A special guest post from N.T. Wright to offer encouragement this Easter.
I knew from an early age there was something wrong. I listened to Easter sermons from good evangelical preachers, and they seemed to be missing the point. I suspect the same problem is getting in the way now, as we try to draw from the Easter message the hope that the post-pandemic world will need so badly.
The sermons I heard tended to stress two points. First, belief in Jesus’ resurrection could be supported by personal testimony: “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!” Second, Jesus’ resurrection proved (we were told) that there really is “life after death.”
Nothing wrong with these at one level. Personal experience of the presence and power of the living Jesus is a vital part of genuine Christian living. And, of course, God the creator hasn’t made us in his image just to tease us with this present tantalizing life. We are made for more.
But “he lives within my heart” is the truth of Pentecost, not of Easter Day.
Easter is about something that happened, launching a new world, prior to any transforming effects on believers. You can’t explain the rise of Christianity historically unless you say that Jesus’ tomb really was empty and that his followers really did meet him alive again. The stories are strange; they are not what people might have made up from what they believed ahead of time. Thus, for instance, the risen Jesus, though identified by the mark of the nails and the spear, seemed somehow different. He was not instantly recognized. Paul grasps the point: what has happened at Easter is the launch of new creation. Jesus’ resurrection body was the first example of a new order of being: a heaven-and-earth reality. That’s what ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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