Every “Baptist Day” the school would invite one of the greatest minds to lecture in the theological education center. One year they invited Dr. Paul Tillich. Dr. Tillich spoke for two-and-a-half hours proving that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book. He concluded that since there was no such thing as the historical resurrection, the religious tradition of the Church was groundless, emotional mumbo-jumbo, because it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus, who, in fact, never rose from the dead in any literal sense. He then asked if there were any questions.
After about 30 seconds, an old preacher with a head of short-cropped, woolly white hair stood up in the back of the auditorium. “Docta Tillich, I got one question,” he said as all eyes turned toward him. He reached into his lunch sack and pulled out an apple and began eating it. “Docta Tillich (crunch, munch), my question is a simple one (crunch, munch). Now, I ain’t never read them books you read (crunch, munch), and I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek (crunch, munch). I don’t know nothin’ about Niebuhr and Heidegger (crunch, munch).” He finished the apple. “All I wanna know is: This apple I just ate—was it bitter or sweet?”
Dr. Tillich paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion: “I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple.” The white-haired preacher dropped the apple core into his crumpled paper bag, looked up at Dr. Tillich and said calmly, “Neither have you tasted my Jesus.”