Is the Resurrection for Real?

Hugh Hollowell

I fully admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ.

Whenever I ignore the plight of the poor, I deny the resurrection. When I turn my back on those on the margins of society, I deny the resurrection. When I pledge my allegiance (with my money, my privilege, and my actions) to a corrupt system that places profits over people, I deny the resurrection. When I fail to stand with the fallen, when I deafen myself to their cries, when I choose power rather than siding with the powerless, it is then that I shout to Jesus "You died in vain!"

Hugh Hollowell is a speaker, a Mennonite minister, and homelessness advocate. He is the founder and director of Love Wins Ministries, and is currently on the planning team of the Wild Goose Festival (June 2011). He blogs at Hugh Hollowell.

Meg Riley

This sense of God as the unkillable spirit, despite all abuse, oppression, and suffering, provided meaning and continuity in my inner-city church community, housed in a storefront, that could count on little of it. Easter, then, became the annual marking of the triumph of the oppressed, no matter how it might appear on the outside. No matter how mighty the powers against him, Jesus could not be killed. That fact—and it was a fact—held together the lives of people who struggled every day to roll boulders off of their own life force, boulders of racism, poverty, violence, addiction.

Meg Riley is a Unitarian Universalist Minister for the Church of the Larger Fellowship and blogs at her Patheos Expert Site. Read her full article on the Resurrection here.

Greg Carey

I confess the actual, physical resurrection of Jesus. I'll freely admit that I have no idea what that means or what it would have looked like. Even the Gospel accounts differ. That said, it matters that God raised Jesus' body. Some people need the resurrection to prove something about Jesus. I don't. But Jesus' bodily resurrection shows that embodied lives matter to God. The resurrection claims all of who we are: our labor, our play, and our love, all of them reclaimed and renewed by God.

Greg Carey is Professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary and the author of Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers. He blogs at New Testament Geeks blogspot.

Carl Gregg

Clarence Jordan said, "The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church." We should worry less what people say they believe happened 2,000 years ago and more whether we are living as if resurrection still happens. I invite you to google Wendell Berry's poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" and discern how God is calling you today to "Practice resurrection."

Carl Gregg is an Alliance of Baptist pastor serving Broadview Church in Calvert County, MD. He blogs at A Protestant Pastor in a Postmodern World.