The Hound of Heaven

Christian churches around the world celebrated Easter this weekend with its focus on the resurrection. Few of them, I suspect, focused on the crucifixion – the signal event in human history which made the resurrection of Jesus “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say. Crucifixion isn't an Easter Sunday topic. The week before, maybe, but not Easter Sunday. 

But in a lifetime of listening to Easter sermons, I've never heard one that centered on the story behind the Easter story – the cosmic motivation that made necessary that bloody weekend and all its suffering two thousand years ago. Oh, I know the theological argument for redemption. The cross was part of it. But what compelled this last desperate act of sacrifice as angels wept and wondered why we humans were so costly?

What is it about God that compels Him to pursue us, to never give up? Looking at mankind’s moral improvidence since The Beginning, I’d have written off the human experiment long ago as a failed idea. God didn't. Why? 

Years ago I read Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment with God. He tells of a visit to his mother’s home long after he had married and began working hundreds of miles from her. They talked and as it is with mothers living alone she pulled down a box of old photos for them to reminisce about the life that was once theirs.

Yancey came upon a photo of himself as an infant, not unlike baby photos any of us have – fat, smiling, dressed in preparation to be memorialized by the photographer – but this one was different. It was crumpled. 

Yancey asked his mother of all the photos she had of him as a baby why keep this one. In an aside, he mentions that when he was ten months old his father was stricken with polio. At age 24 and totally paralyzed, he could only live assisted by an iron lung. Philip and his older brother were not allowed in their father’s hospital room in fear they might “catch” their father’s affliction. So, captive of the metal cylinder in which he lived, Mr. Yancey asked for photos of his family – his wife and two boys – which Mrs. Yancey obliged by jamming them between knobs on the exterior of her husband’s iron lung. When he died three months later – just after Philip’s first birthday – his mother kept the crumpled photos as a memento.

Yancey said he often thinks about this man who was his father. How did he spend his days? No doubt most moments were spent looking at the photos of the three most important people in his short life. Looking at the picture he couldn't touch, his father surely thought about Philip, loved him, missed the feeling of his presence.

Reading Yancey’s story I thought, God is like that. If God had a refrigerator, our picture would be on it. When we had soccer games, He’d be at every one, cheering us from the stands. Everything that is important to us, for no other reason, would be important to Him. Each person in His human family would always be on His mind.

Why? Of all the metaphors God could have used to describe His incomprehensible nature, He used “Father.” Like Philip’s father, He cares for us and longs for us as Joe and Susie and Mary and Paul – not as the human race. There are no group photos where He dwells, only individual pictures. Each of us has our own special place in His heart. 

The English poet Francis Thompson captured in verse the image of a God who never gives up. Thompson would know. He was a dropout in 1885 before it was cool. Addicted to opium when he was afflicted with neuralgia, he was reduced to selling matches and newspapers on London street corners.  He lived under the bridges of the Thames and was so poor he had to beg for paper on which to scribble poems. 

One, The Hound of Heaven, is reproduced below. To save space, I've reformatted it from verse to paragraphs, and I've replaced a few words whose stilted poetic use is obscure in common vernacular today. The narrator is Thompson himself. Mid-sentence capitalizations are his references to God.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind and in the midst of tears I hid from Him and under running laughter. 

Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot, precipitated, adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears from those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbèd pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, they beat – and a Voice beat more instant than the Feet – “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

I pleaded, outlaw-wise, by many a hearted casement, curtained red, trellised with intertwining charities; (for, though I knew His love Who followed, yet was I sore adread lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)

But, if one little casement parted wide, the gust of His approach would clash it to: fear [knew] not to evade, as Love [knew] to pursue.

Across the [margin] of the world I fled, and troubled the gold gateway of the stars, smiting for shelter on their clanged bars; fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.

I said to Dawn: be sudden – to Eve: be soon; with thy young skyey blossom heap me over from this tremendous Lover – float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

I tempted all His [servants], [only] to find my own betrayal in their constancy, in faith to Him their fickleness to me, their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I [beg]; clung to the whistling mane of every wind. 

