How the story of Jesus’s resurrection points toward peace [Peace and the Bible #15]

Ted Grimsrud—March 18, 2024

Christianity, it seems, owes its existence to on-going presence of Jesus among his followers after he was executed by the Romans. Against all expectations including their own, Jesus’s disciples within a few days of his death proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. Ever since, Jesus’s resurrection has been a rallying cry for Christian faith. It was quite a turnaround, because in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’s arrest and execution, it appeared that his movement had met its end.

The shock for Jesus’s followers

Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion were a devastating blow to his followers’ hopes. They “had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21); in the days that followed the shattering of those hopes they scattered and wandered around Judea. Jesus’s most prominent disciple, Peter, led the desertion by Jesus’s followers. They concluded that God had abandoned their leader—in line with Deuteronomy 21:23: “For a hanged man is accursed by God.” Jesus’s mission seemed to have ended up for naught. His message about God’s mercy, it appeared, proved to be no match for the forces of powers-that-be in their society. Whatever the disciples may have thought about the possibility of resurrection from the dead at the end of time, they clearly seemed not to have imagined that it would apply to Jesus in the immediate aftermath of his death.

A few of Jesus’s followers did remain close to him—Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s mother, a couple of others. They seem to have remained simply out of love for him and as an expression of solidarity in their grief, not that they expected his resurrection. Though the story tells that Jesus alluded to resurrection as he spoke of his likely death, it seems that no one actually understood him to mean his personal resurrection prior to the general resurrection at the end of time. The events of Easter Sunday took everyone by surprise.

After Jesus breathed his last (Luke 23:50-56), a member of the temple leadership named Joseph managed to get permission from Pilate to remove Jesus’s body from the cross and bury it in a tomb he owned. The two Marys learned where the tomb was and planned, following the Sabbath, to go to it with spices and ointments to anoint Jesus’s body for burial. However, when they arrived on Sunday morning, they discovered that the tomb was empty. To underscore that no one expected Jesus’s personal resurrection at this point, we read of the women’s terror. Mark’s gospel ends with this terror, as they flee from the empty tomb (16:8).

Luke also tells of the women’s terror but continues, the women encounter “two men in dazzling clothes” who tell them that Jesus has risen (24:5). The women tell the other disciples what they had seen. Again, to underscore the lack of expectation of Jesus’s personal resurrection, the disciples treat the women’s report scornfully— “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and [the disciples] did not believe [the women]” (24:11). However, Peter does take the story seriously enough to go to the tomb himself to investigate. He finds “the linen clothes [that Jesus had worn] by themselves” but no body. He returned home, amazed (24:12). After this, Luke tells of several direct encounters that the risen Jesus had with his followers in the days to come. The appearances culminate, in Acts, when Jesus calls his followers to witness to his message to the ends of the earth. He then ascends to be with God (Acts 1:3-11).

All these stories present Jesus’s resurrection as his physical return. He lived with his followers for forty days before departing again. Though no one expected Jesus as an individual to be raised from the dead, such an event would not have been unthinkable for people who, as was common, believed in the eventual bodily resurrection of people of the covenant.

I am most interested in the story of Jesus’s resurrection and its meaning. I am not so interested in the difficulties within our modern worldview of accepting the historicity of Jesus returning to physical existence following his death. I believe that the issue of the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection is beyond our ability definitively to resolve. Significantly, the evidence of the past 2,000 years shows that belief in Jesus’s resurrection happening in history does not prevent Christians from virtually ignoring the main thrust of Jesus’s own teaching about what matters the most. It would thus appear that to focus on the historicity issue provides little assistance for understanding the role of Jesus’s resurrection for the practice of Christian faith.

The meaning of Jesus’ resurrection must be linked inextricably both with his life and teaching and with the events that surrounded his death. The point that matters is the meaning of the story, not provable “scientifically” historical “facts.”

Jesus’s resurrection vindicates his life

First of all, the story tells us that when God raised Jesus from the tomb, God vindicated Jesus’s life. God thus revealed, confirmed, verified, and enacted the mission of Jesus’s life. The resurrection is God’s concrete and unconditional “yes” to Jesus’s life. The story of Jesus’s life does not end with his death. Contrary to how some might have seen it at the time, Jesus’s death did not express God’s judgment against Jesus. By raising Jesus, God reversed any negative implications people might be tempted to draw from Jesus’s life and death.

The message of healing justice that Jesus embodied is revealed to be a message from the heart of God through this vindication and affirmation. Jesus proclaimed God’s immediate presence in his ministry when he challenged the Powers and served the vulnerable. He asserted that God’s Spirit filled him and empowered him. The resurrection confirms his message as God’s message. Jesus’s basic strategy to bring salvation to the world included: (1) He welcomed all people even across the boundary lines of legalistic cultural exclusivists. (2) He reiterated the core message of Torah concerning God’s mercy and human responsibility. (3) He challenged the Powers of cultural exclusivism, religious institutionalism, and political authoritarianism and sought to loosen their holds on people’s loyalties. (4) He simply proclaimed and demonstrated God’s love. This strategy led to his being killed in the most public, physically torturous, and humiliating way possible.

