Fr. Jose Poch

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Tomb is Empty

I trust you had a wonderful and Christ-filled celebration of Easter, wherever you were worshipping. Days like these I am reminded of the many brothers and sisters who cannot worship out in the open and demonstrate their faith with Alleluias and feasting for fear of adversaries who seek to destroy them. I am reminded also of those who will not celebrate because they doubt the veracity of the resurrection account. On Easter Sunday  I presented the congregation with five irrefutable apologetic arguments for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

THE WITNESS OF THE WOMEN - If you had wanted to start a world religion in a highly patriarchal world, you wouldn’t  make up stories about all the male disciples abandoning Jesus, and present the women as being the chief witnesses particularly when the witness of women was considered suspect by most in the first-century world.

THE STORY OF JESUS – Considering the Jewish culture of the early disciples was a culture of honor and shame, and one in which crucifixion was considered a curse by the very Jewish Law, the story about a crucified and risen man being the Savior of the world wouldn’t have been told unless it was believed to be historically true.

THE BODY WAS GONE – all that the enemies of Jesus, Jewish or Roman, had to do was present the dead body of Jesus, scars and all, but they didn’t because they couldn’t. There was no dead body.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DISCIPLES – deserters became martyrs, deniers became confessors, the fearful became courageous, uneducated men became preachers, women risked being laughed out of court. They were convinced that God’s YES to life in the case of Jesus was louder than death’s NO.

PAUL HIMSELF - Paul sought the believers with the express purpose of persecuting them. But no sooner did he have an encounter with the risen Lord than he became one of the greatest if not the greatest evangelist of Jesus’ resurrection.

Are these arguments convincing enough for you and for those with whom you share the Gospel? Are there other proofs of Jesus’ resurrection that speaks to you even louder? What convinced you that Jesus indeed rose from the dead? More importantly, what difference does it make to your life? Do you feel the necessity to share the implications of Jesus’ resurrection with others? Why or why not?

Let’s blog.

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