Very God, very human.
CHAPTER 11. RESURRECTION.
Easter Sunday and afterwards.
11.1 DAYBREAK
(John 20:1-18. Luke 24:1-12 Mark 16:1-11 Matthew 28:1-10)
A small group of women left their homes before dawn that Sunday morning. They had no desire to be seen by a curious public. Their purpose was very private and personal to themselves. Joanna, Mary Clopas and Mary Magdalene were among them. So was Salome, but not her sister Mary the mother of Jesus.
They carried spices for the body - in that culture the equivalent of flowers in ours - but to place them on the body they needed to roll away the stone and wondered whether it would be too heavy for them.
They evidently did not know (or they would not have come) that the tomb had been sealed with an official seal and was guarded by four sentries.
The early mist swirled about their feet. As night turned to day they approached the tomb and saw the tomb open, the stone already moved. The seal was broken and the guards fled, but these things the women only found out later.
Mary Magdalene reacted to that first impression without waiting to look into the tomb. She cried out, “They have taken Him away!” and ran back to fetch Peter and John.
The other women moved forward and looked inside the opened cave. Two men in shining clothes greeted them with the seemingly naive question, “Why look here? This is a tomb? He is alive. Don’t you remember He told you He would rise.” Angelic beings must sometimes be puzzled by the strangely irrational behaviour of these humans. “Go and tell His disciples He is not here, He is risen. And make sure you tell Peter. ”
The women knew Mary Magdalene was fetching Peter and John from their lodgings in Jerusalem; so they set off on the longer journey (probably to Bethany) to tell the others.
Peter and John.
Somewhere in the city the two Galilean fishermen had found a place to lodge. That morning they woke to a fresh sense of hopelessness and the lethargy that goes with it. Suddenly it was rudely shattered by the arrival of a distraught woman, sobbing out a garbled message that the body of Jesus had been stolen. She had watched the efforts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to ensure a decent burial. Now it had all gone to waste. She probably had visions of Roman soldiers throwing Him into the pit with the other criminals.
The two apostles set out at a sprint to see for themselves. John arrived first and looked in, but when Peter arrived they went together inside. There they saw the grave clothes neatly folded - that at least did not look like the work of one bent on desecration. More than that they could not tell.
11.2 MARY MAGDALENE AT THE TOMB.
We will do the two men the credit of assuming that they expected Mary Magdalene to have stayed in the city, probably seeking the comfort of some of the other women. Anyway they did not wait for her but headed off themselves, having no idea what to do. Mary arrived at the tomb and stayed there alone.
There was one comforting masculine voice for her. “Why are you crying?” The caretaker perhaps. Head down and eyes full of tears there was no question of looking up to the stranger.
Words came tumbling out. She could only think that the grave had been desecrated. “Sir if you have taken Him, please tell me where. I will carry Him back.” This of a heavy body plus 30 kilos of myrrh and aloes. Maybe she was overestimating her strength but not her determination.
“Mary.” Her name, spoken in His voice, the same voice that had healed her a year or two earlier. She looked up now and saw Him alive.
It would be nonsense to suggest that she did not rush to Him and throw her arms around Him. Even that undemonstrative culture could make exceptions for a friend believed dead and found alive.
What followed, however, sets the picture straight as to the relationship between them. Even if she was in love with Him, or felt so at that moment, He handled her emotional intensity with great sensitivity. He valued her, but made it absolutely clear that this was brother-sister love with no hint of romance.
First He disentangled her “Don’t cling to me.” It was gentle, but it was a careful separation none the less. Then, “I am not staying.”
He told her, and she was the first to know, that He intended to ascend back into Heaven where He belonged. If we are looking for reasons why Jesus could never have married, this is one, the coming ascension would, had He been married, amount to desertion.
Finally He entrusted her with an important task. “Go and tell my brothers.” (Literally “my brothers and sisters.”)
It is usually assumed that He was referring to the disciples. Maybe so, but Jesus did have brothers and sisters. Was He entrusting the faith of His earthly family to Mary? Up to then they had not followed Him. Shortly afterwards we find they did. Who better to win them over than this woman whose love for Him was better than a sister’s.
11.3 THE REST OF THAT DAY.
John 20:19-23
Jesus next appeared to the group of women on their way to Bethany where they had been sent by the angel to tell the nine disciples, (Matthew 28:8-10).
Next there was a one-to-one meeting with Peter who desperately needed reassurance after His denial, ( Luke 24:34 1 Corinthians 15:5)
Then in the evening two of Jesus’ followers, not from the twelve, set out to walk to their home in Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem; a mainly downhill journey. One was named Cleopas, a fairly common name, not to be confused with Cleophas or Clopas whose wife Mary stood by the cross. This couple may well have been a husband and wife, but were not among those who knew Jesus well at a personal level. As they walked, He joined and walked with them.
It never occurred to them that this stranger was Jesus Himself; so they listened in wonder as He explained to them the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah who would suffer first and only afterwards “enter into His glory.”
To this day it is a stumbling block. People of all faiths can handle the idea of a great and glorious and successful Prophet or Messiah or even Son of God. And on the other hand they can handle the idea of a courageous hero who suffers and dies for a cause. But to find the two rolled into one comes as a shock.
They reached the home to which they were heading and as it was late in the day they urged the stranger to stay the night with them; but when they came to eat, it was He who took the place of the host, breaking the bread for them as guests. The action exposed the nail prints in His hands and they knew who He was. Then He was gone.
They hurried all the way back to Jerusalem, a mainly uphill journey, to tell the others. There on that Sunday evening He came to them all together.
The final forty days had begun.
11.4 THE FORTY DAYS.
1 Corinthians 15:1-9, Acts 1:1-11,
John 20:24-29 and 21, Luke 24:44-53, Mark 16:14-20, Matthew 28:16-20.
