Several times in my younger years, I was fortunate to experience the excitement and thrill of being part of a “Main Event”. I refer to my participation in grand finals of soccer, water polo, volleyball and basketball competitions. In those days, these events were major occurrences in my life. With the other members of the teams I played with, I had worked and trained hard to arrive at the end of the competitions, in one of the top two teams.
The grand finals were a culmination of the sporting year. After experiencing some failures, but more successes, we had made it! Supported by our cheer squad, we were ready for the “main event”. An event which brought with it ultimate success – to be the winners!
John Irving, an American writer, has described the resurrection of Jesus as “The Main Event”. He writes, “Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity. Any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, you are not a believer.”
Philip Yancey supports this observation in his book The Jesus I Never Knew, when he writes, “The first Christians staked everything on the resurrection, so much so that the apostle Paul told the Corinthians, ‘And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith’”
What was the reaction of Jesus’ disciples to His resurrection? One only needs to read the Gospels and imagine the disciples huddled behind locked doors following his arrest and crucifixion. And then compare it to the description in Acts of the same men proclaiming Christ openly in the streets, to perceive the staggering and deep significance of what took place on Easter Sunday.
C.H. Dodd, a Theologian, writes that the resurrection “was not a belief that grew up within the church; it is the belief around which the church itself grew up, and the ‘given’ upon which its faith was based.” Nothing has changed! The resurrection still is the most significant event in Christian history.
The focal point of the New Testament and of Christianity is, in Paul’s words, “Jesus Christ, risen from the dead!” In the period immediately after Jesus, the movement was bursting with activity. This spirit would have been so much easier to generate and maintain by those who actually knew and mixed with Jesus. For us today though, two thousand years away, the spirit of commitment arising out of the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection is so much more difficult to foster. We were not there!
And so, our commitment to the resurrection event needs to be built on faith, arising out of our own studies and personal contact with our God.
What does the “Main Event” mean to us today? It means there is a loving Heavenly Father who is concerned about the future of His creation; it means that “Death has no sting”; it means that we are not only to live newly after death, but that we are to be new here and now by the power of the Resurrection.
We are playing in the grand final of life. To win this final game, we need to have faith and belief in the resurrection of Jesus; we need to be stirred with a commitment to win the game by the lives we live.
-Bill Gillard