I remember the buzz that spread in 1995 when, after a two-year absence from the NBA, Michael Jordan announced his return to the Chicago Bulls in a fax that said simply, “I’m back.”
Despite feeling like an ancient technology, the fax machine did not actually exist during the Roman Empire. Still, I like to imagine the stir created had each of the Pharisees received a fax from Jesus on Easter Sunday with those same two words:
“I’m back.”
Best comeback ever.
Impossible comebacks are one of the best things about sports. I learned early on that if you leave or turn off a game before the last out is recorded or the clock ticks down to zero, you do so at your own peril.
Because sometimes the miraculous happens.
People talk about it for days, weeks, and even years later.
Hyperbolic announcers describe the unlikely turn of events by exclaiming the trailing team has “come back from the dead!” Of course, Tom Brady and his Patriot teammates weren’t really dead in Super Bowl LI, lying lifeless on the sidelines, mowed down by bullets in a brutal war.
They were just, you know, badly losing to the Falcons.
But Jesus? He really died. We know that for sure. He was beaten to a bloody pulp and publicly endured a brutal day of torture. His limp body was taken down from the cross and placed in a tomb sealed with a stone and guarded by Roman soldiers, who were placed there because Jesus’ enemies didn’t want his followers pulling a fast one by stealing his body and claiming he had risen from the dead.
He was in that tomb for three days. Dead as a doornail, if Dickens were to describe it.
Two thousand years later, it’s easy to dismiss the whole thing as a carefully-labeled ruse, a fairy tale that a society of superstitious and simple-minded citizens would be prone to fall for.
Except…
I did an internet search for the greatest sports comebacks of all time. There was 2017 when Tom his Patriots triumphed over the Falcons in the Super Bowl, the time the Boston Red Sox rallied to win four straight games to beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, and “The Comeback,” referring to the 1993 playoff game when the Buffalo Bills overcame a 35-3 deficit to defeat the Houston Oilers 41-38.
There were others, but curiously, nearly all of them happened within the last forty years. Which makes sense, because the people who keep the memory alive are the ones who lived to experience it.
I doubt that a hundred years from now, most people will even know who Tom Brady was, let alone breathlessly speak of the time he improbably led his team to victory in Super Bowl LI. After all, do you get all excited over that unbelievable comeback by that one athlete in that one game in the 1920s?
Exactly.
Which is why the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best comeback of all time.
Because people are still talking about it two thousand years later.
One should wonder why, as no one keeping Jesus’ memory alive today was around when it actually happened.
Many scholars provide evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The tomb was found empty by women, whose testimony was considered weak in that era, suggesting the account was not invented. The authorities did not produce a body, which would have ended the movement, but instead accused disciples of stealing it. Then there are the recorded post-mortem appearances to individuals and groups, and the rapid transformation of the disciples from fear-filled followers into bold witnesses willing to die for their conviction.
Recent studies of the Shroud of Turin, thought to be the burial cloth of Jesus, show that after disproving several other hypotheses—such as chemicals, vapors, or heat—radiation is the most plausible explanation for the mysterious image found upon it. Creating such an image would require billions of watts of light energy, far exceeding the capabilities of any known UV source today. Additionally, the radiation would need to produce light without generating heat, as the accompanying heat would have vaporized the cloth instantly.
My goal is not to descend into apologetics. Although fascinating to hear arguments for both sides, I find them a tiresome waste of time, because no definitive conclusion seems achievable. Proving the Resurrection in the same way that 2 plus 2 equals 4 would push faith out of the equation.
I think St Thomas Aquinas nailed it when he said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
Perhaps the most compelling case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ goes back to the fact that we’re still talking about it two thousand years later, even though NO ONE keeping Jesus’ memory alive today actually experienced it when it happened.
However.
The people keeping His memory alive today ARE those who have experienced HIM.
I’ve encountered Jesus myself in very personal ways. Perhaps not ways that can satisfy an impartial observer, but in ways that offer an even greater proof: the way I live my life.
Human beings can barely keep a New Year’s Resolution for a week.
But for someone to dramatically transform into a new and better person, for a heart to burn with such a deep love that they sacrifice everything, even their own life, this is not easily explained away. This is proof that speaks to something deeper. Something real.
As Mary Magdalene says in The Chosen: “I was one way, and now I’m completely different. And the thing that happened in between…was Him”.
It’s neither hyperbole nor simple-minded superstition to proclaim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
Billions of people don’t change their lives for a fable.
Millions of people don’t die for a hoax.
One thing is certain:
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