Easter Sunday

I’d like to continue with the story about the bridge controller that I used in my Good Friday homily. As I said, when it is used as an analogy of our salvation in Christ, it has a number of shortcomings. On top of the ones I pointed out on Good Friday, another shortcoming is promotes a theory of salvation that has no need for the resurrection. All that is needed for the train to cross the bridge from death into eternal life is the death of the son of the bridge controller. The resurrection of the son of the bridge controller would be superfluous to the people crossing the bridge into eternal life. It would have made a nice ending to the story, but would have not been necessary. Another shortcoming is that it does not connect Jesus’ life and preaching to the salvific power of his death. For, if all that was necessary for our salvation was Jesus’ death on the cross, then Jesus might as well just have been a boy who had not preached a Sermon on the Mount, fed the 5000 and worked many other miracles.

Now it is true that this story of the bridge controller was just a story that I found floating around social media a couple of years ago. It doesn’t purport to represent mainline Christian accounts of salvation. But before you accuse me of simply building up a straw man that I can then proceed to easily destroy, I think that it is important to realize that certain mainline Christian accounts of salvation do indeed fail to connect Jesus’ death and resurrection to his ministry and his preaching. One glaring example of such a theology is Pauline theology. St. Paul is a towering theologian, one of the greatest our Church has ever known, and far be it from me to cast aspersions on his theology. In many ways, St. Paul was our first Christian theologian and he did a remarkable job of elaborating the first written, systematic account of the salvific import of the Christ event. But it may shock you to learn that nowhere in all his writings does Paul ever find the need to refer to Jesus’ preaching and ministry. Paul elaborates his whole theology of salvation solely around the death and resurrection of our Lord. There is no reference to his parables, his exorcisms, his healings or his interactions with the men and women of first century Palestine. The resurrection, however, does play a central role in Paul’s soteriology, but the same cannot be said of many contemporary accounts of salvation that are found in certain corners of the Christian ecosystem.

Any authentic and integrated account of how we are saved must connect Jesus’ life, teaching and ministry to his death and resurrection. There are various ways to do this, and in this homily I propose to give only one amongst many others. In order to do so, I would like to dwell on a current event here in Zambia.

The signing of a Private Public Partnership between the Government of Zambia and a Chinese contractor for the construction of a dual carriageway between Lusaka and Ndola has not been without controversy. Critics of the deal say that it comes at an unnecessarily high cost to the Zambian taxpayer. Now far be it for me as a priest to wade into this political maelstrom and offer my two cents, but I’d like us to use this story for a thought experiment. Imagine that a savvy local businessman, let’s call him Mr. J., a man with huge charisma and razor sharp investment acumen, started telling people that Zambia had the technical and financial resources to build this dual carriageway on its own, without having to have recourse to an external expensive contractor. Some people would dismiss him out of hand and would mock him as a crazy visionary. But imagine that a small group of people would be convinced by this man, and convinced by his plan. He would show them how it could be done, that with the right combination of a Private Public Partnership and every Zambian doing their bit, contributing what they have, their labour and their other resources, the road could be built for a fraction of the cost quoted by the Chinese and for the benefit of all Zambians. Imagine that he got enough traction to be awarded the contract and got enough investors to trust him with their funds in order to begin the project. But then imagine that after a few kilometres of road had been built, Mr. J. gets arrested on charges of fraud and corruption. Those investors who believed in his vision enough to trust him with their money would now have a moment of panic and self-doubt. Had they been deluded by this visionary businessman? Was Mr. J. a fraud, had they been sucked into a ponzy scheme? Work on the project would stall, awaiting the verdict of his fraud trial. Many people would mock him and those who believed in him, calling them naive to ever believe that Zambia could accomplish such a project on its own. But then let’s say that the trial reveals that Mr. J has been wrongly framed, and the judge delivers a verdict that Mr. J. is completely innocent of all charges made against him. This verdict restores confidence to his investors. The verdict gives them the assurance that his business dealings are sound and that the project of the dual carriageway is financially viable, and so they set about continuing to implement this vision.

In this thought experiment, what the judge’s verdict did for Mr. J. and his vision of Zambia’s capacity as a nation is exactly what the resurrection did for Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God and our capacity as a human race to live by its values. The resurrection serves as the confirmation to all who believed in Jesus that Jesus was not wrong about God and about human life. Like Mr. J., Jesus had what many thought to be a crazy vision of human fulfilment as coming through loving your enemies, forgiving those who wrong you, freely giving away what you possess, and accepting suffering and death as the only way to new life. But his charisma, miracles and preaching captured the hearts and imaginations of many in Israel, with a few of his most devoted followers deciding to take a risk on him and invest all of their lives on his vision for a new world. Like Mr. J.’s investors, his followers would have been absolutely distraught at his death and would have begun to doubt themselves. They would have begun to think that they were foolish to have trusted in Jesus and his preaching on the Kingdom of God. He was just another would-be Messiah who failed to deliver on his promises. The resurrection would have given the same confidence to Jesus’ disciples that Mr. J’s verdict gave to his investors. It vindicated their trust in Jesus and told them that they could carry on with his mission. They were not on a wild goose chase. Like Mr. J’s verdict enabled work to resume on the road, the resurrection allowed a resumption of Jesus’ mission of preaching the Kingdom of God by his disciples.

Concretely, what difference does this make in our own lives? I’d like to end with the story of a young woman whose story really touched me. Intelligent and quick-witted, she recently graduated from law school and passed the notoriously difficult bar exam to qualify as a fully fledged lawyer. She could have opted to go into corporate law and secured a well-paying job that would have assured financial security for herself and her two children. Currently living apart from her husband this would be an important consideration for her. However, she decided not to opt to go into corporate law, and instead signed up to become a Public Defender with the State, defending those who are too poor to afford legal counsel on their own dollar. She has now been posted by Ministry of Justice to a very remote area in Zambia to serve the local population there and ensure that those too poor to afford legal counsel get a fair hearing and are represented by a competent lawyer who is concerned that they receive the same justice as the wealthy of the land. What gives her courage and confidence to make such a brave life decision? It can only come from her deep Christian faith and her belief in Jesus’ promise that if we make our lives about serving others, our heavenly Father will provide and take care of us. How does she know that Jesus was right when he said “the one who loses their life for my sake will find it”? It is the resurrection that proves Jesus was right and that we can confidently invest our lives in serving others and promoting the values of the Kingdom Jesus preached knowing that God has got our backs and will catch us when we fall.

Questions for reflection

1. Where might God be calling me to take a bet on living by Kingdom values? Does the resurrection of Jesus allay any of my fears about taking such a risk?
2. How can I help others to believe in the vision that Jesus promoted? Do I have any personal experiences of “resurrection,” my o