The trial is over. The major testimony has been presented. The impact of Easter has been measured, experienced, looked at, weighed. There are other things that could be presented. They are not different, perhaps they are not capable of being isolated from the main thrust of our witnesses, but they do add another angle of vision, an additional shaft of light. Because of this they may help to expand the witness, fill in a gap here and there, and strengthen the sense that Easter was a mighty moment affecting history so dramatically that some explanation is required.
When we try to embrace the fact that all of Christian history—its moments of glory and its times of depravity, its art, its music, its architecture, its religious certainty that gave rise to inquisitions and anti-Semitism, its institutions, its political power—can be traced back to a single moment we call Easter, then the enormity of that Moment can be properly appreciated. Take Easter away, and history is robbed of more than any one of us can imagine, whether we be Christian or not. So we tryto organize and place in rational form some of the immediate effects that flowed from that moment and created the movement that shaped our world. To that primary evidence presented in this section, I now add a few secondary notes to round out the picture.
First, to the best of my knowledge, it is not questioned that Christianity broke out in human history in Jerusalem rather then in some remote region of Galilee. No matter where scholars finally conclude the Easter Moment was first experienced, there is no doubt that Jerusalem is the city in which Christianity was born. This meant that from the very beginning Christianity had to contend with those whose vested interests were not well served by this movement. If Christianity had been a tender plant liable to destruction, the power arrayed against it in Jerusalem alone might well have destroyed it. If there was any way this new faith could have been discredited, the religious hierarchy had ample reason and opportunity to want to do so. If the Easter Moment was a hoax, if some alternative explanation could have been found for what the disciples were claiming was the Resurrection of their Lord, Jerusalem would have offered the best opportunity. Yet none of these things happened. Instead, the religious hierarchy responded with telling persecution. No one ever persecutes what can be discredited. You only persecute that which threatens you. Jerusalem as the locale for the dawn of the Christian movement gives it a bit more authenticity, for Jerusalem was the locale of the most intense opposition.
Second, it must be noted that very quickly the words, the teachings, and the parables of Jesus were seen in a new light. Healing stories, nature miracle stories, andstories about Jesus began to be gathered. Before the end of that decade the passion narratives that carry Jesus’ story from Palm Sunday to Easter began to achieve a written unity. But the passion story makes no sense without Easter. Take Easter away, and it portrays a disaster. Never would this story have entered the memory of humanity. Without Easter, it is the story of complete failure and shameful death.
Yet in the power of the Moment of Easter, the followers of Jesus gathered it, preserved it, revered it, and clung to each spectacular detail of the narrative, for Easter turned that story of defeat into a prelude to a new vision, a new reality. It ceased to be a tragedy. In time, the passion story became the center of even larger gospels. But it is important to note that the disciples began not only to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, but they also proclaimed Jesus as the gospel. The proclaimer was made the content of the proclamation. Without this, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would not have been written.
Nothing about the teaching of Jesus inspired a written account during his earthly existence. His teaching is even now not judged as particularly original in content. Joachim Jeremias, a noted Bible scholar, suggests that the unique thing about the teaching of Jesus is his application of the intimate familial Aramaic word Abba to God. Almost everything else about his teaching, Jeremias declares, can be found in the Old Testament or the Talmud or the Midrash. But Easter revealed a reality about Jesus that infused the words and events of his life with enormous power. Beyond the fact of his death had come a Moment that caused the stories to be gathered and later to be published, for this life was itsown gospel. Easter was the moment when the power that reinterpreted the life of this Jesus was to be met and engaged. The biblical witness is clear.
Finally, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to be Paul the missionary apostle was a moment of some substance for the Christian Church. There is no question that Saul was a learned Jew, well connected and trusted by the Jewish authorities. Yet his conversion was total, dramatic, and complete. Surely the critics of the Christian movement must have wondered how that movement could capture a man of Paul’s credentials and capabilities.
This entire section has been designed not to prove resurrection. That is beyond the scope of this reasoning process. It is only to identify historic, measurable effects that can be observed and that apparently flow from the Moment we call Easter. Lives were changed dramatically. A dispirited, scattered, cowardly band of men was reconstituted, galvanized, energized into a powerful missionary force. A family moved from scoffing criticism into the very leadership of the movement. A new holy day was born. The historic theological understanding of God that had marked the national character of the Jewish people was radically redefined. Stories and accounts of this Jesus were understood in new ways and began to be collected. Jesus himself was seen as the content of the gospel that they proclaimed. Jerusalem was the locale where this movement erupted, and a leading member of the anti-Christian religious establishment joined the Christian movement, enabling it to leap even the boundaries of Judaism and to emerge onto the stage of the world.
All of this is historic data that begs for an adequate definition and points us dramatically to the Easter Moment. We now turn to that Moment and with all the tools of biblical scholarship and contemporary understanding available to us will try to penetrate its meaning and experience its power.