Friends,
Happy Easter to all of you! The celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus is the high point of our year for Christians.
In this post about Easter, I want to draw your attention to what’s different about the Gospel or ‘Good News’ of Jesus, from the writings of philosophers and religious and spiritual teachers like Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel etc.
For those of you who’ve read any of them, you know you can find in them ideas, arguments and fine inspirational notions. What all those figures have in common – ancient or modern – is a kind of musing detachment as they talk about high ideas. They’re in a philosophical and calm frame of mind. You can imagine yourself sitting in your favourite chair or park bench or out in nature, contemplating the musings of these influential figures.
Well, there’s all that; and then there’s the Gospel of Jesus. I want us to see the contrast between detached, philosophical musing – as beautiful as that is – and the Gospel. ‘Euangelion’ – the Greek word which is translated as ‘gospel’ – means “good news”.
Now the philosophers and teachers I mentioned earlier are full of deep ideas, but it’s not exactly ‘newsy’. They’re not texts about which you want to say, ‘Hey! Let me tell you about this. Something happened!’
But then, there’s the Gospel. Yes, they’ve inspired philosophers and spiritual teachers, but at their heart, they’re not abstract philosophical musing; they’re the urgent conveying of news: ‘Something happened! And I want you to know about it!’
With that in mind, let’s look at a reading from the Bible from Acts 10: 37-43. This is one of Peter’s speeches in the book of the Bible, called ‘The Acts of the Apostles’.
If you don’t have a copy of the Bible, you can read the passage quoted above online at: https://www.biblegateway.com . Choose the ‘New Living Translation’ from the list, and in the Search box on the Page, you can just copy and paste Acts 10: 37-41; press ‘Enter’, and the quoted Bible passage will appear on your screen.
He begins this way: “You know what happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee, after John began preaching his message of baptism.” (Acts 10:37 – New Living Translation).
So right away, he’s not like Kant or Hegel or Aristotle. He’s not dealing in philosophical abstractions. He’s not trading in mythic narrative. He’s saying, ‘Hey! Did you hear what happened? Let me tell you about this Jesus; this person.’ He’s expecting his readers to say: ‘Yeah, yeah; I remember that.
He goes on to say: “And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). It’s going to be about this Jesus…some of you perhaps heard about him; some of you perhaps saw him or heard him yourselves. I want to tell you about him.
And then this man, “God raised him to life on the third day” (Acts 10:40) after our leaders put him to death (Acts 10:39). Wow! Now that’s a story! That he was a preacher – you heard about him, and our leaders put him to death…yeah, sad end to the story.
But the author of Acts anticipating this response says, ‘No, the story is just beginning! God raised him from the dead!’ We’re not talking about myths here; or about vague abstractions. He’s talking about this Jesus whom he knew; and whom some of his readers would have known or heard about. Something happened to him!
And then this line would have been startling to his readers: “We were those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41).
What! God raised him from the dead? And then he appeared to you? Not as a ghost, or hallucination, or something? (They knew about those phenomena…psychological projections, dreams, even ghosts.)
Something happened! Easter – the resurrection of Jesus from the dead!
Now with all that in mind, let’s look at an account of Jesus’ disciples first encountering the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a reading taken from the ‘Gospel of John’ in the Bible. The reference is: John 20:1-9. (If you want to refer to it yourself, you can do this as described above).
One of the things that’s striking about this account, is the amount of running that’s going on in the story. Mary Magdalene runs to find Peter and John. Peter and John run to the tomb. And it’s emphasised that John ran faster than Peter.
I can’t really imagine Aristotle or Plato or Kant or Hegel running 😊…I see them sitting at a desk; maybe teaching a class at a university; maybe walking around with their disciples…running?
Why do people run? One reason is because they’ve got something to tell you. There’s something urgent going on. People don’t run when they’re trading in nice, edifying abstractions. They run when they’ve got some urgent news to communicate.
Let’s look now at how the story unfolds: Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early on Sunday morning (John 20:1). I love the detail of this story. It has the vivid sense of something remembered, like when you’re telling a story of something that happened to you – not just an abstract myth – you remember these details.
She comes early – it says, “while it was still dark” – very early in the morning.
Why has she come? Why does anyone come to a cemetery or a grave? She’s come to mourn; she’s probably crying; she’s come to remember what Jesus meant to her.
But what does she find? “the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.” This giant stone that they had put in front of this cave-like tomb. Obviously, something happened.
Who would have rolled that stone? Something happened here; and so, she runs to tell them: ‘Hey! They’ve taken the Lord away’ (John 20:2).
And so, Peter and John run to the tomb (John 20:3-4). The detail in the account that John outpaces Peter, contributed to the conversion of Graham Greene, the great English novelist. He said that one of the things that contributed to it was this story. Because his novelist’s eye caught this detail and he asked himself, ‘Why would they have included that? If they’re trading in some myth or abstraction or some made-up story, they wouldn’t have put that in. They put that in, because it was vividly remembered.’
They get to the tomb…John first, but he waits and when Peter catches up to him, they look in (John 20:5-8). Mary Magdalene simply noticed the stone rolled away; but now they look in. Jesus is gone; the body is gone, but the burial cloths remain.
First of all, that’s weird! Because if the body had been stolen, why would they bother unwrapping him? Wouldn’t they have just picked up the body and taken it? They would want to get out of there as quickly as possible. Would they have meticulously unwrapped the body, before stealing it? So, the fact that the burial cloths are there, is in itself weird.
But secondly, the cloth that was around his head it says, “folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings.”
First of all, notice the vivid memory of these little details. And see what struck them as so strange. Let’s say the grave robbers did decide to unwrap Jesus’ body and take the burial cloths off. Why would they arrange them beautifully on the burial shelf there? Whey would they fold up the cloth around his head? It doesn’t make any sense. Something happened! Something very weird happened in this tomb!
It says that when John looked in and saw what I’ve just described, he believed (John 20:8).
What did he come to believe? Not that someone had broken into the tomb. That was Mary Magdalene’s assumption: ‘they’ve taken the body of the Lord’ (John 20:2). Not that someone had broken in, but a weirder fact: that Jesus had broken out!
Resurrection faith begins in this startling moment, when they realised that death does not have the final word.
These followers of Jesus that loved him; they were his friends who were amazed at him. They were convinced that he was the Messiah of Israel. But his death on a Roman cross had dashed their hopes. The road to Emmaus story (Luke 24:13-35) was all about that. ‘We thought he was the one. But his death on that Roman cross…if someone’s put to death by the enemies of Israel, there’s no way he’s the Messiah.’ Not only were they mourning him, they were mourning their own dashed hopes; the thought that they’d wasted those years of their lives; they were deeply hurt and disappointed…all of that.
But when John looks in, and he sees the empty tomb and he sees those burial cloths, he comes to believe. Jesus had broken out of the tomb!
Because God’s love is more powerful than death itself. And this means – and this is the heart of Easter faith – all of our assumptions have to be rearranged. This means that everything we’ve assumed about the nature of things is undone. This means that the world has been turned upside down. There’s a revolution in that literal sense of a turning around; a turning upside down, of all expectations.
We live now, in a new world. It’s the only way to understand the first Christians and their message. They’re not like the disciples of Confucius or Aristotle saying, ‘Let me tell you about this new teaching’. Nothing as bland as that!
They’re telling you the world has changed. And that’s called, to this day – evangelisation. ‘Euangelion’ – “good news”. Something happened!
And now, it’s for all of us to run out to the world, with that great message.
Happy Easter!
Content Credit: Bishop Robert Barron
