April 2010

Dear Friends in Faith,

Is resurrection real? That’s the Easter question. That’s the question millions of Christians have when they flock to the churches around the world on Easter Sunday. Death has touched all our lives, and the longing for the ultimate hope is highest on Christianity’s most popular holy day. In this age when we can track the changes in distant galaxies, peer into the very secrets of the human brain, and track the evolution of life and the universe; is resurrection real…or is it just some myth created to make us feel better about the inescapable reality of death?

There are some who would chastise a Christian pastor for raising the question, but I have never been one to avoid being honest. I have officiated at too many funerals not to question the truth. The Apostle Paul himself told the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 19), “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain…If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” In other words, if resurrection is some ancient hoax, then we Christians are fools. We all ought to just close up the church and go home!

Obviously the New Testament message proclaims the resurrection of Jesus and of all those whose trust is in God, but is there any other “evidence?” In my 30 years as a pastor I have learned that all true faith is experiential. We only really believe at the core of our being that which we know from personal experience, that which has touched and changed our lives. In the end it doesn’t matter what the Bible says or what preachers and teachers of the faith say. They can lead us to the gates of faith, but they can’t make us go through to genuine assurance. My firm conviction of the hope of life eternal is informed by the teaching of the New Testament, but it is anchored in the experience of God’s presence in my life.

This is my question for you: “Have you known the presence of God in your life?” If your answer is “yes,” then you can have the confidence of resurrection. How? Because God isn’t interested in dead-end relationships! The matchless Sovereign of creation’s glory is not about to spend His time creating a relationship that has no future. The relationship God begins with us in this life does not end when we cross into the next. This is affirmed by the resurrection narratives about Jesus in John’s Gospel. After Jesus’ death Mary Magdalene comes looking for his body in the tomb. Not finding it, she is distraught, so distraught in fact that she believes the resurrected Jesus to be a gardener. It is not until Jesus calls out her name that she realizes to whom she is speaking. Then the relationship is reestablished for her. She knows that Jesus knows her, and she knows him. The same is true when Jesus appears to Thomas a week later. Earlier Thomas had missed Jesus’ coming to the disciples and had doubted their story of seeing the risen Lord. But when Jesus came again to the disciples and met Thomas face to face, the doubting disciple needed no further confirmation. He did not need to “touch the nail prints in his hand and the wound in his side,” as he as proclaimed earlier. Thomas knew Jesus, and Jesus knew Thomas. It was about relationship. Mary and John’s relationship with Jesus did not end at Jesus’ death because Jesus was not dead. If God has the power to sustain life beyond this world, why would God terminate the relationships He has already begun?

For me, to know God’s presence is to know that someday I will know the presence of others who are in God’s realm of eternity. Death may be the great spoiler of life, but death is not the last word for a still-speaking God. We ought never to put a period where God puts a comma. As the German playwright Goethe once wrote, “Those who live in the Lord never see each other for the last time.” Let us rejoice in that assurance in this season of Easter! Resurrection is real.
Pastor Carlan