Archbishop William Temple once commented that it does very little harm if an eager layman talks heresy, provided he shows and imparts a love for the Lord Jesus whereas it does great harm if a priest talks orthodoxy so as to make men think the Gospel is dull or irrelevant.
When it comes to the great Truth we are celebrating of the Resurrection of the Lord this is supremely true. I can as a preacher argue for the Resurrection of Jesus but what may matter more is for you to meet with a life set alight by the Truth "Christ is Risen" however bad that person may be at expressing that truth!
I owe my convictions to meeting such a life in 1967 and I am still going strong.
These Glorious Forty Days are for me a celebration of the heart of my Christian Faith. The Paschal Candle stands in the Sanctuary as a sign of the basic truth of Christianity.
Like Paul at Athens I should like it said of me as is written in Acts 17v18 "he preached Jesus and the resurrection"!
The Truth of the Resurrection is a historical truth.
It goes beyond history but it is rooted in history. We have four slightly different accounts affirming that when the disciples went to the tomb of Christ they found his grave clothes folded and no sign of the dead. In the next six weeks the Resurrected Christ was seen according to Paul by over 550 people on 11 different occasions. The disciples lives were transformed and the Church grew at an astonishing rate surviving nearly 20 centuries to this day. Over these centuries, particularly the last two highly sceptical centuries, much critical investigation has gone into the claim for Jesus Christ being the only Man to come back from the dead. In this connection the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Darling, made this comment about Christ's Resurrection:
'In its favour there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the Resurrection story is true'.
The Resurrection being a historically founded truth challenges us as an universal truth. Just as the Battle of Waterloo will remain for ever in the history books as the event that changed European history two centuries ago so the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an event that has not just European significance over two centuries but one that has universal meaning, stretching backwards and forwards in time and in space to every place and era in this Universe.
In the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence I once saw the beautiful 15th Century picture by Masaccio of the Trinity. It shows Jesus on the Cross being handed over to us by the Father. The picture used to hang over a tomb with a skeleton laid on top of it. On the tomb was this inscription: "I was what you are and what I am you shall be" (repeat)
The Resurrection shows us that God has come in the flesh and suffered our death so that we in turn, welcoming this gift of the Risen Christ, may become sharers in His divine Life.
Speaking of Jesus C.S.Lewis said 'It seems obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend; and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God. God has landed on this enemy occupied world in human form'.
"Christ has risen from the dead!" sing Orthodox Christians at Easter, "He has crushed death by His death and bestowed Life upon those who lay in the tomb". The Son of God has "crushed death by his death" in the greatest of all imaginable revolutions. Now death to those in Christ is something to look forward to.
May the revolutionary truth of the resurrection seize each one of us this evening. To be a Christian is to be irrepressible. We cannot be put down!
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