Magyar Egyház, 1964 (43. évfolyam, 3-9. szám)
1964-03-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 7 MAGYAR CHURCH last fr The Right Place I« Look for Christ Read: Luke 24:1-12 On the first day of the week the women went out to the Tomb to finish the ritual of burial. What exactly happened in those early hours of the morning no one really knows. The four Gospel-accounts differ somewhat as to details. These details of the discovery of Easter Sunday were told and retold by the women, by Peter and John, and then retold a thousand times until the story found its way into written records. It was retold by excited, bewildered people, shattered by grief who, at first, didn’t believe their own eyes. No wonder the written accounts differ from one another. Yet the basic fact in all of them is the same-, the Lord wasn’t in the tomb anymore. This however, still doesn’t prove that he has risen. The body could have been stolen, like the rumor the Jews spread, (Matthew 28:15). A quite clever argument runs like this-. John’s account states that the napkin which had been over the Lord’s head was not lying with the wrappings but rolled together in a place by itself; now, robbers would have taken the wrappings and napkin, too; disciples would have left in a hurry and wouldn’t have bothered to roll together the napkin — proof that the body was not stolen. Quite interesting argument, indeed, yet it doesn’t give a satisfactory answer. For us, the only valid proof of Christ’s resurrection is the Christian Church. A human answer, one may say, but this is why it is so good for us. For the disciples buried their Master and together with him their hopes and dreams, too. The accusation against the disciples — and subsequently against Christianity — was that they invented the ressurection story, that the whole business was a fraud, that the disciples stole and disposed of the body then spread the resurrection story. Logically, this was possible. Humanly, it was impossible. The story of Pentecost, the story of the early Church, its gradual spreading into all corners of the luorld is not a holy tale but historical fact. Fact also is that all this came about in the wake of the disciples’ telling about Jesus, his words, his death, and his resurrection. The disciples had completely been transformed by the resurrection. Can a fraud bring about such a transformation? And another very important point: if it was a fraud what was the sense of it? What did the dicciples expect to gain? What they gained was persecution, martyrdom, death. Who on earth will invent a hoax and insist on it only in order to draw death upon himself? The entire picture is different, however, if we believe ívhat the disciples claimed: the Lord was risen and this experience finally convinced them that their Master was Lord over all. So all what the Master charged them to say and to do they would now gladly carry out. The right place to look for the Lord is not among the dead. We should remember the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. We should study the records, the written documents. We should make every effort to imitate the example of Jesus. But we need something above and beyond all that. Let us be humble and admit that there is much we don’t know and cannot put into formulas; that not everything originates from us, from our own wisdom and brilliance. Let us be humble enough to acknowledge the reality of God’s unspeakable power and love in Christ for us and the reality of the Holy Spirit working in us. Then the vital question is not merely whether ive believe in the resurrection of Christ but whether our faith in the resurrection has fully renewed our lives. Andrew Harsanyi --------------o-------------BIBLE ANTHOLOGY PREPARED FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL USE A new resource book, the Citizen’s Bible, will be published shortly by Harper & Row “for use by the general public and in American classrooms in harmony with Supreme Court rulings.’’ The announcement was made at the annual meeting in Cincinnati of the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches. Describing the new publication, the Rev. Eli F. Wismer, general director of the Division’s Commission on General Christian Education, pointed out that it will not be a new translation but will use the Revised Standard Version and other translations of the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha, “deliberately pointing out the differences between traditional readings of specific passages by Protestants, Catholics and Jews.” Editors of the new book are Father Walter M. Abbott, S.J., of the Roman Catholic weekly “America,” Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Dr. Rolfe Lenier Hunt, associate director of the NCC Commission’s Department of Church and Public School Relations; and the Rev. J. Carter Swaim, executive director of the Division’s Department of the English Bible.
