Unexplaining

How do you explain it?

This wild and way out there idea that Jesus of Nazareth, lived and died…lay in a tomb for three days….and then walked out. Alive. Not dead any more. But fully alive. More alive, even, than before he was killed on that cross.

That’s the outrageous claim of four ancient documents that we know today as the Gospels.

That’s the story that followers of Christ all over the world, all through these past two thousand years, starting from that very first century, have claimed as their pivotal truth.

Jesus died, was buried and rose again.

How do you explain it?

If you’re Canadian journalist and ecologist Rex Weyler, author of the book The Jesus Sayings you would describe a “radical, Aramaic-speaking, Jewish Jesus” who made no divine claims, required no supernatural beliefs from his audience, and demanded action in the here and now. Weyler’s Jesus had little to do with eternity. It was people later on who imposed that on his story. For Weyler, a resurrection isn’t necessary to follow Jesus.

If you’re York University professor Barrie Wilson, author of the book How Jesus Became Christian, you follow that line of thinking and regard Jesus as a Jewish rabbi essentially hijacked by “Christifiers”, overly zealous religious people trying to make Jesus something he was not. For Wilson, the resurrection is just a wild story Jesus’ followers made up to help push their own agenda and gain a following.

If you’re Tom Harper, described as Canada's best known spiritual author, journalist, and TV host, and the author of The Pagan Christ, Jesus didn’t even exist at all. He was instead a mythological figure, not unlike stories found in ancient Egypt and other pagan cultures. For Harper the resurrection is part of the myth.

And if you’re Andrew Lloyd Webber, creative genius and well known writer of so many well loved musicals…Jesus Christ Superstar being just one….Jesus was a first century rabbi that let things get “so out of hand”. So much so that Judas becomes the hero when he puts an end to the dangerous nonsense by turning Jesus into the authorities. For Webber, there is no resurrection at all. Just the crazed and desperate imaginings of grief stricken disciples.

And there are other explanations. You probably know some. The swoon theory, the mistaken tomb theory, the disciples stole the body theory.

Over time, this incredible story has had so much scrutiny, so many attempts to explain it.

So…how do you explain it?

The truth is, I think the idea is beyond explanation.

Sort of like, why I’m even here this morning.

When I look back at my life, and some of the things I’ve been through, there’s no explanation for that either. That I would even be here, Easter Sunday morning 2010. When I consider the enormity of some of the things that have come at me, and their potential to destroy me. I should not be here this morning. And I’m not overstating that.

Some of what has come at me was my own doing. Like when my desperate need for control and perfection, my abject terror at the mere whiff of failing, my desire for approval and status, had me on self destruct, working insanely.

To the point where I became completely depleted of all my own resources…face down in the muck of my own doings, completely exhausted and totally unable to rescue myself.

Some of what’s come at me has not been my own doing, but the results of what others have brought to my life.

I have been crumpled on the floor in excruciating grief. Knocked flat by unspeakable breaches of trust. Struck down by unimaginable betrayals at the deepest core level of who I am. Laid waste by hatred. Crushed by despair. All of it rendering me helpless. At times, looking for that ultimate escape.

So technically, realistically, I shouldn’t be here. But I am. And I have no explanation for that…except this. Jesus is alive.

Yes, I’ve read the books, I’ve chased down some controversies, I’ve read and watched The DaVinci Code. I know that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is really hard to explain.

And I can’t explain it in any other way except to take at face value. Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s the same power that raised Jesus from the dead that gives me what I need to live.

And to live big. Not just merely surviving the devastations of my story, but to be lifted up and out of them by a power way beyond myself to higher places of strength and joy and becoming and life! And all without any of my life circumstances changing.

I was helpless. No power of my own. But a power was given to me. The power to live.

And I know your stories would bring the same evidence of that same power. That many of you here this morning know the same thing I know. We shouldn’t be here. Except there’s a power that’s been poured into our living that makes it possible, makes it amazing.

How do you explain it?

I don’t think you do.

I think maybe you just claim it.

And echo the words of Paul from his letter to the Philippians in chapter 3.

⁷But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

It's my only explanation for my life.