Resurrection and Revolution

For the last four weeks, we’ve been engaged in a study called Storytellers in which we’ve been attempting to summarize and re-tell the entire biblical story. We bring the series to a close now on this Resurrection Sunday as we consider the meaning of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead in light of the entire biblical narrative. How does Jesus’s resurrection make sense within the story the Bible has been telling?

I have been a professing Christian for practically my entire life; I certainly do not know a time in which I would have said I was nota Christian. But it wasn’t until ten years ago—yes, I can trace it back to exactly Easter 2015[1]—that I finally began to grasp how the resurrection of Jesus fit into the entire narrative of Scripture and why, as Paul the apostle said, “if Christ has not been raised, then [our] faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). Not that I have now come to a perfect understanding on this subject—I feel today much like I have felt for the past decade of Easter Sundays, that there are new treasures just waiting to be discovered. But I’m guessing that, if I went so long without seriously grasping what the resurrection of Jesus means, then there are probably plenty of other genuine Christians who haven’t quite got a grasp on it either.

Don’t be too ashamed to admit this! After all, when Jesus announced that he would be killed and then rise from the dead on the third day, his own disciples weren’t quite sure what he was talking about, “what this rising from the dead might mean” (Mk 9:10). Why were they confused? Because the resurrection did not seem to make sense in the story. What story? The story of creation and fall, the story of God’s promise to Abraham, in which God said that through Abraham’s family salvation would come to God’s creation. How could a crucified and resurrected Messiah fit into that story? It does fit, of course; but Jesus himself had to explain how it fit to two of his baffled disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-27). Yes, it fits in the story quite satisfactorily, like placing that final piece in a very large jigsaw puzzle. At the same time, once this piece is in place, you will see the picture of the biblical story in a very different light. Thus, the New Testament: a re-reading and re-interpretation of the entire Old Testament story in light of the resurrection of Jesus. Thus, the church of Jesus: the true members of Abraham’s family, inspired to live in every time and every place in the light of the resurrection’s new creation power and hope.

Because, of course, what the Christian faith says is that what happened to Jesus is what will happen for all who belong to him. What the resurrection of Jesus means for him it also means for us. On this Easter Sunday, consider three things that the resurrection of Jesus means: that death has been defeated, that the story has been fulfilled, and that this message must be proclaimed to everyone.

The Defeat of Death

First, the resurrection of Jesus means that death has been defeated. Ok, but what does that mean exactly?

Life After Death

At this point, we simply have to insist on what the resurrection of Jesus means over against its various misconceptions in the popular imagination. We have to first say something about what the resurrection of Jesus does not mean in spite of the fact that this is sometimes what people think it means. The Christian message is often confused right here and in particular at the one place it ought to be explained loud and clear: at a funeral.

Resurrection language is used all the time at funerals, even Christian funerals, as some sort of proof that the deceased is really not dead after all, despite what you see right there in the casket. They are alive, we are often told, alive in heaven. Jesus was raised from the dead, so those who are dead are not really dead after all.

The resurrection of Jesus is not meant to prove that there is life after death. Resurrection, the kind we’re talking about here on Easter morning, simply does not mean that.

Here in this passage, we see that the resurrected Jesus came and “stood among” his disciples “and said to them, ‘Peace to you!’” (v. 36). Notice the reaction of the disciples. “But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit” (v. 37). A spirit: that is, a disembodied entity, a ghostly appearance of a person whose body had stopped living. Whatever we might think about the “afterlife,” the resurrection of Jesus is not about that. It is talking about a reality, not about life after death, but the life that comes after that.

The point is emphasized in our passage. No reason to be afraid (as we would all be if we encountered a spirit, let’s be honest), no reason to doubt, Jesus says. “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (v. 39). And just to drive home the utterly human, utterly physical presence of the resurrected body of Jesus, he asks for something to eat. And, having been handed a piece of broiled fish, “he took it and ate before them” (v. 43).

The resurrection is about real “flesh and bone” bodies, very much alive in the same body that had previously been dead. That is what happened to Jesus. It is what will happen to us. This is a critical distinction. Compromise on this, and we are missing the biblical message.

“Salvation” does not mean “dying and going to heaven. . . .” If your body dies and your soul goes into a disembodied immortality, you have not been rescued from death; you have, quite simply, died.[2]

All Is (Not) Vanity

But let’s also be clear that this very-much-alive body of Jesus following his resurrection is not the same kind of “resurrection” that others are said to have had. History, including biblical history, has plenty of examples of people who have died and then come back alive. This is not one of those examples.

What’s the difference with the resurrection of Jesus? Here we find the claim not that Jesus went into death and came back from it, but rather that he went into death and went straight through it. The difference is that the resurrected body of Jesus was now immortal, unable to die. All other so-called “resurrections” are not of the same kind, because in every case those who were said to have had such an experience ended up dying again, and finally.