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, the long savannahs of the blue or, whether, Thunder-driven, they clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven, [splashy] with flying lightnings round the [kick] o' their feet – fear [wants] not to evade as [much as] Love [wants] to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, came on the following Feet, and a Voice above their beat – “Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”

I sought no more after that which I strayed in face of man or maid; but still within the little children's eyes seems something, something that replies, they at least are for me, surely for me!

I turned me to them very wistfully; but just as their young eyes grew sudden fair with dawning answers there, their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

“Come then, ye other children, Nature's – share with me” (said I) “your delicate fellowship; let me greet you lip to lip, let me twine with you caresses, wantoning with our [Mother Nature’s] vagrant tresses, banqueting with her in her wind-walled palace underneath her azured dais quaffing, as your taintless way is, from a chalice lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.”

             

So it was done: I in their delicate fellowship was one – [unlocked] the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

I knew all the swift [meanings] on the wilful face of skies; I knew how the clouds arise spumèd of the wild sea-snortings; all that's born or dies rose and drooped with; made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful divine; with them joyed and was bereaven.

         

I was heavy with the even, when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather; heaven and I wept together and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine: against the red throb of its sunset-heart I laid my own to beat and share commingling heat; but not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek. For ah! we know not what each other says, these things and I; in sound I speak – their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth; let her, if she would [own] me, drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me the breasts o’ her tenderness: never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy; and past those noisèd Feet a voice comes yet more fleet – “Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.”

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! My [armor] piece by piece Thou has hewn from me, and smitten me to my knee; I am defenceless utterly.

I slept, methinks, and woke, and, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours and pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years – my mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, have puffed and burst as [bubbles] on a stream.

Yea, faileth now even dream[s] [of] the dreamer, and the lute [of] the lutanist; even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, are yielding; cords of all too weak account for earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah! is Thy love indeed a weed, albeit an amarinthine weed suffering no flowers except its own to mount? Ah! must – designer infinite! – Thou char the wood ere Thou canst [sketch] with it?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; and now my heart is as a broken fount, wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever from the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my mind. Such is; what is to be? The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what time in mists confounds; yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds from the hid battlements of eternity; those shaken mists a space unsettle, then round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again. But not ere him who summoneth I first have seen, enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; His name I know and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit comes on at hand the [noise]; that Voice is round me like a bursting sea: 

“And is thy earth so marred, shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile thing! Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but [me] makes much of naught” (He said), “and human love needs human meriting: how hast thou merited – of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not how little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, not for thy harms, but just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. All which thy child's mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home. Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”

Halts by me that footfall: is my gloom, after all, shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

“Ah, [most foolish], blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou [drove] love from thee, who [drove away] Me.”

At some point in our lives all of us have fled God only to hear those relentless feet in dogged pursuit … that love that will not let us go.

Easter reminds us to be thankful that He didn't give up.

Death on a Friday Afternoon

Some time back I read about Maximilian Kolbe. He was prisoner 16670 in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in August 1941 when SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Karl Fritzsch was the Lagerführer (camp leader). Fritzsch, a soulless man, once placed a Christmas tree with lights on the roll call square. He forbade the prisoners, however, from singing carols. Under the tree were bodies of dead prisoners who were worked to death or froze to death while standing at roll call. Fritzsch called the bodies his presents to the living.

When an inmate allegedly escaped from the camp (there was no proof) Fritzsch randomly chose ten men to die of starvation, his favorite method of torture and execution. One of the men chosen was Franciszek Gajowniczek. Upon hearing the sentence, Gajowniczek began crying, “"My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?"

Kolbe stepped forward and asked to take Gajowniczek’s place. “I want to go instead of the man who was selected. He has a wife and family. I am alone. I am a Catholic (Polish) priest.” Besides, Kolbe contended, he was “elderly” and Gajowniczek young. In fact, at the time Kolbe was 47; Gajowniczek was 41.

