To a [first-century Greco-Roman] world ruled by fate and the whims of capricious gods, Christianity brought the promise of everlasting life. At the core of the Christian faith was the assertion that the crucified Jesus was resurrected by God and present in the church as “the body of Christ.”

The message was clear: by submitting to death, Jesus had destroyed its power, thereby making eternal life available to everyone.

This Christian affirmation radically changed the relationship between the living and the dead as Greeks and Romans understood it.“The Resurrection is an enormous answer to the problem of death,” says Notre Dame theologian John Dunne. “The idea is that the Christian goes with Christ through death to everlasting life. Death becomes an event, like birth, that is lived through.”

Once death lost its power over life, life itself took on new meaning for believers.

Sociologist Rodney Stark of the University of Washington sees dramatic evidence of this in the high Christian survival rates during the plagues that repeatedly hit the citizens of the ancient Roman Empire. “The Romans threw people out into the street at the first symptoms of disease, because they knew it was contagious and they were afraid of dying,” says Stark. “But the Christians stayed and nursed the sick. You could only do that if you thought, ‘So what if I die? I have life eternal’.” 

Can the Resurrection of Jesus help you overcome the fear of death? Can it empower you, like the early Christians, to serve others in radically self-sacrificial ways?

Source: Kenneth L. Woodward, “2000 Years of Jesus,” Newsweek, April 05, 1999. Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, p. 209. The preceding text was read on Sunday, April 17, as part of our weekly reflections on the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ during the month of April.

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