So, what does this mean? It means that at the resurrection of Jesus the defeat of death is announced. And since death is that fearsome reality which prompts us toward nihilism, the resurrection of Jesus is the spectacular announcement that moves us in the opposite direction: material existence and physical reality is decidedly not meaningless, and definitely not in vain.

Real Hope

Christians have long confessed that we believe “in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting,” so it is high time that we wake-up to what we have been saying all along and stop settling for lesser possibilities. For so long we’ve been talking about our hope being “in heaven,” with the result that we haven’t thought that there really was much hope for earth. That leaves us stuck with a real vanity: the pursuit of progress as our only hope. We all fall into it. We talk about leaving the world better than we found it, of doing what we can to give to our children and grandchildren a better life than we ourselves had. The problem is not that we ought not do such things; the problem is that “progress leaves the victims behind” with a future that can never “repair the past.”[3]

Utopia can be no compensation for those who have suffered history. It leaves the dead dead.[4]

Now, can’t you see what “the resurrection of the dead” means? It means that there is real hope, not just for the future, but also for the past. Resurrection—immortal bodies—is the distinctly Christian hope, and its main opponent is the pagan scheme that far too many Christians actually believe in: immortal souls. The two are not the same thing, and only the Christian hope offers real hope because it does not compromise with death. It defeats it.

The Fulfillment of the Story

But, next, the resurrection of Jesus is not just a religious claim or a religious doctrine about death. The resurrection of Jesus, given its claim of historical reality, is all about the entire story of the world. In fact, the resurrection of Jesus means that the story has been fulfilled.

Remembering the Biblical Promise

What shall we say about the biblical story? For far too long and for far too many people, the biblical story has been all about personal, individual salvation, about the destiny of the disembodied soul after death, about “going to heaven when I die,” about not going to the other place when my mortal body takes its final breath. Please hear me: it is not that the Bible has nothing to say about such things. It’s just that on these matters the Bible doesn’t actually say very much (there’s some Easter controversy for you), because there is a much larger picture that occupies the pages of Scripture.

What is that larger picture? We must get this straight, even if it feels a bit like we are going upstream from what we have long thought the story was all about. The larger picture is about a promise that God has made, a promise that comes in God’s covenant with Abraham. This larger plan has to do with saving human beings, but it is the salvation of human beings for the purpose of those rescued human beings becoming participants in God’s larger plan of saving the entire creation. Salvation comes to us so that it can then also be done through us. Ok, do you see the big picture now?

Everything Has Been Fulfilled

If so, then here is the good news. This larger plan of God, the purpose for which he rescues human beings in the first place, has now been brought to fulfillment in the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.

Don’t take my word for it. Right here in our text, the resurrected Jesus reminds his disciples that this is what he has been up to all along. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (v. 44). Now I probably don’t have to tell you that Jesus is never mentioned in the Old Testament. What does he mean that the entire Old Testament—that’s what Jesus means by speaking of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms—what does he mean that the Old Testament was “written about” him? Of course he is speaking of its prophecies, prophecies that he says have now been fulfilled. But it’s not that there are cute predictions about what would happen to Jesus thrown in here and there for those who are fascinated with that kind of thing. Jesus is saying that the entire biblical story in the Old Testament was about him.

What do we find in the Old Testament? We find the story of ancient Israel, of course; because (remember now) the promise of God was that through Abraham’s family—that is, through Israel—the blessing of God would come to all creation. And the New Testament is at pains to say that it has now all happened, yes, through Israel. Because as Israel’s Messiah, as Israel’s true representative, the single plan of God has been achieved, exactly as God had said.

Verse 45 says, “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” There it is: like getting the key to the cipher, the Old Testament scriptures have been unlocked by the achievement of Jesus during Holy Week. “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” (v. 46). The death and resurrection of Jesus, which must be held together to see the plan of God unfold, are what has brought to fulfillment the single plan of God which is what the Bible is all about. So, do you see it now?

The Kingdom and Repentance

If so, then the implications for life after Easter also flow naturally from the biblical story that has been brought to fulfillment through Israel, that is, through Israel’s Messiah.

Jesus’s life message, “the gospel of God,” was this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:15). Here in our passage, the resurrected Jesus says, in verse 47, “Now that I have fulfilled everything, it is time for repentance for the forgiveness of sins to be proclaimed in my name to all nations starting with Jerusalem.” What is the relationship between the kingdom of God and “repentance for the forgiveness of sins”?

Be careful here that, in answering this question, you don’t completely abandon what the story has been about all along. The resurrection of Jesus can help, so long as we remember what it means.

The resurrection is not an isolated supernatural oddity proving how powerful, if apparently arbitrary, God can be when he wants to. Nor is it at all a way of showing that there is indeed a heaven awaiting us after death. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.[5]

The kingdom of God on earth means a revolutionary challenge to all other earthly kingdoms. To “repent” in light of this challenge would mean, not simply to “stop doing bad things” but to change your allegiance from one kingdom to another. “Repent” is a political call even more than it is a moral call, more like “Surrender!” than “Stop sinning!”

