Resurrection
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Stand On The Edge Of An Earthquake
In the rubble of Haiti, in the dust covered orphans dragged from the rubble of an already shattered country
At the graveside with a family whose lives can never be the same; they will rebuild, but Christmas and Summer holidays will never be the same
In the shadow of the sporting defeats that haunt us more than we like to admit
In the shocking words “Thanks for all you’ve done, but we no longer need you”
In the exam result that comes back
In the agony of the positive test result
In all that we call earth shattering,
There is another shattering, quaking of the earth, that the Christian finds hope
They find another story
Which is somehow bigger dare we say than all these other stories
That on the first day of the week
In a Jerusalem graveyard, someone actually came back from the dead.
This sort of thing has never happened at any other grave in history (although there is a verse in Matthew that does get kind of near)
And the way that we get to it
The way that we let this speak to us
Is through the people who were near there
Long dead themselves,
Barely literate peasants and fisher folk themselves
People who lived on the bread line
With decayed teeth and worn clothes
Who had no power
And almost nothing in common with us
Upon their account we rest our belief in the earthquake
That is bigger than all the other seismic shifts that hit us in life.
Looking At Corinthians
Remember the problems that the Corinthians were facing
The communion meals eaten by the wealthiest members
The court cases and fights
The sexual stuff that was way out of line
The showing off in worship, the competition to see who was the most spiritual
And Paul gives this Church two stories in which to redefine themselves
Both stories are to do with bodies
The first is the one-ness of the body – you are one body, many parts.
The second is the raising of the body – you are due to be raised.
Paul begins his reminder of the second story at the beginning of chapter, its revision, because they know the story, but part of the problem is that they have forgotten it.
“Remember, brothers and sister, the good news that I good news-ed to you
Which you received and in which you have stood – so these are Christians who have heard and taken a stand
And in this you are being saved, if you hold fast – unless you have believed in vain.
And it’s that believe in vain part, - I am being saved, unless I believe in vain
Unless I have been sold a dummy pass here.
That is the thought that must creep across every Christian from time to time
For some it creeps across rarely
And for some it creeps across all the time
And there is actually no link between your depth of a Christian and the number of times
“I might have got this one wrong” creeps across your head
So you have people like Mother Teresa who had visions for fifty years and then doubts
And then me here, who goes through a period of doubt about once every two years, when I think, I have seriously messed this one up
And then you have folk who just believe, they just say “I have a simple faith, and I believe”
And what does Paul give us to deal with the fear that we might have believed in vain
He takes us back to the witnesses of the earthquake
Those women and fishermen who ran to that tomb and who saw it empty.
And Paul says, let me remind you what happened here.
So let us,
Who have believed
Who have stood
Who have
who occasionally ask the question “Have I believed in vain?”
The Witnesses
I passed on to you what I received, which is of the greatest importance: that Christ died for our sins, as written in the Scriptures; 4* that he was buried and that he was raised to life three days later, as written in the Scriptures; 5* that he appeared to Peter and then to all twelve apostles. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred of his followers at once, most of whom are still alive, although some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, and afterward to all the apostles.
8* Last of all he appeared also to me—even though I am like someone whose birth was abnormal.
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So the story that Paul is telling about Jesus being read, the way that he expects the Corinthians to believe
Is to believe that quite a lot of people saw Jesus
And then Jesus also appeared to Paul.
So from this letter which is being written about twenty years after the birth of Jesus
We know two things
About 20 years after Jesus died, a man called Paul appeared in a Greek city called Corinth and said “There is a man Jesus who rose from the dead, and this is very important, and I want you to believe it because of the signs that I do amongst you, but I want you to believe me”
The stories about Jesus being resurrected that we have in the gospels were probably going around at this time, but they hadn’t yet been written down, that wouldn’t happen for about another 15 years.
However, Paul would have know these stories because his companion Luke was one of the people who wrote them down, and Paul also knew Peter who was Jesus’ disciple.
Now what do we do with this?
Let me assume that Paul is making this up
That there is something gone wrong here
And that this guy who appears in Corinth has indeed got the wrong end of the stick
Let us assume for the moment that for next 10 minutes everybody here is a non-believer, how do we establish that.
