Magyar Egyház, 1980 (59. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)

1980-03-01 / 3-4. szám

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

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New Testament accounts of it. We cannot present evidence which will prove it scientifically. If you are determined to disbelieve it, you will be unmoved by the testimonies of eyewitnesses.

Here certainly in the resurrection of Christ, is mystery, not only a problem. Here is the tremendous claim that life came from death, that life came through death. We just cannot remain neutral about it. Bluntly, and harshly, Paul told the Corinthians: “If Christ was not raised, your faith has nothing in it” (I Corinthians 15:17, New English Bible). Perhaps this seems to be laying it on a little too thickly. Some fine-living people could say that they believe in God and put their trust in God through the Jesus who came at Christmas and who died a sacrificial death on Good Friday. They cannot accept full Christianity, but they are certainly the equivalent of committed Christians. They hope that the resurrection faith can be proved true. Do they know that there would be no Christian faith without faith in the resurrection? There would be no living church without conviction in the risen and living Lord whose spiritual body is now the church. If we detatch Christ’s V-Day from his D-Day; that is, settle for his life, teachings, and death apart from his victory over evil and death in the resurrection, Christ becomes chiefly a past influence, an example, with decreasing influence upon our complex modern world. Most men don’t live by faith, but by reason. Some say that Christ is dead. They say that the Syrian stars look down on his grave. No! says the convinced and not always unintelligent or wishful Christian: “Now is Christ risen. The Lord is risen indeed.”

How does God enter the shadows of doubt and disbelief? He enters as the Holy Spirit always does, as Guide, Truth, Power, and with the gift of faith. To journey out of darkness into the light of assurance is a journey of faith in its deepest meaning. How can we receive such a faith? One step obviously is to believe in the God of holy, righteous love, who acts in history and in this life, and who steps into human life most clearly in Jesus Christ. Another step is surely to be persuaded that Christians are generally reliable. Has this conviction that Christ defeated death made Christians better? What is the quality of Christian life? Can Christians march on, never doubting that right will triumph? What do you make of the church, its life, witness, worship, and service? With all its sins — with all our sins, ineptitudes, littleness, and moral cowardice — it is the body of Christ. Today Jesus points to his body the church — Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant — and says, as he did to skeptical Thomas: “Reach your hand here and

put it into my side.” In other words, test the reality of this body, this fellowship of mine: be unbelieving no longer, but believe (see John 20:27, The New English Bible).

“He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” By his entering in, God “has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” The very word translated “qualify” means “to make worthy.” God not only gives us the honor, but he also makes us worthy to receive it. A new relationship exists between God and man. When any one puts his trust in Christ, he is delivered from the darkness of guilt, a sense of failure, and from despair. Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian, once said that forgiveness is the final form of love. God’s forgiveness and acceptance of us when we are truly sorry for what we have done and for what we have been and are now, are made real and effectual for us and in us by the living Lord, whom death could not hold. You are not longer at the mercy of the powers of darkness in your life. Your sins have been forgiven. You are free. It wasn’t cheaply won for you. It is the most costly gift anyone, including God, can give. The price was the life of God’s well-beloved Son.

In this first chapter of the Colossian letter the apostle gives us his interpretation of Christ and his place and work in the total scheme of things. Christ is God manifest, the image, the picture, of the invisible God. He is in time and dignity prior to all creation. Somehow he holds all things together. Christ is the head of the church, his body. Then Paul declares that he is death’s first conqueror, the sovereign Lord of a great risen host. “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). He is “the first to return from the dead, to be in all things alone supreme. For in him the complete being of God, by God’s own choice, came to dwell” (Colossians 1:18-19, New English Bible). When a young person dies, or a useful person of any age, what do we say? We complain that it isn’t fair; it isn’t right. This is the Christian conviction about death. Death isn’t fair; death isn’t right. Paul said death is the last enemy. Isn’t it still the enemy? Death floors us. If we believe that death is the end, we live in a Good Friday world. The Christian religion did not cross centuries and frontiers because it preached death or a dead Christ. It preached resurrection, a shout of triumph. Death is an enemy, but it will be destroyed. That is why Easter is a full pipe organ, trumpets, alleluias, hosannas, cheers, and hurrahs! God has banished the shadows of death’s power. Alleluia!