Why I Believe

As we prepare to celebrate Easter this coming Sunday, I thought I would send out a small article I was asked to write for a local newspaper.  I had to limit it to 800 words, so it is a “bulletpoint” version of a more extensive examination of the resurrection of Jesus.  Here you go:

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection is either the greatest event in human history…or the greatest fraud. If it is true, life has meaning and purpose.  If not, “eat, drink, and be merry” because you’re going to die and that’s it!  The crux of whether Christianity is true or false rests on the truth or falsehood of the resurrection.  Let me point to three reasons why I believe Christ rose from the dead:

REASON #1: An empty tomb.  It is possible to build a case for both the historic existence of Jesus and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate from ancient histories, without even invoking the Bible. But when it comes to the details surrounding his burial, the gospel accounts are critical. They tell us that the body of Jesus was released to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin and secret believer in Jesus.

Joseph had a new tomb that had never been used before. If you travel to Israel you can still see what such a tomb looked like. They were carved out of solid stone. Inside, a place was created to lay the body of the one who had died. The body was wrapped in linen strips, with each layer of the shroud being laced with aromatic spices. Some scholars believe that as the gummy spices dried, they not only helped preserve the body, but would form something like a cocoon around the body.

The tomb would then be sealed with a carved stone.  The normal stone would weigh between one and two tons. The tombs were built with a graded trough in front where the stone was placed and rolled down to cover the tomb opening. Under normal circumstances, the tomb of Jesus would have been sealed and the burial would be complete. But the burial of Jesus was not performed under normal circumstances.

The Jewish leaders remembered that Jesus proclaimed he would rise on the third day. They went to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and asked him to secure the tomb so that the followers of Jesus would not come and steal the body to fake his resurrection. Pilate responded by sending a Roman guard and having the tomb “sealed” with a Roman seal. Getting past a Roman guard was virtually impossible, and breaking a Roman seal without authority was punishable by death.

Consider the above scenario compared to what Mary Magdelene and her friend found when they came to the tomb that first Easter Sunday:

The seal was broken. The stone was moved. The guard had fled (an offense punishable by death!)  The tomb was empty. Mary rushed back to tell the other disciples that the body was gone. Peter and John rushed to the tomb. Looking in they discovered the tomb was NOT empty. The GRAVECLOTHES were empty! John writes that when he went in the tomb and saw the empty graveclothes “he believed”!

REASON #2: Eyewitness Testimony. Add to the empty tomb the fact that Jesus began to show up! He first appeared to Mary Magdelene. Then to two men on the road to the nearby village of Emmaus. Then to ten of the eleven disciples in the Upper Room – without Thomas. Then to the eleven again with Thomas. Then to his brother James. Then to a group of 500 in Galilee. Finally, he appeared to the hostile Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Luke records that these appearances took place over a 40-day period and that they were “convincing”. Many of those who were eyewitnesses became leaders in the early church.

REASON #3 – Transformed lives. It was these eyewitness encounters that led to the radical change that we see in the lives of the disciples and multitudes of others. Before the resurrection, Peter was so terrified of the Roman and Jewish authorities that he denied Jesus three times. The other disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. They all were hiding in the Upper Room after the crucifixion. But something happened to transform them. On the day of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, Peter stood in the middle of Jerusalem and proclaimed fearlessly that “You killed him (Jesus), but God raised him from the dead…and we are witnesses!”

Eventually, ten of the twelve, plus the Apostle Paul, would die martyr’s deaths for this proclamation. These men were willing to die horrendous deaths: crucifixion, flaying (skinned alive), stoning, and torture, for claiming that they saw Jesus risen and alive.

You don’t have to take your brain out to believe in Jesus. You don’t have to be stupid to believe in the resurrection. All you really have to do is examine the evidence.  Christ is risen.

Happy Easter!

(To hear more about this subject, come join us Easter, 10:30 a.m., Highline Community Church, 6160 S. Wabash Way, Greenwood Village, CO 80111)