We cannot be reminded too often that the very center of our faith is a grotesque murder. Not only was Jesus murdered, but He was murdered in a miscarriage of justice—the murder was perpetrated by the very authorities assigned by God to prevent that kind of thing.
We must not be permitted to gloss over this, or pass too quickly to the “happy ending” of the resurrection. Indeed, the resurrection happened three days after the crucifixion, but then, just a few weeks after that, Jesus disappeared into heaven, where He has been for two thousand years now. If He wanted people to believe that He had risen, then why didn’t He just stay here and show them? His body is incorruptible now—He could have just remained, and nobody could dispute it. Just what we need, we think—straight-on proof. Atheistic societies would dwindle down to nothing. Evolution would be a laughing-stock. Why didn’t Jesus stay?
Yes, but self-satisfied religious groups called churches would not wither away. We would all learn the appalling lesson of walking by sight, not by faith. God wants us to believe the absurdity of a crucified and risen carpenter, one who is now seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and he wants us to do this on the basis of the foolishness of preaching.
God wants to offend our pious sensibilities, and He has done this by placing the offence of the cross right at the heart of things. But the great oyster of the Church has too often taken this irritating and scandalous message, and turned it into a pearl of self-improvement and civic decency, decorated appropriately with a little silver cross.
But God in His kindness has ensured that His gospel cannot be tamed in this way, and every once in a while it dawns on a number of Christians—simultaneously—what our message actually says. And when this happens, there is great turmoil, fuss and bother, controversy, riots, wars, misunderstandings, persecutions, and confusion. When the commotion dies down, a generation later a bunch of people decide that what happened should be called a reformation, and they start building tombs for the prophets slain, with long hallways, and floors of polished marble.