Lent #5: Busting Eternity, Breaking Our Minds

This Sunday, something quite amazing will happen. Much of the portion of the world formerly called Christendom, and a good slab of the part that was formerly not, will join together to celebrate an event which defies all logic, science and expectation: the resurrection of the dead.

We will give each other hollow chocolate eggs, or perhaps painted egg shells, representing what? The emoty tomb, and new life. But whose new life? Jesus', of course. And that in itself is problematic, because the resurrection of Jesus is one of the least understood, least examined and least accepted truths in human history. There have been numerous credible works done on why it almost certainly happened, and I have read many of them. But ask me, arme with a lie detector, whether or not I live like it happened, and I will admit, shamefacedly, probably more than a bit anxiously, that I don't. And nor do most of us, Christian or otherwise.

This Sunday, however, we won't just celebrate Jesus' resurrection, though that alone should be challenging enough for us to remember. No, the New Testament made something abundantly clear in how it spoke of Jesus' resurrection: that, if Christ, the true human being, was raised from the dead, then we too would be raised. And, for the early church, this was a deeply transformative belief because it meant that they no longer held on to this life, but to the life that was to come. This is one if the central concepts if the letter to the Hebrews which I am currently reading in my own devotional time: the life to come in Christ is so glorious that we should willingly endure all things in this life in order to make it to the finish line, found in Christ. This idea pervades much of what the Apostle Paul wrote too - and it is something which I am deeply, deeply reluctant to do.

Now, there are multiple reasons people might have for denying that Jesus rose from the dead, most of them variations on the theme that 'the dead simply don't rise from the dead'. Tom Wright has commented in his wonderful work on this topic, 'Surprised By Hope', that this may be a legitimate response but it needs to be made knowingly, consciously, not as a default or passive response.

I personally do not have that option. I have looked at the evidence and have been convinced. I have known the risen Christ and had Him dwell in me. The evidence makes no logical sense of our scientific categories, but it stands there on its own merits, demanding to be heard.

Wright, at the end of his discussion of the topic, issues this challenge:

In so far as I understand scientific method, when something turns up which doesn't fit the paradigm you're working with, one option at least, perhaps when all other have failed, is to change the paradigm - not to exclude everything you've known up to that point, but to include it within a larger whole.

This Easter, confront with me this truth: Jesus rose from the dead, and so will we. Don't dismiss it as blind illogic; a belief which has transformed much of the world at least deserves to be examined on its own merits. So confront it as truth, and see what happens. You'll need a new paradigm to contain what happens, if it even can be contained. It will mess with your head; let it. It will throw your whole life up into the air; let it. The early church, for centuries, let this truth transform them, and they said that the life they gained was far better than the one this paradigm shift forced them to accept. Listen to them. It will hurt, and I will certainly be hurting this Easter. But I'm going to ry and let it run its course in me and see what happens. I may lose everything, but I may also gain so much more in the other side.