For Jesus it was all going so well until he started making explicit, outrageous claims. His opponents must have secretly rejoiced. The theologically educated among them had known almost from the outset that he had been implying he was unique and not just another in a long line of teachers, scholars and prophets. They had detected early on that he was claiming to be God. They deserve some credit for this, because a number of those closest to Jesus took a while to catch on. But then he began to be more explicit about this claim until he succeeded in driving away many of his own supporters. On some occasions he was so clear about it that his original hearers were outraged; they started picking up stones to throw at him. Somehow he escaped. Every leader makes mistakes. Great leaders learn from them. But apparently not Jesus. Instead of dialling back his claims, he continued to make them and started heading for the place where they would cause him the most trouble – Jerusalem.
There’s little evidence that Jesus was driven to Jerusalem
by events; there is considerable evidence that he headed there quite
deliberately. This would seem to be a miscalculation of historic proportions.
It’s not as though he was naïve about the dangers. Indeed, he seems to have been
very aware that the main result of heading to Jerusalem would be his own death.
And he provided strong hints about the events that would immediately precede
his death, and even the manner of his death. His immediate circle managed to stick
with him all the way, until, at the last, it was too much for even them. One
of them eventually conspired with the authorities to have Jesus arrested and the
rest quietly disappeared and hid. Once he was arrested, they knew what the
likely outcome was. They also knew that having stuck with Jesus as long as they
had, once the authorities had dealt with him, they’d likely be next. They
observed the apparently final events of Jesus’ relatively short life from what
they thought was a safe distance. So much, then, for his bold claims. Like so
many before and since, their boldness was no protection against the cold
realities of political and institutional calculation and power. And that should
have been that. The cleverer of his sayings might live on. Some of his more
calculating followers might profit from his death by turning it into some kind
of noble sacrifice with a cult following. But his real influence had ended, and
any cult that grew up around him would be trivial. And of course, if anyone
actually thought about what he had said, it would be clear what a charlatan he
really was. In the light of his death, none of his claims were believable, because they were not true. God indeed!
And then what happened next, happened. There’s lots of
detail that can be examined at leisure. But the big picture is this – He did
exactly what you would expect if every one of His claims were true. It was the surprise
that no one expected. Certainly not his friends and former followers. Certainly
not his enemies. They did expect trouble of course. In His life, Jesus had caused
quite a stir. Aspects of His trial and death had been quite controversial. Some
of them predicted that His followers, to substantiate the claims He had made in
life, would steal His body and then make yet more bizarre claims on His behalf.
As they weren’t idiots, they took sensible precautions to prevent this from
happening. They needn’t have bothered. Jesus followers were in no state to
perpetrate further fraud. And they needn’t have bothered because in reality
they could do nothing to stop what happened next.
The thing about God is that He is God. He is not a big
version of us. He’s not a slightly more powerful president or prime minister.
He’s God. And even death itself has no hold on him. At this point I have to
confess that it’s quite hard for the believer (which is what I am) not to get a bit excited.
The events of the Sunday morning following the Friday night have been prodded,
poked, stared at, examined, dissected, discussed and debated ever since they occurred.
That something happened, no one disputes. What happened is critical and
therefore has been a matter of dispute right from the start. I’m not going to
go through it all here, for the simple reason that you can read the eye
witness testimony for yourself in the Gospel accounts. I think
those early accounts are compelling and on reflection persuasive. But here’s
the thing. If you were going to make up a story that might be persuasive, it
would not be the one that you find in those accounts. It’s just not that believable.
It is an apparent fact of our experience that human beings
once dead stay dead. I’ve been at a number of funerals and thanksgiving
services. I was at another one last week. The sadness and grieving on such occasions is real and occurs precisely because everything we experience tells us that the dead, once
dead, stay dead. That’s why there is that sense of loss and of parting. That’s
also why Jesus’ closest friends, when told that He’d been seen alive, responded
exactly the way you or I would have responded. They didn’t believe it. It’s why
two of his friends could find themselves walking beside Jesus, and not recognise
Him. Of course they didn’t. He was dead, this person was alive, therefore the
one person it could not be was Jesus. Their logic was impeccable, and their
perception followed it completely. But eventually the evidence overcame their
previous experience, and they came to see the truth of the matter. He was
alive. And all of His claims, all of the things He had done, all of those qualities
He had demonstrated, it all made sense. They didn’t take a leap into the dark,
they were persuaded.
One of His friends has gone down in history as a sceptic. “Doubting”
Thomas was no more than a sensible human being who knew what you and I know. He
was a scientist before his time and proposed an experiment that, in the event, he
never had to run. He knew what crucifixion involved, and proposed a simple test
when told Jesus was alive. But the evidence of his own experience was so clear,
so incontrovertible, that rather than prod and poke the living Jesus as he had
proposed, all he could do was gasp his worship in amazement when he himself saw
Jesus. He along with the others spent the rest of their lives reporting what
they had seen, even at the cost of those lives.
If they were going to invent a
believable story, a story that would be an easy sell, this was not it. If they
were going to construct a case for Jesus being who He claimed to be, then this
was a desperately risky strategy. One bone of Jesus body would be enough to
torpedo the credibility of it all. If it was a concoction, an elaborate
hoax, then if just one of their number cracked, the whole edifice would come
tumbling down. As compelling as Jesus had been before His death, if he was
still dead this was not a web worth spinning. It was unlikely to stand any
test, let alone the test of time.
Yet here we are.
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