Fritzsch quickly consented and Kolbe and the other victims were led off to the starvation chamber, Building 13. Kolbe was the last to die. Gajowniczek lived another 53 years to age 94.

Lagerführer Fritzsch never questioned why Kolbe would die for a fellow prisoner.

Throughout history people have given their lives to save others. Soldiers have thrown themselves on grenades to protect comrades. Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities around the theme of the killing spree called the French Revolution in which one of his characters took the place of another at the guillotine. But the best known substitutionary death took place over 2,000 years ago outside of the gates of Jerusalem.

In contrast to an almost commonplace knowledge of Jesus, whose execution and resurrection will be the center of worship in Christian churches this Sunday, we know almost nothing of the man who, by executing him, had such a profound impact on the world’s history from that point forward. Pontius Pilate, the archetypal Robespierre and Fritzsch,  is absent in recorded history before he came to Judea in 26 AD and is unremarkable during the history of his eleven-year rule as the fifth Roman governor of a third rate province in the Empire. That he was stationed in Judea speaks volumes about his insignificance in the Roman political constellation.

The historians Josephus and Philo, contemporaries of Pilate, describe a much harsher man than the weak-willed, fair-minded one that seems to be described in the Bible’s four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. From Josephus and Philo we learn that Pilate’s assignment in Palestine probably ended as a consequence of his vicious crackdown on a Samaritan messianic fanatic and his followers who armed themselves and intended to climb to a holdout on Mt. Gerizim. Pilate had his troops block their way, and in typical Roman fashion, there was a slaughter. He executed the leaders and killed or imprisoned the followers. Representatives of the Samaritan leaders, however, went over Pilate’s head to complain to Vitellius, the legion commander and governor of Syria, about Pilate’s brutality in the affair. Vitellius evidently outranked Pilate, because he sent a representative to Palestine to replace him, and sent Pilate back to Rome to explain himself. What happened to Pilate after that is lost in history. His life, at least as we know of it, consisted of only the eleven years in backwater Palestine, renown  primarily for ordering the death of Jesus.

In 1961, a stone plaque further confirmed the historical Pilate. It was found bearing his name in the ancient maritime city of Caesarea, the capital of Judea in Jesus day. Pilate lived in Caesarea Maritima and went to Jerusalem only when business called him there. The two-foot by three-foot slab refers in Latin to a Tiberium, a temple for the worship of Tiberias Caesar, the emperor during the time of Pilate and Jesus. The four-line engraving on the slab refers to Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea – the title by which the Bible refers to the man who ordered Jesus’ execution. We can only guess that the purpose of the slab was to identify the Tiberium and perhaps credit its construction to Pilate.

There also can be no doubt that the historical Jesus and the historical Pilate crossed paths in the former’s execution. Apart from the Biblical accounts of their encounter, there are many secular accounts. For example, the first century apologist for Judaism, Flavius Josephus, who was sympathetic with the Romans and whose disbelief in the deity of Jesus was renowned, nevertheless wrote of him in Antiquities of the Jews XVIII 3:3:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

                                   

Likewise, Cornelius Tacitus in his Annals, xv. 44, wrote: “Christus ... was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontious Pilate.” Lucian of Samosata, a rigorous historian, satirized the Christians in his Passing of Peregrinus and yet wrote, “(Christ was) the man who was crucified in Palestine.”

Crucifixion was undoubtedly the cruelest method man has ever devised to torture someone to death. It was an instrument of state terror whose origins in history are lost, but it’s known that Darius the Great, third king of the Persian Empire, used it in 519 BC to kill 3,000 Babylonian captives. Alexander the Great, the leader of the Greek Empire, brought the practice with him to Egypt and Carthage (modern Tunisia), and with their defeat of the Carthaginians, the Romans apparently learned of its practice. They perfected it to a form of torture and capital punishment that was designed to inflict maximum pain and suffering, and if desired, to prolong death for days. When the Thracian gladiator Spartacus led a breakout from the gladiatorial school around 70 BC, which subsequently developed into a slave revolt against the Roman Empire, their defeat was celebrated with the crucifixion of 6,000 of Spartacus’ followers.

