Was your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother born? How do you know? You can’t produce her birth certificate, because in those days they didn’t exist. You can’t produce anyone who witnessed her birth. You probably don’t even know her name. How do you know she was actually your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother? What if the woman you assume was your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother and another woman who was really your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother were switched at birth? What then? If you answered, “Then, nothing” or “Who cares?” you are understanding my point completely. In truth, the fact that you are present here among us guarantees you had a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother.
Some years ago a member of a church I served confided in me that her grandmother may have been switched shortly after birth with a cousin who had died and so the woman was raised by her aunt, believing the aunt was her mother. The reason for the switch was that her grandmother’s mother was pregnant and unmarried – a matter of great shame in those days so the pregnancy was hidden from the public. Farm living made that sort of thing possible. These were the days when women gave birth at home as often as not, the doctor or midwife coming to assist if necessary. The woman who confessed this to me was very concerned about what all of this meant. I suggested to her that, whatever it meant, it was ultimately not possible to determine with any degree of certainty whether this actually happened since everyone who would have known about it was long dead. I then explored with her whether or not such a switch would have impacted her some two generations later. Together, we decided it wouldn’t matter too much, the fact that she was here meant that she had a grandmother, and since she had never met her great-grandmother (or great, great-aunt, whichever she was) it probably wasn’t a huge deal in terms of how her life played out.
Every now and again, someone writes a book claiming to have found the tomb of Jesus with bones in it, or claims to have found proof that Jesus’ didn’t really die, or some other sensational claim designed to sell books. In turn, conservative and moderate Christians become predictably upset, feeling as if a tenant of their faith was being hacked to bits by an author’s pen. Despite all of this, like the case of your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother and the identity of my church member’s grandmother, there isn’t any definitive way to prove anything. Why, then, do we get so excited?
Was Jesus’ resurrection physical or spiritual? Some parts of the biblical record seem to suggest it was physical – as when Jesus invites Thomas to place his hand in the wound in Jesus’ side. Other parts seem to suggest the resurrection was spiritual – as when Jesus moves into a locked room without benefit of opening the door. In the end, it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether there are bones in a tomb somewhere, because we don’t have a sample of Jesus’ DNA (or the DNA of anyone else from that time) and so can’t do DNA testing on them to determine whose bones they were. Getting all wrapped up in this is an exercise in missing the point. The fact is that many people throughout history have encountered the risen Christ, and so how precisely Christ was raised is rather irrelevant.
Just as your presence here proves that you had a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother, Christ’s presence among us proves that death has been transcended. Unless the whole point of your Christ experience is to prove to the world that you excel at irrelevancies, then the most important part of that experience is how it transforms you, not which airline he flew in on. In fact, I believe that those who get all tied up in the details, who find it necessary to argue the fine points of the biblical account, who insist on literally connecting all of the dots, do so at the expense of their own conversion. It’s the best way to appear very spiritual while at the same time remaining extremely closed and resisting all change – and it is a very common practice.
The truth is, most people don’t want to be transformed by their spiritual journey, they want to be told they were right all along. That’s why people become very threatened when their beliefs are questioned – even if they are only questioned indirectly, as when we discover the whole world doesn’t see things the way we do. Approaches that demand certainly, provide answers but don’t tolerate questions, and require believers to assent to a list of beliefs in order to become members of a church are interested more in conformity than transformation, more in unity than in growth. Needless to say, their members are stagnant.
Was the tomb empty? I don’t know. I do know that, even if the dust that was the bones of Jesus is in a tomb somewhere, Christ is risen. For me, that’s more than enough.
Filed under: tradition Tagged: christ, easter, empty, jesus, resurrection, risen, tomb
