other Hebraic criteria without which the disciples could hardly have been persuaded. And it was powerful enough to turn cowardly disciples into courageous witnesses to the gospel of life. Of course, what had happened was not mere resurrection. Christ was now alive forever more. Time and space no longer limit him from walking down our Emmaus’ roads (Luke 24: 13-35) with us.

John the disciple needed only the empty tomb to convince him that his beloved Master was alive (John 20:8). For St. Paul, it took a special appearance (Acts 9:3-4) of the risen Christ. What will it take for you?

And what remains is the implication of the resurrection of Jesus for us as we face death and dying. “Because I live, you also shall live.”

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Will you pray with me?

“Holy God, righteous, merciful, and powerful, cleanse our minds and free our consciences from the things that divide us from you. Open our eyes to your resurrection glory!  Amen”

Dr. Allen Churchill

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LISTEN TO PODCAST:  http://accm.ncf.ca/images/12.04.08.wma
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