Why I Believe In The Resurrection

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead. I believe the cross killed him deader than a rock and that the disciples buried him in a borrowed tomb on a Friday. On the following Sunday, I believe his heart started beating again, pumping blood through his veins. I believe his lungs filled with air, his nose smelled the musty odors of the tomb, his body felt the chill of that awful place, his ears heard the stony silence. I believe the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb, that he sat up, unwrapped himself from the burial clothes, and walked out. Alive. My reasons for believing in the resurrection of Jesus may not be yours. If you doubt or don’t believe at all, they may not be enough to remove your suspicions or convince you that it’s true. But I believe.

I believe Jesus rose from the dead because the Bible says he did. And I trust the Bible.

I believe because the first witnesses were women. In that culture, country and time, women were not considered credible witnesses. Yet they are the first to testify to the truth of the resurrection. If the writers of the gospels were trying to foment a conspiracy, they’d have presented testimony from someone with a deeper voice and the XY chromosome.

I believe because neither the Jewish authorities nor the Romans ever produced a body. Which would have been the surest way to put a nail in the coffin of what they said was a hoax.

I believe because 11 men who, days before, were unwilling to admit they even knew him, somehow found the courage to confront kings and crowds with the message of the gospel, and ultimately died defending his name, his cause, and his mission.

I believe because someone as intelligent, informed and fanatically opposed to anything that remotely resembled Christianity as Saul of Tarsus, became Christianity’s greatest defender and most prolific author.

I believe because two-thousand years after the fact, we’re still talking about it. Telling stories about it. Writing songs about it. Making movies and television specials about it. And in Kenya and other hard places, dying for the truth of it.

I believe because several years ago, I watched a three-year old named Allison die of a rare form of leukemia. Her mother and her father were lying in the bed with her when she opened her eyes, looked at them one last time, then drew her last breath. I don’t want to live in a universe where there is a permanent period at the end of a story like that. I want Jesus’ resurrection to be true because I want Allison to see her parents again. I want them to see her.

And I would like very much to see my sister, Jean, again. And a lot of other family and friends who have been gathered to their fathers and mothers.

I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the literal, bodily resurrection, because I want to follow a leader who is impervious to death. I want to believe that death has been defeated, that its fangs have been removed and that all it can ever claim is a temporary, provisional victory.

And I believe because I want to know that failure, the worst kind of failure you can imagine, is never final. Never.

Because if Jesus rose from the dead, if he really did, then there is nothing from which we cannot recover. Nothing. Not a single thing.