Mark 16

We live in an age where everything must be explained. So, let’s suppose the Jesus took human form during our generation and that He stuck with the living, preaching, teaching, dying, resurrecting plan, how would our world react to that?

I bet that it would be like an episode of CSI gone wrong. We would send in teams to dust for prints while putting out an APB (or BOLO as they are now called in TV lingo) on Mr. Universe. Get it? Mr. Universe? God? Never mind. When no prints were found and eyewitnesses testified to the tomb being opened on its own, we’d start looking for government conspiracies involving nerve gas and mind control experimentation, and when the government denied any involvement we’d respond by electing a different party the following November.

It would never occur to anyone that it just might not be explainable, but even for those that might get that far they would probably qualify it as not explainable yet. Believing it was a miracle would take a miracle. Wrestle with that logic for a minute. Yet people still believe today in the miraculous resurrection of Christ. Why? How can I reconcile the intellectuality (is that even a word?) of our society with the belief in the miraculous that so many of us still hold dear?

I think it might be a little easier to believe in the miracles of Jesus in our society than in the time of Christ. Sure, some of the people that lived at the same time as Christ and the apostles saw His miracles. Those guys probably believed what they saw, but what about the rest? When they heard a story about a guy that healed a blind man, raised someone from the dead, calmed a storm, exorcised demons, did they believe? Or were they just suspicious enough to go find out for themselves? Or more likely, did they just think that they were hearing stories from a crazy person that had gotten into some old wine and started seeing things?

Today, many of us “believe” in the miracles of Christ because it’s a part of our society. We accept it as true because we have never known a world where Christ did not rise from the dead. We’ve never known a world where Lazarus was dead. Others of us “believe” simply because it’s in the Bible but couldn’t really point to any miracles in the world around us. Many from both of these groups could not be deterred from their “belief,” but is it the same as when Jesus asks us to believe in Him? Or is that just a general knowledge item? Something you just know but don’t really apply, like the knowledge that George Washington was the first President.

The women in Mark 16 didn’t have a general knowledge belief that Christ rose from the dead. They had a firsthand experience. They didn’t read a story in a Bible. They saw the story as it happened, and they had every reason to look for an explanation just like we would today. They didn’t, though, because they believed that God is all powerful, and they opened their eyes to the possibility of a miracle. Do you think God still works that way in our world today? Do you allow yourself to see the miraculous when it happens right in front of your eyes?