All things to all people?
Commentary
Object:
What does the territory ahead look like as you chart your way through what is
perhaps the most challenging and rewarding day of the Christian year? For many
preachers this is the Sunday that they agonize most about. It is not just that they will have
congregations that are well above average in attendance providing them with the
opportunity to present one of the core convictions of the Christian faith to one of the
largest audiences they will have. The waters here can be pretty treacherous because as the
preacher foresees the way ahead there are so many levels of expectation in the
congregation this Sunday.
No doubt for some the hope is that the preacher will be able to deliver a relatively light message on how the eternal wins out in the end, there are some causes that never die, and, of course, Jesus lived on in the hearts of his disciples. All of which should be done in good order, without unseemly haste, but tasteful awareness that this is a family day and there are Easter dinners waiting.
Others will come with a heartache almost too deep to bear as they consider the loss of a loved one during the last year. For them this day will lift deep feelings. They will for the most part be uninterested in what causes continue undimmed on earth. For them the issue will be whether there is some hint in this story of whether we shall be reunited in heaven. Indeed, for them, some of the problem is that the loved one does live on in their hearts as a felt absence.
Some will come, knowing the story as well as the preacher, looking for any evidence of deviance from what they consider theological orthodoxy. Their text for the day is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised." For them what is at stake is the Bible itself as an authoritative reporter of actual events as they happened. For them this is not something to be interpreted. There will be no room for them for any excurses on the existential meaning of the text. The Bible is true or it is not. "Give me that old time religion" is their battle cry.
Others come looking for ways to reinforce the power of positive thinking and ways to turn their scars into stars as made plain in the triumph of Easter morn. If ever there was someone who was able to do much more than merely make lemons out of lemonade it was Jesus. Their text for the day is from Philippians, "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
In the midst of this crowd, I always find my seminary professors showing up. Not in the literal sense mind you but as the still, small voice whispering in my "mainline" ear "preach a message of integrity consistent with all the scholarship that you know and that almost none of your congregation knows." Their text for the day seems to be Paul's words to the Romans, "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
All right, preacher, having studied the charts, it's full speed ahead, and best of luck. However, there are some solid principles that might help you chart the course through these waters. Remember that the most important person that has shown up is you. Don't go into the wheelhouse without a good sense of what the meaning of the resurrection is in your own struggles. You may not be all things to all people but you will help many with their own struggles if you are aware of your own in coming to terms with the Easter story. Allow for the diversity of understanding of these events as evidenced in the Christian Testament itself that makes no attempt to gloss over or harmonize the various accounts of Easter morn. The biblical literalists may have a fit but they will know that you read your Bible. Remember that the events of this day as recounted in scripture were at first terrifying and only slowly began to sink in as people came together and came to faith. The most wounded among us need less arguments for the truth exhibited here and more time and community to experience these truths. The post-resurrection community pondered and shared and life beyond their imaginings came.
All right, captain, full speed ahead.
Acts 10:34-43
The Easter proclamation always used to run aground for me as a child. As most children growing up I had only a dim awareness of what Easter was all about. However, all the talking of death being defeated, Christ triumphing, the bonds of death being broken did sink in sufficiently to raise some questions in my mind. If death had been conquered, how come we still had to every once in a while assume the appropriate position at our school desks in case of nuclear attack? How come so many still seemed to be dying in so many places if what binds us to the ways of death had been broken? Why were the leaders of the world including our own so willing to threaten massive death? If death had been conquered, why did it begin to feel like I was going to die every time I came near a member of the opposite sex? Why were so many still dying to confirm what our Declaration of Independence enshrined as the basis of our nation -- that all people are created equal regardless of race? Why did my relatives still cry at the loss of loved ones years before? I understood the sentiment of Easter. I wished it was true, but compared to what I saw around me and was feeling in me it seemed like whistling in the dark.
The text for this Sunday is drawn from the book of Acts and describes the world that is opened up for those who are in Christ Jesus. Something has been released that brings new life in ways that the world does not comprehend -- as Paul put it to the Romans, "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." In avoiding a death like his we had missed out on becoming truly alive like he is.