By the time Jesus was born, Pax Romana – Roman peace – had reigned for almost 30 years. It spanned the rule of Caesar Augustus (27 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), a period of about two centuries during which there was virtually no internal discord. But the lack of discord was due to a large army that always stood ready to crush any form of civil disobedience with unbridled cruelty. It was the kind of “peace” which would have reigned had the Nazis won the WW II.

Into this peace were cast accusations that Jesus was subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king and thus a threat to the authority of the Empire. Initially, Pilate saw the matter as little more than a religious dispute and told the Jewish leaders to settle it themselves. They reminded him that under Roman law they couldn’t execute anyone, implying that Jesus was guilty of a capital crime. Only when the wily Jewish leaders accused Pilate of being no friend of Caesar, did he relent and order the execution, showing just how insecure he was in his position as a Roman Prefect.

Scourging was a legal requirement of Roman law before a victim could be crucified. Sometime the lash could be laid on lightly to prolong the suffering of crucifixion. Other times, the victim never survived scourging. The condemned was stripped naked. His (women were not crucified) arms were stretched up and tied near the top of a pole set in the courtyard of the praetorium where Pilate held court in Jerusalem. But the victim might alternately be pulled over a stump of wood or stone with outstretched feet and hands tied to the ground such that his back was arched for the torture. Either method was intended to expose the back to the full effect of the lash.

A flagellum, or short whip, consisted of a wooden handle with leather thongs of different lengths in which iron balls and sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied. One or two soldiers, called lictors, administered the beating, making sure that the back, legs, and buttocks were ripped open as the lash landed on the flesh and was jerked back toward the lictor. The iron balls were intended to inflict deep contusions. Continued lashing would rip through outer layer of tissue and begin tearing the skeletal muscles, producing ribbons of dangling bleeding flesh. Circulatory shock often accompanied the trauma and blood loss.

The gospel accounts of the flogging and crucifixion are remarkably benign because the writers apparently assumed their readers were already familiar with both so a lot of detail wasn’t needed.

Two types of crosses were used for crucifixion. One looked like a lower case “t” which is the Latin cross commonly worn as jewelry and shown in pictures of the crucified Jesus. Archeological evidence, however, indicates this almost surely was not the type of cross on which Jesus was crucified. Rather the “tau” cross, resembling an upper case “T” was prevalent in Roman Palestine and was likely the type of cross used.

Moreover, pictures showing Jesus carrying the entire cross on which he was crucified are wrong. The victim would only carry the patibulum or horizontal part of the cross for two reasons: first, the vertical part of the cross, the stipes, remained permanently in the ground and second, the patibulum would have weighed 75 pounds or so, whereas, the entire cross could have weighed over 300 pounds – more than the victim could have carried after being scourged. The scourging that Jesus received was so extreme, that he wasn’t able to carry even the patibulum, and Simon, a passerby, was ordered to carry if for him.

Aside from the taunts the victim heard from the crowd as he walked with his arms often tied to the patibulum, which was placed across the nape of his neck, he often walked naked to the place of execution and was crucified naked to add to his humiliation. After his scourging, the soldiers put a robe on Jesus and placed a crown of thrones on his head, bowing to mock him as the king he was accused to be. But before he began to walk the 700 yards to Golgotha, the place where crucifixions took place outside the city wall, the robe was taken off and his clothes were returned, suggesting that Jesus didn’t walk fully naked to the execution site. However, once crucified, his clothes were gambled for by the soldiers suggesting that he may have been naked on the cross.

Nakedness is significant because even today it is a humiliation for a Middle Eastern man to be naked among others, especially strangers. The courts martial and imprisonments associated with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq show the seriousness of this cultural violation.  Naked men there were forced to lie on each other in a pile. Touching each other while naked was humiliation enough but a female soldier was also present.

