Sermon: Truth and The Resurrection

Sermon by Matt Kennedy
Easter Day 2010

Usually around this time of year, the History Channel/Discovery Channel/National Geographic wheel out some kind of special investigative report on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, advertised with trumpets and fanfare weeks in advance. You’ll be innocently watching the history of the deisel engine and then, suddenly, eerie, mystical music…“All of the Christian gospels claim that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, but Now newly uncovered evidence sheds fresh light on these ancient stories, threatening to undermine Christianity’s most cherished article of faith”
    
I’ve watched way too many of these specials. 
    
In 2006, National Geographic unleashed startling news of the “Lost Gospel of Judas”. In this gospel, Judas is not villain but hero, called secretly by Jesus himself to hand him over to be killed so that his spirit will be free: Herb Krosney, the author of the book “The Lost Gospel” says, “There’s no direct mention of the Resurrection. Judas is a different kind of character. He’s the person who is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. And that sacrifice is to sacrifice the life of Jesus in order that Jesus may attain eternity and immortality. And Judas is the one who enables all of us to help find that inner spark within ourselves.” Well, it turned out that the Gospel of Judas wasn’t really written by Judas, or by anyone who could’ve known Jesus face to face. But by a gnostic cult member in Egypt about 100 years after the crucifixion. Gnostics hate the resurrection because they believe the body is bad and the soul is good so they made up lots of stories to get around it. 
    
The Gospel of Thomas aired just as the craze over Dan Brown’s “Da Vince Code” was waning.
Brown’s “fictional” novel was based, he said, on the true story of Jesus’ “secret marriage” to Mary Magdalen and his royal bloodline traced through French royalty. The marriage was so secret, it turns out, that there’s no evidence for it anywhere.
    
In March 2007, the world was rocked by a new special documentary when James Cameron claimed to have discovered Jesus’  bones in a tomb in the ruins of an ancient small village near Jerusalem. When a first century Jewish person died, his body was anointed with oil, wrapped in cloth, and laid in a tomb until it decomposed. Then the bones were collected in a stone box called an ossuary. James Cameron discovered ossuaries engraved with the names, Joseph, Jesus, son of Joseph, Jude and Mary. DNA testing revealed that the remains in the Mary box were not related to the remains in the Jesus box. 
    
What other conclusion could we possibly draw than that Jesus did not rise, but was buried in this tomb with his dad Joseph, his wife Mary Magdalene and their son Judah? 
    
Well it turns out that finding ossuaries with the names Joseph, Jesus, Jude and Mary in a first century tomb is about as rare as finding an American grave plot with the names bob, bill, John and Jane. And it turns out the tomb is in the wrong place. Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father, disappears from the gospel accounts early on, meaning he most likely died before Jesus’ crucifixion. He would’ve been buried in Nazareth, his family hometown, not Jerusalem—meaning that for some reason it was decided to dig poor Joseph up and cart his bones away from his family tomb 100 miles south to an obscure village near Jerusalem rather than doing the normal Jewish thing and burying Jesus’ bones with his family in Nazareth.
    
These are just the latest in a long long series of attempts to discredit the New Testament resurrection accounts. They stretch back to the claim by Jewish authorities that fishermen and accountants who had scattered and hid like scared sheep on Friday suddenly decided to just go over and sneak past armed trained Roman warriors and steal Jesus body on Saturday. 
    
I used to get frustrated by these things but I’ve realized that each groundbreaking discovery that comes with fanfare and shrinks back in shame only underlines the rock solid historical veracity of the New Testament and the claims at the foundation of the Christian faith. The bible, as someone once said, is an anvil that has worn down a thousand hammers. 
    
They also help us to clarify the NT record. And that needs clarifying. I’ve heard a lot of strange ideas about the resurrection in my short time as a pastor. Here are just a few:
    
1. Jesus wasn’t the only guy to rise from the dead. My uncle Joe who died on the operating table and came back, why don’t we worship him?”  
    
2. Jesus rose in a kind of spiritual ectoplasm, not physically. He was like obi wan kenobi after he died, floating in and out of rooms, showing up in this greenish light. Use the force Peter.
    
3. Others, under the influence of our former denomination think that Jesus’ resurrection was just a metaphor for spring flowers, good vibes, new hope. Jesus’ disciples felt really bad on Saturday but on Sunday the realized Jesus would always be with them in their hearts and kinda felt better. Resurrection. 
    
4. My favorite comes from a girl who said that Jesus died and then on the third day he appeared to his disciples as the Holy Ghost.
    
