Born Anew To A Living Hope
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
It is a paradoxical world where a life that appears empty of meaning and possibility can spark either mass murder or desperate clinging. While Terri Schiavo's parents move heaven and earth to retain for their daughter an existence of dubious quality, young Jeff Weise of Red Lake expresses the depth of his forsakenness by killing ten people in addition to himself.
If we have indeed been "born anew to a living hope" through the resurrection of Christ (1 Peter 1:3), if we have indeed been empowered to continue Jesus' life-renewing ministry, as John's Gospel recounts, then what have we to say to people caught in terrible nightmares of absurdity -- or even the everyday absurdity that we all must pass through? What can hope mean in light of the resurrection, and how trustworthy is it?
Sooner or later in every life these become burning questions, though they may or may not be articulated. Sooner or later all of us face the absence of meaning, the death of hope; and we need then an answer that can make the enormous leap from appropriate religious language to the power to live gracefully and die confidently even in the face of hell on earth. The question underlying all the skepticism, the nostalgia, and even the fervency in our pews (and pulpits!) in this Easter season is, Does Jesus deliver? And if so, what?
One of the frustrating things about the New Testament (this week's epistle reading is a case in point) and also the church is that they so often toss around rich and promising terms like "salvation" and "hope" without giving them specific content, without any grounding in concreteness. (Given that most North Americans are, in Meyers-Briggs terms, "sensing" types, this may be more of a barrier to faith than we predominately intuitive clergy realize.) Over-specification may not be desirable, either; but for most people, particularly in our current era of biblical illiteracy where people cannot be assumed to have much ambient sense of the rich history of our hope, a nebulous religious "salvation" can lack motivating and transforming power.
Biblical Roots
The ministry, death, resurrection, and redeeming work of Jesus were initially interpreted in light of the long backdrop of Jewish history and, in particular, the eschatological hopes and messianic expectation that grew out of that history. R. J. Bauckham helpfully summarizes:
In contrast to cyclical conceptions of history, the biblical writings understand history as a linear movement towards a goal. God is driving history towards the ultimate fulfillment of his purposes for his creation. ... The forward-looking character of Israelite faith dates from the call of Abraham (Gn. 12:1-3) and the promise of the land, but it is in the message of the prophets that it becomes fully eschatological, looking towards a final and permanent goal of God's purpose in history. The prophetic term "the Day of the Lord" (with a variety of similar expressions such as "on that day") refers to the coming event of God's decisive act in judgment and salvation in the historical realm. For the prophets it is always immediately related to their present historical context, and by no means necessarily refers to the end of history. Increasingly, however, there emerges the concept of a final resolution of history: a day of judgment beyond which God establishes a permanent age of salvation. ... (Tyndale House, New Bible Dictionary, 2nd edition)
This already is quite different from what many people today imagine we mean by salvation. In modern North American thinking salvation is apt to be a purely personal matter, abstracted from life and history, a matter of the soul "going to heaven" after death. People are often quite unaware of the robust, this-worldly orientation of our faith history. Even when Jewish hopes came to be focused beyond the present age, they remained rooted in the known world of people and nations, daring to believe that God would act definitively to establish divine rule, not merely in heaven, but on earth. This hope remains a feature of Christian scriptures (e.g., Revelation 21).
As Bauckham notes regarding the Old Testament hope for the age of salvation, "it is the age in which God's will is to prevail. The nations will serve the God of Israel and learn his will (Is. 2:2f = Mi. 4:1f; Je. 3:17; Zp 3:9f; Zc 8:20-23). There will be international peace and justice (Is. 2:4 = Mi. 4:3) and peace in nature (Is. 11:6; 65:25). God's people will have security (Mi. 4:4; Is. 65:21-23) and prosperity (Zc 8:12). The law of God will be written on their hearts (Je. 31:31-34; Ezk. 36:26f)." There was also recognition that the world -- including the people of God, the nation of Israel -- would have to be judged and transformed if this were to happen. "Frequently associated with the eschatological age," notes Bauckham, "is the Davidic king who will rule Israel (and, sometimes, the nations) as God's representative (Is. 9:6f; 11:1-10; Je. 23:5f; Ezk. 34:23f; 37:24f; Mi. 5:2-4; Zc 9:9f)." He would be the agent of God's judgment and God's reign.
