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Christ is Risen! by Fr. George Hackney
Shortly after Pascha this year some non-Orthodox clergymen appeared on a Television programme to tell the world that they did not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was really God incarnate. They also proclaimed to the viewers that they did not believe that He rose from the dead. It seemed that they believed that they themselves were too clever, too well read, too well educated and too scholarly to accept the witness of the New Testament as the Orthodox Church has received and preserved it. They also claimed that most of the clergy they knew secretly thought the same way but kept their doubts secret and did not share them with their congregations. At this point I switched off the TV - because I had heard it all before in my Anglican days. Indeed I have listened to such men and women and read their books carefully to weigh their arguments for almost 40 years now. There is nothing new in what they have to say. And still I believe that Christ is God incarnate and that He is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death ! It is as true today as it was when St Paul first declared it that the actual physical Resurrection of Christ after his real and actual death is the foundation rock of the Orthodox Church and the Christian Faith. As St Paul wrote, ³ If Christ be not raised then we are of all men most to be pitied and our faith is vain.² Over the centuries and right up to our own times the Orthodox faithful have accepted Martyrdom in their thousands rather than deny the Divinity of Christ and truth of the Glorious Resurrection. During the present Paschal Season the Scripture Readings in the Services of the Holy Orthodox Church continually remind us of the appearances of the Risen Christ to his disciples and his apostles. The Risen Lord would appear suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the blue. They never knew where they would see Him next, or when. They learnt to live in constant expectation of his appearing. Every time he reappeared he had something new to teach them, or some clear instructions for them to follow. They learnt that the Risen Christ was not a ghost, but a real bodily person, who appeared to them physically, in a body that could be touched and felt to be truly real. Yet it had new qualities which it never had before the crucifixion and the rising again. The resurrection body of Christ had both physical and spiritual properties. St Paul,struggling for words to describe it, called it a spiritual bodyı. It was real and solid - and yet in it our Lord could appear and disappear at will. He could eat fish and share a meal with them - yet he could also pass through locked doors ! They, blinded by bereavement and drowning in doubt, often failed to recognise Him the first time they saw Him. They didnıt recognise Him because to see Him alive was the last thing they expected. It couldnıt be Him - he was dead ! It wasnıt natural - Indeed it wasnıt - it was supernatural ! The body of our Risen Lord is a body fit for life in another world than this. It is a body fit for the life of heaven. A body that bears the scars of the earthly life - yet a body that is now beyond the reach of disease and death - a body transformed, risen and glorified. A body fit for the Son of God. Our present bodies are not like that. Our bodies are subject to disease and disability, infection, trauma and decay. From the moment we are born we begin to die. The older we get the more the aches and pains remind us of our mortality. Even many of the young the fit and the strong may not survive the dangers of accident, murder or sudden death. Donıt you wish that you had a perfect healthy body like that of the Risen Lord ? a body beyond the reach of death and decay ? a body with the best attributes of the physical and the spiritual, all rolled into one ? Well you can have ! Because Jesus did not rise for himself alone. He promised that as He is now, so we one day shall become. He is the trailblazer. The pioneer who leads the way. We have only to follow Him, to trust and obey Him and be joined to Him by the Sacraments, and we shall become like Him - in the unimaginable bliss of Eternity! First we receive through Him the forgiveness of sins, which he won for us on the Cross. That is a spiritual gift - and the beginning of the restoration of the the Image of God which sin has deformed within each of us. The second step is to receive the resurrection, in which, following death, our souls will be re-clothed in in the glorious immortal body of the resurrection. That is a physical gift. In all the life of mankind the physical and the spiritual are interwoven and inseparable. We are sacramental beings who can express our spiritual nature only by means of physical forms and in no other way. That is why the Orthodox Christian Faith teaches us to believe not only in the immortality of the soul - but also in the resurrection of the body. Not only in the resurrection of Jesus - but in your resurrection dear reader, and my resurrection, and the resurrection of all the redeemed. Death is not a dead end, as the secular people around us believe. There are in this country many liberal ministers of Religion who have no hope of heaven. They are proud to proclaim that Christ is not risen and death is the end of existence for every man, woman and child. For them Christ is a Teacher and an Example - but not a Saviour That is their faith. They cannot prove it. It is their belief that death is the end of everyone. That is their chosen faith. The faith they choose to organise their lives around. It is the dogma and the doctrine of secular people that death is the end. It is a very dogmatic doctrine. The dogma that death is the end is the dogma that our Society conforms to. The dogma that death is the end is pressed into peopleıs minds in this country of ours by the newspapers they read, the films they go to see, the popular books they read, and above all by the endless flow of TV programmes that saturate their minds. All re-enforced by the atheistic assumptions of day to day conversation in pub and club, office and school, factory and fireside. The Media which saturates the minds of our Nation today is an Atheist/ Agnostic Missionary Media. It is certainly not Christian. But neither is it value-free. The Media provides a constant saturation of secular assumptions, values and propaganda. The population of this country are constantly subjected to a kind of negative evangelisation - they are soaked in the secularism which preaches that death is a dead end and there is no real and actual God ! And most of the viewers and listeners donıt even notice that this brainwashing is going on. It hits them at a subconscious level. It poisons their minds against the Christian Revelation. Yet death is not a dead end. It is a doorway. A doorway to a richer, fuller life, - as demonstrated by Christ our Lord. Christ is Risen ! Risen indeed ! by Father George Hackney, Assistant priest at the Community of All Saints of Lincolnshire, St Matthias Church, City of Lincoln. |