Jesus' world, like the world that I grew up in and live in, believed that life was best found in drawing a line in the sand against those who are different or unclean. As a matter of fact, we are often killing ourselves in drawing a line against the outsider, rather than drawing circles to embrace the stranger and the different.
The Acts text describes the struggle of the early church to embrace the Gentiles on an equal basis with Jewish Christians. They believed that uniformity of thought, behavior, and custom would keep the faith alive. They believed that uniformity rather than community was the answer. Many today believe that uniformity of theology, practice, politics, and sexual orientation is the foundation rather than community of all whom God has embraced and brought together and the working out of community amongst them.
This involves a sort of death of the familiar, the comfortable, and the convenient. In practical terms, it involved rubbing elbows with those whose eating habits and practices one abhorred. It meant listening to and taking seriously people that one was used to dismissing. Old ways were dying and to the surprise of all new ways were breaking in. It must have felt for many like the death of all that they had known. It was and is the refusal to undergo this kind of death that prevents people from being truly alive. This reroutes me from the course of thought that had left me aground. "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear...."
Much of what the world treasures is killing us. The power to put people in their place does not make us alive. The power to put us in their place does. The ability to kill does make us alive because regardless of the ability to kill, according to the Easter story, our ability to bury things is rather limited. My hunch is that in directing our thinking from how to live to what needs to die, Easter has a way of rerouting most people in a new direction -- "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."
Colossians 3:1-4
Having been raised in Christ, how does that affect the course of our lives? The answer of the letter to the Colossians is, "So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." In the struggle with the things that are below we often picture ourselves in battle with the elemental earthly spirits that keep people bound to racism, sexism, and economic oppression. Of course, we are in constant conflict and struggle with these things. However, it seems to me that things that run us off course are as much the lesser things as the major.
A friend says that their marriage is in trouble because they are constantly arguing over when dinner should be served. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that much more is going on here than when dinner will be on the table. However, I find that many marriages seem to suffer from being unable to look to the things that are above -- to see their relationship as something that they are called to and blessed by and something through which God will bless the world. In the midst of all their passion for each other many couples miss out on the passion of the living Christ for what he can do through them. My Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors understood the family as a miniature church that helped to bring its members to Christ and to show the world a more excellent way. Many complain that the bane of American religion is its focus on the personal and private. True enough, but perhaps the trouble is also that we have privatized our domestic institutions to the point that they, in the Christian context, do not look to the living Christ that is above. My hunch is that many marriages would stay on course and be more alive if they did.
Even in the church, it is often hard to look to the Christ that is above. It certainly is hard to get the youth group to do so. Many churches are just thankful any youth show up. Yet, my experience is that youth want to know whether any of the evil in the world can be pushed back. It is hard to look to the things that are above when change seems to threaten and we look upon our building as more about being a museum rather than a tool for mission. No doubt it can feel like death when change comes, but look to the things that are above. Churches that can are most likely to be alive to the needs of their members and to their mission in the community and are least likely to run aground.
I suspect that our inability to focus on the things that are above has had disastrous public consequences. Heather Menzies, a Canadian writer, put it this way in an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen, "The public discussion on stress has only recently shifted from how stress makes individuals sick to how it makes organizations sick and dysfunctional. One study documented a ten-point drop in employees' IQ due to so many email interruptions. Another study, reported in a 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review looked at 'presenteeism,' a variation on absenteeism in which people show up for work so brain dead with fatigue or so lost in focus and perspective that at best they merely go through the motions and, at worst, waste others' time and make mistakes. According to this article, it's costing the economy $150 billion US a year." The study also concludes this has cost lives in the rush to war and in the inability to bring peace to our planet.
The news of Easter morning is that those who find their lives focused through the living Christ will find their attention aimed in another direction -- "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
John 20:1-18
The gospel of John portrays the events of Easter morning as one of the most comedic scenes in scripture. It is composed of confusion, mistaken identity, and comical racing around that results in a dead heat in which the loser in the race is the one who comes away as the winner because, at this point, for all the frenzy the beloved disciple is the only one who comes away with genuine faith. It has all the elements that can be seen in situation comedy seen on American television any night of the week.
