What possible difference could it make to my life today that some rabbi died on a cross and then came to life again — 2000 years ago? “Not only is the assertion of the resuscitation of a corpse incredible… but still more pressing is the question, So what? … What difference can that make to my existence, or to the social, political and environmental problems of contemporary [humanity]?”[1]
In my previous article, I concluded that what happened to Jesus is a mystery of faith. But now I want to explain that it is a mystery, not a myth or legend. All of those things that Christians call mysteries of the faith have an anchor in the material world. For instance, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is not proof of God, but we all agree that there is a universe that began from an event we call the Big Bang.
Similarly, what happened to Jesus has an anchor in history. To begin with, “Something” happened to the disciples that enabled them, impelled them to go forth into “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and away to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1: 8). This is a historical fact, “an x”.[2] I am convinced that the first disciples had extraordinary experiences with Jesus alive and not dead, as all the canonical and non-canonical gospels assert, and that part of these experiences was that the tomb in which he was laid after his crucifixion was empty.[3]
