Pastoral Letter 113
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and peace to you all.
Today, on Easter Sunday, we celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, proclaiming that He lives. During the week, our church Sign Board read: “Jesus was Crucified! Sad News? Or ….”. Today it gives the answer to that question and says: “Good News! He Is Alive!”. As we progressed in the Holy week, we reflected on what happened and how our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ went through such an ordeal for us. But today, on this Easter morning we celebrate His resurrection with great joy and glorify God with songs and praise.
I hope we come together on Sunday morning to worship and give thanks to God the Father, who raised His Son to give us hope for eternity. There is no other better reason to worship and praise the Lord. If you will not be able to join us to our face-to-face service, you can worship with us at home. Please light a candle and follow the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
Here are some more prayer points for this week:
- Pray for all those who are again suffering because of the devastating floods.
- Pray for those who have lost loved ones, homes and property.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for the coming week and the Good Friday and Easter Morning Services.
- Pray for hope, that comes to us because of Easter and Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
Good News! He Is Alive!
John 20:1-18
At the end of Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ”, Jesus dies and the screen fades to black. You think the credits are going to roll, but an image flashes back on the screen. It is Jesus – resurrected, perfect, and glorious, with only the nail marks or the holes. He has escaped death. He’s back and He’s alive! Good News!
What happened to the sixth and the seventh words of Jesus on the cross: “It is finished!” and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”? Did everything really finish when Jesus died on the cross? Was it the end?
The scriptures, as well as the film and many other films, confirm that Jesus did die, but He rose again, and He was and is well and alive. He appeared to Mary and the disciples and many others, including the zealous Jew and Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, later named Paul, who was persecuting the Christians, capturing, torturing and imprisoning them without any mercy. He did this until that day, when the Risen Lord appeared to him on the way to Damascus.
Indeed, Jesus died on the cross and His breathless body was put in a tomb. But after three days, on Easter morning, His tomb was empty. The Stone was rolled away, and His body was not there. Instead, He appeared as the resurrected Christ.
Resurrection! Jesus was crucified, died and buried. Then on the third day He rose again.
Is this something we should really believe?
Did Jesus really rise from the dead or is it just a Hollywood film ending?
Is there any evidence or is this just a matter of faith?
What does the resurrection of Jesus mean for us today?
But before answering those relevant questions, first let us examine if “The Resurrection” is True or False.
There are a lot of people who don’t believe, who don’t think Jesus really rose from the dead. In an attempt to demystify the resurrection, over the years several theories have been developed to prove that the resurrection is not true and never happened.
Let’s look at three of these theories that try to prove that the resurrection is not true.
1. The Theory of the Stolen Body
The first theory says that Jesus’ body was stolen. We know the Romans wouldn’t have taken the body – they wanted Jesus dead. The Jewish religious leaders and the Pharisees wouldn’t have taken the body – they wanted Him to stay dead in the sealed tomb. Sceptics believe that Jesus’ disciples stole the body.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that this theory was fabricated by the Jewish religious leaders and spread by the Romans. Here’s what the Gospel of Matthew says in chapter 28:12-15: “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So, the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.”
But there are some problems with this theory. The disciples had nothing to gain but everything to lose by stealing Jesus’ body. Why would they want to live a life of denial and suffering and then be tortured to death for a lie? Besides, the disciples were confused and didn’t understand that He was going to die, let alone that He was to be raised. They never anticipated a resurrection. And if they had stolen His body then how do we explain the fact that this group of men who had scattered and hid in fear suddenly became bold, outspoken preachers, most of whom were brutally killed because they were preaching that Jesus was alive? People will sometimes die for what they think is true, but they won’t die for what they know is a lie.
The greatest problem with the theory that the disciples stole the body is that there were over 500 witnesses that Jesus appeared to after His resurrection. Imagine 500 witnesses? If we were to hold a trial to determine the facts concerning the resurrection, and if we were to call the witnesses to the stand and examine them each for only 15 minutes, if we went around the clock without a break, how long do you think we’d be here? 125 hours! That’s 5 days straight!
Therefore, the evidence seems to indicate that it’s impossible that Jesus’ body was stolen.
2. Jesus Never Really Died.
The other leading theory among sceptics is that Jesus never really died. In fact, that’s what many Muslims are taught. It’s called the “swoon theory” – Jesus fainted or took a drug that made Him appear to die, and then the cool air of the tomb revived Him. Like the remedy in Shakespeare’s play of Romeo and Juliet, that Juliet took to appear to be dead, until Romeo comes and rescues her.
If you saw the movie “The Passion of the Christ”, with violent scenes featuring Mel Gibson, you would know how impossible this theory is. Jesus was tied to a post and beaten at least 39 times – and probably more – with a whip that had sharp bones and balls of lead woven into it. Undoubtedly, Jesus was in serious to critical condition even before the crucifixion began. And the crucifixion was a horrific form of torture and execution by itself. It was so bad that a new word was coined to describe it – the word “excruciating,” which is Latin for “out of the cross.”
One of the reasons we know that Jesus really died is that when the soldiers came to Jesus to speed up His death, they discovered that He was already dead and to confirm it, they pierced a spear between His ribs which literally punctured the sac around the heart and the heart itself.
Nobody came down from a cross alive – that included Jesus. All the evidence indicates that Jesus was dead, even before the wound to His side was caused. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with the evidence.
The evidence clearly disproves this theory as well. There’s no doubt… Jesus did die.
3. Jesus’ Resurrection was a Hallucination.
There’s one more theory that’s very common among sceptics: it’s that Jesus’ resurrection was a hallucination or an imagination. Those people thought that Jesus kept showing up alive, but that they were actually hallucinating and imagining, because they wanted to see Him alive.
The major problem with this is that psychologists tell us that hallucinations are like dreams – they’re individual events that can’t be shared between people. It would be like asking someone: “Did you enjoy the dream I had last night?”
But what if these weren’t hallucinations or imagination, but instead a kind of wishful thinking where people in a group encourage one another through the power of suggestion to see an image?
The problem with this is that the circumstances were all wrong for anything like that to happen.
For instance, the disciples weren’t anticipating a resurrection. They didn’t believe He would come back. They thought He was dead and gone. This was totally contrary to their Jewish beliefs. And so, they weren’t ready for this sort of thing to happen. Besides, Jesus ate with them, He talked to them, and He appeared numerous times before all kinds of people in various settings – all of which run contrary to this theory.
Besides, what about the empty tomb? Where was His body? If they had been hallucinating, don’t you think the Romans would have produced the body eventually to disprove this theory?
So, what was the reality and the truth?
The reality is – Jesus did die, and rather than His body being stolen, He rose from the dead and transformed the lives of those who He encountered. His resurrection changed the course of history and is the reason we’re here this morning. It’s what our faith is all about. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions, and what sets Jesus apart from all other religious leaders who ever lived. Every other human being is powerless to death. But Jesus had power over death.
Jesus did more than just communicate from the grave – He rose from the grave. He gave proof that He was alive. He said to “doubting” Thomas: “Put your finger here, see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
We can’t see Jesus, but we’ve heard the evidence. We can’t see Jesus, but we can believe. We can believe that because of Jesus’ victory over death we can not only be forgiven and given complete lives, but we can look forward to everlasting life – to being reunited with loved ones after death and even getting to see Jesus, face to face. That’s the Good News we are talking about and that’s the Good News to be shared with others.
The church, the living body of Jesus Christ, has the responsibility and the duty to go out and share this Good News, proclaiming that He is alive, and He is, our Lord and Saviour. Our only hope for eternal life and joy.
Amen!