Has John lost it here, or is he on to something? Perhaps we should not be surprised at John's rendition of the resurrection events. Certainly a sense of irony permeates through and through. In Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan women at the well or with Lazarus or with the man born blind, there is always this comedic struggle to get to the truth through the mist of misunderstandings. Peter proclaims that Jesus will never wash his feet, yet cleansing is exactly what he needs. If we knew better we could get a good laugh out of the amazing religious ineptitude of most of the characters in John's story.
Yet, as John tells the story, there is more than casual comedy here. As John tells the tale, when Peter and the beloved disciple are told they come running to see this opening. Where in recent days they only experienced the closing in on them of events, that they barely understand, now they come to see this strange new opening.
Well, isn't that what we are all looking for some opening in life? We look for some opening that will break the ice where there has been estrangement. Religious or not we pray, "Oh, Lord let her or him give some opening that will indicate that the marriage is not completely dead, that there is some way forward to better days." We begin with a first date secretly praying that there be some opening to at least a pleasurable evening if not pleasant days ahead. They gather around the conference table for the umpteenth time in the last thirty years hoping that there will be some opening despite years of frustration to a lasting peace. You watch the evening news and wonder if there can be some opening through which the nations can agree, that will get us all through the environmental and energy crises.
Peter and the beloved disciple get to the tomb and see the opening. You would think it would be enough to see the opening and move the story along. Such a sight would move me along, but John is not done. Seeing the opening is not enough to bring Peter or the women at this point to the realization of true faith. The women respond to the opening, "So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' " John is clear that the reaction of Peter and the other disciple are quite different from each other as they survey the scene. At this point only the other disciple comes to genuine faith.
For John, we come to faith not because of the opening we see but because of what the living Christ opens in us. Are you open to the living Christ leading you through the give and take that will make a marriage? Will you be open to Jesus leading you through the growth in wisdom and stature that life requires? I consider this text and think of the Reconciliation Commission in South Africa where an entire nation was opened to the leading of a Christlike Spirit embodied in Desmond Tutu that there might be a just and lasting peace. John tells us that Jesus came and stood in the midst of the disciples even when they were locked up in their own fear. Matthew reminds us that he comes into our midst as the poor, the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the vulnerable, and those whom we marginalize. Are you open to embracing them that the living Christ may have the victories that come through open arms? As Matthew reminds us, he will come in the "least of these," for he lives for all people.
Application
We bring so much to this Sunday that congregation and preacher are engaged together in quite a dance. The flowers are beautiful, the music rich, and the crowds are larger. There is nothing worse for the preacher than an Easter Sunday where the preacher is wide of the mark. No doubt some of this is brought about by our own perfectionism, longing to please, and our desire to be all things to all people. As a preacher on Easter Sunday, I often felt like an airline pilot approaching a runway for landing with cockpit alarms going off: too far left, too fast, pull right, pull up. That is certainly a bad way to head into any Sunday, let alone Easter.
However, the texts themselves suggest some ways to approach this day. First, Easter morning was not meaningful for everyone. The disciples themselves will by evening still be locked away in fear by walls of their own making. Second, we have nothing to prove but something to proclaim. The worst of Easter preaching comes when we try to explain the inexplicable. Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians, "Behold I show you a mystery." Exploring it, sharing it, honoring it, and cherishing it stands the best chance of bringing hope this Sunday. Do not try to harmonize the accounts. Scripture is perfectly content with the variety of reports regarding the resurrection. It is the community that lies behind each of the gospels, which selects the narrative that is most important to their life. What is most important to your congregation and surrounding community this Easter Sunday?
These suggestions may not be perfect but in my preaching they have a way of leading to a landing that will enable things to take off.
Alternative Application
John 20:1-18. Jesus reads Mary's unexpressed desire to hold on to him. She understandably wants to get her hands on him. There are a lot of folks I would like to get my hands on and hold. Yet the challenge of this day is to put others and ourselves in Jesus' hands. Sometimes this comes for me when I can't wait to get my hands on an errant child, when I know that I need to put that child and moment in Jesus' hands. Sometimes the answer to a vexing problem only comes when I let go and put whatever is frustrating me in Jesus' hands. Certainly, in refusing to conform to the usual things that divide people the early church was not holding back from where the living Jesus was leading them. The good news of this Sunday is that there are hands larger than our own that take a hand in our lives.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
It's Easter. For us, this is a day of new beginnings. It is the penultimate moment. Christ is risen! In the wake of Easter lilies, bunnies, and too, too much candy, a barrage of pat phrases echo above the Easter morning trumpets. "The shackles of death have been broken." "O death where is thy sting?" We have heard it before.
