Resurrection Lockdown

Kevin Moss | 13:40, 10th April 2020

It is almost inevitable that the current CoronaVirus quarantine may have given rise to more opportunity for both reading and writing.  And for myself, now that we are in Easter Week, it has led to an extended reflection on how Christians globally will this year celebrate this most significant historical event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  For most of us in the ‘free world’, this will be the first time in our lives that we will have been prevented from gathering together for that purpose, and one wonders how the denial of that opportunity to the community of faith will affect us in practice?

For most of us ... this will be the first time in our lives that we will have been prevented from gathering ...

Of course, for all too many other Christians globally, such restrictions will not be a novelty.  In China, from where the plague has been exported, the authorities have been repressing Christians since the time of the Communist revolution under Mao.  It is difficult to gather together for your Easter Sunday service, when the Government has just dynamited your church premises.  There are plenty of other countries where visible expressions of Christian faith would be impossible, due to the nature of the oppressive regimes in place, and yet we know that the kind of life which flows out of the resurrection hope is impossible to repress.  Iran is a good example here – one of the fastest-growing underground churches in the world, in a place where a public identification with Christ can cost you everything.

So, what does resurrection look like, under conditions of lockdown?

It turns out that our experiences in 2020 might just reflect what went on in 1st Century Palestine, at the time of that first Easter.  We know from Josephus, the Jewish historian, that the Roman authorities governing Jerusalem increased their military force by 500% during the Passover, in order to keep all that bubbling nationalism under tight control.  Entrance to the city was rigidly policed in order to exclude potential trouble-makers, and yet Jesus and his excited followers made it through the checkpoints.  As did Christian friends, back in the late 1970s, when smuggling Bibles into East Berlin – having eschewed any attempt at subterfuge, and having loaded up their vehicles to the point where the suspension was at risk of failure.  The same God oversees all.

Lockdown wasn’t much more effective when the authorities got their hands on Jesus

Lockdown wasn’t much more effective when the authorities got their hands on Jesus.  The Roman Governor, Pilate, crows about the authority that he has over Jesus, who politely reminds him that the only reason he has that power is because it suits God’s purposes.  Peter has a crisis of confidence in the High Priest’s courtyard, but goes on to become a fearless proponent of the truth of the resurrection, sealing the deal with his own life.  The Jewish authorities attempt to censor the public message, posted at Jesus crucifixion, but are overruled by Pilate’s obstinance.  And attempts to secure Jesus’ grave by means of military guard are equally fruitless, as is the subsequent plot to cover up the embarrassing fact of the empty tomb.  Resurrection is like that.

Even the kind of self-imposed lockdown, the result of human weakness and uncertainty, is unequal to the task of suppressing something like the resurrection of Christ.  Whilst those manly disciples, only a few days before bartering for positions of privilege, were cowering behind locked doors for fear of the authorities, it’s the women who have the bottle to visit the grave, and in the process discover that something remarkable has happened.  In 1st Century Palestine, women had no legal status in a court of law – so the Gospel writers had to have complete confidence in the truth of their narrative, to make them the primary witnesses.

Social historians ... tell us about how this changed everything

And we could go on with this analysis.  The book of Acts, the early history of the embryonic Jesus movement, provides a consistent narrative of suppression by both Roman and Jewish authorities prior to AD70.  The tactics they employed were not that different to what we see going on around the world in the 21st Century, and were just about as effective – for news about the resurrected Galilean spread like wildfire across the known world.  Social historians like Rodney Stark tell us about how this changed everything:  women accorded equal status with men; orphans cared for; infanticide a thing of the past; widows supported; plague victims nursed, rather than thrown into the streets…

the major hospitals at the epicentre of the outbreak were founded by Christian missionaries

Plague and resurrection.  The two have been long intertwined.  Whether or not Dr Li Wenliang, the early coronavirus victim and whistleblower in Wuhan was actually a Christian, it is a fact that the major hospitals at the epicentre of the outbreak were founded by Christian missionaries.  It would be difficult to trace the origins of any healthcare system without discovering its Christian roots, for belief in Christ’s resurrection does not lead us to somehow denigrate the body and the value of each human life – that being more a feature of gnostic paganism.  Indeed, the death and resurrection of Christ are what ultimately supply purpose and intrinsic value to each individual, for whom Christ died.

You can’t keep a game-changer like the resurrection of Christ down.  This Easter, churches the world over will be discovering new ways of proclaiming old truths.

[Originally appeared as blog post on 6th April 2020 on the theobloggie website]