Don’t know if you enjoy the sliding door motif in stories. You run for the bus, and catch it, and on it you meet a mysterious stranger – and oh the adventures for good and ill that flow from that. Or you miss the bus by a whisker, are furious and frustrated, but actually spared the trauma you would have endured if you caught it. It can be fun to speculate like that. What would have happened if I said yes, instead of no, if I made that decision instead of the one I did – and so we can go on.
But what about this one? What if Easter hadn’t happened. Or more precisely, what if only part of Easter had happened. The grizzly part – the Good Friday crucifixion part. What if the women had gone to the tomb of Jesus, found his body there (just as expected) and anointed it with spices (just as they had planned). What if they then returned to the others, wept a little, then slowly got back into everyday living – Jesus a fond memory of a more hopeful time when they had dared to dream, when they had hoped for the impossible, when they aspired to more. What if Jesus’ fishermen disciples went back to be fishermen – sometimes catching, sometimes not. Perhaps they occasionally would have thought of some of the challenging things he had taught (like, “love your enemy” – fat lot of good that did him!), but soon enough keeping their nets mended and their boats in order would have taken all their time and energy.
Let’s ask the question: What would have happened if Jesus hadn’t been resurrected?
As starters, Christianity would have been a pretty pathetic faith. Paul makes this clear in 1 Cor 15:14, “if Christ wasn’t raised to life our message is worthless and so is your faith.” Why is Paul so adamant about this? Wouldn’t it be enough to have some inspiring teaching from a noble but deluded ancient teacher to cheer us on our more depressing days? After all, Jesus said some impressive things. It’s nice to think that the meek are blessed and will inherit the earth. True – it’s nice to think that, but unless Jesus was raised from the dead there is no evidence to suggest it will ever be true. After all, it is not in this world that the first are last and the last first. That’s for the world to come. But if there was no resurrection, there is no reason to believe that world will ever come.
Without the resurrection our little window of time on this planet is all there is. Justice will forever be denied to those slain without mercy, or tormented without pity. Our bewildered “why” to the unfairness of life will forever be unanswered. Actually, that’s not true. It will be definitively answered. “What a stupid question! Why presupposes purpose. And if this is an accidental world with no evidence of God or transcendence – well why ask such silly questions. There is no ‘why” – there is only ‘what’ – what happened to you is what happened to you. No purpose – no intention – just what it was.”
Without the resurrection, well as Ivan Karamazov says in Dostoevsky’s novel, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” Because if there is no resurrection, well God just might exist, but it sounds like you are whistling in the dark. Where is the evidence. And if no God, there is no absolute moral authority, no divine source of right or wrong, so do your own thing, for “if God does not exist, everything is permissible.”
Sliding door moment.
The women arrive at the tomb of Jesus. The stone has been rolled away. Strange. Stranger still – there is no body – just a man who seems to be the gardener. Hold on – not the gardener, Jesus. Mary rushes back and tells the others, “I have seen the Lord. He is risen.” They doubted it (and who wouldn’t), but then saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes. The once doubtful Thomas is invited to touch the wounded side of Jesus. He’s convinced – My Lord and my God he calls out.
That’s the story. Reject it – and life goes its own way. Accept it – and find yourself part of a vast company for whom life will never be the same. Because the bold claim of Easter Sunday is that resurrection happened – and in that moment all of history changed… And if it didn’t, I have no idea why those women didn’t simply anoint the body, or why those fishermen didn’t go back to their nets. The world would have been very different if they had – infinitely poorer, and without hope…
Nice chatting…
Photo by Josh Withers: https://www.pexels.com/photo/the-resurrection-of-christ-painting-in-tapestry-gallery-vatican-city-27063870/
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