By Rev. Loel Wessel
Spring Valley, MN
Herb Panko is in good company when he regards the dying and rising of Jesus as fiction. (FCJ, March 26, 2018). The women who went to Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning following his crucifixion were looking for a dead body too. When they reported to the disciples that Jesus’ grave was empty and an angel said “He is not here; he is risen as he said,” the news seemed like nonsense to them.
One man was so convinced that this whole history was a fraud that he dedicated his early adult life to stamping it out. “Breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, [he] went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9:1-2) This is the man whom Mr. Panko credits with creating and encouraging “a fantastical, supernatural theology…the beginning of the distortion, perversion, and fictionalizing of the authentic Jesus of history.”
On the way to Damascus this man (Saul) encountered the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. He entered Damascus a changed man. Saul, also called Paul, began his mission not by trying to convince pagans that his resurrection myth was better than their resurrection myths, but by proclaiming in the synagogues of Damascus that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ whom their own Scriptures said would die and rise from the dead.
Paul later admitted that such preaching is pointless if Jesus did not really rise from the dead. He wrote: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ…And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (I Corinthians 15:14-19)
Pity the person who lives his life for a Jesus who has not been raised from the dead. Mr. Panko asserts that the central message of Jesus’ life was “his insistence on the importance of justice, compassion, taking care of the poor and dispossessed and showing love and respect for all humanity.” All good things. But this message does not require a teacher named Jesus. What Panko is arguing is that Jesus is unnecessary. Many would agree. The eyewitnesses of his resurrection say otherwise.
When Jesus stood among them after his resurrection from the dead, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus did not “lose his humanity” by dying and rising. He stood among them with nail marks in his hands and feet and a spear gash in his side. He spoke with them. He ate and drank with them. And “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” (Luke 24:45-46)
It was his bodily appearances among them that ultimately convinced the disciples that Jesus has truly risen from the dead. The women were greeted by Jesus as they ran to the disciples from the tomb. Jesus stood among his disciples in their locked room and asked for something to eat. Eight days later, Thomas was invited to touch the marks of the crucifixion on Jesus’ living body. Seeing a fully human Jesus, he confessed of him, “My Lord and my God.” And Jesus replied, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:24-29)
Yes, the central message of Jesus requires faith: trust in what is written about Jesus in the Scriptures. Mr. Panko’s message begins in Chatfield and ends with a lifeless body buried outside Jerusalem. The authentic message of Jesus begins in Jerusalem and ends with good news being proclaimed in all the world: Christ is risen. History. Faith. Together.
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