Ugly Treasure

I was reading Acts 17 today where Paul gets separated from his buddies and decides to take a stroll around town while he waits for them in Athens. It says "his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols." (vs. 16) He just can't help himself (in spite of flying solo without anyone to tell him if a rock is about to be thrown at the back of his head) and he starts preaching about Jesus, which is all cool until he gets to the crazy part—the resurrection. "Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, 'We shall hear you again concerning this.'" (vs. 32) Believing that someone came back to life after being dead is nuts. Believing that those who believe in a guy who came back to life will also come back to life is nuts. The Christian faith rests on a pretty outrageous claim and Paul just lets it fly.

Some people today are disenchanted with the Christian Faith, often describing their condition as a distaste for "organized religion." It's true, in many churches (in many people, rather) the Faith has become an ugly conglomeration of man-made rules and practices, which at best conceal and at worst assist the very evil the Gospel is meant to eradicate. Christianity is merely a screen these people use to dull the definition of their empty, average, unholy lives. It's all very unresurrection-esque. Have we forgotten that a Dude died and came back to life? It seems to have somehow lost its pop. We talk about it now two-thousand some years away but it's become all cloudy and cute and super nonfantastical by tradition and repetition and familiarity.

I have a picture in my head of me preaching in a church somewhere. I'm up front and I say something about Jesus rising from the dead. I stop. The good church folk are sitting, listening, some slightly smiling, legs crossed, heads tilted to the side warmly. As I wait, a few eye-brows raise good-naturedly in anticipation, as if to say "yes, continue with your pleasant talk." No reaction. "People," I think, "I just said someone came back from the dead! Sneer, laugh, believe, get mad, something!" Something as ludicrous as rising from the dead deserves a reaction, and yet for many of us in the church, it simply slips right on by as harmless religious jargon.

I wonder if we've become too comfortable with the resurrection. As I read, I had to stop at the part where Paul tells the Athenians, "He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." (vs. 31). The eternal outcomes of the souls of men will hang on their reaction to Jesus' resurrection, in which He defeated death and made God's justice and His mercy one. Without the resurrection, we have a weak, stupid, unspectacular religion.

It reminds me of the parable Jesus tells about the Kingdom of God as a treasure buried in a field, so valuable that the man who finds it sells everything he has to buy the field and own the treasure. If I might modify this a bit, imagine that the treasure is the resurrection, an actual factual real-time event that makes righteousness and union with God possible, the place where true, sold out faith begins (if this is possible, what isn't?). Has the church lost the treasure among the weeds of programs, buildings, committee meetings and lame outreach events? Have we even dug it up yet or are we content to have the field and to know where the treasure is if we need it? Do we consider it an ugly treasure, the scary claim of our religion that will repulse as many as it attracts? If we did go through the dirty, messy process of digging it up, would we hold it high in joyous celebration for all to see or be ashamed and try to sneak away with it under our shirt?

I think part of the success of the early church was its focus on and embracing of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It may be that the intellectual and emotional turmoil that arises in one's soul after considering the actuality of the resurrection gives the Holy Spirit something to sink His teeth into. It is a rubber-meets-the-road proposition, one that if understood fully demands a response. Paul obviously knows this because he never hides it. To him it is a glorious, life-changing truth. He holds the treasure up high for all to see, knowing that if someone is to have true faith and if the church is to be all that it can be, they must know, share and participate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul pays for all this resurrection talk, and we will, too, maybe even with our lives (some sneerers can get pretty nasty), but do what they may, they can't take away our treasure.