Medieval and Renaissance painters show the crucified Jesus with nails through his palms. Nails through the palms cannot support the weight of the victim and would strip out between fingers. Archeological remains of crucified victims show the nails were driven through the wrists, most often through the space between the radial and ulna wrist bones. Arriving at the execution site, the victim would be pushed to the ground, falling back on the patibulum tied across his shoulders. Any wounds that had clotted across the back would reopen allowing dirt to contaminate them further. Using iron spikes of 5” to 7” in length, a soldier skilled in crucifixion could find the spot in the wrist to drive the nail through without breaking a bone or piercing the radial or ulnar arteries. However, the nail would likely pierce the median nerve running up the wrist, causing bolts of unbearable pain to shoot up the arms. That and damage to tendons would paralyze the hand, forcing it into the shape of a claw.

The object of crucifixion was to suffocate the victim. Therefore, after nailing both wrists to the patibulum with enough slack to avoid pulling the arms taunt, the patibulum would be hoisted up atop the stipes and dropped into a mortise and tenon joint. The victim’s feet would be pulled up so the knees were bent, and with the left foot overlapping the right, a spike would be driven through arches. The soldier-executioner would do this without breaking metatarsal bones, allowing the victim to push up on his nailed feet in order to breathe. However, the medial and plantar nerves would be crushed causing agonizing pain in the legs when the victim pushed against his feet.

At this point the victim would be fully crucified and the death struggle would begin. As he sagged, it put more weight on the nails in the wrists. Unbearable pain would race through his fingers and up his arms because the nails would press the median nerves. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel, and if you’ve ever had the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome, multiply it by ten thousand to understand what a crucified man felt.  

In order to relieve the pain in his arms, shoulders, and neck, the victim would unconsciously push up on his nailed feet to take weight off of his wrists. Doing so would scrape his already shredded back on the rough-hewn stipes, inflicting more pain by opening the wounds, which ran horizontally. But shifting his weight to his nailed feet ripped at the nerves running through the metatarsal bones. It would also rotate the wrists on the nails, rubbing nails against nerves and inflicting excruciating pain. The victim would raise and lower himself between these alternate positions trying to relieve his pain. But he would also begin to have trouble breathing. He would find that he could only inhale with his weight on his wrists with arms fully outstretched. He could only exhale by raising himself allowing him to flex his arms, rotating his wrists, but even then he had to force the air out of his lungs by flexing his diaphragm. Only during the exhalation was Jesus able to speak from the cross.

As muscles fatigued from lack of oxygen, the onset of cramps began, making it harder with each attempt to push up and exhale. Hanging by his wrists, the victim could only inhale and panic would set in. Shallow respiration would cause a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood and fluid would accumulate in the lungs, making breathing more difficult. Intermittently, the victim would push up to gasp for breath but rapidly fatiguing leg muscles would fail from spasms. Inadequate respiration would lead to further multiple failures – fluid in the pericardium, making it harder for the heart to pump, and inadequate oxygenation, which raises the heart rate. Congestive heart failure would begin. The loss of tissue fluids, kidney failure, and the compressed heart would produce searing thirst, which caused Jesus to cry out “I thirst!” His body at that point was in extremis with enough strength to push and exhale out his last words, after which he died – most likely due to asphyxia.

The two thieves who were crucified on each side of Jesus had not died when the soldiers broke their shin bones with a heavy club to prevent them from pushing up to breathe. Asphyxic death would have come to them within minutes.

In his book Night, Elie Wiesel wrote of the gallows deaths that he and other prisoners were forced to witness when at 15 years of age he was interred in his first Nazi concentration camp. One incident involved a Dutch Oberkapo – an overseer who was himself a camp prisoner but one with special privileges. The Dutchman had a small servant boy who was given extra food in return for serving the Kapo. These boys, called pipels, were often used for sex by Kapos, but there’s no indication this was true for this boy, whom Wiesel said had the face of a sad angel.

When a nearby power station was sabotaged, the SS found a trail leading to the Dutch Oberkapo. He was tortured for weeks but revealed no names of collaborators, so he was then shipped off to Auschwitz not to be heard from again. The pipel was left behind, tortured, but he too did not speak. He was sentenced to hang along with two adults found with weapons.

