Christianity without the physical resurrection

Sermon preached at Kippax Uniting Church, 12 April 2026

Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14a, 22–32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3–9; John 20:19–31

Resurrection and Doubt

Robbie Tulip, Kippax Uniting Church, 12 April 2026

Celebrating the story of the risen Christ at Easter is a high point in the life of the church. Today as we stand with Saint Thomas, with his first great confession of faith, ‘my Lord and my God’, we can explore in more detail how we can understand the resurrection in the modern world.

There is a basic problem with the story of the resurrection. Many modern people, formed by science and by the expectation that the universe obeys consistent laws, find it impossible to believe that a dead body literally returned to life. Doubting Thomas speaks for that frame of mind. He asks for evidence. He wants to see and touch. In that sense Thomas stands very close to the sceptical temper of modern Australia.

Part of the background to this scepticism lies in the world that formed our culture. Australia was founded in the time of the scientific Enlightenment, a period when British thought had become increasingly shaped by evidence, logic and criticism of inherited authority. David Hume’s essay On Miracles, published in 1748, gave classic expression to this outlook. Hume argued that when an event seems astonishing, we should first suspect error, deception, enthusiasm or ignorance rather than divine intervention. That scientific way of thinking places highest value on the consistency of nature. It says sacred doctrines are open to just as much critical scrutiny as any historical claims.

That sceptical habit of mind has deeply influenced our modern culture. Secular science has helped to create a condescending attitude toward Christianity, even while Christianity’s moral and social influence remains profoundly important. And yet the church still celebrates the resurrection story, still proclaims that Christ is risen, and still gathers on the first day of the week, recognising how that first Easter changed everything.

So the question I want to ask today is this: how can Christian faith expand its message in a world shaped by science, where accepted theories of truth are so much tied to evidence.

The consistency and coherence of reality are basic assumptions for science. Physical laws of motion and thermodynamics and gravity do not have known exceptions. And yet, the deeper meaning in the universal consistency of nature is that these laws are expressions of divine order, of the grace and glory of God. Our faith in God as creator of heaven and earth can see the lawful physical order of nature as an expression of divine faithfulness, a basis of God’s covenant with us, God working through the laws of nature rather than against them. In this context, it makes sense to explore how we might find strong ethical reasons to question a purely physical reading of resurrection.

Modern science has succeeded precisely because it begins from the assumption that reality is consistent. It assumes that the same causes produce the same effects, and that when evidence does not fit expectation, the answer is not to abandon reason but to study the anomaly more carefully. That disciplined trust in natural coherence has given us medicine, engineering, astronomy, and all the practical triumphs of modern science.

In that light, to question miracle claims can be a way to strengthen faith. It can be an ethical commitment to truth and rigorous method, seeking the underlying meaning in the story. A questioning attitude gives priority to evidence and logic over emotional comfort. A faith that relies too heavily on supernatural exceptions is hard to reconcile with the observation of our senses. It also risks weakening human agency, because it tempts us to wait for miraculous rescue instead of accepting responsibility for the hard work of understanding, repentance, forgiveness and action. As Paul says in Romans, “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” The Christian hope is not that God miraculously intervenes against reality, but that God works through reality, and especially through our hearts, toward redemption of the world.

Religion goes astray when it treats the suspension of reason as a virtue. My view is that when we understand God as working through the order of creation we gain a clearer picture of divine majesty than when we imagine God as acting in ways that are inconsistent with the natural order.

Rather than the choice only between crude literalism and unbelief, an allegorical reading of the resurrection can see the story as primarily a poetic and symbolic parable, leaving aside debates about historically facts. Doubt about the physical resurrection is a legitimate Christian reading.

One clue comes in a line from our reading in John. After telling the story of Thomas, John says, “These are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” John does not say, “These things are written so that you may have scientific proof.” He says, “These are written so that you may believe.”

John’s purpose of creating belief tells us that his testimony is shaped for building faith in God. It is reasonable to suspect the holy story of scripture was designed to resonate with the spiritual needs of the growing Christian community. The Gospels plainly contain abundant material that is not best read as simple factual history. Small inconsistencies exist between the different accounts, and the decades from the time of Pilate to the writing of the Gospels gave ample opportunity for various traditions of memory, interpretation and theological shaping to emerge. The Gospels are shaped stories, rich in symbol, pattern, miracle, drama and theological purpose. Jesus taught in parables. Indeed, Mark 4:11 tells us that Jesus said everything he told the public was a parable.

