... according to the Scriptures

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, that that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures... (I Corinthians 15:3-4)

The fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians was written by St. Paul in the late 50's of the first century, less than thirty years after the death and resurrection of Our Lord. There were still many people alive who had followed Jesus and had seen him after his resurrection (verse 6). None of the Gospels had as yet been committed to writing, making this passage the earliest written account of these events.

St. Paul emphasizes that the death of Christ was not random, nor an accident, nor simply an innocent teacher falling victim to the Romans; it was all “according to the Scriptures,” as was the resurrection. The Gospels emphasize this as well, telling how Jesus taught his disciples ahead of time that he “must” be killed and rise again on the third day (St. Mark 8:31), and that “he spake that saying openly” (St. Mark 8:32).

This is why we hear Exodus 12 on Maundy Thursday, describing the institution of the Passover, and why on many Sundays we hear the Celebrant say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” This is why the Suffering Servant passage from Isaiah (chapter 53) is part of the Good Friday liturgy. And this is why we have nine Old Testament lessons plus the psalmody at the Great Vigil of Easter. The early Church, and by the Gospel accounts Jesus himself, understood his death and resurrection to be the fulfillment of these passages and many others – as St. Luke says, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets” (24:27).

Holy Week is where it all comes together. At the beginning of the Palm Sunday liturgy, we pray “that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby [God has] given us life and immortality” (BCP p. 270). On Good Friday we sing “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Yes, we were there, and not just vicariously: “I am crucified with Christ,” says St. Paul, “and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). At the Great Vigil and on Easter Day – and by extension, every Lord's Day – we give thanks for his resurrection. “For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death.” (BCP p. 285)

'Tis the spring of souls today;
Christ hath burst his prison,
and from three days' sleep in death
as a sun hath risen;
all the winter of our sins,
long and dark, is flying
from his light, to whom we give
laud and praise undying.
(St. John of Damascus – Hymn 199)

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The above will be my essay in the church newsletter for April. Writing it was a struggle.

Partly, it is a case of post-recital lassitude. I managed to stay on task Wednesday afternoon and evening, but once that was done, it has been hard to pick up the threads of my work, this essay being one of them. I wasted time, dawdled over meals, did other work that was not at all pressing – anything but writing.

But part of it was wondering how to say it. There are many, probably a majority, in our congregation who do not believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead. They have been greatly influenced by the teachings of Marcus Borg and others that Jesus was no more than a good and holy teacher who was crushed by the Roman power, the passion accounts in the Gospels are in essence pious fabrications with no resemblance to what actually happened, and that Jesus most certainly did not rise from the dead, except in a spiritual sense.

I must be fair about this; you should visit Borg's website.

Near the top is the final post from his blog, dated 11 December 2014, about six weeks before he died: “Has Christmas been swallowed by the miraculous?” [Here is the link to the essay in his blog]. He wrote:

The problem with the Christian meaning of Advent and Christmas is not primarily commercialism, though that affects many. Rather, Advent and Christmas have virtually been swallowed up by the miraculous. The angel Gabriel comes to the virgin Mary and tells her she will conceive without the involvement of a human father. Prophets foretell such a birth, and even its location in Bethlehem, despite Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth. A special star moves with the precision of a global-positioning device to lead wisemen from the east to the place of Jesus’s birth. Angels sing in the night sky to shepherds. These are the themes of Christmas cards, hymns, manger scenes, concerts, and pageants.

To be candid, I do not think that any of this happened. Of course, there is some historical memory in the stories. Jesus was born. He really lived. He was Jewish. His parents’ names were Mary and Joseph. They lived in Nazareth, a very small peasant village, perhaps as small as a few hundred. But I do not think that there was an annunciation by an angel to Mary, or a virginal conception, or a special star, or wisemen from the East visiting the infant Jesus, or angels filling the night with glory as they sang to shepherds.

Yet I am not a “debunker” of these stories. I do not dismiss them as “fables” or “fabrications” or “falsehoods.” Many in the modern world do see the two options as “it happened this way” or “it didn’t” – and if it didn’t, then we are dealing with delusions and deceptions. A few years ago, a television special on these stories posed the question that way: are they “fact or fable”?

There is a third option. Namely, the Christmas stories with their miraculous elements were not intended to be “factual” in the sense of reporting what actually happened. Rather, they are early Christian testimony, written roughly a hundred years after Jesus’s birth. They testify to the significance that Jesus had come to have in their lives and experience and thought. The stories are parabolic, metaphorical narratives that can be true without being factual. [my emphasis]

Borg's views on the Resurrection are similar; the accounts are “true without being factual.”

But what should we then make of St. Paul and I Corinthians 15? As I wrote above, this was not a hundred years after the fact; it was barely twenty, and many of the first-hand witnesses were still alive. Had St. Paul misrepresented the death and resurrection, there were people who would be able to say “No, you are wrong. I was there. I saw it for myself.”

The problem for me: how to say this in a manner that people will hear it? How to disagree with Borg's teachings (and, I suspect, our Rector's views, as well as those of her predecessor), without being disrespectful of them, nor of my many friends who believe in this manner? I do not know if I did an adequate job or not.

For the record: I do believe that there was an annunciation by an angel to Mary (which we will celebrate next week), and a virgin birth, a special star, wise men from the east, angels in the sky. And I do believe that Christ died according to the scriptures – the four Gospel accounts as well as the Old Testament prophecies – and rose again on the third day in his physical body [“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (St. Luke 24:39)] – and ascended into heaven, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.