Resurrection!
I Cor 15: 12 – 20
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 11 Apr, 2004

THE FOREIGN Minister, Alexander Downer, recently bagged outspoken Christian Ministers. Downer did say that we shouldn’t talk about things we don’t understand. But many people assume that, if you are a Christian, automatically you are clueless.

  Certainly, some Christians think they are upholding the Bible when they are only upholding conservatism.
  Just read the Herald’s Letters column to see how the world views us.
  Let  some Bishop or even a parish minister speak about a social or political issue, and the Letters pages fill with anti-Christian outrage.

  People take four basic lines of attack. They deny Christians any legal right to speak. They deny our moral right to speak. They deny our democratic right to speak. And they deny our intellectual right to speak.
  I want to reflect on the last one, that we don’t have an intellectual right to speak. But we will pass briefly over the other three, so you are ready for today’s style of opposition.

NO LEGAL RIGHT
  When I started Theological College, I was coming home late from a Church meeting and stopped at a small shop. An elderly Aboriginal customer asked me why I was out so late.
  I told him I'd been at a meeting, and he asked me what kind of work I did.
  I hesitated. I was a student, but I was also sort–of working at Wentworthville Church, but, only a few months before I had been a Town Planner. How should I answer?

  I said, “I’m a student minister.”

  “Never be ashamed of that,” he said. “There are plenty of people like me who don‘t have anyone to speak for us. We need people like you to speak up!”
  I thanked him for the advice and said I would always remember it. I’ve always tried to.

  But you know how it is. As soon as a Christian speaks out, the writers get into a lather over separation of Church and State.
  “Christian leaders should not speak about politics. Church and State are separate. They have to keep out.” That’s what you’ll hear.

  They forget Jesus cleansing the Temple, overthrowing the Government–approved revenue–raisers.

  Alright, in some countries separation of Church and State was brought in by politicians, but the idea came from Christians. It came from European Anabaptists and English Baptists like ourselves. The Anabaptists were radical separationists. They refused any part in Government matters, while we Baptists  said, “Christians must be good citizens and participate in their society. But we must not control the State and the State must not control the Church.”

  So a Government can’t say, “You can’t elect your pastor. From now on, we appoint the pastors we like.” Nor can the Churches claim, “Before anyone is elected to Parliament, we will tell you if we accept him.”

  At times, exactly such things happened. In some European countries, pastors are still financed from taxes, and Governments can dismiss outspoken clergy.
  We don’t want churches controlling Parliament or Parliament controlling churches.

  But that has nothing to do with the right of Christians to speak out on society or politics.

  We speak because we know what is going on. You can’t be a Christian and not be involved with people and know the issues.
  If we don’t speak, who will?
  Of course, politicians make the decisions. But the principle of separation of Church and State was never aimed to stop people from talking, or expressing opinions.

NO MORAL RIGHT
  I used to work with a leader in an heretical cult. He talked about the moral failures of Christian leaders to imply that I should not argue with him because that allied me with failed Christians. It’s nonsense; but the Letter writers often trot that one out too.

  “How does Harry Herbert of the Uniting Church presume to tell us whether injecting rooms are a good thing, when the Boston Diocese of the Catholic Church has tolerated paedophile priests for so long?”

  Do the moral failures of some Christians make all Christians immoral? Hardly! Some of Jesus’ followers were prostitutes and tax collectors. Does that mean he should have been quiet? Hardly! And they killed him, too.
  In the anti-Jewish pogroms in the past, people often murdered Jews because a few Jews were  unscrupulous businessmen.
  And people who deny all Christians a right to speak because some are immoral follow the same logic, and create the same conditions for anti-Christian pogroms.

NO DEMOCRATIC RIGHT
  Some of you remember the public meeting about closures of local hospitals. The State Government had an agenda, and they were not really interested in community opinions. The decisions were already made, and the public meetings were only for show. A community committee was set up, but the members could not even discuss community opposition to the plans.

  After all the public servants and politicians made their speeches and let members of the audience have their say, they started to wind up for the night. Nothing had been decided, no notice had been taken of the comments.
  I stood up. “There’s just one thing,” I said. “We have all spoken about these proposals, and there has been no indication that anything we said has made a difference to the Government’s plans or will even be reported back. So I move a motion of no confidence in the Community Committee and this process.”
  Someone seconded it and it was carried by an overwhelming majority.

  No one ever suspected that anyone in the meeting would realise he had a democratic right to move motions or take real action.

  Of course, in the long run the Government overturned that decision.

  The point is that, as a member of the local community and as a voter in NSW, I had the right to move such a motion and it had to be accepted by the poiticians present.
  But many letter writers say that Christian leaders are not elected, so they have no right to speak on social or political issues. They are not part of the democratic process.

  In fact, even the Pope is elected!

  And Baptist elections are even more common and more democratic. We Baptists vote for our State President. Our leaders are fairly representative of the members.
  Once people remove the right to vote from any group in society, we are on our way to dictatorship, because, in the end, the only ones still free to vote are those who vote the popular way. It is extremely dangerous thinking!