And what about the “forgiveness of sins”? Sin in our story, remember, has to do with the failed human vocation, the result of which is the loss of the glory God created us to have and to reflect into his world. Because of sin, death reigns, corruption reigns, chaos reigns. But because of the resurrection of Jesus, the reign of sin and death, of corruption and chaos, has ended. The glory of God can be restored in us as we abandon one way of life and follow Jesus, trusting him for a different and better one.[6]

Jesus has brought the great biblical story to its fulfillment, so we must not ever be coaxed into believing that salvation (the rescue of our embodied lives and realities) can be found in anyone else. That’s what his resurrection means.

The Proclamation of the Message

Now, since the resurrection of Jesus means that death has been defeated and that the stunning promise of the entire biblical story has reached its fulfillment, this necessarily means that this message must be proclaimed to everyone. That’s what Jesus says here in verse 47, “that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.” And then he told his disciples, “You are witnesses of these things.” They who had seen the great story reach its fulfillment were the ones who simply had to carry this good news to the whole world.

Jesus Is Lord

What is it that Jesus said his disciples were now witnesses of? What would be their testimony? What would they have to say?

We are asking a very central question here, aren’t we? “Repentance for the forgiveness of sins” is the message, but as we’ve seen, this is a political message as much as it is a moral one. It is about one’s allegiance now more than it is about one’s destiny later.

In Romans 1:4, Paul says that “by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” was “declared to be the Son of God in power.” This Jesus who humbled himself and was “obedient to the point of . . . even death on a cross” has been highly exalted by God the Father, so that the message we are to carry into the world, at least in the simplest form I think we can say it is this: Jesus Christ is Lord! (Phil 2:11).

That slogan, in the wake of Jesus’s resurrection in the first century, was as revolutionary as it gets. In Jewish practice, Lordwas reserved for Yahweh; the earliest Christians were already calling the risen Jesus by that name, which is a good way to get yourself stoned for blasphemy.[7] Furthermore, all over the Roman empire, there were public inscriptions announcing, “Caesar is Lord.” This early Christian slogan, announcing that Jesus is the one and only Lord of the world, meant that Caesar was not, regardless of Rome’s propogandist claims.[8]That would be the kind of thing that could get you killed for treason.

Revolutionary Power

In the place you and I live, brothers and sisters, we’ve lost the revolutionary power of “Jesus is Lord.” But it’s not because we live in a democratic society where you can say such things without fearing it will get you in trouble with the government of the day. I still regard that as a good thing. Praise God we can say on this Easter Sunday, “Jesus is Lord!” without fear for our lives.

The reason we’ve lost the power is because we’ve forgotten where the power comes from. It does not come from our political affiliations, from insisting on our rights, from boycotts and social media efforts.

Look at what Jesus says in verse 49. “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” He’s talking about the revolutionary power of God’s Holy Spirit which comes upon the believers in Acts 2.

Blessing the World

Read the book of Acts and you’ll see what this revolutionary power looked like in the wake of Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection from the dead. The power of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized church of the Lord Jesus Christ effected the greatest revolution to ever happen in human history, just as it was promised by God in the Abrahamic covenant: in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Blessed, not cursed. Jesus did not come to condemn the world (it was condemned already), but to save it (Jn 3:17). The revolutionary power of the resurrection is not, “Jesus is Lord,” so let’s go shove it down their throats, show them who’s boss. No, the mission of the church is not to prepare for Jesus to be king but to implement the reality that he has already become king, to make it known to all, in word and in deed that Jesus is Lord of all. This is the revolutionary power the world needs to see again, and the way they will see it, by God’s design, is through God’s people who accept the challenge of living by this faith that Jesus is Lord (and, therefore, that no one else is).

We know the answer to the question, “Who is the world’s true Lord?” Our challenge in our day is to believe the answer we know, to put it into action in our lives.

What might that look like? How do you see the world with Jesus now in charge?

This will take serious imagination, imagination fuelled by reflection and prayer at the foot of the cross and before the empty tomb, imagination that will discern the mysteries of God’s judgment on evil and God’s reaffirmation, through resurrection, of his beautiful creation.[9]

This is our challenge, church. Oh, but because Jesus is Lord, it will be worth all the effort we can give by the power of his Spirit.

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[1] This is because I owe so much to my reading for Easter 2015 of N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003).

[2] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 235.

[3] Richard Bauckham and Trevor A. Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 23.

[4] Bauckham and Hart, Hope Against Hope, 24.

[5] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007), 246.

[6] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 258.

[7] Gordon D. Fee, Philippians, vol. 11, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, ed. Grant R. Osborne (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 101.

[8] Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 156.

[9] Wright, Surprised by Hope, 236.