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03.23.08

EASTER SUNDAY

WHAT HAPPENED TO JESUS?

MATTHEW 28:1-15; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-25

• Resurrection—Can We Believe It?
• Looking for Evidence
• In 2001, Ron Dubay sifted the dust through a small sieve and found two tiny fragments of bone on the cliff-tops above the Dead Sea
• Then he heard his partner, Dennis Walker, shout, “Whoa!  We got something here!”
• Walker’s trowel held three vertebrae
• Fighting their excitement, the archaeologists carefully dusted away for two days, finding skull fragments and brittle, broken remains of at least one human body
• Dubay and Walker believe their find is important because, among the 1200 simple graves at this location, only this tomb was inside a purpose-built structure
• That may mean that the bones belonged to the “Teacher of Righteousness” mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Some researchers are speculating that the teacher may be one of the Maccabean kings of Judea, the apostle James, John the Baptist or perhaps even Jesus himself
• But if they’re pointing to Jesus, they’ve got the wrong man
• “He is not here,” says the angel of the Lord.  “He has risen, just as he said.”
• Jesus left no bones and no body
• This is good news for believers
• So why, like some of the early disciples, do we still feel a nagging sense of doubt?
• That Nagging Sense of Doubt
• For many people, the resurrection story remains a bone of contention, a subject for argument
• We simply aren’t very comfortable with mysteries
• We want rock-solid facts, empirical evidence, DNA matches and Carbon-14 dating
• We’re looking for proof—we want evidence that we can see and touch and examine
• So many of us are like the disciple Thomas who was absent from the group of disciples on that first Easter evening when Jesus appeared to them in the Upper Room
• With a Missouri-like attitude, Thomas said, “Show Me!”
• “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” (John 20:25)
• On numerous occasions during the last months of his life, Jesus told his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die and be raised again to new life
• But the disciples did not understand what he was saying to them
• They refused to believe that death was in the cards for the one they called the Messiah
• No person, especially a king, becomes great through suffering, and death is not a sign of victory but defeat
• If they spent three years working to establish the reign of God’s Messiah to have it all end with his death, they were wasting their time
• The disciples were so adamant about this that, on one occasion, Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him
• He took Jesus by the hand and scolded him like a little child—“Jesus, you don’t know what you’re saying!  You shouldn’t talk that way!”
• Of course, these disciples had no idea of what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of resurrection anyway
• Their concept of death was that everyone went to Hades when they died
• Hades was the abode of the dead and it was divided into two parts
• Those who lived a righteous life on earth would abide in “the bosom of Abraham” for eternity, while the unrighteous would spend eternity in Gehenna, a place of fire and torment
• The concept of even a spiritual resurrection was only beginning to be formulated
• But really, at least three of the disciples should have known what he was talking about
• Peter, James and John were with him on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured as he was preparing to begin his journey to Jerusalem and to the cross
• In that transfiguration, God gave them a glimpse of Jesus’ resurrection glory, but their minds could not comprehend it fully until after Jesus had died and rose again to new life
• What Do We Expect?
• The resurrection accounts in the gospels make it very clear that the women who went to the tomb on that first Easter morning expected to find a dead body
• Matthew tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went there to look at the tomb, in the same way that we visit the graves of our loved ones who have died
• We go there to be alone in our grief, to remember, perhaps to pray, to wish that they were alive again, but knowing that that is impossible
• Such was the case with the two Marys
• The other gospels tell us that they brought with them spices to properly anoint the body of Jesus since he was so hastily buried on Friday before the start of the Sabbath
• If they expected to see him alive, what need would they have for the burial spices?
• But to their amazement, when they arrived at the tomb, they found the stone rolled away and the body of Jesus was gone!
• Had the body been stolen?
• Did somebody move it?
• Then the angels appeared and told them that Jesus was alive, that he had been raised from the dead! – Impossible!
• It was only when they could see his face, hear his voice, and touch his body that they were truly able to believe
• The Passover Plot
• Recognizing the danger that the resurrection of Jesus posed to them, we are told that the Roman and Jewish authorities together perpetrated a lie
• “His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.”
• Yeah, right!  Like anyone would believe that!
• The penalty for a Roman soldier for sleeping while on guard duty was death, yet they would rather risk their own lives to perpetrate this lie than to admit that the miracle of the resurrection occurred
• The popularity of this idea continues even today, and it is one of the many reasons why people have difficulty in believing the gospel
• In 1967, the book The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield, became an instant best-seller
• He was one of the early scholars who attempted to strip away the “myth” surrounding Jesus in order to discover who the “historical” Jesus really was
• In his estimation, resurrection is an impossibility, and that the “resurrection myth” was a lie perpetrated by the disciples to make people believe that Jesus was something that he wasn’t
• Schonfield argues that it is much more likely that the body of Jesus was indeed stolen by the disciples and hidden somewhere while they spread the rumor that he was raised from the dead to prove their claim that he was the Son of God
• In our quest for empirical proof, it is much easier to believe that the disciples stole his body than to believe that Jesus was actually raised from the dead