NO INTELLECTUAL RIGHT
  I am saddened when some Christian starts spouting about some topic that he knows nothing about.

  I once had a pastor who, a couple of times, said crazy things about science. He knew a lot about Spanish, but he didn't know much about outer space!

  Maybe I was arrogant to tell him he was wrong, but he was humble; so, whenever he planned to preach about some scientific topic, he asked me or my brother first, and we would hear our words coming out of his mouth the next Sunday night.

  The difference between him and a boofhead was that he was prepared to learn, but some people just shout louder.

  Whether it's science or philosophy or social policy, some Christians give Christianity a bad name. And, of course, there are people around who are more interested in seeing Christians get a bad name than in finding out what most of us really do believe.
  So, let a Christian come up with a statement on some current issue, and the letter writers begin frothing at the mouth. “How dare a Christian tell us what to think when Christians have to believe illogical nonsense? Faith itself is irrational — it doesn’t make sense. Christians believe things that don’t make sense, so they have no right to speak.”

  Of course, the question is not whether a person thinks Harold Holt* was kidnapped by the Chinese. The question is whether what he or she has said today is reasonable.

  Bob, who used to come to the Drop In Centre, was often a bit out of touch with the real world, but you remember him. You know that he knew more about youth crime in Marrickville than the police did.
  But there is another side to it. Must Christians really believe unreasonable or irrational ideas?

WHAT MUST CHRISTIANS BELIEVE?
  In the passage we read, Paul states,

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

  If we had also read Hebrews 11:6, we’d have heard,

...without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

  Essentially, there are two things that a Christian must believe. First, the existence of a God who rewards earnest seeking, second, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
  Paul tells the Romans,

If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

  There are really two, maybe three things that a Christian absolutely must believe. Belief in God is basic; the only thing that might raise eyebrows is the resurrection of Jesus.

  You might not believe in Six Day Creationism. In fact, worldwide, relatively few Christians do. Yet they are still Christians.
  What you believe about creation will affect how you understand God, and may impact on the quality of your faith, but Christians can be true and faithful Christians and cover a whole spectrum of views on creation.

  But, if Christ is not raised from the dead, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.

  You might not believe in the virgin birth. Some Christians don’t, yet they are still genuine Christians. Once again, it’s an area where inadequate belief leads to serious errors in other understanding of the gospel, but the one thing that counts is,

...if Christ is not raised from the dead, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.

  You might question Jesus’ miracles. I’ve even heard conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics baulk at some of the miracles. They say, "I believe this miracle," but then they find ways to explain it away. I don’t think I baulk at the miracles, but some good Christians at least admit they have trouble believing them. The reason is that they think about their faith, and they believe that faith is reasonable. We all go through that process, and sometimes reach different conclusions.
  But the one thing you can’t do without is,

...if Christ is not raised from the dead, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.

  The point is this: Christians do think about their faith. Christians do not hold irrational ideas. Christians, if they are sensible, look at evidence and decide how to think about it.

  But Christians do believe that Jesus rose again from the dead. That one thing is basic. That is why we are here today. Resurrection.

  Still, we don't hold this as an irrational belief, it is not something we believe despite all evidence. We believe it because of the evidence.
  We all know that resurrection is not a normal experience of life. Back in Jesus’ time, no one expected resurrection to occur. In Athens they thought that Paul was mad for preaching resurrection.

  So don’t ever imagine that people accepted the resurrection idea because they were gullible in those days.

  If we had read Paul’s letter from just a few sentences earlier, we would have seen that he believed in the resurrection of Jesus because Peter saw Jesus alive, because the whole group of the apostles saw him alive, and because Jesus appeared alive to over 500 people together at once. These were people Paul had been able to talk to. He knew them, he knew whether they were likely to be lying or self-deceived. He accepted their evidence that a totally unprecedented event had occurred.

  After he tells us of the 500 seeing Jesus, he also mentions an appearance to James.
  James was Jesus ’ brother — half brother to be exact. James had thought that Jesus was mad because of his preaching ministrhy.
  But then Jesus appeared to James, who was in no way part of the band of Jesus’ apostles, and James was so convinced that he became a cornerstone of the Christian Church in Jerusalem. Even hostile Jewish records mention James and his son as successive leaders of the Jerusalem church.

  Finally, Paul says that the risen Jesus appeared to him.
  Paul was absolutely opposed to the message of Jesus, and used everything he could find to silence Christians. He had them arrested and killed. But he saw Jesus alive.

  There are many other reasons why we can confidently say that Jesus rose again from the dead, but these are a start.

  Irrational? I dont think so!

Christos aneste: alithos aneste!
Christ is risen! Hallelujah!  

* Harold Holt was the Prime Minister of Australia, after Robert Menzies. He disappeared in 1966 while surfing at a Victorian beach, and his body was never recovered. Among the theories about his disappearance is the idea that Chinese spies were waiting off the coast in a mini- submarine and kidnapped him as part of a plot to overthrow the conservative Government in favour of a more socialist-leaning one.

© Peter R. Green 2004. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)

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