The Scripture Reading this week is Luke 24:36-48
The Sermon title is Proof?
Early Thoughts: How do you prove Resurrection? Is that really what we need to do anyway?
I have heard more than one Easter Sunday sermon trying to "prove" the historic reality of a bodily resurrection. At times I have wondered if that is somehow what I am supposed to do on Easter Sunday. I have a strong sense that trying to provide some form of rational scientific proof of the Resurrection is missing the point.
That being said, the Gospels, particularly the Gospels of Luke and John (the last 2 Gospels put into written form) spend a bit of space showing how the resurrection was proved to the earliest disciples. In John's Gospel we have the famous story of "Doubting Thomas" and in Luke we have this story, which seems to have more than a few similarities.
Among the arguments used to cast doubt on the reality of Easter have been: Jesus was not really dead, someone stole his body so they could spread "fake news", people were having hysterical visions born of trauma and grief,it is all some grand ghost story. None of these attempts to explain away the Resurrection end up matching the evidence. First off, if an Empire wants you dead and has you in custody, you are not going to survive. Jesus was surely dead. In fact the few non-Biblical sources from that era to mention Jesus mention that he was put to death. The prevalence of the second argument is shown by the fact that Matthew includes a reference to it in his Gospel. However, even though the last few years have shown us that fake or alternative news can indeed have real power to shape attitudes, the stolen body hypothesis does not account for the ongoing power of the movement, the transformation of its followers from folk huddled in hiding to evangelists spreading across the Empire and risking their own lives.
Both Doubting Thomas and this week's story from Luke (which I really think have a common memory source since there are such clear similarities) deal more with objections 3 and 4, especially with the 4th, the whole ghost story thing. Mass hysteria and collective visions have never made much sense to me. What are the odds of it happening? In 1 Corinthians 15, his magisterial chapter on Resurrection, Paul claims Christ appeared to 500 people at once (1 Cor 15:6). IN this week's passage the heavy emphasis on body also speaks against a vision of some sort. (On the other hand I would say that the experience of Paul himself as described in Acts is more like a mystical vision than anything else--but that is a single person, the odds of a room full of people having the same mystical experience at the same time are long. That emphasis on the body, on this is someone you can touch, someone who eats, someone who hears and speaks also are a direct counter to the "it is only a ghost" or "only the spirit" arguments as well. Here is the body of Jesus interacting with his friends.
Is Luke offering this as proof of a bodily resurrection? I think he is.
To be totally honest I wrestle with the empty tomb stories. In the last couple of decades my wrestling has largely been focused to the fact I doubt the existence of a tomb at all -- executed prisoners were often left on the cross as a warning to other possible trouble-makers, and even if they were to be buried it is likely in a mass unmarked grave of some sort. When I was younger I wrestled with the stories on the basis that they made little logical scientific sense. But the mystic that resides (sometimes deeply buried) inside me has come to appreciate the truth of the line from Hamlet "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Or in more traditional faith language "all things are possible with God". Over time I have pretty much dropped a desire to know for certain, to have Easter proved as a historic reality.
From the very beginning people have struggled with the Easter story. People have struggle with "what really happened". The very fact that we have stories such as this week's reading show that to be true. If everyone automatically accepted the truth of the empty tomb narrative there would have been no need for this story.
In the end I think we can never prove what really happened at Easter. We can never really prove if there was a tomb, or a giant rock blocking the entryway. We can never prove a bodily resurrection, we can never disprove it either. All we can do is hear the witness of the ages.
For almost 2000 years people have had mystical and mysterious experiences of the real presence of the Risen Christ. And they have passed those stories down to us. Those experiences, some of which were focused on a body, some of which have been described more like visions, changed those who had them and changed those who were told about them. That, to me, is the proof that Easter, that resurrection is real. It made a difference, it changed people, it still changes people. Maybe that is all the proof we need? (I am pretty sure it is all the proof we are going to get.)
--Gord
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