Monday in the Octave of Easter
Readings for Monday in the Octave of Easter

First Posted: Monday, April 17, 2006

The Truth about Odds

Reflection:

The Scripture selections for today put us a kind of time warp. First, in the readings from Acts of the Apostles, shows us Peter confidently proclaiming Christ crucified and risen. In our afterglow from the Easter celebration of yesterday, this fells right. We rejoiced because, once more, we celebrated our own liberation from sin and remembered the great gift God has given us. We hear Peter summarize the reason for our joy:

God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father, as you both see and hear.
(Acts 2 32-33)

It feels right, but we know that during this period of our Easter joy, the Apostles were not having a good time of it. Remember, on Friday of last week (just 3 days ago) they scattered they ran away. Even Peter, who so boldly proclaims the Lord in Acts, denied the Savior of the World. So in real time these men, called by God to greatness, are fugitives We hear in the Gospel how the Sanhedrin discredited the events of yesterday. How the Chief Priests paid off the guards at the tomb to tell the credible story about the Disciples stealing the body of Jesus.

This is something worth pondering for a moment. The possibility of the Disciples stealing the body of Jesus is actually a much easier story to believe than what really happened. Lets face it, if we had been there and, lets say we were not big time followers of Jesus, and someone came up to us and said; Jesus the Nazorean has been raised from the dead Its a miracle. Would we have believed that or the next person who came running up and said; You know that holy man from Nazareth, they say his disciples stole his body. Which story sounds more credible?

The reason I ask the question in the first place is, while hard line Jews still believe that story, the entire Christian world has come to believe the less credible truth. How could that be possible? Especially when we consider that the number of ardent followers of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion was perhaps, at best, a few hundred and the most ardent of these were hiding when the stories started to emerge. The fact is, it defies logic. There is no way the story of Jesus should every have emerged from the shadows of history unless!

,,,Unless there was something about this event that caused it to jump out to a skeptical people in a backwater province of Rome; Unless there was something added to this mix of disciples, humble and very common men to cause them to suddenly be able to articulate the miracle to the multi-cultural group of Greeks, Romans, Turks, Assyrians, Jews, and Pagans they encountered; Unless the God intervened and His only Son, who was seen crucified was also seen by his friends and gave them courage, hope and strength to overcome the staggering odds of a powerful opposition.

When we put it in those terms, I just cant understand how event the staunchest skeptics can say it was anything but a transcendent truth that will ultimately transform the world.

He is Risen!