Saturday 25 April 2009

Easter Sunday

It seems to me I kinda abandoned Easter with Jesus dead. Which was maybe not such a great idea. After all, Norma (I guess you'd call her our youth pastor) was most upset at the thought she might have to leave the teaching of Christianity with Jesus on the cross.

A brief summary of what happened then. Jesus was hastily buried on the Friday, as no work could be done on the Sabbath which traditionally started on Friday evening. This meant that his body was left in the tomb over the Saturday. A couple of chief priests went to the governer and said 'look, this guy said he was gonna rise from the dead, so put a gaurd on the body will you so that none of his disciples can steal his body and claim he's risen'. So the Romans did just that, and rolled a big heavy stone in front of the tomb. On Sunday morning, some of the women who were with Jesus (Mary Magdaline and a couple of others, including one called Joanna) went up to the tomb to deal with Jesus' body properly. They were concerned as to how they'd get the stone away. When they got there, they found the stone was rolled away, the guards were not there. This is where accounts in the different gospels differ slightly. They were met by an angel, and told that they shouldn't look for Jesus amongst the dead because he was living. Then according to (I think) Luke, they saw Jesus but mistook him for a gardner at first. They went back, told the other disciples that Jesus was risen, but they didn't quite believe them. Then Jesus appeared to them and they kinda had to believe cos he was right there in front of them.

The resurrection of Jesus is the most important part of Christianity. This part is where faith comes in. It's one thing to accept the virtually indisputable fact of Jesus' death on Good Friday, it's another to believe he's the son of God and rose from the grave on Easter Sunday. This occurrence is so central to the Christian faith that Paul wrote 'If Christ had not been raised from the dead, our preaching is useless and so is your faith'.

Historically, there is some evidence in favour of the idea that Christ did rise from the dead. The gospels were written down within thirty or so years of Jesus' time on earth. That's not really long enough for a myth to build up, and there were plenty around who could say 'nah, that never happened like that'. In Acts, Luke records that Jesus appeared to some 400 or so people, many of whom were still around to attest to the validity of that claim. To do so when nobody could in fact do that would invite trouble. However, ultimately it comes down to a question of faith, of whether you do or do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

That, then, is the events of Easter.

As an interesting foot note, when Jesus appeared first to the disciples, one of their number, Thomas, was missing. When they told him that Jesus had been present, he dismissed their claims as ridiculous, saying that unless he could touch Jesus, put his fingers in the nail holes and his hands in Jesus' side, he wouldn't believe it. Jesus showed up amongst the disciples again, and this time Thomas was amongst them. He invited Thomas to do what he had said would convince him. Then he said that those who believed but had not seen were very blessed indeed.

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