Well he has to be deluded, because if he is deliberately lying he wouldn’t be going to all this bother (people that deliberately lie tend to run cults in which they are in charge, Paul is never that bothered who is in charge here)
So he is deluded, and that means that the disciples he has all met are deluded
So that means Peter, and James and the twelve
And harder to pull off is the 500 who have also been appeared to, many of whom are still alive – so there are five hundred deluded people in Jerusalem, and Paul seems to know who they are because he knows that some are still alive and still dead
But Peter, James, the twelve, Paul the 500 are deluded
Now what would it take for them to be deluded.
What would it take for this kind of a story to gain traction, such that someone who was against it, 500 people around it, started to believe it.
There are two things
The first is some sort of psychic experience of Jesus being with them
The second is some sort disappearance of Jesus body – let us say it was stolen (maybe by one rogue disciple, or some thieves)
You need both
Without the psychic experience, people would just say “The body is stolen, that’s not great”
Without the stolen body, people would just suppose that the psychic experience was them seeing a ghost; and all the stories that would be invented, or told would be of a disembodied, ghostly Jesus, and there would no need to go on about empty tombs.
So, most plausible theory,
Paul, Peter, James, John, 500 people are all hopelessly deceiving themselves.
A body has gone missing and nobody has been able to find it.
Now, what are the problems with this theory is going to have to overcome.
Invented Stories
Firstly, you are going to have to claim that all the stories about Jesus resurrection are invented. Which is kind of hard first of all, because you have a group whose big claim is that they tell the truth and love, and the heart of that is an invented story.
Fair enough, invent a story if you are going for a power grab. That’s happened plenty of times before, even by Christians. The most famous example is this document called the donation of Constantine, a document found in the XXXX’s by someone in the Church which was meant to be the will of the Roman Emperor Constantine, saying that all the land of the Roman Empire was to be given to the Church.
But there is no power grab going on here, but there is a kind of influence, thing, people are inventing a story because it gives them some sort of credibility within the group which is clamouring for resurrection stories.
The next, is the invented stories; they are kind of odd. First because none of them quite match up. It’s the kind of slight jigsaw effect when something really has happened, rather than a copy of an original story. Different people are arriving at the tomb at different times, but you also have the road to Emmaus, the women arriving at the empty tomb, and all the time in the background the fact that the body has actually gone missing.
The next thing is that the stories are not trying too hard. More of the content of the story seems to be that everyone is a bit frightened and confused; nobody is really trying desperately to say “this actually happened.” They all kind of believe that. What they are worried about is reacting to it. Not proving what has happened, but coming to terms with what they have little doubt has actually occurred.
A lawyer called Sir Edward Clark, writes
As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate.
And then you have got the whole thing of women appearing at the tomb and this not being very believable.
And then you have this thing where nobody quite recognises Jesus. That is not something that you would have predicted. And yet it seems to appear in all the accounts. That would serve no purpose, other than if it were actually true.
So you have invented stories with women, who don’t recognise Jesus, and you have no accounts of Jesus actually being raised (like an invented story might have a witness to the resurrection – as actually happened with some later invented stories in the invented gospels)
So, you have some invented stories, which are nothing like the stories you would have expected someone to invent,
Quality Of Appearances
The next thing for everyone to be deluded is that the resurrection appearances would happen to a small number of people; because that helps your group dynamics (the great leader who alone has seen the truth). I find it interesting that James had seen Jesus in a way that people recognised. James was a pain, he was a pain to the early Church, he was never one of the early disciples. People would have found a way to keep him out if this was delusional power politics going on, or deception.
Secondly, James doesn’t seem like someone who likes to shift position, who was not keen on Jesus, and not too keen on his new disciples
Next there is Thomas who asked lots of questions, he gets an appearance
Next there are the 500 people who are still alive
Next there is Paul years later, who is in the middle of persecuting the Christians when he gets this experience.
It’s hardly wishful thinking by a small number of people, turning itself into a psychic experience.
Instead it is happening to lots of people, many of whom it was not in their interest to believe.
Transformation Of Disciples
The other thing is that none of the disciples is saying that this is a sort of inner experience. If that was so they would all be going “Jesus was with me, and he is with me now”, but these events are all in the past “He appeared”, as if it was a thing, something unique; and something that stopped. It’s not been a feature of life. It stopped.