So at the very least those who try to explain away the resurrection provide the opportunity to clarify what the NT claims happened. So let me do that briefly:
    
The New Testament records that Jesus died on the cross at about 3pm Friday. It was against Jewish law for bodies to be left hanging during the sabbath, so the Jews asked Pilate to have his soldiers to kill Jesus and those crucified with him. That was done using a large iron mallet to break the their legs so they couldn’t hold themselves up and that would cause them to asphyxiate. By the time they got to Jesus, he was already dead. To be sure one of the soldiers stabbed him in the side with a spear and both blood and water gushed out which, doctors tell us, only happens after you’re dead. Afterwards, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate if he could take Jesus’ body down and bury it in his own tomb. Joseph was an important man, a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews, so Pilate gave him permission. Joseph took Jesus body, laid it in his tomb, and along with Nicodemus, hurriedly anointed him with oil and wrapped in linen before sunset and Sabbath. Mary Magdalene and some other women saw where Jesus was laid and watched Joseph and Nicodemus do their work. Jesus’ body lay in the tomb from Friday night through Saturday. On Saturday the Sanhedrin asked Pilate for a contingent of soldiers to guard the tomb and he agreed. At some point before dawn on Sunday there was an earthquake. An Angel descended from heaven and rolled the heavy stone door away from the tomb. Later in the dim dawn light, a number of women including a whole bunch of Marys arrived at the tomb to complete the task of preparing Jesus’ body. They saw the stone rolled away. Mary Magdalene runs to tell the disciples. But the other women enter the tomb. They see two men in dazzling white, angels. They say. Jesus is not here. He’s risen. They instruct the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee. The women run out of the tomb. Peter and John, having heard about the empty tomb from Mary, run to see for themselves. They see neither Jesus nor angels. Jesus appears first to the women and to Mary Magdelene. He lets them clasp his feet and worship him. On the same day he appears to two men on the road. At some point he appears to Peter. That evening he appears to all the disciples in a locked room and eats with them except Thomas. He appears to Thomas 8 days later and lets him touch his wounds. Then he appears to James his brother, and to 500 other people.
    
That’s the NT record. There are two reasons people generally give for doubting it. Either they don’t believe in angels and miracles or they think the record was made up.
   
How many here believe that God exists and created the cosmos? If you believe that God created the cosmos, then its not logical to dismiss out of hand at least the possibility that God can raise the dead.
    
The most common objections come from those who believe that God exists but who just don’t believe the New Testament. Some think the disciples made things up to promote themselves. Others think the early church added layer of myth upon layer of myth until we get the accounts as they now stand. Still others think the disciples were deluded and confused.
     
The biggest problem for those who reject the NT record is that it’s the only first century eyewitness record we have. So to come up with something else means that you have to make up a story. And no matter what story you tell, it will conflict with the only primary source evidence we have.
    
So let me give you an example of how works out. 
    
All four gospels claim that Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin in 33 AD. Members of the Sanhedrin were elite and well known.  All four gospels claim that Joseph buried Jesus in his own tomb. Both claims could easily be proven false by anyone in Jerusalem. But the Pharisees weren’t running around Jerusalem saying, hey no Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, look here’s his body. They claimed the disciples stole it. You’d only make that argument if 1. you and everyone else knows where he was buried and 2. the tomb was empty. If no one knew where he was buried or Jesus’ body was still there—you’d just say, no he didn’t you wackos. Give us some proof!
       
So every attempt to deny Jesus’ resurrection must provide a story to account for the empty tomb. It could be anything. You could go with the robbery story but you’d to explain what made the same guys who stole the body willing to lose status, power, community, and go to bloody horrific deaths knowing that the whole thing was made up and all the while, all they had to do is agree not to preach the resurrection.
Or you could go with the swoon/revival story. Somehow Jesus got better in the tomb and using his superhuman Jesus strength rolled away the stone door and slipped out passed the guards and had babies with Mary Magdalene.
Or you could say that an aliens beamed Jesus’ body up to the planet Zoltron. It really doesn’t matter because anything you come up with will be equally unfounded—a story without anything other than skeptical imagination, to back it up. 
    
You’re free to do that if you choose but to believe a story that conflicts with the only evidence we have and base your eternal destiny on it, takes a lot more faith than I have.
    
Everything rests on what you do with what you’ve heard this morning. Before he died Jesus made many claims. He claimed to be God. He said that we all sin and stand condemned. His purpose, he said, was to stand in our place and bear the eternal condemnation himself for our sins. He promised that everybody who turns to him, trusts in him, and surrenders their lives to him will be forgiven for everything, declared not guilty, and brought into an eternal relationship with God. Those who do not he said will face eternal punishment. He promised that he will come back one day to establish his kingdom and when he does he will raise up his followers up in bodies like his, no longer subject to death, disease, suffering or sorrow.
    
If you believe stories people make up then Jesus is a dead man whose claims are lies. But if you believe the evidence then they were made by the God who loves you, who died for you. And who rose again to give you new life. Who wants to be forever. 

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