Sts Peter and Paul (2025) - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Why on earth would anyone start believing in the resurrection of Jesus?  Why would anyone take the apostles at their word, when they say that their teacher isn’t in the tomb anymore but is alive?  Because that’s just what happened when they preached: people who didn’t know Jesus during his earthly life started believing in his heavenly life as Lord on the strength of the apostles’ preaching.

We should say at the outset that the apostles’ congregations in the first century were no more or less knowledgeable, intelligent, and discerning than we might consider ourselves to be.  Sure, their scientific knowledge isn’t as great as ours is, but then the resurrection stands quite apart from the realm of the sciences.  It’s not as though we can take the Lord’s risen body and submit it to examination.  So, our relatively advanced scientific knowledge doesn’t allow us to say first-century Christians were at a disadvantage, or that they were gullible, or that we should come to a different understanding than they did.  There’s plenty of evidence in the New Testament for the doubt and deep thinking of the apostles: the risen Lord upbraided the apostles for stubbornly disbelieving what the women told them on Easter Sunday morning; at the great commission we’re told the apostles worshipped Jesus “though some doubted”.  We face the same questions of faith and doubt, certainty and knowledge which our forebears did.

To be clear, the resurrection isn’t resuscitation; it isn’t an appreciation of the immortality of Jesus’ human soul; and it isn’t simply exaltation in heaven or some gross promotion by the media machine known as the Church.  The resurrection is Jesus’ return to life in the same body he had but completely transformed by the effects of human mortality and divine majesty.

So, why believe the apostles about the resurrection?  I have four main reasons to put to you.  See how you go with these around the Sunday lunch table today!

The first reason to believe Jesus rose from the dead is the empty tomb.  The Gospels all agree that the dramatic events of Easter Sunday begin with Jesus’ tomb being empty again.  What is more, there’s a great amount of space dedicated to the descriptions of the burial of Christ: we hear about the spices, the cloths, the tomb, the stone, the guard, and more.  But all of that, all of those arrangements, were made redundant after about forty hours.  Instead of the occupied grave, we have the absence of Jesus.  His corpse, as it were, has never been recovered.

The second reason to believe the apostles about the resurrection has to do with the appearances.  The risen Lord appeared to his disciples something like a dozen times.  In most cases (Paul being the exception), the Lord appeared to people who knew him in his earthly life.  They were able to verify him, eventually.  That is to affirm too that the apostles were quite content to relay their failure to recognise the risen Lord, so changed was he after his death and resurrection.  The key here is that it is the same people seeing Jesus before and after his death.

The third reason to believe in the resurrection is perhaps not as accessible to us as some of the others: the fulfilment of prophecy.  The resurrection of Jesus made sense to the first-century congregations.  As they listened to the apostles speak of the Son’s sacrifice and his Easter glory, they knew the apostles were making sense of their ancient faith.  They knew and loved the Hebrew Scriptures just as we do the Christian Bible.  And so, they knew Christ to be the new Jonah, because he too was chosen by God and spent triads of time in the depths of the earth.  Christ is the new David, because his sovereignty is an enduring but eternal one.  Christ is the new Solomon, because he built a new temple not made by hand.  The sacrifice of Isaac, the royal lawmaker Moses, Isaiah’s suffering servant, and David’s psalms, all speak of the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead.

The fourth reason to believe what the apostles preached about Jesus is their own suffering.  We would expect that dishonest charlatans or deluded cult members would eventually come to their senses.  Even if only some of them did, if some of them gave up the charade, it would reveal the real story.  But they didn’t.  None of them did.  All persevered.  The apostles all knew that Jesus had risen because they met him.  Even Paul, whom we suspect never met Jesus before Easter Sunday, continued preaching despite an impressive litany of hardships, punishments, and humiliations he faced because of it.  The apostles preached the truth about Jesus, long after they had dispersed after Pentecost, long after they could have used each other for the moral support the dishonest or deluded would need.

The apostles persevered with the Gospel as we shall.  They knew the truth about Jesus to have been revealed to them; they knew about Jesus because God had chosen them for this knowledge and the mission it demands.  And so, we gladly receive the Gospel of the risen Lord from them and joyfully pass it on, such is the nature of the Church, which exists to worship and proclaim Christ risen.  With Peter we confess Christ to be the Son of the living God.  With Paul we acclaim Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.

For the full account of this discussion, see Brant Pitre, The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (New York: Image, 2016).