Open the gospels and let the resurrection penetrate your mind and heart
by Peter Mullen, TCW:
Death – thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. – John Donne
THERE is no reason to seek proof of Our Lord’s resurrection. The proof is the existence of the church, growing for 2,000 years, so that today there are more Christians than ever in its whole history. People talk about the decline of the church. It’s rubbish. Everywhere you look, the church is growing: 350million new Christians in sub-Saharan Africa in the last ten years. Latin America. South America. China. India. Northern Europe’s suicidal infatuation with secularisation is not typical.
But, concerning evidence for Our Lord’s resurrection, there is one fascinating insight by Bishop Tom Wright. He points out that all four Gospels say that the first witnesses to the resurrection were women. Now in the ancient Middle East the witness of women was despised. In St Paul’s Epistles, written years before the Gospels, the witness of the women is not mentioned – a cynic would say, airbrushed out. So why did all four gospel-writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John put the witness of the women back in again, unless their witness is true?
As Samuel Coleridge said, I am weary of evidences. The resurrection of Our Lord is not a matter of forensic science. The way to approach it – the way to approach all Christian teaching – is with an informed and devoted imagination. The Gospels are not a circular from the council tax office. The Gospels are a whole world. Like what? Well, like a symphony by Beethoven. Unless you have the sort of crackpot consciousness that uses great music as wallpaper, when you listen to your recording of Beethoven – say the Eroica – you sit down and you sit still; you might even pour yourself a drink: you relax with your ears open and your mind attending.
If you do this right, you soon lose sight of the furnishings where you’re sitting, the window frame, whether the door is open or shut. You enter the world of the Eroica and something happens to your whole being. You are filled with the music. You have entered a particular musical world. And this musical world has entered you. So with the resurrection: don’t approach it academically, clinically, forensically, theoretically. Instead, open the Gospels and read the stories. Use your imagination. Let the stories penetrate your mind and heart.
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