Returning from work, Wiesel and the other prisoners were summoned to roll call to witness the execution.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.

The victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. "Long live Liberty!" cried the two adults. But the child was silent.

"Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. "Bare your heads!" yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. "Cover your heads!"

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive...

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed. Behind me I heard the same man asking: "Where is God now?"

And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is he? Here he is – he is hanging here on this gallows. . . "

But Wiesel was wrong. God was not dead. His silence means neither absence nor impotence. God wept the day those three people were hanged because that’s who God is.

For now we must accept the evil in the world. It is not mankind’s invention. It has a father and some have chosen to follow that Evil One. While 9/11 and the Holocaust are dramatic examples of his evil, more pernicious though less dramatic examples of it permeate life in a thousand disguises because a deluded “enlightened” and “tolerant” society have made it acceptable.

At the beginning of time a cosmic struggle between good and evil began. Throughout the Bible it is spoken of beginning in Genesis when God foretold its outcome. Satan would wound but not kill his redeemer. And true to his word, the apparent defeat of a death on a Friday afternoon gave way to the victory of Easter Sunday.

Life is a microcosm of that drama. When it seems like evil is winning, we should remember that we’ve yet to see the end of the story.

The Message of Easter

In his book, Jesus Through the Centuries, the late Jaroslav Pelikan begins by writing,

Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of super magnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse, and in his name that millions pray.

Last Sunday Christian churches were filled with people celebrating the signal event in the life of Jesus that would make him unlike any person who ever lived – the fulfillment of his claim that he would rise from being dead. If one accepts the resurrection miracle, then all of the claims Jesus made about himself must also be accepted – his oneness with God, his redemptive mission, and his exclusive agency as the way to eternal salvation.

Did the resurrection happen?

The historicity of Jesus, his crucifixion, death, and burial are well established by witnesses and secular historians – both his advocates and adversaries – who wrote in the first century and therefore were historically close to these events. Modern scholars accept this historicity without equivocation.

The controversy begins with the events after his death and burial.

There are those who argue that the resurrection miracle must be accepted by faith (implicitly without substantiating evidence) and there are those who argue that miracles which defy the physical laws of existence are impossible (implicitly denying that many things in our existence can’t be explained) Beyond their narrow coterie of adherents, neither of these extreme positions can ever be successfully advanced as an objective argument that has a chance at being accepted or criticized by mainstream advocates and adversaries. The poles are too far apart.

True faith, however, is not blind faith. True faith is the most reasonable conclusion one can reach based on the consistency of facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses. Likewise true skepticism is not blind skepticism. A true skeptic similarly examines facts, corroborating evidence, and the testimony of witnesses to determine if the conventional conclusion can be explained any other way. A true skeptic is a critical thinker and true faith is based on critical thinking. There will never be enough facts, enough data, or experience to explain anything with absolute certainty. Just look at how the understanding of “matter” has changed since the Middle Ages to the present, for example. True faith and true skepticism are simply two sides of the same coin. Neither believes it is possible to absolutely know anything.

That said, there has never been anyone who claimed to have witnessed the resurrection as it took place. But there has been ample evidence that it had to have taken place given circumstances that existed before and after the event. While the analogy is imperfect, detectives solve crimes and lawyers try cases without eye witnesses, using evidence and testimony. Likewise, the argument for the resurrection can be made with reason, motive, and circumstantial evidence – not blind faith. To refute the resurrection argument, one would have to present compelling reasons for interpreting the evidence and motives in a different way.

The discovery of the empty tomb, for example, was made by women, according to the authors of four biblical history books – the Gospels – namely Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Because women were held in low esteem in Jewish society, and weren’t even allowed to be legal witnesses, it is unlikely that this assertion is not fact. With Jesus’ arrest and trial, all of the men who had been his disciples fled and hid behind locked doors, terrified that they might come to a similar end. Why would the authors of the Gospels historically embarrass these men – the future leaders of the Christian movement – and have the empty tomb discovered by women who followed Jesus unless that fact were true?