But what, really, does this mean for us? How does such a notion brush up against our everyday existence? Christ is risen. Well, good. The world continues much as before and little seems to have changed. Christ is risen, and how many people around the world died in a hail of bullets today, or perished from hunger or grinding oppression?
Truly, what does it mean to say Christ is risen?
No short little essay can, of course, provide the definitive answer, but this psalm does provide us with a beginning. When we say, with the psalmist, that "the Lord is our strength and our might," we have said a mouthful.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ, you see, is no mere smoke and mirrors magic show designed to impress the impressionable. It is nothing short of a total rearrangement of life itself. In rising from the dead, Christ didn't just become the most powerful figure in our lives. He actually transformed power itself and redefined it for all time. Christ is risen, and the fundamental understanding of power in the world has been up-ended. The first shall now be last. Those have been full will now go away empty. That which we have understood as powerful is now shown to be weak.
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side write down the things that our culture, or as Paul would say, "this world" considers as powerful. Guns, money, prestige, material possessions, all of it. On the other side we make a list of how God now defines and uses power in the risen Christ. Here we write words like "servanthood," "love," "forgiveness," "self-denial," and so forth.
If we look at these contrasting understandings of power or strength, it quickly becomes clear that as followers of Jesus Christ we are called to what amounts to a countercultural understanding of power.
And this is the crux of what has happened in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is no mere revolution where Jesus comes and sits at the head of the table where someone else once sat. No. In rising from the dead, Jesus kicks over the table.
If "the Lord is our strength," then we will refuse to utilize the power of this world. If we trust in the "might of the Lord," then we will not trust in violence or any of the workings of this world's power mechanisms.
Indeed, Christ's rising changes everything. In the resurrection, God has literally created a new reality. All that is needed now is for his followers to reject the powers of this world and to live into that reality; live into the strength and might of the Lord.
No doubt for some the hope is that the preacher will be able to deliver a relatively light message on how the eternal wins out in the end, there are some causes that never die, and, of course, Jesus lived on in the hearts of his disciples. All of which should be done in good order, without unseemly haste, but tasteful awareness that this is a family day and there are Easter dinners waiting.
Others will come with a heartache almost too deep to bear as they consider the loss of a loved one during the last year. For them this day will lift deep feelings. They will for the most part be uninterested in what causes continue undimmed on earth. For them the issue will be whether there is some hint in this story of whether we shall be reunited in heaven. Indeed, for them, some of the problem is that the loved one does live on in their hearts as a felt absence.
Some will come, knowing the story as well as the preacher, looking for any evidence of deviance from what they consider theological orthodoxy. Their text for the day is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised." For them what is at stake is the Bible itself as an authoritative reporter of actual events as they happened. For them this is not something to be interpreted. There will be no room for them for any excurses on the existential meaning of the text. The Bible is true or it is not. "Give me that old time religion" is their battle cry.
Others come looking for ways to reinforce the power of positive thinking and ways to turn their scars into stars as made plain in the triumph of Easter morn. If ever there was someone who was able to do much more than merely make lemons out of lemonade it was Jesus. Their text for the day is from Philippians, "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
In the midst of this crowd, I always find my seminary professors showing up. Not in the literal sense mind you but as the still, small voice whispering in my "mainline" ear "preach a message of integrity consistent with all the scholarship that you know and that almost none of your congregation knows." Their text for the day seems to be Paul's words to the Romans, "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
All right, preacher, having studied the charts, it's full speed ahead, and best of luck. However, there are some solid principles that might help you chart the course through these waters. Remember that the most important person that has shown up is you. Don't go into the wheelhouse without a good sense of what the meaning of the resurrection is in your own struggles. You may not be all things to all people but you will help many with their own struggles if you are aware of your own in coming to terms with the Easter story. Allow for the diversity of understanding of these events as evidenced in the Christian Testament itself that makes no attempt to gloss over or harmonize the various accounts of Easter morn. The biblical literalists may have a fit but they will know that you read your Bible. Remember that the events of this day as recounted in scripture were at first terrifying and only slowly began to sink in as people came together and came to faith. The most wounded among us need less arguments for the truth exhibited here and more time and community to experience these truths. The post-resurrection community pondered and shared and life beyond their imaginings came.
