The great cry of the Bible and of the Christian Faith is that Jesus is Lord. There is no halfway house or equal division between good and evil. While there is no denying the reality of suffering, difficulties and wickedness, the Bible proclaims that in the end Christ is all, in all and through all and will embrace a creation renewed. No magic wand but a steady reclamation.
What was the first Christian profession of faith? In Acts 2, it concerns Jesus “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” crucified and killed, whom God “raised up”. Peter says that he and the other disciples are witnesses of this. “This Jesus whom you crucified,” Peter declares, “God has made both Lord and Christ.” The Gospel involves death, resurrection and the definitive action of God. When Philip the Deacon encounters the Ethiopian eunuch, the question of faith is raised in relation to baptism. “Is there any reason why I should not be baptised?” Philip is asked and some manuscripts have him say “If you believe with all your heart you may.” The eunuch responds “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Paul will subsequently stress a different basic statement that, as Mr Ross, says “Jesus is Lord”. This is based on his humility, his emptying himself being “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” So Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose from the dead is Lord “to the glory of God the Father.” It is not “the great cry” — that Christ is risen from the dead is the great cry and it follows from his saving death.
And what of “suffering, difficulties and wickedness”? Between Christ’s death and resurrection and the fulfilment of his promises at the “end time”, when history passes into eternity, we are in the “mean time”. The victory is won but its working out is not yet accomplished. It is in some ways a halfway house, just as the Church, the community of the redeemed, contains wheat and tares, saints and sinners. We have not yet reached the harvest time. There is no equal division, indeed at times it looks as if there is a profound inequality, with Christian believers a misunderstood and persecuted minority, a remnant awaiting rescue. But Christianity is eschatological, focussed on the end time and the moment of completion when Christ will, at last, be all in all. The whole creation groans in travail, as Paul says. There is no magic in Christ’s saving work but neither is there “steady reclamation” — quite the opposite, the world must be lost before heaven is found.
Mr Ross cannot resist a reference to the financial crisis, even though Christianity has no concern with earthly treasures.
At this time of financial difficulty it is easy to feel that we are the prey of forces far greater than we can control. But however deep the recession, however low the stock market goes, however high the price of gold rises, the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. And Jesus is still Lord. No magic wand but a steady reclamation.What can this mean? Finance, recession, stock market, the price of gold — none of these have any relevance to the work of salvation. “How the gold has grown dim,” laments Jeremiah, “how the pure gold is changed!” His is a vision of the lonely city that was once full of people; the city that was a princess has become a slave. Jesus is Lord and part of his lordship is that he will come again in glory “to be our judge”. We need only think of his references to Jonah preaching in Nineveh, and bringing about conversion, or to the comparison between the cities of his day and Sodom and Gomorrah, to the clear advantage of the latter. Judgement is the clear teaching of Scripture; not “steady reclamation” but the possibility of condemnation.
What is the root of our confidence? We believe that Christ rose from the dead. We hold that this is a historical fact: no less mysterious for its being historical and no less historical for its being mysterious. This was no “conjuring trick with bones”. The evidence of the Bible points to the shattering surprise that it was to the disciples, with the confusing element that Jesus made his resurrection appearances.Mr Ross now turns to the root of our confidence (though it is not clear how confidence in the future of the financial City can be based on Christian faith). We believe, he affirms, that Christ rose from the dead. It is an historical fact, though mysterious, and he quotes the line of Bishop David Jenkins who held that the resurrection was a powerful myth, a story laden with meaning, but definitely not a conjuring trick with bones. We can certainly argue over the possible proof of the resurrection, indeed over whether proof is necessary, when Jesus blessed those who, not seeing the evidence (as Thomas did), would believe in him. The original ending of Mark’s Gospel, using the words “alarmed”, “trembling”, “astonishment”, “afraid”, and with the women who “said nothing to anyone” about the empty tomb, demonstrates the real amazement that Jesus had risen.
Paul writing in the first Letter to the Corinthians (15: 6 ) states that “Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” If those to whom the letter is addressed found it difficult to believe they could find a number of that 500 who were still alive and question them.
