Easter Sunday
Ever since it became public knowledge that Easter
Sunday this year would coincide with April Fool’s Day, memes have been
circulating over social media drawing parallels between the Christian belief in
the resurrection of a dead man with what could possibly have been an April
Fool’s Day prank. Few people are aware that the first of April is also Atheist Day.
What
turned out to be a hoax was eventually accepted as fact. Atheists have claimed
the day for their own as well. Perhaps this year, they will take greater
delight in pointing out to their Christian friends that the whole Easter story
was actually a hoax, an April Fool’s Day prank.
So, is Easter a
hoax and are we Christians “fools” for believing? Well, atheists would claim
this to be so. They would assert that the bible is irrefutable proof that no
one saw the corpse of Jesus reanimate. What the disciples actually saw was an
empty tomb and an empty tomb, they argue, is not sufficient to prove that the
resurrection happened. There are countless empty tombs in the world today, but
none of them prove a resurrection had happened. Likewise, subsequent ‘appearances’
of Jesus could be explained away as either mass hallucinations of His followers
who desperately wanted to see Him or perhaps stories generated by the followers
to further their cause. Thus, for a
certified atheists, a Christian’s belief in the resurrection is simply
ludicrous and blind.
But is their charge
tenable? Certainly not if we were to consider the story of Easter once again. Faith,
despite what the atheists claim, is not blind. On the contrary, unbelief is
blind. Faith sees a reality beyond what eyes can see, a reality that God
reveals to us which is more important more real, than what we can see
with our physical eyes. In fact, eyesight was never a guarantee that people
really “saw” Jesus. Judas was the greatest example to this tragic truth. On the
other hand, the beloved disciple saw an empty tomb but did not see the body,
and came to belief.
For Christians, the
resurrection was more than just talking about life after death in general, the
immortality of the soul or claiming that Jesus’ soul went to heaven. They’re
saying something radically happened to Jesus. More fundamentally, the
resurrected life is life in God, life with God, life in God after death. It is this “in God” and this “with God” which
characterises the risen life far more than the ‘after death’ aspect.” That's
the essential story of the Resurrection.
The empty tomb is
a necessary condition for the Resurrection, but atheists are right in stating
that it's not sufficient. The Apostles needed to see in the flesh that the Lord
was alive again in His body, but in a transformed and glorified state. And this
they did, and so did many others who witnessed the resurrected Lord in the flesh,
not just in their dreams or imagination. According to St Paul, Christ's
resurrection is attested by more than 500 eyewitnesses whose experience,
simplicity, and uprightness of life rendered them incapable of inventing such a
fable. They had nothing in this life to gain, but everything to lose by their
testimony, exhibited in their apostolic life and martyrdom. Even as
Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, the Resurrection was one of
the stumbling blocks. Christians were mocked for their belief. It's impossible;
even ancient people knew that dead people stayed dead. And yet, we witness the
rise of the Church in spite of all these unfavourable odds.
St. Thomas Aquinas
notes that while there is nothing strange that a man should die, but that God
should die is incomprehensible. This thought led Tertullian to exclaim, “It
must be true, because it is impossible!” Similarly, that a man should rise from
the dead is problematic -- did not the Athenians laugh Paul to scorn, when he
proposed this idea to them? -- and can only be resolved by a divine
intervention of the highest order. This is why the Resurrection is the proof
for the Divinity of Christ, for only God could so corroborate His divine claim.
Popular culture
now holds up many Christ figures. If you watch the superhero movies, they make
liberal use of Christian themes, death and resurrection, but they also seem
interchangeable with Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology, as if all have equal
cultural value. A lot of people actually treat the story of the Passion and
Resurrection of Christ as just one more myth. But the real difference about
Jesus and superheroes is that the resurrection of Christ is not something that
happened on top of Mount Olympus before time, but God broke into time. All the
episodes with the risen Lord confirm that the post-resurrection experiences
with Christ were real, visible, and accessible through the bodily senses. This
makes the resurrection a firm reality, established on verifiable data, on
plenty of eyewitnesses and therefore not a myth.
The atheist’s
denial flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Both the rejection
of God and that of the resurrection is anything but scientific, though they
might quote from science to bolster their position. The real reason is moral.
When man chooses to live a life autonomous of any higher order, he ultimately
must rid himself of the source of that order – God must die for man to be set free.
This is what the psalmist means when he says, “The fool says in his heart,
‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1). He is not saying that unintelligent
people do not believe in God. Rather, the text is saying that sinful people do
not wish to believe in God. Therefore the rejection of God is due to a desire
to live free of the moral constraints God requires and to escape the guilt that
accompanies the violation of those constraints. When that person begins to
embrace a man-made cause, and in the process, do what is right in his own eyes,
he begins to justify abominable and evil things. As St Paul so rightly puts it,
“they exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:18–25).
The resurrection
of Christ is and must always be the foundation of our Christian faith. The
resurrection gives credence, authenticity and reality to our faith. It is the
cause of our salvation. It proves salvation is real for millions and millions
of believers down the age from all over the world and also millions who have
gone to be with the Lord hoping to be resurrected someday. “The Resurrection
above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and
teachings. All truths, even those most
inaccessible to human reason, find their justification if Christ by His
Resurrection has given proof of His divine authority, which he had promised”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 651). Many have gone to their deaths knowing
that their faith has not been in vain, as St Paul reminds us, “if there is no
resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. And if Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. 15: 14-15).
So Easter falling
on April Fool’s day this year may not be an incongruity after all. Christians
are called to be “fools for Christ,” which does not in any way imply that we
are stupid and lack common sense and judgment. But rather, that we will share
the lot of the One who died for us and rose again on the third day. It is those
who reject the idea of the resurrection, who reject the idea of a Saviour, who
reject the idea of a God who loves us so much that He would sacrifice His only
Begotten Son so that we may have life, who are the real fools. For indeed, it
is only the fool who is capable of saying in his heart, ‘there is no God’. To
such a fool, there is no hope beyond this transient impermanent material world,
there is no consolation from having to endure suffering in this life, death
would truly be the end of the road, a dead end. This is the significance of the
resurrection. For without it, there is no salvation, no victory over sin and no
eternal life.
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