These days (the last couple hundred years or so) you find a lot of different kinds of Christians. There are Lutherans and Roman Catholics, Methodists and Baptists and so forth. Depending on where you are you may be more likely to find one kind of Christian more than the other. In South Dakota you ran into a lot of Lutherans. In Arkansas (and southwest Missouri to a certain extent) you run into a lot of Baptists. However, unless you are in Russia or Greece you typically don’t run into a lot of Eastern Orthodox Christians. I was surprised a little when I met an individual in South Dakota who said that he was part of the Orthodox Church. He did not look particularly Russian or Greek (both countries are predominantly full of Orthodox Christians). He looked kind of Middle Eastern. He was, in fact, Egyptian. He was part of the Egyptian Orthodox Church. He was an American citizen and all but his faith was Orthodox. We had some interesting conversations.
One time when I met him it was shortly after Easter and he asked me a question. He said, “Do you think that most Christians really believe in the resurrection?” I knew what he was getting at. It really isn’t an easy position to hold when one comes under a certain kind of scrutiny. Still on the other hand, it is easy to say that you believe in the resurrection. It is easy to recite the Nicene Creed along with everyone else in the sanctuary and come to the part where it says “and I look for the resurrection of the dead” without giving it much thought. This same creed would have been said in the Orthodox Church as well (with the caveat of “and the Son” being left out in the third article {old disagreement they have}). Believing that statement about the resurrection requires faith, quite a bit of faith. It means believing that something that seems to be physically impossible can and will happen.
He correctly followed this question with the statement, “The resurrection is the foundation of the Christian faith.” To which I smiled and said, “Yes, it is.” As I thought about it some more I figured that if any Christian I know were asked about the resurrection they would say they believed it. If asked about how they thought it was physically possible or what not, then they would probably be at a loss for words. Yet, I am not too disheartened by this. Belief is not the same as scientific explanation. God does not ask us to understand how. He just asks us to believe. Yes, the Christian faith does stand or fall on the resurrection of Christ. And for the entire history of the Church no one has ever had Jesus repeat the process of dying and rising so that they can run an experiment to figure out how it is done. That misses the point. If God is God, it really doesn’t matter. If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead then it means that you believe that He is much more than a guy who figured out how to come back to life after being crucified. He is God’s own Son. He is God himself. He is the resurrection and the life. Believing this takes faith in God to be God. I think my Orthodox friend really knew this and I trust you do, too. He is risen, He is risen indeed, alleluia.
~ Pastor Mehl