The case for the Resurrection

This is my homily for today, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.

Tradition says that St. Luke was a physician.  But in today’s Gospel reading of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearance to this room full of his disciples, Luke sounds more like a lawyer than a doctor.  He marshals evidence intended to prove something which admittedly can be hard to accept: that this man Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.

I assume most of us are here today because we believe.  We accept, with a heart of faith, that Jesus’s passion, death and resurrection really happened; and that they constitute Good News for us.  When we hear these Gospel stories, they reinforce our faith.  They help us to believe.

But not everyone believes.  And even in the hearts of us who profess to believe, there can be difficulties and doubts.  A part of us remains skeptical, perhaps especially about this seemingly far-fetched claim of Jesus rising from the dead.  The skeptical person approaches this, not from a heart of faith, but from a different angle.  The skeptic needs to be persuaded.

To be sure, the skeptic may be willing to concede that there once was a man named Jesus of Nazareth; that he made enemies of powerful people; and that these powerful people had him arrested, put on trial, tortured, and then killed.  After all, that isn't very hard to believe.  There are precedents for such things.  That has happened to others before it happened to Jesus.  And it has happened afterward.  

It continues to happen today: in our own day, authoritarian regimes continue to arrest, torture and kill dissidents and troublemakers.  I’ve preached before about the assassination of St. Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who was killed by the Salvadoran military regime - shot down while celebrating mass.  I’ve preached about Jean Donovan, the lay American woman who, together with three American religious sisters, was kidnapped, raped and murdered by the same brutal Salvadoran regime.  There are many other contemporary examples.  The name Jamal Khashoggi is pretty well-known, the Saudi journalist who apparently was tortured and killed by a Saudi death squad in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a few years ago.  You may have heard the name Alexei Navalny, the Russian activist and dissident whom Russian agents nearly killed with the terrible nerve agent Novichok last year.  Navalny recently was arrested and imprisoned, and the Russian government won’t let his doctors see him.   His health is said to be declining - he may well be dying in prison.  You may have heard of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy protest leader.  The Chinese government recently sentenced him to prison for his pro-democracy activities, and is considering charging him with other crimes which would ensure that he stays in prison until he dies.  Yes, the Roman occupiers of Judea 2,000 years ago crucifying a Jewish troublemaker: that’s not difficult for a skeptic to believe.  

It’s the Resurrection which is hard to believe.  There is plenty of precedent for authoritarians killing a troublemaker, but one of the troublemakers rising from the dead?  That’s hard to believe.

This is where today’s Gospel passage comes in.  You see, in order to remain skeptical, the skeptic has to be able to explain away this post-resurrection appearance to an entire roomful of witnesses.  If Jesus was dead, then what was he doing, seemingly alive, in this room?  

Well, the skeptic might reply, what all these witnesses saw wasn’t really the risen Lord; it was an imposter.  Or it was a ghost: a spirit, an apparition of some sort.  

And in fact, in Luke’s telling of this story, the latter is exactly what his disciples thought at first: the Gospel account tells us that “they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.” That is not surprising.  As we’ve noted: there is no precedent for rising from the dead.  People may not immediately understand it, much less accept it.

And so Luke the lawyer goes to work.  In support of his case, he has Jesus offering three pieces of evidence to show that it’s really him, and that he literally is in the flesh.  First, Jesus shows these witnesses his hands and his feet, which bear the wounds from his being nailed to the cross.  That’s pretty good evidence that it’s him and not some imposter.  Next, Jesus invites the witnesses to touch him, because a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones.  Then he asks them for something to eat, and proceeds to eat some fish in their presence.  Everyone knows that ghosts don’t need to eat anything.  

Taken together, this is pretty convincing evidence.  We know that Jesus died, because many people witnessed his death on the cross.  We know he was laid in the tomb, because the highly respectable Joseph of Arimathea said so.  We know the tomb was empty a couple of days later, because that is what some women witnessed.  And now we have these reports from an entire roomful of witnesses who not only have seen Jesus alive again, but squeezed his hand and embraced him, and watched him eat.

The only logical conclusion is that this is no imposter, but really is Jesus of Nazareth; and that it’s not just his ghost, but all of him: the enfleshed, embodied man.  He died, and yet here he is alive again.

This is the essence of the Good News: Jesus of Nazareth was tortured and murdered by the ruling regime, which isn’t remarkable; and then he rose from the dead, which is remarkable.  In fact, it’s unprecedented.  A skeptic might be forgiven for doubting it really happened, but according to the evidence we just examined, it would seem to be irrefutable.

In today’s Gospel story, the disciples are still wrapping their heads around all this.  Yet they do get the chief point: Jesus who was dead is now alive.  And we’re told that they were “incredulous for joy and were amazed”.  

There is so much more we could say about Jesus’s rising from the dead: what it means for us and our lives, what it means for our loved ones, what it means for all of humanity, what it says about God and how much he loves all of us.  But right now, we’re still in the Easter season.  We have the rest of the liturgical year, and the rest of our lives, to unpack what all of this means.  For now, let’s just join the disciples in their celebration.  Jesus who was dead is alive.  The disciples’ incredulous joy and amazement are infectious.  Let’s not get vaccinated against this infection: let’s let that joy and amazement infect us, and let it fill our hearts.  Let our hearts and our beings overflow with rejoicing: Jesus, arrested and executed by the authoritarians, has risen from the dead.  Thanks to St. Luke, attorney for the defense, it’s proven and irrefutable.