The obliqueness – the sheer, understated character – of the New Testament accounts of the Resurrection makes them powerfully disturbing.
True, Matthew’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus died, the tombs of Jerusalem opened and the holy dead arose, like characters in a canvas by Stanley Spencer (Matthew 27:52). Matthew also has an earthquake occurring at the time of the Resurrection of Christ (Matthew 28:2).
But you would expect the other Gospels to have much more of this sort of thing, especially since they were written decades after the events described. There had been plenty of time for a tall story to grow.
Instead, we watch a tall story shrinking to understatement. The oldest of the Gospels, Mark, ends with women going to the tomb, and finding it empty.
They ‘ran away from the tomb because they were frightened out of their wits; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’ (Mark 16:8).
It is hardly the story you would make up, if you were trying to start a new ‘world religion’ and persuade people that the founder had risen from the dead.
And this is a Gospel, probably written in Rome, whose first audience were friends with Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21), the actual sons of the North African man who had helped Jesus carry his cross – Simon of Cyrene.
Paul, on the road to Damascus, did not recognise the risen Jesus when he appeared in his vision. And John’s Gospel, probably written towards the end of the first century, has stories of the Resurrection where the witnesses don’t even recognise the risen Christ.
The first is of Mary Magdalene coming to the garden early in the morning and finding the tomb empty. When she sees Jesus standing there, ‘Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him” ’ (John 20:15).
Again, as with the story in Mark of the women running away, is that the sort of story you would invent if you wanted to persuade an audience that the Resurrection was really true? The other detail, lost on modern readers, that makes this account so strange is that, in Jewish courts, women could not give evidence.
Their evidence counted for nothing. In Luke’s Gospel, therefore, we find the testimony of the women is dismissed as ‘pure nonsense’ (Luke 24:11), precisely because it comes from women.
In the final Resurrection appearance in John’s Gospel, the disciples are coming to land after fishing and find a mysterious figure on the shore of Lake Galilee, grilling fish on a charcoal fire. Again, they do not recognise him at first.
Only in the second Resurrection story in this Gospel does the story confront the reader unambiguously. The reader is put in the position of the apostle Thomas, Doubting Thomas, who was not present when the Lord first appeared. A week later, when Thomas is now present, Jesus comes again, and invites him to put his hand in the wounded side. It provokes the unforgettable confession by Thomas, ‘My Lord and My God’ (John 20:28).
The reply is equally unforgettable, ‘You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’
A decade or so before John’s Gospel was written, Luke told the story of two disciples walking in deep dejection, after the death of Jesus, to a village outside Jerusalem. They are joined by a third.
Only when they reach the village, and ask the stranger to sup with them, does the revelation occur, and they hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles – ‘How they had recognised him at the breaking of bread’ (Luke 24:35).
Christians are committed to the historical truth of their faith. These are not stories that are simply metaphors for the human race having ‘conquered death’ in some airy-fairy, ‘spiritual’ sense.
The claims are made more convincing, and certainly more disturbing, by the fact that they are so quiet.
If you were inventing the story, would you not be tempted to make the risen Christ appear to the High Priest or Pilate to dispel all doubts? Instead, puzzlement, and lingering bereavement, appear to have remained part of the experience.
Every year at Easter, the Orthodox Church expresses these profound experiences in the liturgy of the Fire. The faithful gather in complete darkness. Outside the church, a fire is lit and, from the fire, the Paschal Candle. From the Candle, other candles are lit and then, from the back of the church, forwards to the front, each person lights the candle being held by their neighbour, until the whole building is ablaze with light.
The other Christian churches, in the West, retain some of these ceremonies, and it is hard to imagine any more eloquent way of enacting the Gospel stories written down in the first century.
There is the conviction that an event in history certainly took place. The Resurrection is not just some symbol.
But, more than an event in the past, it continues to be an event in the experience of women and men, as they pass on their flickering candle flame to their neighbour.
‘Christ is risen!’ they say, and the reply is, ‘He is risen indeed!’
A N Wilson is author of Jesus
