Resurrection: the vindication of the Christ

Humanity, in killing Jesus, killed the one who bore the image of God. How could this be atoned? Who can wipe out the horizon? Surely this guilt will remain with us forever! In this act of murder we are all guilty, if not individually but as universally human. There can now be no doubt about our sin, found not in some far dystopian communist or fascist country but right here at home among the people of God, Israel, and by association the Church. Is not the discovery of sexual abuse, committed by the ordained, yet another confirmation? It is clear now, after the murder of Jesus, that we do not see our own sin but that it must be revealed to us by God. To become Christian is to become a self-conscious sinner. The crucifixion is that revelation.

The current ideology, that Christianity may be summed up in the imperative to love, masks the darker imperative for the self to be broken on the cross, to be baptised into the death of Christ and hence to share in his resurrection. The cross unmasks our humanism that tells us that we are OK. To once again quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer; "When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die." Without this death love is impossible.

If the legend of resurrection had not been written, first by Paul and then by all the evangelists, it may not have occurred to us that we were steeped in sin. After all, Jesus was just another victim of Roman tyranny, there were plenty of those at the time.The one we put to death is vindicated by being raised from the dead. The tables have been turned. We the judges are now the judged and the one we judged is raised in glory to sit at the right hand of God.

Paul continues:

^"Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" (Acts 2:37)

This moment of realisation of our true identity, when we are cut to the heart, is bitter sweet. It is bitter because we now know that the game is up; we are not good persons as we have been pretending all our lives. It is sweet because we recognise the truth about ourselves; that the ego will assert its righteousness even in the most blatant wrong-doing and fault. Pretence is over and resurrection life has begun. We imitate the trajectory of Jesus who had to die before He was raised. We have to let go of ourselves. We can no longer be our own project because we now know we are unable.

The answer to the men who asked "Brothers, what shall we do?" is to be baptised, that sacrament in which we all go down into the waters of death only to rise to resurrection life in Christ. This is the centre of Christian faith without which we would be reduced to talking about love being the solution to all things as if that kind of love is in our power. It is no wonder that every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection.

None of this understanding would come to us if we did not have the legend of resurrection. "Legend" here stands for the interpretation of the crucifixion without which Jesus would be just another dead man. It is the result of theological reflection concerning the puzzling figure that came among us from obscurity to obscurity but nevertheless destroyed our world. We must rid ourselves of the notion that truth only resides in fact; that pernicious conclusion of Enlightenment rationalism, that unless the resurrection can be taken as an historical event of the flesh then the Church must fall.

Timothy sums it all up:"Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory." (1Tim.3:16)