Approaching Easter - Resurrection

According to the Apostle Paul....

    For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brethren, most of what are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also....1  Corinthians 15:3-8


Christ's appearances in the 40 days following His Resurrection prior to His ascension...

1. Were to believers only
2. Were tailor-made to comfort and confront each individual (His visit to Thomas was different from His visit to Peter, etc)
3. Were flesh-and-blood, not ghostly, encounters


So what does it all mean?


More from Philip Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew...


"Because you have seen Me, you have believed," said Jesus. (John 20:29)

These privileged ones could hardly disbelieve.

But what about the others?

Very soon, as Jesus well knew, His personal appearances would come to a halt, leaving only "those who have not seen."

The church would stand or fall based on how persuasive these eyewitnesses would be for all--including us today--who have not seen. Jesus had 6 weeks in which to establish his identity for all time.

That Jesus succeeded in changing a snuffling band of unreliable followers into fearless evangelists, that eleven men who had deserted Him at death now went to martyrs' graves avowing their faith in a resurrected Christ, that these few witnesses managed to set loose a force that would overcome violent opposition first in Jerusalem and then in Rome--this remarkable sequence of transformation offers the most convincing evidence for the Resurrection.

What else explains the whiplash change in men known for their cowardice and instability?

One need only read the Gospels' descriptions of disciples huddled behind locked doors and then proceed to the descriptions in Acts of the same men proclaiming Christ openly in the streets and in jail cells to perceive the seismic significance of what took place on Easter Sunday.

The Resurrection is the epicenter of belief. It is, says, C. H. Dodd, "not a belief that grew up within the church; it is the belief around which the church itself grew up..."

The crowd at Jesus' crucifixion challenged Him to prove Himself by climbing down from the cross, but not one person thought of what actually would happen: that He would die and then come back.

Once that scenario played out, though, to those who knew Jesus best it made perfect sense.

The style fit God's pattern and character.  God has always chosen the slow and difficult way, respecting human freedom regardless of cost. He did not stop His crucifixion. He rose from the dead. The hero bore all the consequences, yet somehow triumphed.

One detail in the Easter stories has always intrigued me: Why did Jesus keep the scars from His crucifixion? Presumably He could have had any resurrected body He wanted, and yet He chose one identifiable mainly by scars that could be seen and touched. Why?

I believe the story of Easter would be incomplete without those scars on the hands, the feet, and the side of Jesus.

When human beings fantasize we dream of pearly straight teeth and wrinkle-free skin and sexy ideal shapes. We dream of an unnatural state: the perfect body.

But for Jesus, being confined in a skeleton and human skin was the unnatural state. The scars are, to Him, an emblem of life on our planet, a permanent reminder of those days of confinement and suffering.

I take hope in Jesus' scars. From the perspective of heaven, they represent the most horrible event that has ever happened in the history of the universe. Even that event, though--the Crucifixion--Easter turned into a memory.

Because of Easter, I can hope that the tears we shed, the blows we receive, the emotional pain, the heartache over lost loved ones, all these will become memories, like Jesus' scars.

Scars never completely go away, but neither do they hurt any longer. We will have re-created bodies, a re-created heaven and earth.

We will have a new start, an Easter start.