These, then, were the hopes and expectations applied to Jesus by his first followers. His assertion to Pilate that his kingdom was "not of this world" (John 18:36; compare his noncommittal "You say so" to the king question in the Synoptics, e.g., Mark 15:2), coupled with his assertion that he is nonetheless the Son of Man (Mark 14:62) begin what John Marsh calls the "quite drastic re-interpretation of Jewish eschatology into Christian terms" (Saint John). But if the first Christians removed the messianic rule from the realm of this-worldly politics, it is clear that they did not intend to remove it entirely to atemporality and the rarefied realm of the soul. Rather, it is something already present in the worldly life and actions of believers, yet only to be fully realized at the general resurrection and judgment accompanying Christ's future return. This, then, is the content and context of 1 Peter's "living hope," "imperishable inheritance in heaven," and "salvation to be revealed in the last time."
Growth from the Roots
One suspects that, then as now, while it is helpful and at times inspiring to understand the fuller meaning of these shorthand terms, concepts like "salvation" often come up empty in times of human crisis. When a young man feels alone and rejected; when parents face the loss of a beloved and vulnerable daughter; when friends have watched their leader executed after the mockery of a trial -- at times such as these, the most beautifully articulated and earnestly believed ideas about God's future sit in the heart like dust, accomplishing little except to add to the unbearable weight of disaster. At such times the vision of hope, if we can summon it at all through the fog of despair, stands less as a beacon than as a mockery of where it seems we will never be. The contrast with present circumstance is oppressive, the distance to be bridged too great.
What, then, does the resurrection of Christ have to say to people crushed under the absurdity of this world? Maybe nothing ... directly. Perhaps the power of this hope is for those of us who stand around the hurting ones, who can bodily carry our hope into situations of abandonment. We can interpose ourselves in the tide of circumstance like trees rooted deeply in something solid, where the castaways can hang on until the waters ebb.
Look at the scene John paints of those first days after Jesus was raised. The eleven knew the tomb was empty (v. 2), and had presumably heard from Mary that the risen Christ had met her (vv. 14-18), but that evening found them still behind locked doors, fearful and perhaps also despondent. Knowing he was alive had not changed anything for them -- until he showed up in person. Then -- just as the sound of his voice speaking her name had galvanized Mary -- they rejoiced at the sight of him and the sound of his greeting. That is when they were ready to receive a new purpose and the Spirit with which to accomplish it. Not when they learned he was alive; not even when (if!) the significance of this was explained to them (compare the Emmaus road duo in Luke 24), but when their living friend and Lord showed up in person and restored gave meaning to their world. Similarly, Thomas, though hearing the excited witness of the others, could not do anything with that information, not even believe it, until the information took flesh in an encounter with the one he had known and loved.
Information alone, understanding alone, beautiful concepts alone do not help us. Hopeful understanding embodied in relationships does help us. Ask anyone who has lost a loved one. The well-meaning folks who say to them, "He's in a better place" or "She's at peace now" may well be saying what the grieving person also believes -- yet the griever may be startled by an impulse to slap the person offering such bromides. The friends who are truly appreciated are the ones who do not try to explain away the grief or reduce the enormity of the loss, but who simply say, "Come for coffee," "Let me help with that," or who say nothing, only share tears and hugs. It is in such standing with and sharing that the hope is somehow also communicated. Similarly, while a Jeff Weise assuredly needed the guidance of a good counselor, what he needed also and even more fundamentally was a friend, someone who had time for him and cared for him and believed in a future for him without being paid by the hour. Someone -- preferably a sizeable community of someones -- who could show him that his disastrous experience of home and family was not the only reality nor the only possibility for him, people who could show him that he belonged, and help him come to belong, in healthy, hopeful society.
What Jesus came preaching and living, what he delivered in his rising and gift of Spirit, was the kingdom of God, the place where God reigns in Spirit and in truth. This kingdom (or kin-dom, as many now winsomely put it) is at once a fitful and a deeply steady thing -- as flickering and uncertain as the unreliable humans who participate in it, as sure and dependable as the purposes of God. This kingdom manifests (when it does) in graceful human community, a community which can both tell and embody the message that God is in it, God is in all of it, and God's will is to redeem. This is the meaning of salvation.
Team Comments
Carlos Wilton responds: Chris, you raise the question of what the author of 1 Peter means by "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," and what difference that living hope can make for our lives today. It is a timely question for these days after Easter. Perhaps it is the question for this season.
