Is the Resurrection Too Good to Be True?

Luke 24:1-12

Introduction

Have you ever heard that saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”? This is a good general rule of thumb. For example, if you receive an email saying that someone from another country, who you don’t know, has left you one million dollars, you should be suspicious. Would it be good if a stranger gave a million dollars? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Not really. It is good for us to have a critical mind, especially in this world where we receive a constant stream of offers by email or phone. It probably is too good to be true.

But that doesn’t mean that everything that sounds really good is not true. It is possible for something to be good and true. We need to train ourselves to distinguish between the false and the true. This is especially true when it comes to the story of the resurrection of Jesus. We tell people that Jesus died on a cross, which is pretty believable, but that he also rose from the dead on the third day. How do we expect them to respond? It kind of sounds too good to be true. And yet it is true. Let’s take a look at the story.

The Message of the Women

We are going to back to the story and look at the experience of the first witnesses of the resurrection. Jesus had been crucified and had died on that cross. It must have been a devastating to his disciples. They had put all their hopes on Jesus and now he was dead. Jesus died on a Friday. There was nothing that could be done on Saturday because that was the Sabbath and Jews were forbidden to work. So this brings us to Sunday morning. Remember that there were no funeral homes to prepare bodies and so everything rested on friends and family. 

When you think of disciples of Jesus, what image comes to mind? You probably think of some guy with a beard in a robe. But not all of Jesus’ disciples were men. This was radical as rabbis were expected to only have men as disciples. But these women were disciples. They followed Jesus, they learned from him and they were prepared for ministry by him. That is discipleship. Some of these women arrived at the tomb to prepare the body. What they found shocked them. The stone that blocked the entrance to the tomb had been moved away. Inside the tomb, there was no body. That would be hard enough but then two angels spoke to them, announcing Jesus was risen from the dead as he had promised. The women seem to believe the message. There is no hint of doubt, just the normal fear of being in the presence of the holy. This was not a message that they could keep to themselves, so they rushed back to the Eleven. These were the twelve disciples that were known as apostles, minus Judas who had betrayed Jesus. They explained that the tomb was empty and that Jesus was risen from the dead.

And the apostles didn’t believe the women. We think of this group as the elite of the larger groups of the disciples, how could they doubt? The angels had stated, as we know from reading the Gospels that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead. Why wouldn’t they believe those words? The apostles did believe that Jesus would rise from the dead, just not yet. They believed that all of God’s people would rise on the last day and that then Jesus would rise with everyone else. But that day had not come. What about the third day references? Well Jesus was always saying something mysterious, it probably was some symbolic thing.

Peter at least was willing to go and check things out for himself. He ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty and that the linen that had wrapped Jesus’ body was just lying there. Did he believe at that point? Luke tells us that Peter wondered about what had happened. He still didn’t fully believe. And this is Peter, that Jesus made the rock of the church. We know that eventually the Eleven, including Peter, would believe. But at the moment, the resurrection of Jesus seemed too good to be true.

The Message of the Church

Bringing things to the present, let us think about the message of the Church. What is our message? Is it that you should try to be a good and nice person? Of course we should try to be that but that is not the message of the cross. Paul summarizes the gospels in this way: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) Not just that Jesus died for our sins but that he also rose again. In fact when we look at Paul’s preaching, in Acts and his letters, sometimes he leaves out mention of the cross and just focuses on the resurrection. The resurrection was so central to Paul’s preaching that at one point, a Greek audience thought he was preaching about two gods, one called Jesus and one called the Resurrection. 

That is still the same message of the Church today. There is room for us to disagree about many doctrines but the one that must stay central is that Jesus rose from the dead.

If you asked people on the street if they believed that Jesus died on the cross, the majority of them would agree. If you asked those same people if Jesus really rose from the dead, that number would go down significantly. It seems, as we have said, too good to be true. Because if Jesus really rose from the dead, then Jesus was who he said he was, and he could share his resurrection with us. Hope is a dangerous thing. Will people dare to help?

We, as the Church, need to share the message of the resurrection. How will people respond? Some are going to struggle. I had many conversations with my dad where he would say, “When people die, they stay dead!” That was a stumbling block for him. If the women at the tomb had trouble convincing the Eleven who knew Jesus personally, how much more will people today struggle?

And yet this is the very message that we need to share. How do we share it? We do it through word and deed. In our conversations with people, as we talk about the things we believe, we need to share that we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This is not a side issue for us, this is the gospel. Yes we believe that Jesus rose. Yes in this modern day with scientific advances, we still believe. But people need more than words. We need to live our life as if Jesus really rose. The resurrection of Jesus should transform how we live and die. The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Even if others struggle with it, they should look at us and conclude that we really believe what we say we believe.

Conclusion

Jesus died on a cross for our sins. But he also rose again. It was women that first saw the empty tomb and passed the message on to others. Even the apostles struggled to believe. Is the resurrection of Jesus too good to be true? It is definitely good but it is also true. The resurrection of Jesus is not just a symbol to make us feel good. It is a fact of history. A fact that changes everything. We have been given this message to share with others. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed.