“The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your husband, private first class Clyde G Wilkinson Jr., has been reported missing in action since thirteen November in France. If further details or other information are received you will be promptly notified. Dunlop Acting the Adjutant General.”
My mother received this telegram on December 9, 1944. She and my father had been married for four years.
“Missing in action.” “Was her husband a prisoner? Was he wounded? Was he dead?” Those questions filled her thoughts. Very recently new families in our nation have gone through the same agonized waiting. Some got good news and some didn’t.
Finally, six weeks later, the mailman delivered this Kriegsgefangenenpost — a card for the use of prisoners of war in Germany. My father was a prisoner in Stalag II A. He was unwounded.
Think how welcome this letter was. There was still no guarantee that my father would return home. But at least it was still possible.
Hope is a very interesting thing. Sometimes it sounds more like denial — “He just can’t be gone” or “The Cubs just have to win the World Series. But other times, hope has a foundation in hard evidence -- as tangible as this letter — as tangible as Easter.
A boy defined faith as “believing something even though you know it’s not true.” That’s not faith. That’s delusion. True faith comes from evaluating the available evidence and taking what you learn to the logical conclusion. It’s not believing “just because.” It is believing “because.”
William Barclay says, “The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is a claim so vast and far-reaching in its importance and it its implications that there is no half-way house about it. It is either the greatest single fact in history, or, if it is not true, it is the greatest deception in history.”
The question I want to explore with you this Easter morning is whether or not the Bible’s claim is true. I also want to explore why, on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus, do I now believe in the forgiveness of my sins, the resurrection of my body and my life everlasting. Is it believing “just because.” Or is it believing “because?”
Jesus died on the cross. He didn’t swoon or faint. He didn’t revive in the tomb, blast open the stone and overcome the guards. He didn’t then rejoin His disciples and convince them that He was not only alive but victorious. He didn’t maintain this illusion for forty days before finally wandering off to die in the desert. The business of Roman executioners was to kill condemned prisoners — not to be duped into hauling live people down from crosses.
Jesus experienced the kind of beating that often brought death just by itself. He then suffered hours of crucifixion and breathed his last. His death was confirmed by a Roman spear thrust into his side which, according to the eye-witnesses, must have pierced His heart.
A wealthy member of the Jewish ruling community, Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body. He secured permission from the Roman governor Pilate to place the body in his own unfinished tomb. He closed it with a large stone. A Roman seal was placed on the stone. It was late Friday afternoon.
Two of Jesus female disciples watch. On Saturday, a guard is posted at the tomb. Early Sunday, the women return to the tomb and find it empty. A young man in white clothing tells them that Jesus had risen. They immediately report to the disciples. Peter and John run to the tomb. They confirm that Jesus body is gone. Nothing remains in the tomb except the linen shroud in which the corpse had been wrapped. Then, during the following days and weeks, on various occasions and in various places, the risen Jesus appears to His disciples and to others.
That’s how the Gospels say it happened. Certainly, it was a mysterious event. But it is not presented as a dream or new mystical hope in the hearts of those who loved Him. It is told as a fact. Jesus, leaves His tomb empty, converses with His disciples, shows them His hands and His feet, eats fish with them.
Let’s look at the evidence. Let’s start with the prophecies. There are, of course, many detailed prophecies of the crucifixion in the Old Testament. Isaiah 53 is a good example. But these prophecies also indicate that there will be a continuation or renewal of life after the servant has suffered death for others. Peter quotes one of these in our text from Acts 2.
Jesus prophesied the same thing. Months before the event He told his disciples that He was going to suffer and die and that He would also rise from the dead on the third day.
Now we can’t say that these prophecies did much to help the disciples out of their post-crucifixion depression. In fact, the only ones who seem to remember that Jesus promised to rise from the dead are His enemies. The priests quote Jesus’ promise to Pilate when they ask for a guard on the tomb.
But what about more hard evidence than promises? Let’s start with the tomb.
Some people claim that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. The women simply went to the wrong tomb. According to this hypotheses, the women are not well acquainted with Jerusalem. They go through narrow streets in dim light on Sunday morning and end up at the wrong place. They find an empty tomb and then hurry to tell the disciples -- who amazingly end up at the same wrong tomb.
That explanation sounds disarmingly simple and plausible. But it contains some serious flaws.
First, remember that Jesus was buried in a private tomb, not a crowded public cemetery. These women had also witnessed both crucifixion and burial. Even in the morning light, they would hardly fail to recognize the particular topographical features of this single tomb and its surrounding garden, close to the place where the crucifixion had taken place.
