(#1) It Would Have Shaken Everything

 If Jesus Rose from the Dead, then (#1) It Would Have Shaken Everything (audio)

Today is Resurrection Sunday. In all the history of man, there has never been a day like it. In fact, it marks the apex of history. Without it, there would be no split in time; no days labelled with BC or AD.

And it was the great confirmation of who Jesus truly was and is. Everything He said and did were validated and confirmed. When Jesus rose from the dead, it proved both His deity and His identity. In fact, the entire foundation and validity of Christianity rest upon the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

It not only shook the earth on that early morning, but it also shook loose the angels in heaven. It shook the hearts of the rugged soldiers guarding the tomb, and it shook the powerful chief priests and the elders. It shook the dead out of their own tombs, and it shook the hearts, minds and emotions of the women and the disciples who followed Jesus. They were never the same again. And it has, slowly but surely, shaken the whole world. Like a rock in a pond, those shock waves have rippled outward from Jerusalem toward the utter ends of the earth.

After Paul had been reasoning with the Jews in a synagogue in Thessalonica in which he said, "...it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead..." a mob dragged some of them before the city authorities, shouting:

"These men have turned the world upside down..." (Acts 17:6)

Indeed, the world has never been the same since that Morning.

The Resurrection was a constant theme within the messages of the disciples. It was the focus of Peter's first sermon:

Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a Man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him from the dead, putting an end to the agony of death...This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.  Acts 2:22-24, 32

And witnesses they were. They had seen Jesus mutilated and then executed, hung on a cross until his dying breath. He had been wrapped in spices and grave clothes. His body had been laid in a tomb that had been sealed and guarded by the power of Rome. It was over. Dreams shattered. Hope lost. Their leader and close friend had been summarily crucified. They could be next.

That Sabbath had to have been the most miserable of all Sabbaths. But it was the last Sabbath before everything changed. They had now seen the risen Jesus. He was alive. They had touched him, talked with him, ate with him. The Great Confirmation settled into the depths of their souls and filled them with an unquenchable joy and peace—and boldness…an unrelenting and unrecanting boldness that would willingly usher virtually all of them to a violent death.

But they didn’t care.

The deep reality of the risen Jesus and the unshakable truth that he really and truly was the only way, the only truth and the only real and everlasting life, penetrated them permanently—heart, soul and mind.

My prayer is that the depth of this surety and awe will infect us as if we had been Mary Magdalene, who broke into the upper room and breathlessly and joyously, with awe and wonder, declared to the disciples that she had just seen Jesus!  "And," as the song[1] continues: “I’ll never be the same again!”

Oh, my!

For us, two thousand years later, the reality of that event, the facts, the details, the impact and implications, are worth continual meditation. It should weigh just as heavily on us today as it did for those who were alive on that Resurrection Morning—both believers and even unbelievers.

Several years ago, I watched Risen[2]. It was intriguing. The high plausibility of the backstory it depicted really struck me. I had never thought about the possibility that Pilate would have had a deep interest in finding the body of Jesus. For sure, the Jewish hierarchy would have been driven to do so. They had taken measures beforehand to ensure no one stole the body and then when the tomb was found empty, they immediately bribed the guards to spread a lie. For sure, they would have done everything possible to find the body of Jesus to squash a “resurrection” movement. But I’ve never considered the political pressure that Pilate would have felt, compelling him to do the same.

And with both the power of Rome and the power of the High Priest joined together to find the corpse, it would have been pretty much impossible for someone to pull off a “resurrection” hoax. Especially since, as the movie rightly portrayed, the evidence at the tomb was significant: ropes that were busted “like threads”; the huge stone tossed aside as if it were nothing; grave clothes collapsed upon themselves; guards giving fearful testimony of something terribly “supernatural” happening… evidence that didn’t match up with an unlikely story of a body heist by a bunch of uneducated fishermen.

The movie followed a plausible and probable course in which the Roman Tribune, sent by Pilate, squeezes all the possible suspects and witnesses, looking for answers, and, hopefully, a dead body. But instead of a corpse, the Tribune comes face to face with Jesus… alive. Risen. Just as He had said.

This is the core of the movie plot and what happens in the heart of the Tribune as he encounters the risen Nazarene.

But what struck me was the scene when the Tribune had hauled in Bartholomew and was putting pressure on him to reveal where they had taken the body. The disciple wasn’t fazed by the intimidation, nor the threats. Surely, the Tribune had the power of life and death over him, but Bartholomew was overpowered, instead, by the reality that Jesus was really, really alive. He had seen Him. He had talked with Him. It was true… absolutely true. All doubts were now gone. And if Jesus had really risen from the dead, then everything about Jesus… everything He had said, everything He had done, everything He had been teaching them was not only confirmed, but it meant that death was nothing… the grave was nothing. And so, standing in the presence of a worldly power that could have easily hung him on a cross as well, Bartholomew spoke with a sense of awe and inner joy: “If you want to crucify me, I will gladly submit… this changes everything!”

And from that point on in the film, in the back of my mind I wondered, why don't I carry that same sense of awe and inner joy and outlook on life?

The resurrection of Jesus is by far the most documented event in the Scripture. It is virtually impossible for anyone to mount an honest and credible argument against it. For those who do not believe, of course, no amount of evidence would suffice, much like George Wald and spontaneous generation or Francis Crick and DNA.

But I am not writing this for those who do not believe. I’m writing this for those who are in Christ, because it is easy to allow the narrative of the “Easter” event to become just that—an oft-heard narrative… so familiar, so common, that we are no longer moved by its reality.

That is why I have continually asked myself the question that haunts me:

“Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?”

Bartholomew was realistically portrayed in the movie as one who had “seen the risen Jesus” and for him it “changed everything.” The Tribune saw Jesus alive as well and the movie concluded with him taking off his Tribunal signet ring and confessing, “I can never be the same.”

For those of us who believe, we have also, at some time, confessed something similar, that we would never be the same again. And, essentially, we haven’t. But the flow of the world pulls at us daily, like a relentless gravity, and our perspective shrinks back into the naturalistic box—into the mold of a world that continually acts as if there is nothing outside of that cosmic box, that the only reality is the physical realm that we are bumping around in minute after minute, year after year, life after life; matter and energy is all there is… survival of the fittest… grab what you can… all about me… nothing really matters.

And all of that could be seen to be true, except…

Jesus rose from the dead.

He really did.

He lives.

“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O grave, is your sting?” 1 Corinthians 15:54-55

May this amazing reality be lived out in our lives each and every minute of each and every day.

Because if He lives… it really does change everything.

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