The ultimate sacrifice: True meaning of Easter

This Sunday many of us will celebrate with colored eggs, Easter bonnets, an obligatory church service, and a family feast of ham and scalloped potatoes. For the majority, however, the true meaning of the holiday will be lost, and we will forget the miracle responsible for the event:

Jesus rose from the dead. Three days in the tomb; one hundred pounds of aromatic spices gummying the linen that mummified Him; a huge stone, typically weighing over a ton, rolled into the cave's doorway; a strictly-disciplined Roman guard standing nearby; and Jesus walked out. Just like that. Back from the dead.

We take it for granted, don't we? "Jesus died," ho-hum, "and rose on the third day," we say. Yawn, yawn. Give me something to really get excited about...like a new car or a bigger home or a better paying job. But can there be anything more significant? After all, it is because of the resurrection that Christianity trumps every other religion. Without it, our faith is hopelessly flawed. Everything of eternal value hinges on its truth.

I find it interesting to listen to people justify their belief system. "Evolution." "No real evidence of God." "Reincarnation." Then I ask them who Jesus is. Typically they say He was a good person, a great teacher, maybe even a prophet. The brilliant C.S. Lewis, himself a converted atheist and author of the famous book "Mere Christianity," had this to say about such a notion:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg -- or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Following Jesus' resurrection, he appeared to more than 500 of His followers. When Paul wrote those words, the majority of those witnesses were still alive. Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, emphasizes: "What gives a special authority to the list (of witnesses) as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, 'If you do not believe me, you can ask them.' Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago." There are no written accounts to deny Paul's statement. Even Josephus the historian refers to the empty tomb.

Theories abound explaining Jesus' resurrection. The Swoon Theory says Jesus didn't die -- he just fainted but revived in the tomb. The Hallucination Theory posits that the disciples just imagined they saw Jesus after his death, and the Conspiracy Theory states that Christ's followers just made the whole thing up.

Some go so far as to make Jesus the conspirator. Karl Barhdt wrote that Jesus arranged His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, faking His death and resurrection. To add to such absurdity, Barhdt explained how Jesus survived the rigors of crucifixion: Luke the physician administered drugs to help with the pain.

Karl Venturini proposed that Jesus was a member of a "secret society" who wanted to shift attention from an anticipated political Messiah to the idea of a spiritual one. His plan backfired when He was crucified. He was placed in a tomb alive, but fellow "secret society" members dressed in white scared off the guards at the tomb and rescued Jesus.

Brilliant theologians have written dissertations discounting such preposterous myths surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but to me, the most convincing evidence comes from His disciples and followers. They were the ones who had run for cover after He died, but once they saw Him face-to-face, their entire lives were devoted to telling others what they had witnessed. This, in spite of being beaten, sawed in half, stoned, thrown to the lions, and crucified. I don't know about you, but there are few causes that I am that sure of to make me give up my life for them. The disciples knew exactly what they were doing.

So, what do we do with the message of the Resurrection? Jesus Himself said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." He should know. He's the only one who paid the ultimate price for us and lived to tell of it. And as for me, all of my Easter eggs are in that basket. I hope yours are, too.