There is no room for miracles in our grown up, contemporary expression of humanity. If something can’t be replicated in a lab or quantified and observed by scientific methods, it’s not real.
It’s OK to consider the vastness of the universe and ruminate on the existence of aliens, but not God.
Nevermind the fact that what we don’t know vastly outstrips what we do know, and that it’ll always be that way, or that we can’t replicate the tiniest of insects. We have an expert grasp of how this world works, thank you very much, just like we had 2,000 years ago when the Romans built the Coliseum, or 2,000 years before that.
We will not tolerate the nonsense of God taking on the form of a human, redefining 1st century Judaism and far beyond, dying for it, then rising from the dead.
In the last 10 years especially, there’s been a push to re-write the Jesus narrative, making him a normal guy, an average 1st century Jewish man who merely had good things to say. He wasn’t the promised savior of Israel and certainly wasn’t God in the flesh.
But there are few things to consider before we decide that this whole resurrection thing never happened.
First, prior to Jesus, there aren’t any stories that come close to a deity taking on human flesh, befriending the losers/rejects/unpowerful, proclaiming unconditional forgiveness, dying at the hands of his own people, then rising from the dead.
Second, nobody saw the body. Nowhere in our collection of ancient documents is there an eyewitness to Jesus’ corpse.
Third, consider the Old Testament texts that allegedly fortell the advent, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, especially the one about his mom:
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel ~ Isaiah 7:14
Last, and most importantly, if there’s a God who interacts with us on any level, how can we expect Him to make sense? His grasp of the universe is just a bit higher than ours; by definition, some crazy shit would have to go down. Call it miraculous if you want, but expect some events that don’t jive with our “expert” grasp of reality.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ~ Hamlet 1:5
I could go for days about all the reasons why I don’t have much of a problem with this aspect of Christian faith, but it’s still something I choose to believe. Nobody can prove it, or remove all the reasons why we shouldn’t believe. You can’t blame anybody for not agree with us Christians on this one.
And with so many of us showing up on social media peddling conspiracy theories, national division, political idolatry, and other versions of religious insanity, who could blame non-Christians for taking a hard pass here. They don’t trust us, go figure, why would they trust something that’s so difficult to believe?
If you’re in that camp, if you have a hard time with this particular aspect of alleged Christian history, I get it. Totally. I have a hard time believing it too. But I’ll ask you this morning to reconsider, momentarily. When we’re done, you can flush all of this if you want to, just hang with me for a quick minute.
The best place to start is to put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples, hunkered down in a secluded room, hiding from the authorities who condemned their leader to death, convinced that they were next.
When Jesus began his ministry, the first thing he did was round up a bunch of losers, rejects, traitors, and prostitutes and elevate them to the front row of whatever it was that God was up to. That’s one of the reasons the religious leaders couldn’t stand him; he was too popular with all of the wrong people.
The losers loved him, most of them believed that he was the promised Messiah, God in the flesh, savior of Israel.
Now, he’s not just dead, but was nearly eviscerated by the Roman “Scourge” and hung up to naked to die. They watched the whole thing. From their perspective, Jesus went quickly from king of the universe to another meaningless Roman murder. They didn’t just lose their friend, they probably felt a little duped.
It’s interesting to note that, while the men huddled together, trying to figure out how to get out of Jerusalem alive, the women decided to take a very public stroll and visit Jesus’ tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day riseagain.’ ~ Luke 24:1-7
Imagine what it was like for these devout Jewish people to believe they were a part of God’s narrative, just like the heroes of old, then have that – all of it – stripped away by a pagan political force. Then, the God of Israel walks through a wall, mocking their unbelief (and ours), teaching them a few very important last things before making an even more dramatic/miraculous departure.
If you went through all of that – not just the resurrection part, but meeting Jesus for the first time, watching him heal sick people and square off with deadly politics/culture, walking with him, coming to believe that he actually is God made flesh – how would this final encounter affect you?
I’m tempted to start preaching about all of the ways that the resurrection should impact the way we think about our world, but I don’t want to distract you from encountering what’s most important about Easter. If this happened, it changes everything.
What does it hurt to take 15 minutes and believe? You don’t have to abandon reason, you just have to abandon the idea that humanity has this world all figured out. You don’t have to become a crazy religious person. You don’t have to move to Africa, or quit your job and go do something that sounds more spiritual.
15 minutes. That’s all I’m asking. When you’re done, you can return all of this to the “never happened,” and/or “nice story, but” file. I certainly wouldn’t blame you.
