Vindication is a good feeling. We enjoy it directly when we are proved right or justified in even the simplest matters. It happens in a sports trivia discussion when someone pulls out his smart phone and in a quick search that yes, the University of Oregon’s football program really did begin in 1893. And it happens more significantly when the verdict on a lawsuit clearly rights an injustice, like awarding damages to a person injured by a faulty product.
Jesus’ resurrection is not just the happy conclusion to the Gospel’s story of Jesus’ life. It is the final vindication of all that Jesus taught and did and of who He claimed to be. He was crucified as a pretend messiah, a false claimant to be the rightful King of Israel (as was written above Him on the Cross). The resurrection shows that it was those reasons for crucifying Him which were false and that He is truly King of Israel and the promised Messiah.
Above is Titian’s marvelous altar-piece painting of the risen Jesus victorious carrying a banner that is at once the crusader flag and His cast-off grave clothes. He is vindicated in His radiant resurrected life over all the forces, like the soldiers in the forefront, which put Him in the tomb and would have kept Him there.
As followers of Jesus it is good to remember at Easter that this event is also our own vindication. We may seek too much for those sweet immediate justifications of ourselves, being proved right in few seconds by an Internet search, receiving a favorable decision from a court, or perhaps seeing our candidate win an election. But our true and best vindication has already been accomplished for us in Christ and we will receive it in full only when we too have been raised with Him.
Until then, we hope and trust in our vindication by God and not by our own efforts to ensure victory over others around us. It is God who ultimately fights our battles and wins our cause. We may need to strive hard for rights or justice or some good cause, but the final vindication of all those efforts comes from the same power which raised Jesus from the dead. That’s why the Nicene Creed says, “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” That’s real vindication. Everything else, every other victory, is something less.