A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. On the evening of the first day of the week, even though the disciples had locked the doors of the place where they were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood before them. Peace be with you, he said. When he had said that, he showed them his hands and his side. At the sight of the lord, the disciples rejoice and Jesus said again, peace be with you.
As the father has sent me, so I send you. Then he breathed on them and said, receive the holy spirit. If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them. If you hold them bound, they are held bound. Now, it happened that one of the 12, Thomas, the name means twin, was absent when Jesus came on this occasion.
The other disciples kept telling him, we have seen the lord. Thomas's answer was, I'll never believe it without probing the nail prints in his hands, without putting my finger in the nail marks, and my hand in his side. It was pretty severe. So a week later, the disciples were once more in the room. And this time, Thomas was with them.
Despite the fact that the locked doors, Jesus came again and stood before them and said, peace be with you. And then to Thomas, he said, take your finger and examine my hands. Put your hand into my side. Do not persist in your unbelief but believe. Thomas replied, my lord and my god.
Then Jesus said to him, you became a believer, Thomas, because you saw me. Blessed are they who have not seen me and have believed. Jesus performed many other signs as well, signs that are not recorded here, says Saint John, in the presence of his disciples, witnesses. But these have been recorded to help you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of god, so that through this faith, you may have life in his name. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. As last Sunday, I want to begin my well chosen remarks this morning with a quotation from one of our ancient hymns, Vexilla rages, loudest, praise to the cross of Christ. And it goes like this. Remember, the theme last Sunday was joy, and that's the whole theme of the church, and it has been. Let all things in creation, their notes of gladness blend.
For Christ the lord has risen, our joy that has no end. That's the eleventh century, and you think about how down the century, that wonderful hymn is one of the great Latin hymns has been sung over and over again. Let all creation praise the lord with joy. He says, blend. I mean, that's the English translation.
Blend your joy. Blend your notes of gladness. Christ has risen from the dead. Our joy that has no end. Last Sunday, I spoke to you or tried to, on how the resurrection, that is the bodily physical resurrection of Christ touches our daily lives.
Even as you sit in those pews this morning, it touches you. You're here because of the resurrection of Christ. If Christ be not risen, your faith is in vain, and our preaching is empty, says Saint Paul. Now briefly, I touched upon this matter of credibility. Well, after the serve after my mass last Sunday, I got the New York Times.
And lo and behold, there's an article by Peter Steinfeld's. And the headline of the many of you saw it probably. The headline was Jesus died. Then what happened? Question mark.
Then he goes on to give you a number of views quoting different people. We'll come to that. And I wanted to briefly just give you the synopsis of some of their views and then what I would call my response. And I'm keeping my eye on the clock, so don't worry. We won't be here all morning.
It only seemed that way. He first of all quotes doctor Schuler. Doctor Schuller, of course, as you know, is the great popular television minister. And Schuller believes literally in the resurrection of Christ, that Christ bodily rose from the dead just as the gospel say so. Then, he quotes, doctor Forrester Church, a Unitarian minister from New York and doctor Church says, that there's grave doubt if not total doubt about the physical bodily resurrection of Christ, and it isn't very important anyway.
What doctor Church insists upon is the resurrection of faith. I mentioned that last Sunday. In other words, what matters is the faith we have in the risen Christ. And doctor Church says that he much prefers to talk about the apparition, whatever it was. He doesn't tell you what that was, that Peter had with Christ because it shows human weakness, human the the and the ability to forgive and to start all over again.
He says he prefers that to the empty tomb. In other words, what matters is not whether Christ grows, it's this faith we have in the revitalized Christ in the faith that people have, whatever that all means. Then a third person is doctor Willie Markson, a German Protestant theologian that the Steinfeld says is at the center of the debate, what happened after Christ's death. Now Markson Markson says that the main thing there is church. And as a matter of fact, Markson says, it's a mistake and a hindrance to bother it to even bother with the resurrection of Christ.