I, for one, would recommend caution in using the Schiavo case as the basis for a sermon. This heartbreaking case has turned into a true media circus. A great many of our people have grown weary of the 24/7-news coverage of recent weeks. There is a right to privacy here for the bitterly divided family of Terri Schiavo, a right that journalists and members of Congress alike have been routinely trampling. In light of the information overload many of us are feeling, using the Schiavo case as the major theme of a sermon could be an invitation to our listeners to zone out and think about something else.
That's not to say that issues of life and death are of no interest. They are of perennial interest. I believe a sermon on the 1 Peter text could proceed with only minimal reference to the Schiavo case. Easter itself makes the topic timely.
One way of responding to the question is by investigating what the Apostles Creed says on the subject. "The resurrection of the body" is a familiar article of the creed, but it's virtually impossible to explain. The best minds in Christendom have labored for nearly twenty centuries to do so. On the face of it, the resurrection of the body seems rather simple. The earthly remains of those who have died are buried in the ground; on the day of Christ's coming, a living spirit will be restored to them, and they will rise up, to a new and purified bodily existence.
Perhaps the most literal description is this passage from 1 Thessalonians:
The Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
In this new and glorious existence, as the book of Revelation puts it:
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)
A whole host of funerary customs have been built upon scripture passages such as these: caskets to hold the body, giving to mourners the illusion of restful sleep, embalming to preserve the body from decay; concrete vaults to hold the earth itself at bay, sometimes for centuries -- to preserve the body intact, ready to be re-animated at the day of Christ's coming. Does the "living hope" of which 1 Peter speaks arise out of these funerary customs? No, not out of the customs themselves -- although the customs are a reflection of a prior hope, hope based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Powerful social customs dictate funeral practices, and most church traditions honor nearly all of them. There is nothing in scripture or church teachings to dictate, absolutely, how the body of a departed Christian must be taken care of. That's because the resurrection of the body is not affected by anything we do, physically, to the bodies of those who have died. It's entirely God's work, God's miracle.
Cremation, earth burial, donation to medical science -- it's all a matter of indifference that can be left to personal choice. This is because, at the Christian funeral, the focus is not on the condition of the body (either at the time of death or at any time thereafter) but on the power of Christ's resurrection.
Christian theologians have written some of the strangest things as they have sought to puzzle out the reality of the resurrection of the body: What about amputated limbs? Some have asked -- or sailors lost at sea? And what of the unfortunate victims of cannibalism?
Saint Augustine gets himself all wrought up over the rather obscure question of whether the resurrection body will include every part of our human bodies. He's most concerned about certain organs he considers sinful or shameful. A good look at 1 Corinthians 15, however, should have set the good doctor-of-the-church's mind to rest. In this passage, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that the resurrection body is fundamentally different -- that "the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Paul compares resurrection to the experience of a seed planted in the ground. First the seed has to die to its old nature, its seed nature, in order to take on the new form that God intends for it. The seed must first wither, then crack open and "die," before the full-grown plant can emerge, soaring up strong and green toward the heavens.
It's like the old joke that has two caterpillars munching the same leaf, side by side. Just then, a butterfly flutters overhead. The two watch it pass over in silence, then one turns to the other and says, "You'll never get me up in one of those contraptions!" Little does the caterpillar know that it will not be riding in one of those "contraptions" but rather will become one.
There is so much we do not know about the resurrection of the body. Yet it is an article of faith for us, and it therefore provides the foundation for a strong and sustaining hope.
Mary Boyd Click responds: How does the resurrection of Jesus direct and empower us to live differently? It is an honest question for genuinely searching Christians. John's account of "doubting Thomas" informs us that the paradoxes of life, the struggles of doubt and faith are best dealt with in community with others. Twice in these appearance stories, John nudges us to ask the question about community make-up, i.e., Where's Thomas? In verse 24 John states that Thomas was not with them. In verse 26 the writer points out that Thomas was with them. Salvation -- that restoration of wholeness and health of living and being -- came to Thomas only when he was in community with those who had sustained his life and new-found faith.
Death is a community buster, anytime, anywhere. The crucifixion was a community buster. The disciples could easily have splintered and taken off in different directions. The risen Lord did not search out his disciples individually. He had one-on-one conversations with Mary Magdalene (John 20) and Peter (John 21), the couple on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24), Thomas, and others, but no one was totally isolated during any encounter. So it seems no accident that the risen Christ, being concerned about his now fearful and depressed disciples told them to gather together in Galilee and there he would meet them (Matthew 28:10). Throughout his ministry, Jesus restored people to wholeness and to life within a community. He gave ten lepers a clean bill of health and they were allowed to re-enter society. He raised a widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11ff.) and she was no longer bereft of family and a means of support. He healed the centurion's son (Luke 7:1-10) when illness threatened to fragment their family. Repeatedly, Jesus' miracles express God's desire that death not separate us from one another or from our belief in and sense of God's love for us. The miracle of the resurrection is no exception.
