He Is Risen Indeed The Hope of Easter

It may be a week after Easter Sunday, but we are still very much in Easter and my thoughts this afternoon have turned to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, partly because I recalled a conversation I had with a bar man in a pub a few weeks ago who had been brought up a Christian but who couldn't accept various Christian beliefs; including the virgin birth and the resurrection.

Many people won’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  Those outside church say it is simply impossible.  The dead don’t come back to life.  Others within the church say that what the early Christians meant by resurrection wasn’t that Jesus physically came back to life, but that in the days and weeks following his death they could still feel his presence and therefore began to claim that he was still alive.  The idea that he physically rose from the dead came when later generations misunderstood what the very first Christians meant by resurrection.  This is, of course, utter rubbish.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.  I believe that resurrection was a physical one as well as a spiritual one.  I believe this because that is what the Bible says happened and because it is the only logical explanation.

Since the earliest days of Christianity the constant claim about Jesus was that on the cross he defeated death and that by rising to life he proved death a defeated enemy.  If Jesus did not rise physically from the dead then how is death defeated?

If Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, then where did the idea come from?  In the pagan Roman world the idea of physical resurrection seemed as ridiculous as it does to many people today.  Even in Israel there was no concept of individual resurrection.  Many Jews believed that all the dead would rise when God brought in his worldwide kingdom, but not that anybody would rise before that day.

Now I will say that Jesus did not come back to life on that first Easte Day.  Before you accuse me of heresy, let me explain.  Jesus did not come back to life: he was raised to new life, to everlasting life.  Jesus died and was buried in the tomb.  Then God raised him to new everlasting life.  He was physically raised, no ghost or spirit, but his body was different in some ways.  People didn’t always recognise him immediately.  He seemed to be able to move from place to place without limitation.  He was solid enough to break bread, cook breakfast and eat fish yet he was able to enter a locked room and appear as if from nowhere.

We can see some of the changes in the account of the first Easter Day from John's gospel. 

Mary is sobbing in the garden outside the tomb because Jesus body has disappeared and is approached by what she thinks is the gardener.  Even as he comes close she doesn’t recognise him; perhaps because she is blinded by her tears or perhaps because Jesus is changed, transformed.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” asks Jesus.

“They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Jesus then simply says “Mary” and immediately she recognises him.  His voice, though renewed with the rest of him, is still recognisably the same as Jesus says her name in the familiar way.

Jesus then says to her, “Do not hold on to me.”  This puzzled me for many years until I realised that this was the risen Christ and she wanted to hold onto the Jesus she knew.  This was still that same Jesus, but a Jesus renewed and raised to everlasting life.

What does this risen Jesus mean for us?  Why is it important that Jesus rose from the dead?  It is important because it tells us that death is not the end.  It really isn’t.  We have a great and glorious hope that because Jesus died and rose again we too, when we die, will be raised to new life.

Many, many Christians do not really understand what this means.  What it definitely does not mean is that when we die we go to heaven where we will spend the rest of eternity.  Jesus in his death and resurrection defeated death and its power over us.  How is death defeated if we just die and go to heaven?

The truth is far, far more glorious and our gospel account shows us the truth.  Jesus died on the cross, his life was extinguished; his body was dead.  His heart had stopped beating.  Brain activity had ceased.  There was a time when the corpse of Jesus lay still and cold in the tomb.  Then, on that glorious Easter morning, life returned to Jesus body and he was raised to new physical life.

The evangelical writer John Stott puts it this way: “The Christian hope is not the immortality of the soul (a shadowy, disembodied existence), but the resurrection of the body (a perfect instrument for the expression of our new life).”

That is exactly what will happen to us one day, what will happen to those who have already died believing in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.  One day, unless Jesus returns during our lifetime, we will all physically die.  Our spirit, our soul, will then go to what Jesus on the cross calls paradise where we will rest.  Then, when Jesus returns, when heaven and earth are joined as one and God makes all things new; we will rise again in our own physical bodies just as Jesus did, bodies which are renewed just as Jesus’ body was renewed, bodies which are transformed.  We will be immortal, no longer subject to pain, disease or death; we will be like the risen Jesus.  The physical resurrection of Jesus points towards our own future physical resurrection in a transformed world ruled by God.  That is the Easter Hope!

Or is it?  The resurrection of Jesus isn’t just about us, about our own eternal life.  The resurrection points towards something I’ve already mentioned, the renewal of the whole of creation.  As evangelical theologian Bishop Tom Wright says in his book, “Surprised by Hope”;

“Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord;  Jesus is raised so God’s new creation has begun – and we, his followers, have a job to do!  Jesus is raised so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven!”

Some Christians think that because God is going to renew creation there is nothing we need to do about the environment, about poverty, about suffering or any of the other ills of this world.  In fact the reverse is true because nothing good that we do as Christians is wasted.  God will take all the good things that we do and transform them so that they are even better and part of the renewed and conjoined kingdoms of earth and heaven.

Our Easter hope is a threefold hope.  The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead physically and then physically entered heaven means that he is still alive today, ruling earth as Lord and available to all who call themselves Christian.  The fact that Jesus was indeed physically raised from the dead means that we too can look forward with certainty to the day when we too will experience that glorious resurrection.  Third, the raising of Jesus to new transformed life is a pointer towards the renewal of the whole of creation.  That too is our Easter hope!