There was once a very popular Easter song or hymn, but it actually got sung throughout the year, and one line confidently proclaimed about Jesus, ‘back to life He came.’
No, he didn't! What happened to Jesus was resurrection, not resuscitation. The Christian can be confident because, as Paul puts it, God raised Christ from the dead. He didn't simply get his breath back after a long pause.
Now this matters. As John Wesley made clear, if we sing bad theology, then we will believe bad theology. So we must be clear what we are singing, what we are proclaiming, and therefore what we are believing. Now, I think this is very encouraging. We live in a world in which the film industry and the military political complex tell us that violence and destruction are the real powers. Death is final and to be avoided at all costs.
But Jesus took a different view. On the cross, he looked death, violence and destruction right in the eye. And he defied them. He exposed the sham and disempowered what looked to be invincible. No wonder the early Christians were mocked for their apparent weirdness. A slain lamb sitting on the Emperor's throne at the heart of the Roman Empire?
But this is what defiant Christianity says. As the previously hopeless Peter, the friend who deserted Jesus at the crucial point of his suffering, now preaches in the streets, God raised this dead Jesus and the world is changed forever. It’s in Acts chapter ten verses 39 to 40. Now there are many times in life when we feel defeated. It seems as if the power of death or violence or loss simply can't be overcome.
It can hit us when we least expect it. Like the first disciples of Jesus, we can find that the God who raised Christ from the dead is the same God who promises never to leave us or forsake us. So like the first friends of Jesus, we might wake up on Easter Day bewildered and confused. Less, “Christ is risen, Hallelujah!” And more, “you've got to be joking.” But the last laugh and the last word belong to this God who defies even death with hope.