Tales of the Unexpected
There are some very strange customs around. Take the village of Braughing in Hertfordshire for example . Each year it celebrates “Old Man’s Day” on October 2. The tradition dates back to 1571, and the funeral of a local farmer by the name of Matthew Wall. On the way to his funeral one of his pallbearers dropped his coffin, which turned out to be very lucky indeed, because the jolt promptly woke Wall up. The farmer would live for over two decades more, finally passing away in 1595. His coming back to life continues to be cause for celebration in Braughing.
During this season of Easter Christians have been celebrating a similar event. Except that in the case of Jesus we believe that (unlike farmer Wall) his resurrection was permanent. After his violent death on Good Friday the women who had followed Jesus in his lifetime came to his tomb to perform the Jewish burial rites on his body. Instead, what they found was a set of grave clothes with no body in them. A short time later one of the women would meet Jesus in person fully alive. Over the next six weeks one biblical writer would record that he appeared to over 500 people. Out of this there are two questions that occur to me.
Firstly, do I really believe what is quite clearly a supernatural event? Don’t corpses rising from the dead belong more to the “Marvel” film franchise than to real life? There are quite a number of arguments set out for the truth of the resurrection, but I will mention just one. Nearly all of Jesus’s original followers died violent deaths. Yet all of them went to these deaths insisting that they had met the risen Jesus. I personally have never heard of people laying down their lives for an outright lie.
My second question is – so what? Even if it’s true, what’s it got to do with me? Jesus answered this question by saying ”I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me shall never die, but will have everlasting life”. He was not saying that physical death is ended, but that beyond this life of trouble and suffering there is another world. One where death is no more and where we can live a vibrant new life. More than that, we can begin to live that life now. Jesus offers to walk with us now and to transform our lives now, living a life free from guilt and shame. A vibrant life that God always intended us to live.
People from all walks of life continue to believe in this event. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, philosophers, factory workers and shopkeepers. Not only do they believe in this event, but they testify to the fact that they are living this vibrant new life now.
The resurrection is a tale of the unexpected. May I suggest that it is a tale worth exploring.