On the third day he rose again according to the scriptures. So proclaims the Nicene Creed. In these days of science and scepticism, what do Christians believe?
We know that in Jesus' day there were two schools of thought - the Sadducees, the fundamentalists of their day, said there was no resurrection. The Pharisees said there was. The Pharisees' delight in tinkering with the plain text of the Bible earned them black marks from Jesus, but on the subject of resurrection, he sided with them.
Not only did Jesus believe in a resurrection. We hear of him raising the dead - not only Lazarus, not only the centurion's daughter, but other miracles pointed forward to the offer of new life.
For it is new life that the resurrection is about. Not just a resumption of the old life, with its pains and problems, but a fuller and richer life. Christ's resurrection affirms that life is the gift of God, and that death has no place in God's scheme of things. It affirms that even in the midst of pain and grief, of sin and suffering, life itself is valuable. It affirms that in Christ, we too can shake off the pain and the grief, and pass through it all to fullness of life - and not after our death, but through "dying to sin", being "born again to new life" - through dying to sin in our turning to Christ, and through being reborn through water and the Spirit in baptism, through showing forth Christ's death and risen life in the Eucharist.
Christ's ascension into heaven is tightly bound together with his resurrection. Just as the Resurrection is an affirmation of life, so the Ascension is an affirmation that we lead this life on two planes - a material one and a spiritual one. There is much that is good in other religions, but the Christian faith balances the material and the spiritual - both the Incarnation and the Ascension link our daily life with the life of Heaven. In Islam, and to a lesser extent in Judaism, our life on earth is merely a pale reflection of a transcendent God's true life in Heaven. In the Hindu and Buddhist religions, there is no heavenly life - the greatest spiritual goal lies in disengagement from life, in nirvana, or nothingness.
"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain," wrote Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:14). In saying this, Paul was not drawing attention to the details of the Resurrection. We should maintain an open mind as to what actually took place "step by step", for the Gospel writers do not tell us.
Our Creed adds two practical details. The Resurrection was "on the third day", and it was "according to the scriptures." Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and he rose on a Sunday - the first day of the week, and one that reminds us of the creation story - this was the day for a new creation, not like the Sabbath, not a day of rest or sleep, but a day for making all things new (Rev 21:5).
"The scriptures" are the writings of the Old Testament - the New Testament of course had not yet been written. It is interesting to scan the Old Testament and see how often God acts, not immediately, but "on the third day", but the writers of the Nicene Creed saw this too as the fulfilment of prophecy - specifically Hosea 6:2 and Jonah 1:17. Again, we should beware of getting bogged down in details - the arithmetic of Matthew 12:40 brings us to the fourth day, not the third, and Hosea was calling the people of the Northern Kingdom to repentance in the eighth century BC rather than talking about an event in the distant future. But both Jonah in the belly of the "big fish" and the Kingdom of Israel threatened with imminent destruction are types, images, shadows of things to come. God is constant, and when we read the Old Testament, we need to remember that the past is not something long gone. The God who raised Jonah from the whale, who could lift up a repentant Ephraimite kingdom, also raised Jesus, and the same God can raise us too, to a new and a fuller life.
HD