The fact of the empty tomb was later confirmed by the male disciples upon hearing the women’s witness, but neither their witness nor the women’s became an object of controversy in Jerusalem during the generation that lived during these events. Why? Because the empty tomb must have become widely accepted in a very short time. Because anyone who doubted that the crucified body of Jesus was missing could verify it for themselves by walking the short distance from Jerusalem to the tomb. Because absent a body, the tomb never became an object of Christian veneration by Christ’s followers in the years following the crucifixion. They knew Jesus wasn’t in it.

While this establishes the empty tomb it does not explain what happened to the body.

The Jewish leaders who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus, however, also became aware of the missing body. Matthew’s account of the scene at the tomb is the only one which mentions guards were stationed there. After the women’s discovery, those guards went to the city and told the chief priests “everything that had happened.” Everything. Whatever the guards reported, Matthew says the priests then bribed them and instructed that they were to lie by saying the disciples stole the body while the guards were asleep.

Despite the unlikelihood that all of several guards would fall asleep at the same time, and all would sleep through the noise of more than a few men toiling to break the seal and roll away a large stone to steal a body, why include the-guards-were-asleep tale in a story whose bias is to advocate for the resurrection – unless there was a cover up? What was being covered up? A sleeping witness can’t testify to anything – certainly not as witness to a theft or the resurrection. But if the guards were awake and saw something which could corroborate what happened in the pre-dawn that Sunday morning, it would be worth all of the hush money the chief priests would pay.

Matthew tells what happened.

And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.

First century Jews believed in angels. There were reported accounts of encounters with them. When the guards regained their wits and told the chief priests what had happened, the Jewish religious establishment would have had little choice but to keep the guard quiet and to concoct the stolen body hoax to explain the empty tomb.

Anyone continuing to believe that the disciples stole Jesus’ body should consider that these men had denied their association with their leader during his arrest and trial, had not (except for one of them) attended his crucifixion and death, had been hiding behind closed doors in fear of the Jewish establishment during the weekend, and had not accompanied women to the tomb in the pre-dawn hours of dark when they were least likely to be seen. How would these same men muster the nerve to steal a body under guard?

Okay, perhaps others antagonistic to the followers of Jesus stole the body. For what motive? Assuming that the theft of the body could figure into some angle to disprove the resurrection, why didn’t the thieves produce the body when the resurrection was being proclaimed 50 days later? Because there was no body – anywhere.

The tomb was empty and no one had a motive and opportunity to take the body. But, there also is enough circumstantial evidence of an inexplicable supernatural event by eye witnesses because something induced the Jewish religious establishment to hush it up with a bribe. Why?

If Jesus had risen from the dead, as he said he would, that could spell trouble for the Jewish leaders. The Roman general, Pompey the Great, invaded Palestine in 63 BC, initiating seven centuries of Roman rule. There had been many uprisings in Palestine since the Roman occupation began, and the region had a reputation in Rome of being a haven of troublemakers. Ultimately, an uprising would occur in 70 AD – about 40 years after these events – that would result in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.

When Jesus began teaching his message that the kingdom of God was coming, his followers misunderstood his mission, thinking he had come to establish an earthly kingdom that would liberate the Jews from their Roman occupiers. This terrified the religious establishment. John tells why using the words of the chief priests:

Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place (the Temple) and our nation. So from that day on, the Jewish leaders plotted to kill Jesus.

The Jewish leaders did succeed in getting Jesus executed, but much to their chagrin, the Roman procurator insisted on crucifying him with a placard over his head that declared Jesus to be the king of the Jews. Now this “king” goes missing from his tomb and a bribe has been paid to suppress an apparent supernatural event.

If that is all we have, the argument for the resurrection would be weak. But there is more. Having heard from the women that Jesus’ body is missing, Peter and John go to the tomb to observe for themselves. John tells his recollection:

Peter then came out with [John], and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but [John] outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then [John], who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed. (Underline mine)

The word “saw” is used three times in this account. Translated into English, it would seem that each instance of “seeing” was equal. But the writer uses three different Greek words to describe what was seen in this event for a good reason. The first “saw” is a word that could be translated in English as peep or glance; it was a quick look. The second “saw” uses a word that describes a more analytical way of looking. Peter, for example, studied the scene sufficiently to observe that the burial wrappings and the facial cloth were lying separately.