All right, captain, full speed ahead.
Acts 10:34-43
The Easter proclamation always used to run aground for me as a child. As most children growing up I had only a dim awareness of what Easter was all about. However, all the talking of death being defeated, Christ triumphing, the bonds of death being broken did sink in sufficiently to raise some questions in my mind. If death had been conquered, how come we still had to every once in a while assume the appropriate position at our school desks in case of nuclear attack? How come so many still seemed to be dying in so many places if what binds us to the ways of death had been broken? Why were the leaders of the world including our own so willing to threaten massive death? If death had been conquered, why did it begin to feel like I was going to die every time I came near a member of the opposite sex? Why were so many still dying to confirm what our Declaration of Independence enshrined as the basis of our nation -- that all people are created equal regardless of race? Why did my relatives still cry at the loss of loved ones years before? I understood the sentiment of Easter. I wished it was true, but compared to what I saw around me and was feeling in me it seemed like whistling in the dark.
The text for this Sunday is drawn from the book of Acts and describes the world that is opened up for those who are in Christ Jesus. Something has been released that brings new life in ways that the world does not comprehend -- as Paul put it to the Romans, "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." In avoiding a death like his we had missed out on becoming truly alive like he is.
Jesus' world, like the world that I grew up in and live in, believed that life was best found in drawing a line in the sand against those who are different or unclean. As a matter of fact, we are often killing ourselves in drawing a line against the outsider, rather than drawing circles to embrace the stranger and the different.
The Acts text describes the struggle of the early church to embrace the Gentiles on an equal basis with Jewish Christians. They believed that uniformity of thought, behavior, and custom would keep the faith alive. They believed that uniformity rather than community was the answer. Many today believe that uniformity of theology, practice, politics, and sexual orientation is the foundation rather than community of all whom God has embraced and brought together and the working out of community amongst them.
This involves a sort of death of the familiar, the comfortable, and the convenient. In practical terms, it involved rubbing elbows with those whose eating habits and practices one abhorred. It meant listening to and taking seriously people that one was used to dismissing. Old ways were dying and to the surprise of all new ways were breaking in. It must have felt for many like the death of all that they had known. It was and is the refusal to undergo this kind of death that prevents people from being truly alive. This reroutes me from the course of thought that had left me aground. "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear...."
Much of what the world treasures is killing us. The power to put people in their place does not make us alive. The power to put us in their place does. The ability to kill does make us alive because regardless of the ability to kill, according to the Easter story, our ability to bury things is rather limited. My hunch is that in directing our thinking from how to live to what needs to die, Easter has a way of rerouting most people in a new direction -- "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."
Colossians 3:1-4
Having been raised in Christ, how does that affect the course of our lives? The answer of the letter to the Colossians is, "So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." In the struggle with the things that are below we often picture ourselves in battle with the elemental earthly spirits that keep people bound to racism, sexism, and economic oppression. Of course, we are in constant conflict and struggle with these things. However, it seems to me that things that run us off course are as much the lesser things as the major.
A friend says that their marriage is in trouble because they are constantly arguing over when dinner should be served. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that much more is going on here than when dinner will be on the table. However, I find that many marriages seem to suffer from being unable to look to the things that are above -- to see their relationship as something that they are called to and blessed by and something through which God will bless the world. In the midst of all their passion for each other many couples miss out on the passion of the living Christ for what he can do through them. My Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors understood the family as a miniature church that helped to bring its members to Christ and to show the world a more excellent way. Many complain that the bane of American religion is its focus on the personal and private. True enough, but perhaps the trouble is also that we have privatized our domestic institutions to the point that they, in the Christian context, do not look to the living Christ that is above. My hunch is that many marriages would stay on course and be more alive if they did.