What matters is to have a conception of being a Christian as a venture, whatever that means. Now doctor Perry, the provost from the National Cathedral, he he has recently written a book on this matter, the resurrection of Christ. And I I don't know where he stands exactly, but he says that there are two main objections to the literal, bodily, physical resurrection of Christ. Two. One of them is, first of all, that any such phenomenon would contradict contemporary science, modern science.
So that's out. And the second one is that the four gospels in Saint Paul are filled with inconsistencies and variants. Now, before responding to this, I wanted briefly go back a bit because, you know, not many years ago, in my lifetime, we had the attitude of many very, very elevated elite theologians who said Christ never existed, that he was not an historical person. So we that disappeared. No one today can deny that Christ lived.
Then the second thing is regard to this resurrection business. The second thing was, well, Christ didn't die. He only appeared to die on the cross and then he was buried and they revived him. That was a very current theory. Notice, they they don't even mention that now.
Then another theory was that Christ was crucified and he died and he was buried and they misplaced the body in an unknown tomb, something like Mozart. That, of course, how anybody could maintain that in the light of of the fact that there was a Joseph of Arimathea turned over his unused tomb is beyond my thinking. But but all of these things have been discredited. Now and this is an improvement. Now they admit that Christ existed.
Now they admit that Christ was something special. Now they admit that Christ died on the cross. He actually died. They admit they know where he was buried, and they admit there was an empty tomb. I don't know how they explained the empty tomb if he didn't what happened.
But this is all this is a big this is a big advance. Whatever else may they may say. But now let's look at this thing. As regards the first objection that the resurrection of Christ contradicts modern science. Well, now the basic problem here is the whole problem of miracles, And CS Lewis dealt with that as better than anyone I know of.
CS Lewis, in his little pamphlet called miracles. And you see, anyone who rejects the divinity of Christ remember, admitting that Christ existed does not mean you admit his divinity. Most of these people do not admit the divinity of Christ at all. At all. Now so if you take the view that Christ was was just an ordinary good human being, which I say is nonsense, but supposing you do, and you reject the idea of miracles, period, there's no use talking about the resurrection of Christ.
Obvious. And I'm not about to go into that this morning in the time that I have to try to justify miracles. The only thing I do say is that from the from the time of our lord down to the present time, some of our best scientists have been very fervent Christians and believed in the resurrection of Christ. And that to me is a very good argument. But now as regards to the second one, these inconsistencies, this is what they make a great deal of.
That that you have now, where who are our witnesses? The four gospels, the acts of the apostles, and Saint Paul, first and second Corinthians, first Thessalonians. That's our main source of evidence for our witnesses. There are variants. There are inconsistencies.
But what are they like? Was there one angel or were there two angels? Was the tomb open or was it closed? Who were the first or who was the first at the tomb? How many were there?
One woman, two women, or three women? All of it has been take your pick. They've all been mentioned. How many appearances were there of Christ? To who?
There are inconsistencies here. But what do you conclude from these inconsistencies and these variants? Are you going to conclude that the witnesses are not reliable? Why? Why do you say that?
Let me give you a very personal incident. A couple I know had a very beautiful boat, and they ran it up on a reef in the South Pacific. And they together were telling me about the incident. And almost about every other sentence, one or the other was correcting the other. They were both there.
They both went through the experience. And yet, as each or the other was telling their part of it, the other one would be correcting. And that's only two people. In a in an incident in which they were vitally interested and very much involved, and the time lapse was very short. So what do you make of it?
That they that they didn't run the boat on the reef, that they didn't lose the boat, that they nearly lost their lives just because one has to correct the other? Are you going to conclude that they're both unreliable witnesses? And these were both very intelligent, well educated, professional people, which you can't say that about the four four evangelists. Now the point I would like in other words, none of these inconsistencies, none of these variants touch upon the substance of the risen lord. There was an empty tomb.
I don't care how many angels are were there or any at all. There was an empty tomb whether it was closed or open. There was an empty tomb whether or not it was guarded at the moment. There was an empty tomb whether one woman came first or two women or three women. Christ did appear to somebody sometime.