A theory for the disappearance of Christ’s body from the tomb is that there were grave robbers; very foolish grave robbers taking the worthless body and leaving the valuable spices behind? Another is that the disciples stole the body; a small group of scared disciples overpowered a well-trained military unit set to guard the tomb against such an event? The disciples were good Jews. As good Jews they would have upheld the three main tenets of Jewish life at the time – the food laws, circumcision and the Sabbath. It must have been something of cataclysmic cosmic proportions that made them change the Lord’s Day from the Sabbath/Saturday to Sunday, the day of Jesus’ rising.
An argument always looks weak when it has to be bolstered and buttressed. First the 500 are called as witnesses. Then a theory for the theft of the body is put forward, grave robbers or the disciples themselves. The suggestion of grave robbers is a new one to me, though I see it is dealt with in similar terms online in the Wikiversity without references, and in a more scholarly manner, not lacking in humour, in http://www.tektonics.org/gk/graverob.html. The argument of theft by the disciples was dealt with in Matthew 28:11-15 long ago. The emergence of Sunday is not a strong argument for the resurrection but for the need for the new community of Jews and Gentiles, soon to be called Christians, to have a distinctive identity based on non-Jewish practices. None of these so-called proofs are likely to persuade anyone of the reality of Christ’s resurrection.
In the City of London we have our own testimony to the fact that there is more, whatever circumstances may throw at us. In 1666 the Great Fire consumed all but eight of the churches. From the ashes the new St Paul’s arose; Resurgam was the message upon the stone that Sir Christopher Wren found. Out of the ashes across the City many churches arose. The glories of mediaeval London were destroyed but the life of London moved forward, the church of London moved onwards, and the Gospel was passed from generation to generation down to ourselves.
Mr Ross now executes the “City turn” as a way out of a failing argument and on this we need to be quite clear. The rebuilding of the City of London after the great fire of 1666 has no theological significance. It does not indicate definitively that there is a more of some sort. It may illustrate the rule that people, of every religion and none, rebuild their cities after destruction if they can, and abandon them if they can’t. Neither post-fire nor post-war rebuilding contributes to the religious or theological argument. The resurrection of Christ is, in religious terms, a defining moment for humankind and must not be reduced or trivialised by analogy to any other resurrection-like event. The Great Fire might be an argument for belief in the phoenix and what it represents, a human belief, pre-dating Christianity, in regeneration, for belief in after-life of some sort clearly exists in other religions.
We as Christians within the City are Trustees of our Christian heritage within the church buildings, be they mediaeval or from the hand of Christopher Wren or Hawksmoor. More importantly we are the trustees of a Gospel that is older than the buildings, and when the buildings turn to dust and ashes the Gospel still goes on. The Gospel proclaims that Christ is risen.
This is, of course, the publication of the Friends of the City Churches and that may justify a reference to the buildings, but the buildings themselves are only significant in a religious sense if they witness to the faith that inspired their construction or assist in the presentation of that faith to visitors and pilgrims. If a church building has become a concert hall, if its bells ring out to delight bell-ringers but not to call to prayer, if it becomes merely a heritage site, then it may be a counter-sign. At last Mr Ross comes near the real point. We are, he says “trustees” of a Gospel — a curious expression suggesting conservation rather than proclamation. We are, more accurately, ministers of the Gospel and stewards of the mysteries of God. The gospel is the good news and as such it is to be proclaimed. The gospel does not proclaim that Christ is risen; the gospel is the saving death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Christ is risen though recession may come. Christ is risen though we may face traumatic difficulties in finance and family. Christ is risen and so there is more, not only to the story and not only to our lives here on earth: with Him we also shall rise. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it and, like Job (19: 25), “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last He shall stand upon the earth”.That Christ is risen is a basic Christian statement of faith. No event or experience changes that, but that is true of objective historical events of any sort. Caesar was assassinated, William of Normandy was crowned King of England, Napoleon died on St Helena — all these remain true despite recession and traumatic difficulties, but they also have a “so what?” factor, whereas the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ impinges on the lives and expectations of Christians with regard neither to wealth nor family — both these aspects of living come under Christ’s censure — but with regard to matters of ultimate concern. Why cite Job at this point when Paul says it all? “Christ is risen from the dead : and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death : by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die : even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
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