Sunday, in Christian churches throughout the world, the joyful shouts will go up: "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!" The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is absolutely pivotal to the Christian faith. Everything else swings on that, so much so that the Apostle Paul, writing to early Christian believers in the Greek city of Corinth, could say: "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile." In other words, if the resurrection of Jesus is fiction, we Christians may as well board up the doors of our churches and dedicate our energies to some other cause. If, however, the resurrection of Jesus is fact, then a whole lot else follows from that.

Now I could write a book about all that "whole lot else." But plenty of others have already done that _ beginning with the writers of the New Testament. Besides, the New Testament itself says that "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." Not having the whole world, but only this newspaper column to fill, I will confine myself to only one aspect of that "whole lot else," which is that the resurrection answers the question: Who is Jesus?

Of course there have always been _ and still are _ a variety of answers given to that question. Jesus himself asked the question during his ministry long ago: "Who do men say that I am?" Not surprisingly, even then the answer he got came in the form of a list, a range of possibilities. But what if we asked Jesus himself, "Who does he say that he is?"

The stunning and, at first glance, over-the-top answer is that Jesus says he’s God. For instance, on one occasion he said, "I and the Father are one."

By "Father" Jesus meant God. By "one" Jesus clearly meant more than that the Father and he were on the same wave length or some such thing. He meant that the Father and he were so completely in communion with one another that they were equal and that to know the one was to know the other.

Now you and I today would most likely dismiss someone who made such claims about himself as an oddball _ or maybe refer him to a psychiatric ward. Psychiatry not yet being in vogue back in the first century when Jesus lived his earthly life, the authorities instead sentenced him to death. That’s what they did in that time and place to people with pretensions to deity.

Now if there was ever proof that Jesus’ claim to be God was false, his death by crucifixion would have to be it. Some of those who watched Jesus dying made precisely that point. "If he is the Son of God," they said, "let him come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." But of course Jesus did not come down. He died. Proof positive. Case closed. Jesus was not God, but a vile blasphemer, a charlatan, a sham. And that’s no doubt how history would have remembered Jesus if it remembered him at all. Except for that "little" thing that happened that first Easter day. God raised Jesus from the dead.

Now, as I said, a "whole lot else" follows from this. But the first thing that follows is that what Jesus said about himself must after all be true _ even if at first glance it’s quite over the top. Would God raise a blasphemer from the dead? Would God validate his lies and vindicate the liar not only by undoing the righteous judgment against him, but by honoring and exalting him as he had no other? Do you see how God, by raising up Jesus, his Son, was telling us that he was right all along? The apostle Thomas concluded as much when he first saw Jesus risen from the dead. Jesus invited Thomas to touch the scars in his hands and sides from the nails and spear that pierced him. "Be not faithless, but believing," Jesus said. To which Thomas responded, "My Lord and my God," referring to Jesus of course.

Not even Jesus’ disciples dared fully to believe it before Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Now, precisely because of Jesus’ resurrection, billions believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name.

And that’s what all the shouting is about this Easter Sunday. "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"[an error occurred while processing this directive]

A blessed and holy Easter to you all.

The Rev. John E. Priest is pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Delhi.