Re-burying a dead king
I can’t help smiling at all the fuss being made this week over the re-burial of the possible remains – and there is still some doubt whether they really are his – of King Richard III in Leicester Cathedral. It is especially ironic that it should be happening now, little more than a week before Easter Sunday, when Christians all over the world will be celebrating the fact that their king is very much alive, and that he lives for ever more, never to die again. He is a very long way indeed from needing any kind of reburial.
I say ‘fact’ because that is what it is, and the way the New Testament presents it. The resurrection is not just something that happened to Jesus’ spirit, still less merely in the minds of the disciples. It is something that happened to the body of Jesus; he was dead, and now he is alive. This is so important, so fundamental to any Christian faith, that Paul can say: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile … If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:17, 19, NIV).
But if he has been raised – and he has – then he really is “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), the one by whom God will judge the world (Acts 17:31), who has conquered death (1 Corinthians 15:54-55), and who guarantees life even to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11); every word he has spoken can be trusted and is to be obeyed. Here is a King truly worthy of the most serious attention: a living King to be worshipped.