Magyar Egyház, 1963 (42. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1963-03-01 / 3. szám

10

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

who cannot accept the hard particularity of this Christian faith, and the blunt assertions we make about “this Jesus” who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, descended into hell, and on the third day rose again from the dead. It isn’t easy in a world with missiles on their launching-pads, in a universe that reels away beyond the limits of our imagination, to stand up and say: “This I believe.”

LET ME TELL YOU this Easter morning why 1 believe the unadulterated Easter message: “This Jesus hath God raised up.”

(1) First, I cannot get away from witnesses — the men who set this whole movement going. However much I might want to soften the Christian claim and speak of common religious ideas and the myths and symbols by which they are expressed, the plain record of the New Testament reminds me that this was not what launched the Christian Church. Just take a look at the Book of Acts — that fascinating case-book compiled by a Greek doctor to show us how the Christian movement fanned out from Jerusalem like a prairie fire and within thirty years was located in every major centre of the Roman world. There you can see Peter and Stephen and Paul and Barnabas and the other leaders in action and hear the content of their message. Peter didn’t tell the crowd at Jerusalem that another prophet had come along to confirm what all the others had said. “This Jesus” he cried, “hath God raised up.” Stephen wasn’t stoned to death for his long sermon about Hebrew history but because he said: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Paul was not propelled along the traffic-lanes of Europe and the Middle East by the desire to add one more beautiful myth to the pantheons of Athens and of Rome. Wherever he went he told one story — about this Jesus, and the climax of his message was always the same: “God raised him from the dead.” Even among the egg-heads of Athens whom he approached delicately with allusions to philosophy and natural religion and quotations from their poets, he swooped up to the same conclusion: “God hath given assurance unto all men, in that he raised him from the dead.”

Can you imagine the apostles going out to face imprisonment, flogging, torture and death for the sake of what sometimes passes today for the Easter message? “All religions are much the same. Jesus is a beautiful symbol of what you all believe. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. The flowers of Spring are the signs of immortality.” I can almost hear the apostles’ singing: “The flowers that bloom ih the Spring, tra-la, have nothing to do with the case.” (Even the “tra-la” is not out of character: there was a gaity about their belief that we have sadly forgotten). What they had to offer the world was not a symbol but a Saviour, one who had lived our life and died our death — and “this Jesus” thev said, “hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses.” They are the witnesses. We can, like many millions believe their witness. We can, like many others, reject it. We cannot possibly mistake what it was.

(2) Why should I believe it? Not only because I find it harder to believe that these men launched this tremendous, world embracing, worldredeeming movement on a delusion or a fraud; and not only because I kniw no more in pressive hi t of human beings than that of those who through the ages to our own day have accepted the witness to the Resurrection; but because, beyond all else, I find ihat this message convey; God’s answer to our human plight. This isn’t something that claims to be a human solution to our problems. It is a word of God. Without the Resurrection I find that the story of Jesus only adds to our confusion and distress. If our problem is innocent suffering, does the story of this Jesus on that cross not add immeasurably to our distress? If our problem is the power of the wicked and irresponsible over simple goodness, does the darkness of Golgotha not settle like a cloud upon our hopes? If our problem is death itself, how can we bear to hear the cry: “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?”

These things happened in our world. And it is in our world that I wait to hear the answer. Not a speculative answer of the human mind. Not a vague answer from the sphere of religious ideas and symbols. A concrete answer, localized right there where this Jesus lived and died, and an answer from the very heart of God. And this is what reaches me in the living worship of the Church. “This Jesus hath God raised up.”

We are a problem-haunted generation. And — God forgive us — we have almost turned the Christian Gospel into a problem too. “I’ve got enough worries” said a student when asked to altend a Christian Mission, “without adding religious ones.” As a Lenten penance this year I tried in my sermons to abstain from the use of the word “problem.” But every now and then it would come creeping in. On this day at least we can surely speak of an answer. Whatever questions we may have about the details of the Resurrection stories as we find them in the Gospels, there is not a shadow of doubt as to what the apostles are telling us. After the crucifixion they saw him alive again. They-knew he was no longer dead. And they proceeded to shout the news across the world and across two thousand years of history.

THIS JESLTS IS ALIVE. He is God’s answer to our despair — for it was from the hell of nothingness that he came back triumphant. He is God’s answer to evil — because the climactic struggle is now finished, and the victory is with goodness and with love. “The strife is o’er, the battle done.” He is God’s answer to our sin — because this Jesus who let the whole weight of it fall on him there in the darkness, comes back with new life and forgiveness for us all. He is God’s answer to our fear — for just as surely as he was engulfed in the pain, the anguish, and the death that threaten every human being, “this Jesus hath God raised up.” Our companion in the valley of the shadow is our companion in the world of light that lies beyond. “Because he lives, we shall live also.” Therefore we are persuaded that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”