Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Lectionary: 301

Spring growth of flowers

“His accusers stood around him, but did not charge him with any of the crimes I suspected. Instead they had some issues with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus who had died but who Paul claimed was alive.”

In this story, Saint Luke describes Procurator Festus’s bewilderment. Twenty centuries later many people still wonder why people get upset about religious beliefs. Outsiders are always bewildered by religious sensibilities. They make ignorant statements like, "It doesn't matter which church you go to, so long as you pray."

To which I reply, "It doesn't matter which party you vote for, so long as you vote." Try telling that to a political zealot.

As insiders, you and I know how important the resurrection of Jesus is. Saint Paul spelled it out in so many words:

… if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. I Corinthians 15:12

A sympathetic bystander might have tried to soothe Saint Paul at that point, That's okay, Paul. Now settle down. Remember your blood pressure!" He is clearly very upset by somebody's outrageous remarks about there being no resurrection.

Even today many people do not understand that, if there is no resurrection from the dead and if Christ is not risen, the edifices of Christianity collapse. We are left with only a vague moral code based on “natural law” to stabilize our civilization. 

When European philosophers decided, for instance, we had no further need for Christian faith a series of wars -- World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the Balkan War – destroyed millions of lives. Without the prospect of heaven and the Judge who oversees admittance, there is no reason not to grasp at the power and pleasures of this world. One can only hope to survive in a death-struggle with billions of other people; and there are no penalties for genocide.

So religious beliefs do make a difference, even to people like Festus who are bewildered by it all.