THE REV. DR. G. MALCOLM SINCLAIR

   With Easter coming on, it is important revisit the Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah. Ink has been squandered and blood split over this one, long before I waded in, so let us risk a little more for the sake of clarity. A dialogue between Bishop N.T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan has made the options clear for me. They are these:

JESUS WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD. THEREFORE HE IS THE LONG-AWAITED MESSIAH. (This is the notion of HISTORY REMEMBERED).

   This conviction takes the heart of the Gospels literally. Jesus was a unique human being, and a singular, once-only thing happened to him at the end of his life. To go this route blows the end out of our expectations and experiences in living thus far. It says never mind the way the world works. Never mind the laws of science and the testimony of eons of history. When the right person arrives in the right moment, all bets are off. This is equal to the arrival of aliens from outer space. Upon their landing, all past history is out of bounds and out of date. But as we see, the old rules still apply and the old boundaries are firmly in place.

   If Jesus of Nazareth were literally raised from the dead then that would mean we are all at the whim of some unseen force somewhere who turns everything upside down to suit a display in the moment, or to complete some dark and hidden grand scheme. Oh, there is Mystery, and it is alive, but come on people!  It isn’t ham-fisted like that. We aren’t misguided in our general sense of things in the living world, and we aren’t fools. Whatever this story in the Gospels is about, it can’t be about that as presented.

The second option goes like this:

OUR THEOLOGICAL CONVICTION IS THAT THE MESSIAH SHALL BE RAISED FROM THE DEAD. WE BELEIVE THAT JESUS IS THE MESSIAH, THEREFORE IN TELLING OF HIM, WE INCLUDE THAT HE WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD. (This is known as PROPHECY HISTORICIZED).

  This option sees the Gospels as church-sanctioned stories for teaching its deep theological convictions. They present, in incidental form, embellished portraits of life with Messiah in the midst. The Gospels show what the community of faith can and will look like when we are in the company of God. There is healing, teaching, political courage, social integration, and the rise of hope. The death of the Messiah previews our own inevitable clash with the forces that oppose such gracious things. The raising of the Messiah, in the story, expresses our hope that the sacred will be victorious, and the dead in faith, the martyrs and freedom-fighters, shall be recognized and restored.

   This understanding of the Resurrection makes the epic of Jesus a “rallying cry” around which to gather, and a “portrait” of the victory so deeply sensed in us even in the chaos.

This portrait sees us living until we die, and risking faithful engagement with the enemy whether we live or die. Its faith is in the progress of the Sacred in bringing deep and true things to fruition forever. This too is a conviction extrapolated from life experience, but to me, it keeps us right in this world as we explore the possibilities of faithful living.                                                                                                                         Jesus of Nazareth is as dead as any first century human being. But life for us was never simply about physical living and dying. The halo cast by of our living years and the patina thrown by our afterglow are also the stuff that feeds faith and hope. Jesus, the Messiah, is alive like that

  I know which Resurrection option I must choose. It goes with my nature and comes from my experience in life. The Resurrection of the Messiah is the best part of the tale for me. It says that braving faith is worth it, and that defending faith is our greatest human gift to the world.