The next is the transformation of the disciples
These people are a confident bunch. The New Testament has an air of conquest and victory about it. It is not written by frightened people. They are not broken by what has happened to Jesus. To let you see the difference, let me quote something to you from Tom Wright about what might have happened with the killing of another revolutionary experience round about the time of Jesus.
From “Surprised By Hope”, page 60
Many have suggested that the early disciples were so overwhelmed with grief at Jesus’ death that they picked up the idea of resurrection from their surrounding culture and clung on to it, persuading themselves that Jesus had been raised from the dead though of course they knew he hadn’t been. Some have suggested that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus, after his death, had been exalted to heaven, or that they had a strange sense that his mission, to bring God’s kingdom was now going ahead in a new way; and that this kind of belief led them to say he’d been raised from the dead.
But would this make any sense? We can test it out with a little thought experiment. In AD 70, the Romans conquered Jerusalem, and they led thousands of Jews captive back to Rome; including the man they regarded as the leader of the Jewish revolt, “the king of the Jews; a man called Simon bar Gioara. He was led into Rome at the back of the triumphal procession, and the end of the spectacle was Simon being flogged then killed.
Now: suppose we imagine a few Jewish revolutionaries three days or three weeks later. The first one says, “You know, I think Simon really was the Messiah – and he still is!”
The others would be puzzled. Of course he isn’t’: the Romans got him, as they always do. If you want a Messiah you’d better find another one.
“Ah,” says the first, “But I believe he’s been raised from the dead.”
“What d’you mean?” his friends ask, “He’s dead and buried.”
“Oh no” replies the first, “I believe he’s been exalted to heaven.”
The others look puzzled. All the righteous martyrs are with God, everybody knows that; their souls are in God’s hand; that doesn’t mean they’ve already been raised from the dead. Anyway, the resurrection will happen to us all at the end of time, not to one person in the middle of continuing history [here Tom’s style loses a little of its believability]
“No” replies the first, “you don’t understand. I’ve had a strong sense of God’s love surrounding me. I have felt God forgiving me – forgiving us all. I’ve had my heart strangely warmed. What’s more, last night, I saw Simon; he was there with me…”
The others interrupt, now angry. We can all have visions. Plenty of people dream about recently dead friends. Sometimes its very vivid. That doesn’t mean they’ve been raised from the dead. It certainly doesn’t mean that one of them is the Messiah. And if your heart has been warmed, then sing a psalm, don’t make wild claims about Simon.
That Sort Of Thing Just Doesn’t Happen
Some I don’t think the “Honestly deluded with stolen body” theory has real struggles.
The only thing you are left is “This actually happened”
This guy Paul who appears in the Greek city 20 years after Easter saying “Jesus was raised from the dead”, he was telling the truth.
And then you just want to say “Naah”
I know that there is lots of good answers, but it just doesn’t sound right,
That sort of thing I can’t get my head around.
There is one other thing I would want to add
This is a reaction against an inexplicable one off
Not just a one-off like a Brit winning at the tennis
Or escape from Dunkirk
Or Usain Bolt
Or a female prime minister
Or bumping into a long lost friend in the London tube
The kind of unusual thing but nevertheless something that you can understand
Not this kind of one off is the sort of thing that refutes all the rules up to now
That is tangible, real; earth shattering
And you think, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen
Except we know it happened once
We know that 13 billion years ago, for reasons no one understands
With just the right set of laws to hold it together
With freakish quantities of energy
We know that happened, we no of no other instance when it has happened since.
And the claim is that sort of thing happened twice
Once 13 billion years ago
And about 20 years before a Jew pitched up in a Greek City and said
“Jesus Christ was buried and on the third day was raised again”
He preached, and the Corinthians believed
This morning that same word has been preached
And have you believed also?
Like them, many, many of us have
AMEN
* 15:4: Psa 16:8-10; Mat 12:40; Act 2:24-32.
* 15:5: a Luk 24:34; b Mat 28:16,17; Mrk 16:14; Luk 24:36; Jhn 20:19.
* 15:8: Act 9:3-6.
[1]None. Good New Translation - Second Edition (electronic ed.) . ,: :
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