After a lifetime studying military history, Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Reagan administration, concluded that in the fog of war, victorious generals misperceive what is actually happening 95% of the time. Defeated generals, on the other hand, get things wrong 99% of the time. Everything hinges on that crucial 4%.
Our perceptions might be wrong 95% of the time. But we dare not be wrong about that crucial 4% that spells the difference between victory and defeat, between life and death.
This Holy Week, I invite you to think about the consequences of two wrong perceptions many Christians hold about Jesus’ resurrection.
Misperception #1: Jesus’ resurrection is a “spiritual” idea not connected to my personal life.
The real heart of faith for some Christians is trying to be a better person. Liberals tend to focus more on social justice (e.g., Jesus’ care for the poor and disenfranchised) while conservatives tend to focus on personal morality (e.g., Jesus’ character), but both focus on “how can I be more like Jesus?”
Jesus’ resurrection is left on the periphery, as an after-thought. The resurrection is “one of those things Christians believe” (we can add the Trinity and the Incarnation to this list) that are practically irrelevant to what we call “living a good Christian life.”
As thousands of self-help books will tell you, trying to become a better person is all about incremental change. On the other hand, the Bible constantly talks about transformational change.
While we can achieve some incremental change through human will power, transformational change (the theme of the Scripture) requires a power beyond anything we can do for ourselves.
Scripture constantly locates the release of this transformational power in Jesus’ resurrection.
In his great chapter on the resurrection, I Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul declares the importance of the historical fact of the bodily resurrection
“If corpses can’t be raised, then Christ wasn’t, because he was indeed dead. And if Christ weren’t raised, then all you’re doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever. It’s even worse for those who died hoping in Christ and resurrection, because they’re already in their graves. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.
But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.” (I Cor 15:17-20, The Message)
Paul then ends this magnificent chapter by driving his point home in a great Hallelujah Chorus of celebration
“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.
But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(I Cor. 15:55-57, NRSV)
Misperception #2: Jesus’ resurrection is all about going to heaven when I die.
Wait a minute! Weren’t the verses just quoted about life after death or going to heaven when I die?
Yes, but Jesus’ resurrection, biblically understood, is about so much more than going to heaven!
The grand narrative told by Scripture is that
(a) God created the world good,
(b) human disobedience (sin) warped the world away from God’s good intentions, which led to
(c) God mounting a rescue plan to redeem, renew and restore his creation into all God intended it to be. The Bible teaches that Jesus’ resurrection set into motion God’s plan to defeat evil and fix all that is wrong with our world—leading eventually to a brand-new creation.
And here’s the amazing thing! This new creation existence that Jesus promises (Matthew, Mark and Luke call it the Kingdom of God, John calls Eternal Life) isn’t only in the future! It begins NOW!
When we trust our lives to Jesus Christ not only is our personal victory over death assured. You and I get to be partners with God—right now—in God’s ever-expanding renewal of all creation!
Biblical scholar NT Wright puts it this way
“When Jesus rose again God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings themselves to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus does not leave us as passive, helpless spectators.
We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world.” (Simply Christian)
Reading these words, my heart beats a little faster, my mind ranges a little wider, my spirit resonates a little deeper with the incredible gift of new life I’ve been given in Christ!
God’s ultimate purpose for me was never to simply “take me to heaven when I die.”
God’s ultimate purpose for me was always (ever since Adam and Eve’s failure in the Garden of Eden) to rescue me from the consequences of that failure (sin and death) and renew me to be God’s partner in the new creation that is coming, and indeed, already here in Jesus’ resurrection.
Too many Christians imagine Jesus’ resurrection as a safety deposit box. They lock away what is most precious to them–in this case their passport into heaven–keeping it safe until the day it is needed. Until that day, however, the safety deposit box quietly does its work out of sight and out of mind, while we get on with trying to live like Jesus as best we can.
But this is not the apostle Paul’s view of the resurrection! Paul’s last verse in his grand chapter explaining Jesus’ resurrection is NOT the triumphant words already quoted above. His last verse is, rather, these words about daily life and challenging hope (I Cor. 15:58) in two translations
“Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (NRSV)
“With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” (The Message)
“IN THE LORD YOUR LABOR IS NOT IN VAIN.”You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll off a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site.You are–strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself–accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world.
- Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness;
- every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation;
- every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk;
- every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures;
- and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world– all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.
That is the logic of the mission of God.
God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted.
It will last all the way into God’s new world.”(NT Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
The Bible is not another self-help book offering incremental change for those trying hard to be better people.
It is God’s manifesto for how God will put to right everything that has gone so horribly wrong, beginning with our individual brokenness but moving out far beyond our individual lives into an entire new creation. All this hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
This Easter, may we see more clearly (or perhaps see for the first time) how the transformational shock waves of Jesus’ resurrection move outward from the empty tomb–both down through time and across the cosmos today–catching up everything in the power of God’s coming (yet already here) new creation.
