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I remember at school chapel reciting the Creeds almost by rote. The meaning of the words and their significance were lost on me – I found them completely irrelevant and unimportant. It was when serving in the army that I began to wake up from my slumber. Another soldier made a protest in which he refused to say the creeds, finding the concepts offensive. This made me look at the words with greater attention: “I believe in God”…I had to ask myself, do I?
Some people have not believed the gospel because they haven’t heard it, or like me at school, they have heard it but not understood it. Many have heard, andrejected the message with outrage. Paul talks about “the offense of the cross”(eg Gal 5:11). The cross is offensive because it highlights the depths of human sin, our inability to save ourselves, and our utter dependence on Christ’s sacrifice. I’ve noticed recently that the resurrection is also hugely offensive, and this is brought out in the book of Acts.
Luke’s account begins with Jesus “presenting himself alive” to the apostles “by many proofs (1:3). The early preaching of Peter centres on the guilt of the listeners in participating in Jesus’ crucifixion, and the power of God in raising him to life (2:32, 36; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30).
The reaction of the religious authorities is one of fury. The Sadducees are “greatly annoyed” about the preaching of the resurrection (4:2), and the Sanhedrin are “enraged and wanted to kill them” (5:33) after the apostles’ bold testimony that the Galilean preacher who they thought they had done away with, had risen from death and was now in the place of authority with God.
In the later chapters of Acts, we see the apostle Paul repeating the story about his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Again, it is the secularized Sadducees who are particularly offended by him speaking of the resurrection (23:6-8), but this message confronts human scepticism more generally, for example in Athens:
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked (17:32).
And to King Agrippa’s court: Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? (26:8).
Why is the message of the resurrection still so offensive today? Many people still “do away with” Jesus, writing him off in their minds, or damning him with faint praise as a good, but dead, moral teacher. The message of the gospel is no, he is alive. The world tolerates or even admires a church which restricts its message to doing good in the here and now, but a church of “nobodies”, not controlled by the ruling elites, confidently preaching the supernatural resurrection and winning disciples, is offensive, causing a range of reactions from sneering to physical violence.
So, let’s not be surprised at the offence that we cause as we proclaim the resurrection, but also not be surprised at the power of the resurrection proclaimed. Let’s also remember that the risen Lord Jesus has been ‘appointed’ as the righteous judge of the whole world, so we should repent and call all people everywhere to repent.
Bishop Andy Lines
Missionary Bishop
Anglican Network in Europe
