Easter

EASTER



You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life. (Luke 21:16-19, NIV)



How much has your faith cost you lately? For most of us, the cost at Easter is the price of a few chocolate bunnies for the kids, or the bill for a new Easter outfit.

But during Lent, and particularly [on] Good Friday, as we reflect on the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we would do well to consider how much faith is costing our fellow Christians around the world -- especially in Africa.

In Sudan, a holy war has been raging for nearly twenty years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. So how high is the price of obedience? Very high indeed. In Sudan, the cost of faithfulness is freedom. Among the battle tactics the North employs is kidnapping Christians and selling them into slavery.

The cost of faithfulness is family. A year ago, government planes bombed a church-run grade school in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. More than a dozen children -- who were just beginning their English lessons -- were killed, along with their teacher.

The cost of faithfulness is dignity: Kidnapped women and children are often gang-raped by government soldiers, and forced into concubinage. When their clothing wears out, they must endure the shame of nakedness.

The cost of faithfulness is hunger: The government destroys crops and keeps international famine relief from reaching southern Sudan.

The cost of faithfulness is health: Children weak from hunger succumb to disease -- diseases for which no medicines are available.

The cost of faithfulness is also the loss of home: Christians are being driven off their lands by a government greedy to gets its hands on the oil that lies beneath.

And the cost of faithfulness is often life itself: Two million Sudanese Christians have already been killed -- starved or slaughtered for refusing to convert to Islam.

We can't say Jesus didn't warn us: He promised that the cost of faithfulness might be everything we have.

Here in the West, most of us pay pocket change: Following Christ means we may lose a job, or we may have to endure the likes of Ted Turner calling us names. In Sudan and elsewhere, Christians pay a much higher price: Freedom, family, and life itself.

The people of Sudan know the high cost of obedience -- but they also know the joy. An American who recently traveled to Sudan with an anti-slavery group spoke to a young girl who had just been redeemed out of years of slavery. The American asked: "Now that you're free, what are you going to do?" The young girl replied: "I want to see my father -- and I want to go to church."

For most folks, Easter is a time to stuff the shopping cart full of goodies, hide the Easter eggs for the kids, don your Easter bonnet -- and then grumble if the sermon goes too long. Well, I suggest you and I instead stop, take stock of our blessings, and think especially of those this day around the world who are suffering for their faith, particularly the persecuted church in Sudan.

And as we think about them, it will give new meaning to the Cross, and the event we commemorate this Easter.

Chuck Colson
(copyright (c) 2001
Prison Fellowship Ministries;
reprinted with permission;
"BreakPoint with Chuck Colson"
is a radio ministry of
Prison Fellowship Ministries)

EVIDENCE FOR EASTER



If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (1 Corinthians 15:14, NIV)

He was buried, . . . he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and . . . he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living. (1 Corinthians 14:4-6, NIV)



Millions of Christians celebrate Easter every year, a day commemorating an event that distinguishes Christianity's founder from all other religious leaders -- the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's not about colored eggs or cute bunnies. It's about one who claims authority over all creation as the living Lord. Is there good reason to believe this?

In a pluralistic culture, diverse religious ideas are often viewed as merely products of subjective faith. A religion is "true" if it "works," if it gives a sense of meaning to life and a connection to a community of faith. Matters of objective fact are dismissed in order to avoid controversy and strife. However, Easter makes no sense apart from the reality of an historical event. The Apostle Paul wrote to the early Christians, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14).

In a free society every religion is allowed to make its case publicly without fear of censure. All have the constitutional right to practice any religion or none. But this does not answer the question of what faith - if any - one ought to embrace. Easter offers an answer based on the compelling evidence that the story of Jesus coming to earth to redeem his people from their failures is vindicated by his space-time resurrection from the dead.

No blind leap of faith is required to believe that the resurrection of Jesus is more than a nice religious idea. The Gospel accounts that attest to the resurrection were written by people in a position to hunt down and check out the facts. They were either disciples of Jesus (Matthew and John) or individuals who carefully interviewed those closest to the event they described (Mark and Luke). These accounts were written shortly after the events they narrate; there was insufficient time for such mythological additions as a resurrection.

The Apostle Paul, writing sometime in the 50s, spoke of Christ's publicly appearing to many people, many of whom were still living at the time he wrote (1 Corinthians 15:1-8). Had there been no resurrection, this kind of statement would have been suicidal, since hostile witness could have refuted Paul's claim. We have no record of a refutation.

Moreover, all the New Testament books have been accurately preserved over time. Scholars have access to thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts from which to translate our modern versions of these books.

The earliest record of the Christian movement (the Book of Acts) reports that the church proclaimed a resurrected Christ as the source of its courage and drive. The first Christians weathered intense persecution for their resurrection-faith; yet they persevered -- some even unto death. Had the notion of the resurrection been fabricated, it would have unraveled under the relentless social and political pressures it faced. As former Nixon aide Charles Colson pointed out in his book Loving God, he and the other White House conspirators were not able to pull off the Watergate cover-up, despite their unmatched political clout. When the crunch came, the truth was quickly flushed out. The early Christians had no such power to obfuscate or intimidate; but they never recanted. Their resolve is best explained by their knowledge of the resurrection.

Those hostile to these determined followers of Jesus could have easily refuted the nascent movement by simply exhuming the dead body of Jesus and displaying it as the decisive evidence against any claim to his resurrection. Both the religious and the political authorities of the day had reasons to resent these Christians and to stop their evangelism. But there is no evidence that anything of the kind occurred. The tomb was empty.

Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is entirely different from the fascination many people have in supposedly supernatural events (of the "X- Files" variety) that have no logical support. When Christians observe Easter they stand on the solid ground of history, looking upward with rational hope for a better life in the world to come.

Douglas Groothuis
(www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/groothuis)