Novelist John Updike sees the truth of the resurrection as something that sustains a community, the church.
Make no mistake; if He rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
Reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
(Collected Poems 1953-1993, "Seven Stanzas at Easter" [New York: Knopf, 1993], p. 20)
The writers of Genesis remind us that people need community. God said, "It is not good for human beings to be alone"(Genesis 2:18). Babies die if they are left alone. Humans fail to thrive if they are not touched. In short, people have to be loved in order to live. For humans not to be in community is to be like fish out of water. It is certain death with varying sights and sounds. We often fail to recognize it in kids like Jeff Weise, and that is our tragedy, not his. The good news is that the kind of despairing, frustrating, disappointing life that unfolded for Jeff Weise is not the kind of life God wants for God's children. The community life which is primary to the kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus is one in which people don't go unnoticed by others, those who know sorrow find compassionate listeners, the pain of the heart, mind, and body connects with a healing balm. This kingdom of God community is not something that is promised only for the hereafter. It is one that people of the resurrection are meant to participate in daily through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Restoring people to a new life of community with one another is the primary work of the Spirit that the risen Christ bestowed on his disciples in our Gospel Reading. When Jesus breathed the Spirit on his disciples once again we are reminded of the Genesis Spirit, ruah, the breath of God that moves over the waters and makes sense out of chaos. It is the Spirit, that same ruah, the wind that drives the waters of the Red Sea back, so that God's people are delivered from the armies of the Pharaoh. The Spirit calls judges like Samuel and prophets like Elijah to lead God's people. It is the Spirit of God that fully rested on Jesus at his baptism and flowed from his new-risen Being as he breathed upon his disciples. The work of God's Spirit has consistently been to confront the agonizing and frightening paradoxes of faith and doubt, meaning and despair, life and death. The resurrection of Jesus does not begin a new story. It makes clear, even clearer, the one we've known all along.
Recently I saw an awe-inspiring film, which I've recommended to many of my friends for Easter viewing. It's titled Monsieur Ibrahim. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. There is nothing definitively Christian in the movie, but it captures in a moving way the healing and wholeness, the salvation that is God's desire for all of humanity. The movie is about the coming together of a despairing young Jewish boy, named Moses, and a grandfatherly Arab grocer, Monsieur Ibrahim. The role of Ibrahim, a Sufi Muslim Turk, is played superbly by actor Omar Shariff. On his sixteenth birthday, the young boy Moses is bursting to grow up and into life's adventures and joys, especially sex. He lives in Paris, the city of life and light. Moses' family doesn't offer much in support of his desire to experience life fully. His mother deserted the family when he was a young child. Moses has been his father's chief cook and bottle washer ever since. When he turns sixteen he makes his own birthday cake, lights his own candle, and celebrates by himself. His depressive father loses his job and deserts him in despair, later to commit suicide. Moses is utterly alone and caught in the pain and paradoxes of life. All around him people abandon him at a time when his life urge is to start learning about girls, learning how to dance, learning about faith. Paradoxically, at the same time that so many losses are occurring in his family life, Moses is building a friendship with Monsieur Ibrahim, the grocery store owner. That friendship becomes his salvation. Readers should see Frederick J. Ruf's film review for a wonderful description of how a grocery store is the place for healing community life. One can connect to http://avalon.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No1/Reviews/monsieurIbrahim.htm. When his father dies, Ms. Ibrahim adopts Moses and teaches him how to turn his anger and resentment of his father into a love for the gift of life.
The Easter hope in this film lies in the coming together of a Jew and a Muslim as one family. It is a palpable hope that many in our culturally and religiously divided world yearn to sense, grasp, and work toward. As the risen Christ pulled Thomas back into fellowship with the others, so is his Spirit continuing to work to reconcile and restore the family of God to one another. In this year when Muslims, Jews, and Christians are killing each other around the world on a daily basis, it is nice to be reminded of Easter's claim that God in Christ aims to restore all of creation to fellowship with the divine and with one another, and that salvation begins here.