You can't escape it. You can't get out of it. And therefore, these inconsistencies and variants, I say, they are they don't touch upon the substance of the matter except that you interpret that as, destroying the credibility of the of the witnesses. Now when we say witness, we don't mean anyone saw the resurrection. There was no eyewitness.
But let me tell you, there's just one little point that in preparing these well chosen remarks that struck me very forcefully. Remember, we aren't the first ones who discovered these inconsistencies, these inferring. In the second century, in the second century Celsus, he made a great deal out of it, and he used that as an argument to reject Christ's divinity and the resurrection. Resurrection. That's the second century AD.
Now, my point is this, you do not have the New Testament that is the four gospels until the end of the century, the AD, 100 AD. They were not written simultaneously. There was one, there there are four of them, and Saint Paul comes at the end and Saint Luke. In in the acts of the apostles, they were written at intervals. Now, these great scripture scholars who wanna reject the credibility of the witnesses, what they tell it, they tell us how the gospels were amended, how they were changed, how they were added to.
Well, then I have a question. Why didn't those early Christian writers, why didn't they wipe out, erase, avoid inconsistencies as they could very easily have done? The one who wrote the second gospel, whichever one it was, we know it was a second one, had the first one before him. The one who wrote the third one had the first two before him. John, when he wrote his fourth one, had the three before him.
Luke, when he wrote the acts, had all four before him. Why didn't they change if these inconsistencies inconsistencies are are so so vital to the credibility of the witness? And as doctor Schuller, I think it is, points out I'm not sure it was Schuller, but anyway, one of them points out that is one of these Protestant ministers who believes in the bodily resurrection of Christ, he says, if the witnesses had agreed one with the other, then what would our critics say? Collusion. Collusion.
And wipe them out. Now, finally, I wanna lay another very good point before you, and that is Saint Paul. Saint Paul in the first chapter of the Galatians chapter at verse 11, Galatians says, I'm going to quote you exactly what Saint Paul says. This is in Galatians, and this is early. The gospel, remember, that's translation means good news.
Preached by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human being nor was I taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ. How about that? I've never heard that referred to. I thought, remember, Paul didn't know Christ.
He never he didn't he only came into the scene well afterwards. So Paul is saying and and he has other quotes. I did not get my doctrine from the anybody. I got it straight from revelation of Jesus Christ. And he's one of the strongest strongest witnesses to the resurrection of Christ.
His whole theology rests upon it, of course. Now, I know this is boring. But the thing is, it's frightfully important that your faith be firm. And there's nothing there is nothing to wave to to make it waver. There is nothing to make it waver.
I say read the text as you read anything at all. That Christ lived, no question, that he died, no question, that something happened, everybody agrees to it. Remember, in three hundred years, the whole Roman Empire became officially Christian. Christian in three hundred years. How did it happen?
Before the resurrection, you and right afterwards, in the beginning, you had a handful of men who were scared to death, who were wimps. And then what happened? They explode. They go right into the temple precincts and accuse the Jews of crucifying Christ. But then he said, you know, you didn't know what you were doing, but now listen to him.
And the Jews were converted by thousands. What brought about the change? What accounts for a transformation of the whole whole known Roman world in a few hundred years by the time of Constantine, Fourth cent, first part of the fourth century. That's a fact. Some and everybody admits that something happened at the time of the resurrection.
What happened? I rest my case as the church has rested its case for two thousand years on the testimony of the four evangelists, on Saint Luke's acts of the apostles, and Saint Paul. But remember, before anything was ever written, we had an oral tradition, and I rest my faith on that. It doesn't compel me to say, yes, I believe with Thomas, but it certainly gives me plenty of ground to side with two thousand years of history that Christ bodily rose from the dead. And Saint Paul can say, if Christ be not risen, vain is your faith and empty my preaching.
We can say with, hallelujah, but Christ did rise. My preaching is not empty, and your faith is not in vain. May you enjoy it. In the name of the father, of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.