Even in the church, it is often hard to look to the Christ that is above. It certainly is hard to get the youth group to do so. Many churches are just thankful any youth show up. Yet, my experience is that youth want to know whether any of the evil in the world can be pushed back. It is hard to look to the things that are above when change seems to threaten and we look upon our building as more about being a museum rather than a tool for mission. No doubt it can feel like death when change comes, but look to the things that are above. Churches that can are most likely to be alive to the needs of their members and to their mission in the community and are least likely to run aground.
I suspect that our inability to focus on the things that are above has had disastrous public consequences. Heather Menzies, a Canadian writer, put it this way in an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen, "The public discussion on stress has only recently shifted from how stress makes individuals sick to how it makes organizations sick and dysfunctional. One study documented a ten-point drop in employees' IQ due to so many email interruptions. Another study, reported in a 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review looked at 'presenteeism,' a variation on absenteeism in which people show up for work so brain dead with fatigue or so lost in focus and perspective that at best they merely go through the motions and, at worst, waste others' time and make mistakes. According to this article, it's costing the economy $150 billion US a year." The study also concludes this has cost lives in the rush to war and in the inability to bring peace to our planet.
The news of Easter morning is that those who find their lives focused through the living Christ will find their attention aimed in another direction -- "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
John 20:1-18
The gospel of John portrays the events of Easter morning as one of the most comedic scenes in scripture. It is composed of confusion, mistaken identity, and comical racing around that results in a dead heat in which the loser in the race is the one who comes away as the winner because, at this point, for all the frenzy the beloved disciple is the only one who comes away with genuine faith. It has all the elements that can be seen in situation comedy seen on American television any night of the week.
Has John lost it here, or is he on to something? Perhaps we should not be surprised at John's rendition of the resurrection events. Certainly a sense of irony permeates through and through. In Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan women at the well or with Lazarus or with the man born blind, there is always this comedic struggle to get to the truth through the mist of misunderstandings. Peter proclaims that Jesus will never wash his feet, yet cleansing is exactly what he needs. If we knew better we could get a good laugh out of the amazing religious ineptitude of most of the characters in John's story.
Yet, as John tells the story, there is more than casual comedy here. As John tells the tale, when Peter and the beloved disciple are told they come running to see this opening. Where in recent days they only experienced the closing in on them of events, that they barely understand, now they come to see this strange new opening.
Well, isn't that what we are all looking for some opening in life? We look for some opening that will break the ice where there has been estrangement. Religious or not we pray, "Oh, Lord let her or him give some opening that will indicate that the marriage is not completely dead, that there is some way forward to better days." We begin with a first date secretly praying that there be some opening to at least a pleasurable evening if not pleasant days ahead. They gather around the conference table for the umpteenth time in the last thirty years hoping that there will be some opening despite years of frustration to a lasting peace. You watch the evening news and wonder if there can be some opening through which the nations can agree, that will get us all through the environmental and energy crises.
Peter and the beloved disciple get to the tomb and see the opening. You would think it would be enough to see the opening and move the story along. Such a sight would move me along, but John is not done. Seeing the opening is not enough to bring Peter or the women at this point to the realization of true faith. The women respond to the opening, "So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' " John is clear that the reaction of Peter and the other disciple are quite different from each other as they survey the scene. At this point only the other disciple comes to genuine faith.
For John, we come to faith not because of the opening we see but because of what the living Christ opens in us. Are you open to the living Christ leading you through the give and take that will make a marriage? Will you be open to Jesus leading you through the growth in wisdom and stature that life requires? I consider this text and think of the Reconciliation Commission in South Africa where an entire nation was opened to the leading of a Christlike Spirit embodied in Desmond Tutu that there might be a just and lasting peace. John tells us that Jesus came and stood in the midst of the disciples even when they were locked up in their own fear. Matthew reminds us that he comes into our midst as the poor, the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the vulnerable, and those whom we marginalize. Are you open to embracing them that the living Christ may have the victories that come through open arms? As Matthew reminds us, he will come in the "least of these," for he lives for all people.
