Easter is always interesting, both for believers and non-believers. Every succeeding year causes growing Christians to appreciate more deeply the consequences of the event, and every succeeding year produces anti-resurrection chatter, much of it in the churches themselves.
One expects Jesus’ resurrection to offend outsiders, and especially the secular press which must annually attempt to re-debunk it. For them real resurrection simply cannot be allowed to happen. The very idea violates the faith-presuppositions of all so-called “naturalists” and their passionate religion of “immanence,” i.e., what you see is what you get and it’s all you get. All the tired rhetoric (Jesus swooned and revived, His body was stolen, the apostles were plagiarizers, liars or psychos, etc.) re-appears annually, with now-and-then new “gospels” discovered, even one from Judas, to enlighten us with the real truth. Who is to be believed, Simon Peter who had skin in the game, including the title of “First Pope” riding on the deal, or shamelessly abused Judas who was driven, not by guilt but because he knew too much, to suicide?
Spurgeon explained the phenomenon: “The sun,” he said, “cannot discover herself to a blind man.” Nor to a man who holds both hands over his eyes.
Few can be surprised at such a come-to-pass, but it is troubling to many church-goers to learn that their own pastors—and writing theologians—take the same position as the critics. Sometimes equivocating, sometimes not, pastors are offended at Jesus actually rising from the dead. Flannery O’Connor pinpoints their problem: “’Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,’ The Misfit continued, ‘and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance.’” Theological misfits, ancient and modern, don’t like Jesus acting up and showing up and “throwing” things off balance by walking out of an actual grave.
Once, in a pre-Easter setting, I asked a question of two seminary-trained pastors (true misfits) of churches in my city in a Q&A with other pastors: “Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?” The first immediately said, “No, He didn’t.” The second trumped him: “Well, He did,” then added, astonishingly, “but it didn’t matter.” The odds are that the majority of senior pastors, both Catholic and Protestant (Baptists aren’t technically “Protestant” but count them in as well) in your town would not be bothered by either answer.
It turns out that many things about Jesus offends, indeed, scandalizes, these people: His birth, His sinless life, His teaching, His miracles, His substitutionary and atoning death, His resurrection and His second coming to earth. A British theologian answered the “second coming” question this way during my seminary days: “I am willing to admit that there is a certain ‘not-yetness’ about the Kingdom!” How is that for courage! And a local pastor of a large “mainline” denomination church says openly that he doesn’t believe in an actual hell, and he doesn’t know a single pastor in his denomination who does.
Here is the question: honestly, in what sense can such men call themselves, in any meaningful sense of the words, “Christian ministers?” That is not to berate them. They may choose, if they wish, to believe in, and advocate for, the Church of Penguinism. (Yes, there is one). That is their right. But, denying the pivotal act of Christ’s resurrection (forgetting all the other doctrinal denials), how are they “ministering” in a “Christianly” way. How is the use of the words itself not a demonstrable fraud? Why doesn’t their shame of historic Christianity force them simply to be honest? Why not, openly and honestly, abandon the farce? “I am sorry; I cannot possibly believe this clap-trap any longer, and I here and now resign to pursue an honorable living elsewhere.”
What, one asks, about Jesus’ own offense in all this! That would make a catchy front-page for “Time” or “Newsweek” next Easter! One could cite fifty relevant sentences from Him (all the while assuming He actually lived and we have a trustworthy witness to Him in the New Testament!), but one will more than suffice: “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38) Let every man ponder quietly but soberly the possibility of experiencing unquantifiable shame. With no chance of it ever ending.