Resurrection

I have begun Easter Sunday morning by listening to a long interview with Desmond Tutu on the Something Understood programme on BBC Radio 4. I'm not normally a great fan of Mark Tully's continuity announcement approach to global spirituality but Tutu is always worth hearing. An icon of our age, you can listen again here.

And now I've been reading a review by Ziauddin Sardar in the Times online of Geza Vermes's book Resurrection. It shows why it is perhaps difficult for clergy who have studied the scholarship on the resurrection to always preach good Easter sermons - will have to see if mine from last year passes muster 12 months on. We'll nevertheless be off to church later and then have friends round for Easter lunch. However no Easter egg hunt more like a snowball fight in the garden. More snow has fallen overnight.

Here is how Sardar ends his article, I fear I may have think about buying this book too...

"But Christianity does not hinge solely on the claim that Jesus “defeated death”. One does not have to believe in literal, physical resurrection to be moved and influenced by the teachings of Jesus. Faith may involve a leap into the spiritual and metaphysical realm, but it cannot avoid evidence altogether. The worth of a faith is judged by how it makes good things happen, not by how it sticks to things that did not happen. And how much attention it gives to respectful and reverential critics such as Geza Vermes."