• The Foolishness of the Gospel
• A Matter of Faith
• But resurrection is a faith event
• The church of Jesus Christ was founded upon the conviction that Jesus was raised from the dead—Acts 4:10-12
• And the apostle Paul argues later in 1 Corinthians that if Jesus was not raised, our faith is useless, we will die in our sins, and that we have all been false witnesses—1 Corinthians 15:12-19
• Without the resurrection, there is no Christian faith
• A living Savior, not a dead founder, is what makes Christianity different from the rest of the religions of the world
• Paul wrestles with this in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians as well
• He says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God—v. 18
• It is important for us to understand that when Paul speaks of “the message of the cross,” he is not only referring to the crucifixion of Jesus but also to his resurrection
• The two events cannot be separated
• It is the resurrection that gives the message its power
• To speak of only the crucifixion is to leave us with a dead founder
• The reason why the “message of the cross” is so difficult for so many to believe is that it defies the laws of nature
• The law of nature says that when you’re dead, you’re dead—life is done, the end has come, game over
• But if we believe that there is a God (and we do), and if we believe that God created the universe and established the laws of nature (and we do), is it not possible for God to supersede those laws?
• Since God created the world and established the laws of nature, does that not mean that God has power greater than the laws that God established?
• Is it not possible, then, for God to raise Jesus from the dead?
• In our finite wisdom, this is foolishness, for in our finite wisdom we have searched for God but we have not found him
• But we are not dealing with finite wisdom here; we are dealing with the infinite wisdom of God
• In God’s infinite wisdom it makes sense to allow the holy Son of God to suffer and die for the sins of humanity so that God does not have to destroy all of his creation again as he did in the days of Noah
• In the infinite wisdom of God, it makes sense to raise that holy Son of God back to life so that we human beings can finally experience what real living is all about
• “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”—v. 25
• Christ crucified is a stumbling-block for the Jews because, in their mind, strength does not come through weakness
• A dead king is no hero
• Christ crucified is foolishness for the Gentiles because they believed in an apathetic God
• They believed in a God who was totally unable to feel
• If God had feelings, then God could be changed by the whims of humanity, and if God could be changed, then the ones who changed God has more power than God
• A God who suffered was a contradiction in terms in the Greek mind
• It was an insult to God to be involved in human affairs
• In order to be God, God had to remain utterly detached from God’s creation
• There are so many of us today who still believe this, despite what Jesus shows us about God
• Jesus shows us that God is love, but we choose to believe that God is vengeful and mean-spirited
• Jesus shows us that God cares about our every need, but we choose to believe that we can make it on our own
• Jesus shows us that God’s deepest desire is to have a personal relationship with us, but we’re much more comfortable with a God who is distant
• Benefits and Consequences
• Admittedly, denying the fact of the resurrection is safer for us
• If we deny the fact that God loves us we are free from the responsibility to love God in return and to love others
• Denying the fact that Jesus died for us frees us from having to own up to the fact that we are sinners in need of grace
• Mistakes—sure, we make a few, but we’re good enough to make it into heaven by ourselves
• Denying the fact that Jesus rose from the grave to new life allows us to continue to live in our old, comfortable, selfish and self-righteous ways and we never have to try to be better than we are
• But there are consequences as well
• By denying the resurrection of Jesus we cut ourselves off from a relationship with God and the blessing of God’s presence and power in our life
• By denying the resurrection we are left to fend for ourselves in a cruel and dangerous world
• By denying the resurrection we are stuck living the life we’ve got with little ability to make any significant changes
• And by denying the resurrection we are cut off from hope, for without the resurrection, the end of life is death
• The choice of what we believe is up to us
• God does not force any of us to believe
• God has provided for us the means of salvation, but the decision to accept it or reject it is ours
• What do you believe about Jesus?
• What happened to Jesus?
• Is he dead or alive?
• The testimony of Scripture and the foundation of our faith is “He is not here.  He has risen, just as he said.”
• If he said it and it did not happen, this is all a hoax
• Because he said it and it happened, we can trust him with our lives