The Widening Circle

PART THREE OF FOUR PARTS

“…..He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. And that He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve.  Then He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely bon, He appeared to me.”  I Corinthians 15:4-8.

In our study of Easter history we have looked at the big splash the Resurrection made. Concentric circles of waves spread out in all directions. Waves of Resurrection truth washed over blue-collar folks like the apostle Peter and Johnny Cash, skeptics like the apostle Thomas and Malcolm Muggeridge.  Now let’s look at two more varieties of people that Easter found.

A Government Official

The text also includes Matthew in the number of those who witnessed the resurrection. He was one of the twelve mentioned in our text. Matthew was a government bureaucrat. He was a tax collector. He was accustomed to dealing with formality, with currency. To him came the risen Christ. And Matthew believed.

Today, “as to one untimely born,” Christ came to Chuck Colson. Himself a corrupt government official formerly on the Nixon White House staff, Colson was also a cut-and-dried personality. He wielded power, had status, but didn’t know Jesus Christ. Yet in God’s grace the ripples of Easter widened to include even him. His book, Born Again, tells how a friend shared the claims of Jesus Christ with him. It tells how Colson groped through tears and pride to discover the unconditional love of a Savior. Colson went on to work with prison reform and the Washington Prayer Group movement.

A Scholar

Working class people, doubters, government officials—the gospel has claimed all sorts. But what about intellectuals?

In the text Paul mentions his own encounter with Christ. An extremely well-educated man, Paul was a zealous Jew. He considered the Christian faith to be utter nonsense, rubbish—and he diligently persecuted the church. But then on the road to Damascus the ripples of Easter swept over Paul and the risen Christ had claimed another soul.

Paul’s modern counterpart, himself untimely born as was Paul, is C. S. Lewis. A literary genius, a professor at Oxford University, Lewis was an atheist. To him all religion was a worn superstition, clouding men’s minds. But quite against his inclinations C. S. Lewis was led on a long intellectual journey that took him to Jesus. In his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, Lewis said, “You must picture me alone in the room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my  mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”  And so it was that, to one untimely born, Christ appeared to C. S. Lewis.

( Next week: part four)

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.