Can you believe in something that
you have never seen? How do you know
that something is true if you have never seen it or experienced it
yourself? Those are questions that some
ask in regard to the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate yearly on
Easter Sunday. Some doubt the
resurrection of Jesus because it is difficult for them to grasp how a person
who has died can be brought back to life again.
Believing in something we cannot understand
is not new for modern people. Even with
all the scientific knowledge that exists, there are things that we encounter
daily that are hard for most of us to understand. Each time I flip on the light switch and the
lights come on, I am doing something that I do as a repetitive motion but one
that is not something I truly understand.
I simply know that, unless the electrical power to the house is not working, when I do it
the lights in the light fixture will produce light. The light bulbs themselves are a mystery as to
how they work. Perhaps Thomas Edison
understood how the light bulb worked since he invented them, but for me as an
average consumer I only know that if the light bulb is in the light fixture and
connected to the electrical lines running through the house, then light will be
produced by my action of flipping the light switch.
There are so many innumerable other
things that we do in life that we do not understand that we have grown
accustomed to simply doing them or using them without knowing exactly how they
work and that is the way our lives are ordered.
I use a cell phone and a computer daily and I have no idea how simply
pushing buttons or tapping a keyboard causes words to appear on a screen that I
can print out on a sheet of paper or send electronically to people around the
world. I simply do these things and have
faith that it will work unless there is a problem inside my computer or phone
that causes it not to work (and I don’t understand how that can be either.)
So, we all live our lives daily in
ways in which we place faith in objects or customs to do the things in life we
want to do without understanding how those things work or what causes them to
do what we want them to do. Why is
spiritual faith something that operates out of the normal way of life when it
comes to belief in something that we cannot explain?
When I say that I believe in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, that God raised Jesus from the dead in some
supernatural way, I can believe in that idea without understanding how it
happened. If I believe that there was a
man named Jesus Christ of Nazareth who lived over 2000 years ago in a land we
now call Israel and whose teachings make sense for ordering our lives, then why
can I not take another leap of faith (who is to say that any historical persons
we learned about in school or at church actually existed? We believe in them because we trust the
people who taught us to believe in them.) and say that it is possible that God
(another matter of faith—to believe in God takes faith on the part of the
believer) could raise Jesus from the dead and bring him back to a spiritual
life that is beyond explanation.
The celebration of Easter precedes
the celebration of Christmas by many centuries.
Persons in the Early Church saw the resurrection of Jesus as one of the
hallmarks of what it means to be called a Christian. The life, teachings, and death of Jesus are
vastly important to society and humankind but the resurrection of Jesus sets Christianity
apart from other religions because Christians believe that if Jesus was raised
from the dead, then we too will experience a spiritual resurrection when we
die.
I choose to believe in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, not because I can explain how it happened but
because it gives me hope for the future and purpose in life knowing that this
life is not all there is. I am not
wishing for a quick exit from this life because I enjoy life and living but I
do not have to be afraid of death or dying because God has prepared something
after this life that I believe exists through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Each time I officiate at a funeral I
begin with the same words called “The Word of Grace”. It says, “Jesus said, I am the resurrection
and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they
live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” Those words of Jesus give me hope that
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we all can experience a continued
existence after this one ends. That hope
conquers any fear that society’s ills may produce. We have hope in Christ because Christ has
conquered death and our lives are contained in his life so we too will have
life beyond death when our time comes.
May the love of God, the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be yours both now and always. Amen.
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