The basic story of Jesus’s life and death, had it ended with his followers scattered and the Powers that corroborated to kill him triumphant, would not have provided hope. The story’s lesson would have been that the Powers of violence, oppression, and death will use whatever means necessary to eliminate those who challenge their hegemony. Jesus’s life—morally exemplary as it may have been—would not have been seen to reflect God’s will for human beings by many people. His life would more likely have been seen as tragic, an approach that was admirable to the few who might remember it but also a warning to all who might be tempted to follow his example. Walk this path and you too will end up abandoned.

However, the events recounted in the New Testament give a different conclusion to the story. They speak of Jesus’s followers regathered and transformed into people who believed (and lived in light of the belief) that Jesus’s life indeed expressed God’s will. God did not abandon the one who lived that way. Had Jesus simply withdrawn into neutrality or affirmed the present status quo, he would never have faced crucifixion. He stood against the Powers by showing partiality toward the vulnerable, the poor, and the outcasts—to the point of putting his life in jeopardy. By raising this Jesus from the dead, God affirmed and effectively enacted the partiality of Jesus.

When Jesus died, God did not abandon him. The cross, with its extreme violence and public humiliation, called into question all the ways Jesus had stood for life in the face of death. The resurrection counter-acted the catastrophe of the cross. Jesus’s death did not mean rejection by God. Due to God raising Jesus, the message that emerges from the story of his life is one of hope and empowerment, not defeat and despair. It reveals the way of God to be the way of welcome. God’s way heals the vulnerable people of the world and stands against violence and oppression. The basic thrust of Torah found concrete expression in this life—and was vindicated.

Jesus’s life gave hope that the world’s healing may be found through love that perseveres even in the face of profound hostility. This hope was vindicated in an act of God that actually went beyond the dreams of Jesus’s followers. God ratified Jesus’s life and teaching by raising him. The message he brought turned out indeed to be true—and would now be remembered as such. Jesus could wholeheartedly be affirmed as a true prophet who genuinely spoke for God.

Jesus’s resurrection rebukes the Powers

When God raised Jesus from the dead, God not only endorsed Jesus’s way as God’s way, but also rebuked the Powers that put Jesus to death. The law as interpreted and applied by those committed to cultural exclusivism, the temple as understood and defended by those committed to religious institutionalism, the state as operated by those committed to political authoritarianism all act against God’s will for those structures. The law, the temple, and the state need not be forces for violence. However, in how they responded to Jesus they were.

Jesus’s resurrection shows that the critique of those Powers who usurped God came not from some marginal disaffected prophet. Rather, it proves that Jesus’s critique reflected the will of the God of the universe. Each of these Powers claimed to represent God and thereby justified their demand for loyalty. When they established and defended (with violence) strict boundary markers for the people of the covenant, the keepers of the law saw themselves as God’s agents defending the identity of God’s people. They critiqued, in the name of God, Jesus’s violation of the legal restrictions of work on the Sabbath and Jesus’s “sloppiness” about who he fellowshipped with. They believed they spoke for God when they did so. Jesus, of course, strongly disagreed and claimed that, instead, he embodied God’s true will.

In this conflict, Jesus seemed to be the loser because of his execution. However, God acted decisively to vindicate Jesus and thereby sharply to rebuke those who understood the law to justify the violence and hostility visited on Jesus. Along with rebuking the Powers for their violence against him, Jesus’s resurrection also rebukes the Powers for presenting the law in such a way that fostered violence and oppression toward all the people who allegedly did not measure up. Jesus did seem explicitly to align himself with the law, that is, the-law-as-it-should-be-understood. He challenged the keepers of the oral tradition because he believed they misunderstood and misapplied Torah. So, Jesus rebukes the misuse of the law; he taught that the actual law-as-it-should-be-understood remained valid and its application needed to be taken away from those who used is as a tool to oppress rather than liberate.

The other two structures, the temple and the state, did not command the same level of respect from Jesus. He did accept that the temple had a legitimate vocation—to be “a house of prayer for all the nations.” He came from a family that respected the temple traditions. However, he ultimately viewed the temple as extraneous to God’s saving work. So, the rebuke to the temple would seem to be that such a structure typically fosters distortions of God’s will. The temple could have served a legitimate role if it actually had been a welcome beacon to the nations. Since it was not, to its shame, other beacons to the nations (specifically, Jesus and his community) would arise. The temple, insofar as its leaders resisted God’s work to bring light to the nations, became not the center of God’s presence in the world but the center of rebellion against God. When God raised Jesus from the dead, to borrow from Jesus’s own enigmatic words as reported in John’s Gospel (2:19), in a genuine sense God raised up God’s authentic “temple,” God’s authentic beacon to the nations. Such a raising up rebukes the failed institution that had not fulfilled its vocation to be such a light.

Jesus had a somewhat parallel view of the state. On the one hand, he seemed to allow for a legitimate role for human government. There are things we rightly give to Caesar, though our ultimately loyalty belongs to God. On the other hand, the gospels generally speak negatively about human government. They link Satan with political power in the story of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness and label the state’s typical style of leadership as a type of “lording it over” that is forbidden to Jesus’s own followers. Most seriously, government leadership as characterized by Pontius Pilate treated Jesus with disdain and issued the orders to put Jesus to death.

