In normal everyday life, most people we meet can’t answer the most fundamental question, “Why am I here?”
Woody Allen, a tragic comic figure who is also very intelligent has said, “The fundamental thing behind all motivation and activity is a constant struggle against annihilation and death. It is stupefying in its terror and renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless.” Now, to the extent of this thinking will be the extent of one’s view of life being utterly meaningless and of no real lasting value.
We live in a world that considers human beings, men and women, as walking monkeys who got an evolutionary break. Our world tells us: Time + Matter + Chance = Human Beings.
The temptation is to escape, like the man who jumped out of a 34-story building and was heard to say as he passed by a window, “So far, so good.”
Like the famous cartoonist Ralph Barton, who wrote this on his suicide note, “I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife, and from house to house, visited great countries of the world, but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up twenty-four hours of the day.”
Does the Resurrection of Christ Speak to the Meaning of Life?
Does what happened on Easter speak in any way to these questions? Does Easter speak to the meaning of life? Does it actually relate to me in the 21st century?
In the Biblical accounts, all the writers agree that Jesus rose from the dead! They all agree in their different eye witness accounts.
The story has different perspectives of different men who saw and experienced the same thing. They all agree that the Jesus who died and was buried on Friday, rose from the grave, and they saw Him alive!
Something Transformed these Men from Fear to Faith!
When you look in the Gospel accounts and compare that with the Acts of the Apostles, you find this disillusioned, disappointed, and depressed group of disciples suddenly transformed into men and women who boldly and powerfully proclaim that Jesus has risen from the dead. They are totally and radically transformed! They go from fear to faith!
Even secular history tells us that the Church is birthed out of this “Calvary seed” (Christ’s death on the cross) and changes the world. All of history is changed. Even our dating system is marked by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ…A.D., Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.
Clearly, something happened that changed a group of 120 fearful, depressed, despondent men and women into the greatest movement that the world has ever seen! Eleven of the 12 disciples even died a martyr’s death, proclaiming that Jesus rose from the grave!
Either the Greatest Hoax or the Most Amazing Miracle
Either that tomb was empty or it was not. We must all grapple with this! Either this is the greatest hoax of all time or the most amazing miracle the world has ever known.
Professor Thomas Arnold, the late chair of Modern History at Oxford, author of the famous three-volume set, History of Rome, once wrote, “I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose from the dead.”
What will you do with the resurrection of Christ? It is fundamentally the answer to the meaning of life.
Excited about Easter!
Pastor Steve