Besides, if the women had gone to the wrong tomb, the Jewish leaders would have been only all too happy to point out the right tomb and then produce a rotting body. The disciples public proclamation of the resurrection began just seven weeks after the crucifixion. They proclaimed this right in Jerusalem — the place where people could check out the facts. If Jesus body still lay in its tomb, their claim would be quickly exposed as a fraud. But while the Jewish leaders offer arguments to explain the empty tomb, they offer no arguments to dispute it.
Their main claim was that someone stole the body. The possible suspects include the Roman authorities and the Jewish authorities. But they have no motive. Their whole goal was to bring this Jesus thing to a shuddering halt.
How about ordinary grave robbers? That’s not likely. Jesus was not buried with the kind of treasure that attracts thieves. And even if they did mistakingly expect to find something of value in the tomb, they certainly would not have stolen the corpse itself. The grave cloths, the shroud, were still lying in the tomb on Sunday morning. This means that the robbers would have to stop to unwrap the body and carry the corpse away naked — a bizarre action without any discernable motive.
We are also told that the tomb was secured with a large stone that was rolled in a track and guarded by a cadre of guards authorized by Pilate. Anyone wanting to move the body would have had to overcome the stone -- which we are told was not so much rolled away as lifted up out of its channel and tossed to the side. And then they would have overcome a group of armed guards. Robbers would not take this kind of risk without a sure payoff.
The most likely suspects were Jesus disciples. That’s what the Jewish priests bribed the guards to claim. Justin Martyr states that the Jews were still repeating and embellishing this story in the second century.
It is certainly possible to imagine that the disciples conspired to overcome the guards, lift the huge stone out of its channel, steal Jesus body and thereby perpetrate a monumental fraud. But it is not possible to imagine that their very fraud inspired them to abandon their livelihoods, devote themselves to a hard and risky missionary existence, and then end their lives as slaughtered martyrs. All of Jesus’ disciples became missionaries and all but one died as martyrs. Martyrs can be deceived. We’ve certainly seen this the last few years. But they do not voluntarily give their lives for a hoax of their own making.
One thing is sure. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, we would never have heard of Him. After the crucifixion the disciples were fragmented and frightened. They believed everything had ended in defeat. Suddenly these same disciples were radiant with joy, flaming with courage, and ready to take on the world. They moved from being totally down to the people no one could keep down.
The quality of the disciples’ life after Easter reminds me of a legendary British pilot, Sir Douglas Bader. Sir Douglas lost his legs in a flying accident in 1931. Fitted with artificial legs, he rejoined the R.A.F. in 1939 and became an ace pilot. In the Battle of Britain, he shot down 22 German planes. In August, 1941, he was captured. One of his artificial legs was crushed in the crash. The Germans so respected Sir Douglas that they asked the R.A.F. to airdrop a new pair of legs for him. That was a mistake. After his fourth escape attempt the Germans decided to lock up his new legs each night where he couldn’t get to them.
Those are the people the disciples became after the resurrection. They were far from that before.
Something happened to cause us to be here today. The fact of the Christian church is it’s own witness to the resurrection.
Think of it this way. If you are at a lake you might have your back turned to the water. But if you suddenly hear a loud splash and turn around to see large ripples coming out from a single center point in the water, you know that a huge fish just jumped. It’s time to get out the boat.
In the same way, no one saw the resurrection. But the fact that there are huge ripples in history that all lead back to the same center point — including the huge ripple called the church — tells us that something big happened at that time and place. It changed the world.
The Gospels don’t describe the event itself -- a detail that would have been irresistible to someone writing fiction. The Gospels also don’t all record the same details. You have to work and fill in blanks to get a coherent view of the events of Easter. But anyone who has been in court knows that multiple points of view is something eye-witnesses have. The only time you get perfect agreement is when testimony has been staged and rehearsed.
In fact, speaking bluntly, if the authors had wanted a fictional story to be believable, they would have changed the cast. In that time and place they would have reported that Jesus male followers played all the vital roles. The woman would have been relegated to peripheral functions. But as it happened, the first preachers of the resurrection were women -- and we are told that the men did not at first believe them.
The prophecies, the empty tomb, the transformed lives of the disciples, the massive impact on history, even the way the story is told point us in a certain direction. All this is powerful evidence. But it is also circumstantial. We don’t get what we most need to hang our faith on. Is there any direct evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead?
Yes there is. It consists of dozens of eye-witness accounts that after dying on a cross, being buried in a sealed and guarded tomb, that Jesus appeared on at least a dozen occasions. The people who reported these appearances believed them to be real -- even if they started with severe doubts. But can they be trusted?