Application
We bring so much to this Sunday that congregation and preacher are engaged together in quite a dance. The flowers are beautiful, the music rich, and the crowds are larger. There is nothing worse for the preacher than an Easter Sunday where the preacher is wide of the mark. No doubt some of this is brought about by our own perfectionism, longing to please, and our desire to be all things to all people. As a preacher on Easter Sunday, I often felt like an airline pilot approaching a runway for landing with cockpit alarms going off: too far left, too fast, pull right, pull up. That is certainly a bad way to head into any Sunday, let alone Easter.
However, the texts themselves suggest some ways to approach this day. First, Easter morning was not meaningful for everyone. The disciples themselves will by evening still be locked away in fear by walls of their own making. Second, we have nothing to prove but something to proclaim. The worst of Easter preaching comes when we try to explain the inexplicable. Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians, "Behold I show you a mystery." Exploring it, sharing it, honoring it, and cherishing it stands the best chance of bringing hope this Sunday. Do not try to harmonize the accounts. Scripture is perfectly content with the variety of reports regarding the resurrection. It is the community that lies behind each of the gospels, which selects the narrative that is most important to their life. What is most important to your congregation and surrounding community this Easter Sunday?
These suggestions may not be perfect but in my preaching they have a way of leading to a landing that will enable things to take off.
Alternative Application
John 20:1-18. Jesus reads Mary's unexpressed desire to hold on to him. She understandably wants to get her hands on him. There are a lot of folks I would like to get my hands on and hold. Yet the challenge of this day is to put others and ourselves in Jesus' hands. Sometimes this comes for me when I can't wait to get my hands on an errant child, when I know that I need to put that child and moment in Jesus' hands. Sometimes the answer to a vexing problem only comes when I let go and put whatever is frustrating me in Jesus' hands. Certainly, in refusing to conform to the usual things that divide people the early church was not holding back from where the living Jesus was leading them. The good news of this Sunday is that there are hands larger than our own that take a hand in our lives.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
It's Easter. For us, this is a day of new beginnings. It is the penultimate moment. Christ is risen! In the wake of Easter lilies, bunnies, and too, too much candy, a barrage of pat phrases echo above the Easter morning trumpets. "The shackles of death have been broken." "O death where is thy sting?" We have heard it before.
But what, really, does this mean for us? How does such a notion brush up against our everyday existence? Christ is risen. Well, good. The world continues much as before and little seems to have changed. Christ is risen, and how many people around the world died in a hail of bullets today, or perished from hunger or grinding oppression?
Truly, what does it mean to say Christ is risen?
No short little essay can, of course, provide the definitive answer, but this psalm does provide us with a beginning. When we say, with the psalmist, that "the Lord is our strength and our might," we have said a mouthful.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ, you see, is no mere smoke and mirrors magic show designed to impress the impressionable. It is nothing short of a total rearrangement of life itself. In rising from the dead, Christ didn't just become the most powerful figure in our lives. He actually transformed power itself and redefined it for all time. Christ is risen, and the fundamental understanding of power in the world has been up-ended. The first shall now be last. Those have been full will now go away empty. That which we have understood as powerful is now shown to be weak.
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side write down the things that our culture, or as Paul would say, "this world" considers as powerful. Guns, money, prestige, material possessions, all of it. On the other side we make a list of how God now defines and uses power in the risen Christ. Here we write words like "servanthood," "love," "forgiveness," "self-denial," and so forth.
If we look at these contrasting understandings of power or strength, it quickly becomes clear that as followers of Jesus Christ we are called to what amounts to a countercultural understanding of power.
And this is the crux of what has happened in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is no mere revolution where Jesus comes and sits at the head of the table where someone else once sat. No. In rising from the dead, Jesus kicks over the table.
If "the Lord is our strength," then we will refuse to utilize the power of this world. If we trust in the "might of the Lord," then we will not trust in violence or any of the workings of this world's power mechanisms.
Indeed, Christ's rising changes everything. In the resurrection, God has literally created a new reality. All that is needed now is for his followers to reject the powers of this world and to live into that reality; live into the strength and might of the Lord.
