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Reflections: Resurrection
Quotations to Stir Heart and Mind
Richard A. Kauffman
April 1, 2002
Any rational skeptic will remind me that ancient rumors of a rabbi's resurrection make a thin limb on which to hang the hopes of the world. Yes, I would admit, it is a thin limb. But sturdy enough, for all that, to have held up a sign for all these ages that God the Creator has the competence to renew the world he made.
If Paul calls death the "last enemy" (1 Cor. 15:26), then the opposite is also true: that the risen Christ, and with him the resurrection hope, must be declared to be the enemy of death and of a world that puts up with death. That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience . …Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is.
Nothing worth
proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven.
Worship … is the most appropriate response that can be made to resurrection.
The joy that isn't shared, I've heard, dies young.
If resurrections happened regularly, there would be nothing different about Jesus being raised from the dead. He would be one among many, just another statistic . …If [Jesus' resurrection] is unique, then, by definition, there will be no analogous events. That makes it a lot harder to believe. It also makes it worth believing.
The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate sign that our salvation comes only when we cease trying to interpret Jesus' story in the light of our history, and instead we interpret ourselves in the light of his.
Death is neither something to fear nor something to embrace stoically. Though death remains the final and most awful manifestation of sin, no matter how we die, the Christian narrative of death and resurrection in Christ offers not simply the promise of an afterlife to remove death's sting, but participation in a cosmic mission of salvation. Salvation through Christ is the final defeat of the powers of destruction that imperil our lives and all human life.
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