The appearances occurred in the presence of women, disciples, skeptics like James, Thomas and Paul, and a group of more than five hundred people. Many of these people were available for eyewitness testimony twenty-five years later when Paul wrote about them in 1 Corinthians 15. The appearances happened both indoors and out-doors. They occur in the early morning, the midday, and the evening.
As with the empty tomb, a naturalistic theory has been offered to explain the appearances. It boils down to a single word: “hallucinations.” The appearances, it is said, were not actual visits by a risen Jesus. Rather, they were simply visions in the minds of distraught, grief-stricken, clutch-at-any-straw observers.
Now at first glance the “hallucination” hypothesis may seem rational. But, it doesn’t hold together.
First, hallucinations are subjective, personal, individual experiences. They usually appear to only certain types of people, such as those with mental illness or vivid imaginations -- unlike the practical and sometimes dense disciples. They do not appear exactly the same to two different people. A single hallucination certainly does not appear to an entire group of people who come from varied backgrounds and are in different states of mind -- especially when those people claim to have experienced the same details at the same moment. Yet several of Jesus’ appearances did occur to groups of people. The Gospels even describe the various details, such as when Jesus exhibited the nail wounds in his hands and invited Thomas to stick his hand into the wound in His side, and when, in a group’s presence He ate a piece of broiled fish to show that He wasn’t a ghost.
Second, hallucinations, except for those resulting from drugs, are usually the product of wishful thinking. But the disciples, and the others to whom Jesus appeared, had no expectation of ever seeing him again. On the contrary, after anticipating great things of Jesus, their hopes were shattered when he was executed on a cross. The man who they believed would be a conquering messiah turned out to be just another weak victim of Roman justice. Most of the disciples scurried into hiding, utterly discouraged and dispirited. They didn’t even join the women in going to the tomb for completion of the burial process on Sunday morning.
These disciples had no idea that Jesus would rise from the dead. He had told them several times about His coming death and resurrection. But they just didn’t get it.
So the disciples were not engaged in wish-fulfillment when they saw the risen Jesus. Nor was the apostle Paul, to whom the resurrected Jesus appeared on the Damascus Road. Paul was an educated Jewish rabbi. Prior to his encounter on the Damascus Road he was an ardent persecutor of Jesus’ followers. Paul was certainly engaged in no wishful thinking about a resurrection.
Those who were convinced were convinced by the physical nature of it all. Thomas certainly was. He knew about hallucinations. And he wanted no part of them. He said, “Unless I can touch the nail wounds in His hand and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And when the risen Jesus gave Thomas that exact opportunity, Thomas fell to his knees and said, “My Lord and my God.” When Thomas finally went, he went the whole distance.
No, it didn’t make headlines in Rome. Outside of the Bible, there are only a few references to the resurrection of Jesus by people who were alive when it happened. Most of these were written at least thirty years later to explain the origin of this new movement called Christian. That’s not surprising. An event that took place in the jungles of Cambodia yesterday morning would not make the front page of the L.A. Times today. It would not even be noticed unless it somehow impacted America. Rome was the same way. It didn’t pay attention to wild stories from the provinces.
The resurrection started out low profile -- at least as far as official notice. That’s also in keeping with the character and purpose of God. God never wants to shock us into faith. He doesn’t want to overwhelm us. But He also doesn’t leave us without evidence.
The evidence is clear enough. It is clear enough that Rabbi Phineas Lapide who is an Orthodox Jewish professor of Scripture has declared his belief that the resurrection happened. He writes in The Resurrection of Jesus, a Jewish Perspective that the sudden rise and worldwide spread of the church could not have been “the result of blind happenstance or human error “ but only of a galvanizing factual event.
Now this doesn’t mean that Lapides became a Christian. He says that Christianity is simply God’s way for the Gentiles while Jews are to stick with Judaism — kind of a dual-track system. But what is interesting is that he was convinced by hard evidence. Peter at Pentecost looks at the same evidence and declares that Jesus is God’s way for all. “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified.”
In May, 1945, the Russian Army liberated the camp where my father was being held. As the German army collapsed and chaos reigned, my dad hiked and hitchhiked a hundred miles to safety in the British lines. He was flown to England in the nose of a bomber and finally came home on the Queen Mary. I have actual video of this event — including a close up of my dad on the rail of the ship — from the old Victory at Sea series.
We’re going to show this during the closing song. “Because He Lives” to remind you that you can also take a journey to freedom. For Jesus has been raised from the dead. It’s not believing “just because.” It is believing “because.” And because Jesus as raised from the dead you can also believe in the forgiveness of your sins, the resurrection of your body and your life everlasting.