Goodnight and Amen
Christ is famous for basically three domains. He performed miracles. He was an accomplished philosopher. And he was the son of God.
Now that last one is the sticking point, the last one is the one that people just had to take his word for. Miracles? There were witnesses. Philosophy? He talked up a storm and a bunch of his friends wrote a bunch of it down. But “son of God?” Well let’s just say that a lot of kids with absentee fathers make up stories about how great their old man is.
But in the end there was one trick, one miracle, that most of the people were willing to concede he couldn’t pull off on his own, one grand show stopper that would at least make his claim plausible, that would mean he had “outside” help: Coming back from his own death.
So that’s what he did. He lay in his tomb for three days and then headed out, a little more ripe than just three days without a shower could explain. He went and saw some friends, some of whom hadn’t heard yet that he’d been executed. Then he headed up to Heaven. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, through Christ’s resurrection we finally had evidence that he’s god and suddenly he’s like “well, bye now.” If there was ever a time that people would have paid close attention to what he had to say, that would have been it.
I asked God why. He told me that the most important trick, the one that every magician really needs to learn, is always leave ’em wanting more. It’s not a bad answer, but I’m not sure it’s enough of one.
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