The third “saw” – the one used in reference to John – is a Greek verb that means to see and understand, to “get it” because all of the clues fall in place. John’s seeing produced understanding that caused him to believe.

What John saw that caused belief can only be speculated but it had to be something so compelling that no other conclusion could be reached except that a miracle had occurred. Quite possibly, the burial wrappings that had encased Jesus remained fixed in a way that a body could not have gotten out of them except miraculously. A bunch of linen strips tossed about the tomb would not produce that kind of insight and belief. A thief could have left that evidence. Whatever happened there happened without haste. The facial napkin was folded and placed separately. Why? Perhaps so an observer could plainly see that the undisturbed burial strips no longer contained a body.

Why didn’t Peter see this? There is nothing that says he didn’t. Luke describes Peter leaving the tomb “marveling” at what he had seen. Why didn’t the women see this? The angel they encountered scared the wits out of them, as it did the guards, and they fled – only learning that Jesus wasn’t there from the angel. Peter and John encountered no reported angels and quite possibly felt it safe to explore.

One might expect that the testimony of Peter and John would have been sufficient to spark a wildfire of rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead. But it still would have been hearsay evidence. Evidence of the resurrection had to be made known in a way that it could not be disputed, and it was – by Jesus himself.

Paul, a persecutor of the Christian movement who later converted to it because of the compelling evidence that a resurrection had occurred, wrote this about 20 to 25 years after the event:

What I received I passed on to you … that Christ died for our sins according to the [Jewish prophecy], that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the [Jewish prophecy], and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom 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.

Significantly, most of these people were still living when Paul wrote this and therefore could be consulted to corroborate Paul’s assertion that over 500 people had seen Jesus after his burial and apparent resurrection. Moreover, while Jesus appeared to some people individually, he appeared to most as a group. Individual sightings could have been fobbed off by disbelievers as a hoax; but how is a hoax perpetrated among 500 people who unlike, perhaps, “the twelve” and the “apostles” could not have collaborated in a lie?

The last two Paul mentions – James and himself – were particularly important appearances because neither believed Jesus was the son of God during Jesus’ life until he appeared to them individually after his death. James was the earthly brother of Jesus and would be martyred for his belief in the resurrected Jesus. Paul encountered Jesus on a journey to arrest Christians about five to seven years after the resurrection. It was an experience that changed Paul’s life. He became a Christian missionary, primarily to the Gentile world and would be martyred most likely in Rome.

On the day of Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks which came 50 days after the Jewish Passover, the followers of Jesus and his disciples became fiery evangelists and bold witnesses in the new Christian movement as Luke records in the biblical book of Acts. Only their belief in the resurrection, which had been revealed to them by direct contact with Jesus, can explain this transformation. That transformation would make them willing to die for their faith.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed in the two centuries following the resurrection. They were tortured, beheaded, crucified, sawn in two, covered in tar and turned into torches to light Roman roads. They were wrapped in animal skins and thrown in the Roman arenas where wild beasts tore them to pieces and devoured them. For what? To protect a hoax that they had stolen a body to give lie to a resurrection story? Liars don’t make good martyrs.

Knowing what lay in store for them, persecution scattered these early believers to the ends of the Roman Empire where they founded many communities of believers. Those communities in turn would, in connection with their trades and vocations, travel throughout the Roman world, starting other communities of believers until they could say the good news of Jesus’ resurrection had been spread to the entire world.

The key evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is not only his empty tomb. It is also the disciples’ experiences with the literal appearances of the risen Jesus that caused their inexplicable transformation from cowards into crusaders who were willing to die for their faith that they too would be resurrected to a life without end. So compelling is the evidence of the resurrection that it has been the central rationale for Christian discipleship for over two millennia.

That is the message of Easter.