So, for Jesus not to stay dead serves to rebuke those forces that killed him. They were not all-powerful; they actively rejected God’s Son. The alternative type of politics Jesus embodied—practice servanthood rather than to lord it over and treat each person with respect rather than disdain—highlights the flaws in authoritarian politics. God’s ultimate rebuke of the state-turned-authoritarian came with the endorsement of Jesus as true king (Messiah) at the end of his life. God’s raised Jesus from the dead in order to challenge people to turn from giving higher loyalty to nation-states. The nations lord it over others and kill prophets. Rome exercised its “mighty” power and ended Jesus’s life, just as with others crucified as political offenders. However, in this case, Rome cannot keep Jesus dead. The most extreme act of violence the empire could take was unable to defeat God’s purposes. Even soldiers and stones (Matthew 27:62-66), lies, imperial propaganda, and bribe money—a veritable catalog of elite manipulative strategies—cannot do it (Matthew 28:11-15). The empire’s governor, Pontius Pilate had the power to bring about death. However, that power was not allowed the final word.

When it rebukes the Powers, Jesus’s resurrection unmasks their use of the logic of retribution. God does not operate in accord with that logic when God brings salvation to the world. Rather, acting against God, the Powers operate according to the logic of retribution. When Jesus embodied salvation through care for the vulnerable in the community and placed the mercy of God at the heart of human life, he ended up in conflict with the rules and expectations of the main cultural, religious, and political structures. Because he “broke the rules,” these structures acted with deadly retribution that, they mistakenly thought, was God’s will.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, God made it clear that this logic of retribution was not God’s will. Raising Jesus did not merely defeat death’s power but also exposed the human leaders as rebels against God when they embrace retribution. The resurrection makes clear that salvation is rooted in God’s deep, persevering love, not God’s holiness and anger that must be appeased when holiness is violated. The retributive punishment that executed Jesus, though meted out in the name of God and of peace and order, was exposed as hostility toward God.

Even with their trauma and despair, those who followed Jesus and affirmed his message came to realize that he indeed died embody God’s healing justice and transformative power—precisely in his path that led to the cross. God emerged victorious against the onslaught of the violence of the Powers. Belief in Jesus’s resurrection implied that Jesus was God’s last word.

Jesus’s resurrection points to his followers’ vocation

From the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus linked God’s merciful gift of salvation with recipients’ vocation to live merciful lives themselves. Thereby, he reinforced the message of Torah. The purpose of God’s gift of healing has from the time of Abraham and Sarah been to “bless all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3). Jesus simply reemphasized this portrayal of God’s purpose: to bless all the families of the earth through a community of faith that embodies God’s mercy and overtly expresses love for God and neighbor. One does not gain salvation without embodying its presence in merciful living. That is to say, the purpose of salvation is not simply to bless the recipient; the purpose is to move the blessing out into the world.

The accounts of Jesus’s post-resurrection teaching emphasize that the main implication of Jesus’s resurrection is that because Jesus was raised, his followers are to go out into the world and share God’s healing mercy. Jesus’s resurrection provides his followers with a vocation. This vocation links completely with the content of Jesus’s life and teaching; the resurrection does not redirect the content of the message. The resurrection itself does not provide the content. The content remains what had been revealed in Torah and was re-emphasized by Jesus: God is merciful, join with others who have experienced God’s mercy in a community of faith that will seek to bless all the families of the earth.

Jesus’s resurrection speaks of his vindication and his power. The Powers did not defeat him. It speaks of the main ramifications for his followers. The main point, we could say, is this: Now, get to work. The primary meaning of Jesus’s resurrection does not lie in the personal future of individuals after we die. The message is not, “you too can have life after death.” Rather, what the story tells the believer is that God intends to transform the entire creation through the vocation of God’s people—and you are to be part of that task. Jesus is raised, so now get involved in blessing all the families of the earth!

Jesus’s resurrection verifies that the love that suffers and perseveres constitutes the heart of the universe. It serves as a strong statement that the logic of retribution, based as it is on an understanding of God’s holiness as inflexible and punitive, does not cohere with the nature of the cosmos. The God of Jesus, the God who raised him from the dead, responds to violence with mercy. The God of Jesus breaks the cycle of violence that leads in turn to more (punitive) violence that thereby fosters an ever-repeating spiral of violence. As reflected in the vocation of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah’s prophecy, and as reflected in the vocation of Jesus, the God of the Bible breaks this downward spiral by offering healing to sinners, not retributive violence. God’s nonviolence in the face of the worst of human violence underscores that God’s intent in vindicating Jesus is healing not vengeance.

The resurrection of Jesus confirms that Jesus lived and taught mercy, not retribution. In his life and teaching, Jesus merely reiterated the basic salvation message we see in Torah and the Prophets. For God to vindicate Jesus so decisively underscores that the Powers are the enemies of salvation, not its agents. God’s vindication also underscores that the universe itself rests on mercy, not retribution.

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