The supreme miracle of Christianity is the resurrection. Unlike the virginal conception of Jesus which, though important, is rarely mentioned in the New Testament, assurance of the resurrection blazes out from every page.
It is the heart of the matter. If it is true, then there is a God. If it is true, the claims of Jesus are vindicated. If it is true, then he has achieved salvation for us. If it is true, there is a future for the human race. If it is true, death and suffering have to be viewed in a totally new light.
If it is not true, it is not Christianity we have bought into, but another mythology of disillusion and St Paul is conspicuously on target: "your faith is futile. . .we are to be pitied more than all men" (1 Corinthians 15: 17,19).
There is an all-or-nothingness about the resurrection of Jesus. It is true or false: no nonsense. The evidence for it, rooted in 2,000 years of scholarship, is accessible to secular scrutiny and debate. Christianity is not private knowledge, for its book, the Bible, is rooted in real history, not mythology. Alternative resurrection theories have not stood the test of time, nor ultimately the weight of critical investigation.
Where was the body of Jesus of Nazareth located four days after his crucifixion? The Gospels and 1 Corinthians 15 give an answer. They report when, where, by whom, and under what circumstances Jesus died. The owner of his tomb was a well-known local man, Joseph of Arimathea, and names are given of those who saw him buried and who came at dawn on Easter Day to do for their fallen hero that last, loving service of embalming his ravaged body.
But Jesus's body was gone and the tomb empty when those women came, and subsequently Jesus appeared to, spoke to, ate with, was handled by, between 500 and 600 people, many of them named, on at least 12 occasions over the next 37 days.
The only alternative to this startling fact is that the Gospels lied about the empty tomb as a cover-up for the disciples' theft of Jesus's dead body. In that case, the New Testament in its entirety rests on deceit. Either the demoralised, fearful disciples pulled off history's greatest hoax or Christ rose bodily from the dead.
Casual theft is ruled out because the tomb was guarded. Neither the Romans nor the Temple authorities had any reason to remove the body. If they had, it would have been produced rapidly when the apostles began preaching the resurrection.
The crowning argument for Jesus's resurrection, however, is the contemporary one to which all Christians seek to lead their friends: a personal encounter with the Risen Christ. Down the centuries people have indeed been meeting Jesus for themselves and it has brought peace with God - by trust in the sufficiency of his death to satisfy God's wrath and thus guarantee our reconciliation to him - and new moral power in every area of daily life through the gift of his Holy Spirit.
A first-time encounter with the risen Jesus this Easter will involve embarking on what Kierkegaard called "the autopsy of faith" Open the New Testament, praying the prayer of a humble seeker: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. If you really are alive, come, make yourself known to me." Then read on, carefully examining the evidence. No lightning will strike, no stars will fall, but the Risen Lord may speak from its pages with compelling power and love as of old, with the irresistible invitation to enter into friendship with him.
But that is not all. Despite the quip that Christianity is just pie in the sky, because of Jesus's resurrection there is indeed more pie in the sky than ever we dared hope. St Paul's logic is inexorable: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit, who lives in you." (Romans 8:11.)
For Christians death has already been robbed of its sting and the grave will not claim its apparent victory. We too will rise as Christ our Prototype has risen!
No wonder, then, as we meet with fellow-Christians tomorrow to worship the risen Lord Jesus we will greet one another rapturously with the age-old words of triumph:
"Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"