To build one’s life upon a hope and a dream and then have it shattered is a traumatic experience. It can be nearly as stressful to have it suddenly and unexpectedly restored. The disciples had travelled this emotional roller-coaster and were now experiencing a mixture of elation and bewilderment.
So Jesus told them to go back to Galilee. In the region where they had known Him best, where He had stayed with them longest, He now took them for one last and final period of recovery, adjustment and briefing for what was to follow.
He met them by the lakeside (John 21) began preaching again, once to five hundred people, (1 Corinthians 15:6).
But in this forty day period there was one main emphasis, not confined to one occasion but spread over the whole. He gave His disciples what has come to be called The Great Commission.
11.5 THE GREAT COMMISSION.
Matthew 28:18-20
All authority is given to me in Heaven and on Earth; go therefore and make disciples (learners, apprentices or trainees) from all nations, baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teach them to do all that I have told you, and I am with you to the end of the age.
Mark 16:15
Go into all the world and tell the Good News to all creation.
Luke 24:46-47
He told them, It is written that Christ must suffer, and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness will be declared in His Name to all nations.
John 20:21
As the Father sent me, so I send you.
Acts 1:8
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the Earth.
Way back in Abraham’s time God’s promise was blessing for “all nations.” The theme occurs again and again through the Old Testament and in Christ’s teaching. At His birth the angels brought the shepherds, “good news for all people” and old Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be “a light to the nations.” Blessing the whole world is one of the Bible’s great topics.
The Great Commission set the disciples a task which would involve exploring all the inhabited earth, learning every language and crossing every cultural barrier.
After 197 decades, millions of martyrdoms and a billion dedicated lives, the task is still unfinished. When it is finished, He promised to come back.
SEQUEL.
The public announcement that Jesus was alive came seven weeks after His crucifixion. It was made by His known followers, declared with great confidence and the familiar combination of success with suffering. Many believed the News, but those who told it were persecuted.
It was soon enough after the event for the authorities to have found and produced the body if the story was false. The official records of the execution and the people who carried it out were all still available.
Were the apostles deceivers, deceived, or telling the truth?
The “deceived” option can be ruled out at once. There were too many of them for hallucinations. They had known Jesus well. They claimed to have met Him repeatedly over six weeks after rising.
The claim was made with absolute confidence, and determined persistence, by what had been a tiny band of disheartened and disappointed disciples. Something drastic must have happened to revitalise them.
The Hoax Theory.
The opponents of the message claimed it was a hoax. (Not even they made any of the other more fanciful suggestions which have been dreamed up since. The hoax theory was the only credible alternative to accepting the resurrection as truth.)
To believe it was a hoax one must explain these facts:
1. Several hundred people must have joined the conspiracy and not one of them ever let out the secret.
2. They were a fair cross-section of ordinary people.
3. They had nothing to gain by such a deception.
4. They had much to lose - respectability, property, life itself. (Martyrdom for a belief does not prove the belief true. But it does prove the martyr really believed it; ruling out the hoax theory.)
5. Their story convinced others, a wide cross-section of people who listened, weighed it up intelligently, accepted it as true and shared persecution as a result.
6. There were dedicated opponents from the start. Nothing which could be said against the resurrection was left unsaid. Yet belief in it spread.
Someone is Desperate.
The “total hoax” theory with all its difficulties is at least worth considering as one possible explanation of the evidence. We now come to the fanciful theories which were not put forward at the time because nobody would have taken them seriously. The fact that they have been suggested at all shows that someone is desperate to discredit the story at any cost.
Theories based on the idea that Jesus was not dead ignore the most obvious evidence. Roman officers simply did not bungle their job like that. Faced with a request to hand over the body for private burial (a common enough request) there was a clear routine to check the body was really dead. A javelin thrust would put it beyond all doubt and John’s Gospel says this check was made.
Assuming, however, an impossibly incompetent Centurion and an unbelievable recovery, we are left with the suggestion that a wounded and weakened man could not only get out of the tomb and evade the guards but - most incredible of all - actually convince His followers that He had conquered death.
If He went to them to be nursed back to health they would never have mistaken His survival for resurrection, and if they did not believe it themselves we are back to the hoax theory.
There is one other idea, better called a fantasy than a theory, which was first described by a second-century Gnostic writer. This was that Jesus supernaturally exchanged bodies with Simon of Cyrene who was helping Him carry the cross. So Simon died and Jesus remained. As a miracle this is considerably less credible than any of those described in the Gospels. To our minds it makes Jesus the villain of the story although Gnostic morality saw nothing wrong in it. It is, however, a second-century fantasy and we are only investigating hard facts, recorded in the first century.
The Jesus of the Gospels.
Compare the very human Jesus of the Gospels with the mystic figure of these later writings. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John portray a flesh and blood figure, a dynamic and colourful character, the carpenter of Nazareth, the companion of many journeys, the down-to-earth orator whom the common people heard gladly.
This is how the Gospel writers remembered Him; or in the case of Luke who had not known Him personally, this is how the witnesses he interviewed remembered Jesus. This is how they described Him, writing while others who remembered Him were still able to check their story.
The point of their claim is that when God became a man and lived among us He proved to be very human indeed.
The alternative “Gospels” written a century or more later present a dehumanised figure who was all mystic and supernatural, not fully God but not fully human either. Christ in the four original Gospels is more real, more attractive and more credible than these later legends.
The Final Test.
When the evidence of history is finished it is time for yours to begin. The claims of Christ include the promise that people can come to know God through Him, can have their sins forgiven and receive new life. Commitment to Christ results in a transforming miracle. This is the final test.
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