Against this context, we can read the gospels against the scholarly standard that insists historical events must have multiple converging lines of evidence for us to be confident they actually occurred as described. The Gospels may not meet this historical standard. We should also accept that the thousand years of high Christendom actively excluded alternative traditions, so only the orthodox beliefs were passed on. But recognising this high bar of evidence and uncertainty need not detract from the immense value of the gospel story as a witness of faith. Once we see that, another possibility opens before us. Scripture speaks in poetry, image and layered meaning. Allegory is not fraud. Parable is not deception. Symbol is a path to truth. Can we let the resurrection story also speak primarily at that deeper level?

This matters pastorally. If we insist that faith depends entirely on accepting the impossible as literal mechanism, then we risk making honesty itself an enemy of belief. We force thoughtful people to choose between conscience and church. But if allegory is allowed, then faith can remain intellectually honest. Then the Gospel can speak again to people who cannot make themselves believe what they do not believe, yet who still hunger for God, truth, hope and grace.

Our reading from Acts helps us here. Peter says that God raised Jesus up, “having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” Taken literally, that is an astonishing claim. But taken spiritually and allegorically, it expresses a profound truth. The eternal life of God cannot be destroyed by violence, fear or the grave. Divine life is not the kind of thing that can be extinguished by execution. The Son of God, as the living Word and presence of God, is not something that death can contain.

Peter then quotes the Psalm: “my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced, moreover my flesh will live in hope.” That beautiful language speaks of confidence, joy and hope in the vision of a new dawn. Perhaps that faithful confidence is the key. If Jesus is the light of the world, as John’s Gospel says, then what does it mean to say that death could not hold him? It holds out the allegorical meaning that darkness cannot imprison light. Night can cover the sun for a time, but it cannot keep it for ever. The new dawn always comes. Winter can diminish the world’s warmth, but it cannot abolish the return of light. The grave can hide life, but it cannot finally master the source of life.

Death cannot hold the Sun, whether SUN or SON. That is a thought I want us to ponder today.

Every evening the sun sinks from sight. It descends into the underworld of night. To appearance, it dies. Yet morning comes, and the light returns. Every year the sun weakens toward winter. The days contract, the world seems stripped and cold, and then the light begins to grow again. At the winter solstice the rising and setting points of the sun appears to stand still for three days at the horizon, as if darkness has brought it to the edge of defeat. Yet even there the light returns. Dawn returns. Strength returns. Life returns. Christmas is the first day when the position of the Sun has shifted visibly to the north. In the Northern Hemisphere this is the beginning of the cycle of light in winter, after a metaphorical three days in the tomb. And Easter marks the time each year when day become longer than night, the rebirth of life in the spring.

Christmas and Easter are far more than simple nature myths. A deeper and more Christian approach can recognise that the Gospel personifies in Jesus the deepest pattern of divine grace already written into creation. Light arises from darkness. Life arises from apparent death. Hope is reborn when all seems lost. In Jesus that cosmic truth is given a human face as the resurrection defeats the powers of evil who nailed him to the cross.

The risen Christ is the dawn of God within human history.

That reading can help us make sense of why the resurrection story became so powerful. Human beings do not want death to have the last word. We do not want love to end at the grave. We do not want injustice, violence and fear to be the final truth about the world. The Easter proclamation answers that longing with immense emotional force, bringing us together to support what is good. Easter says God is among the living and not the dead. It says divine love is stronger than all the powers that crucify.

That emotional power helps explain why literal resurrection became such a compelling public story. It is simple. It is vivid. It binds a community together. It gives immense reassurance. The early church consolidated its secular alliance with the Roman Empire by simplifying faith into a shared creed that assumed only the literal surface could carry the truth. But in insisting on literalism alone, the church neglected the ways that scripture also speaks in symbol, mystery and parable.

That is where our reading from 1 Peter becomes so important. “Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.” Faith here is not based on inspection, like Thomas putting his hand into the wound. It is based on hope, love, joy and endurance in suffering. The church lives by living hope.

