This last week a colleague of mine (with a smile on his face!) told of a recent trip to a Mayan ruin in Mexico, where the tour guide had been commenting on the carving of the tribes people from centuries ago and how white missionaries had got there, way before Columbus. And the guide said:
“Religion is a story told us from people we trust.”
For my colleague this provided a great summary, a sociological answer in fact, as to why religion takes root in any culture. For him this was also a dig at religious leaders who abuse their positions of power in an attempt to control people, for example to indoctrinate the weak and vulnerable.
However that statement rang true with me because it actually nicely captures what Easter (and therefore Christianity) is about. The resurrection of Jesus is a story (a news story to be more exact) told to us, by people whom we’re encouraged to trust… and have every reason to trust. Let me explain what I mean in two parts.
(1) A story
Firstly, let’s think about Easter being a news story*. The word in the New Testament is ‘gospel’ and in greek it is Euangelion which is actually made of two words ‘Eu’ (joyful) and ‘Angelos’ (‘one announcing news’). So the gospel is an announcement of joyful news. So the Easter message is good news, or at least it should be.
Now the word gospel was a word that was already in use in the 1st Century but it wasn’t a religious word. It meant history-making, life-shaping news, as opposed to just daily news. For example, there is an ancient Roman inscription from about the same time as Jesus and it starts “the beginning of the gospel of Caesar Augustus”. It’s the story of the birth and coronation of the Roman emperor. And when Greece was invaded by Persia and the Greek won the great battles of Marathon and Soluns, they sent Heralds (or evangelists) who proclaimed the good news to the cities and they said:
“We have fought for you, we have won, and now you’re no longer slaves, you’re free.”
So a gospel is an announcement of something that has happened in history that changes things in a meaningful way. It’s news of some event – a victory – that’s been done for you that changes your status forever. So Christianity is ultimately a story… a message… of great news about what Jesus has done in dying on Good Friday and rising from the dead on Easter Sunday; and this changes everything.
(2) From people we can trust
So secondly, why should we trust the people who told us this story? Surely believing such a story is craziness and a sign that you’re “taking a blind leap of faith”, rather than using common sense and reason. Well let me give you four reasons (four W’s) as to why those first eye-witnesses and heralds should be considered trustworthy.
(a) Women
The first person who announced the news of Jesus’ resurrection was a woman. Why is this significant? Because women had no social standing in those days and a woman’s testimony would not have been counted in a court of law. So if you were making up a story and wanted to convince people that Jesus rose from the dead you would NOT say that the first person to see the empty tomb and the first person to meet with Jesus was a woman! Their testimony would count for nothing! There would be no reason to record this… unless it was actually how it happened because it was true.
So the story gains authenticity because the first eye-witness was a woman.
(b) Witness
The Greek word for Maryr is μάρτυς which translates “witness”. In the first century to be a witness for Jesus was to be a martyr for Jesus. You see many people have made up stories that aren’t true for some personal gain (money or power or reputation). But the disciples who went and told the message were ostracised, mocked, humiliated and shunned by family and friends. They were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking… and yet they wouldn’t stop talking! This was no lie, they had met the risen Jesus in person and were willing to die for the good news they had to tell.
And psychologists will tell you that no-one would ever die for a lie. If you were held a gun point and told “tell me the truth, did Jesus rise from the dead… did you meet him after the resurrection…. tell me or else I’ll kill you”. At that point you crack and say “Ok I never saw him, I am just making it up”. But they didn’t crack, because this was no lie and they were willing to die for the truth.
So the story gains authenticity because the first eye-witness died for sharing the message.
(c) Worldview**
This one is a bit more thought-provoking and it goes deeper than just evidence and looks at the issue of worldview. You see for many people I could present 20 reasons, 20 facts, that show Jesus rose from the dead and it would not convince them. Why? Because they would still think what any 21st century person thinks…“we can’t believe in the resurrection because dead people don’t rise again… we know that from science”. So the scientific worldview stops us believing stuff like this can happen. In fact only unenlightened people who are not willing to wake up and smell the coffee still believe stuff like this. We know for a fact that everyone dies and that when you die you die, you don’t come back from the dead. That is impossible and science proves it.
But no-one in the ancient world thought people came back from the dead. You see, take the two main people groups of the time – the Greeks and the Jews. What did they believe? The Greeks were famous for believing that the body was bad and the Spirit was good. The physical and material was bad but the spiritual/the soul was good. They were dualists! So for them, what they were waiting for, what they hoped for (their salvation!) was that they would be liberated from the body. For them to believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead was not only impossible but undesirable. Why would anyone want to rise physically from the dead? The sooner the you got rid of the body which was corrupted, defiled, evil and falling apart, the better…. then the soul could be free. To return to life in a body was to be imprisoned once again. The goal was to get free of the body.
And to the Jews? Well there was one group of Jews called the Sadducees and they were famous for not believing in the resurrection from the dead at all. But then most of the other Jews believed that there would be a resurrection of all the righteous at the end of time when God would remove all suffering, evil and death from the world. They believed in the resurrection but it was at the end of time and it was for all of God’s people. So the idea that one individual being resurrected in the middle of history while the rest of the world continued on burdened by sickness, decay and death was inconceivable. The resurrection was something that happened at the end of time, not in time and was not to just one individual but to all of God’s people, and meant that the whole world would be renewed.
So whether you were a Greek or a Jew, your belief system, your mindset, your worldview didn’t allow a resurrection; just like our scientific worldview doesn’t allow it. And when we look back at ancient times and say “well we are more advanced, we now have science, we know better”, CS Lewis says we commit ‘Chronological Snobbery” and treat people in the 1st century as gullible, easily persuaded, ‘leave-your-brain-at-the-door’ idiots. They weren’t. For totally different reasons, they had a worldview that found it just as hard to believe in the resurrection as we do with our (scientific) worldview. They were NOT more gullible than us. And that is why no-one but a few women who were completing the Jewish Burial rite were at the tomb on the third day… even though Jesus had repeatedly said he’d die and rise on the third day. They didn’t believe him.
So the story gains authenticity when your realise that the first eye-witness were just as sceptical as we are about people rising from the dead.
(d) What alternatives are there?
And here is the final thought about these eyewitnesses who told the story of Easter 2000 years ago. If they were lying, how else do you explain away their story? Here are some explanations people have given throughout history… and why they don’t work.
- The disciples stole the body… but they died for it.
- The authorities stole the body… but they killed for it and never produced it to disprove the whole thing.
- Jesus never died… but the records are clear he did.
- Everyone hallucinated… but there are too many people for that.
As Cambridge theologian C. F. D. Moule has written:
If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? … The birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church… remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.
So I think the Mayan tour guide is right when it comes to Christianity – it’s a story told us from people we trust. And we have every reason to believe the story and every reason to believe the people.
Happy Easter! I hope we’ll see you on Sunday as we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead.
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*The background to the word ‘gospel’ is taken from Tim Keller’s King’s Cross
**The explanation of the worldview of Greeks and Jews is taken from Tim Keller’s The Reason For God