That means resurrection faith, in 1 Peter, is already more than an argument about what happened to one body. It is new birth into hope. It is the courage to go on when the world is dark. It is the conviction that the power of God can still sustain us when death, grief or despair seem to have won.

Then we return to John’s Gospel, to that locked room where the disciples are gathered in fear. This scene is one of the greatest in all scripture. The doors are shut. The room is closed. Fear rules. Shame rules. Failure rules. The disciples are not triumphant believers. They are broken people hiding from the world.

And Christ comes among them with one word: “Peace.”

Whether we read this literally or allegorically, John is telling the truth about us. We live in locked rooms. We seal ourselves in fear. We shut the doors of the heart. We hide from grief, from loss, from shame, from failure, from mortality itself. And the risen Christ is the power that enters closed worlds and says, “Peace be with you.”

Thomas then appears as the honest doubter. He does not want slogans. He wants reality. And that is why Jesus shows him the wounds. Resurrection does not erase suffering. The risen Christ still bears the marks of crucifixion. Easter transfigures Good Friday. The wounds remain, but they no longer have the last word.

That too is the deepest truth of Christian faith. Suffering is real but can be overcome through the love of God. Darkness, death and cowering in the locked room are not final.

If we read the resurrection allegorically, the deep truths of the story become more profound. The story ceases to be a contest between science and tradition and becomes instead a revelation of the deepest order of grace, of how God is on the side of new life, how love is built into the tissue of matter. Christ is risen whenever peace overcomes fear. Christ is risen whenever love outlasts hatred. Christ is risen whenever hope returns after despair. Christ is risen whenever light breaks again into the locked rooms of human life.

The new life symbolised by the resurrection of Jesus Christ speaks directly to our planetary situation today. The same habits of domination, violence, greed and spiritual blindness that led to the crucifixion can still be seen in the forces driving war, ecological destruction and climate change. Easter declares that the powers of death are defeated by God. Just as the resurrection reveals the victory of life over the violence of the cross, so too a planetary resurrection remains possible and necessary for our wounded world. If we turn again to the God of abundant life, not in passive hope for supernatural rescue, but in active faith expressed through truth, courage, repentance and care for creation, then our present path toward destruction can yet be reversed.

And that is where the image of Jesus as personification of the Sun can help us, not as pagan reduction, but as Christian insight into creation itself. The sun is not God. But the sun is the most visible sign of the grace by which life is sustained. It shines on the just and the unjust. It orders our days and seasons. It returns each year when cold and darkness are at their greatest. If Christ is the light of the world, then the resurrection says that the same divine grace seen in dawn and in the returning year is present personally in him. The light that gives life to the world has taken a human face.

Far from any diminution or rejection of Christian faith, a focus on the symbolism of the resurrection can enable a Christianity that can speak honestly in a scientific age, asking us to deepen our reasoned understanding of the world through symbolic meaning. Faith is enriched when we learn to trust in the divine pattern of life stronger than death. It asks us not to rest our belief upon the claim that impossible signs and wonders once happened long ago, but to recognise that the world of science and matter exists entirely in the light of God.

So I want to suggest today that an allegorical reading of the resurrection is not only legitimate. It may be necessary. Without an openness to different views, the church risks driving away every thoughtful Thomas. Without a celebration of poetry, faith becomes tribal assertion rather than living truth. Without respect for the great achievements and vision of science, we reduce the Gospel to a demand for impossible belief rather than an invitation into transformed life.

But with allegory, the Gospel opens again.

Then Peter’s words make sense: death could not hold him.
Then John’s words make sense: these are written so that you may believe.
Then 1 Peter makes sense: though you have not seen him, you love him.
Then Easter makes sense: light returns.

So the question is not only, “Did a corpse walk out of a tomb?”

The deeper question is this: can we believe that in Jesus the light of God still rises? Can we believe that peace can enter locked rooms? Can we believe that wounds can be transfigured? Can we believe that the grave does not have the last word? Can we believe that darkness may hide the light for a time, but cannot master it?

If we can believe the teachings of Christ reveal the presence of God in the world, then we already know the meaning of resurrection.

Christ is risen whenever the light returns.
Christ is risen whenever hope is reborn.
Christ is risen whenever love proves stronger than death.

And that is why the church still gathers every Sunday, on the first day of the week.

Because dawn still always comes again.