Although life inevitably surrounds many of us with absurdly painful paradoxes, our hanging on in faith is as good as the faith and hands of those we hang onto. Therefore, the kind of community life we choose is important. The church offers us an opportunity to hold hands with other people of faith in the Spirit of Christ. I believe that Jesus delivers, but it's not something I'd put on a bumper sticker, because it really does have to be discussed. He delivers us once again to our graceful and loving God and once again to one another. Our divine lover delivers us for a community life of peace and justice, one with meaningful work, meaningful loves, and meaningful mission. It is such a joy to discover the signs and promise of that kingdom this side of eternity.
George Murphy responds: I've always been fascinated by this Sunday's gospel, John's account of the appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples. One of the intriguing things about this is the way it reverses the "locked room" motif of mystery stories. In the standard form of the story, the murdered man is found in a room locked from the inside, and the detective has to figure out how the killer committed the crime and escaped. John's story flips this theme on its head. It's about life rather than death, and the man who has been unmurdered breaks into the locked room to rescue his frightened accomplices.
A critical part of the story is that the disciples have locked themselves in "for fear of the Jews." There was probably no real reason for their fear. If they'd just gone back to Galilee and kept their mouths shut, the authorities wouldn't have bothered them. But it's very easy for us to lock ourselves in, to close ourselves off from the world, for various reasons. When you're depressed, pulling the covers up over your head and hiding from the world seems like an excellent plan. I think of the men Ezekiel was shown in his vision of Jerusalem, closed off in a dark room worshiping idols (Ezekiel 8:7-13). Or there's Solzhenitsyn's brilliant portrayal of Stalin in his night office in the Kremlin (in the chapter "Old Age" in The First Circle [Bantam, 1969]). The elderly dictator pondered his triumphs, still thinks of becoming emperor of the world, and can't let go of the hope that somehow he can live forever. The concluding sentence of the chapter is, "Death had already made its nest in him, and he refused to believe it."
The whole human predicament is like that -- think of Augustine's description of original sin as a state of being curvatus in se, closed in upon the self. In that state we may be hopeless or we may have illusory hopes, but real hope is absent.
Our readings of course announce the genuine "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). It's a hope that Jesus announces when he says "Peace be with you," and of which he invites the disciples to become active participants by giving them the authority to forgive sins. If Christ really is risen, then in an important sense nothing in life or death is completely hopeless. Everything then depends on how seriously we can take this message that "Jesus is risen."
Who is supposed to be risen is the first question to ask. Prepare for the strange looks when you ask that question in church -- it's Jesus, of course. But the way in which the resurrection is often discussed doesn't make that obvious. Sometimes Easter is treated as if its message were some kind of general truth that people can survive death, and at worst as a kind of strange "believe it or not" story. And the message that "someone is risen" would not necessarily be good news. If the message were that the emperor Nero had risen (as rumors in the late first century said, rumors that may have contributed to some of the imagery of revelation), it would have been bad news. But the one whom the gospel proclaims as risen is the one who "showed them his hands and his side," the one who died because of his faithfulness to God and his message of forgiveness. If he is risen, then there is hope that his life and message are what the future of creation will be like.
What is risen? At first this question seems redundant: We just said that it was Jesus. But is it in fact Jesus in his full bodily reality? We may have different ways of understanding human nature and can talk about the human soul, or spirit, or mind, in addition to our bodily aspect, but the one undeniable fact is that we are bodily entities. We aren't ourselves without bodies -- and, in fact, without our bodily relationships with the rest of the physical world. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:44 that it will be raised a "spiritual body," a body fully in the right relationship with God. It is a transformed body -- transformed in ways we can only guess at -- yet a body.
It's rather odd that some Christians who consider themselves very down-to-earth people and who claim to accept the idea that science can explain what goes on in the world in terms of the interactions of matter nevertheless think that it's satisfactory to speak of Easter as if it had to do with some kind of disembodied "spiritual" reality. If Jesus -- and not just some ghost of Jesus, or idea about Jesus -- has been raised, then we have to talk somehow about the resurrection of the body that hung on the cross and was placed in the tomb. And if we have to cross our fingers when we say that we believe in "the resurrection of the body" then there's considerable dissonance between the kind of hope we have and the way we live our lives in the world now.
But how can Jesus be risen? And, to repeat the questions Paul imagined being posed, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" (1 Corinthians 15:35). The idea of resurrection has been challenged from the very beginning: At Athens "some scoffed" when Paul spoke about "the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 17:32). Since the rise of modern science the challenges have been particularly severe. Resurrection of the body seems to go against almost everything that we think we understand about the world.
It's interesting to see how Paul responds to the question, "How are the dead raised?" The arguments he presents can't be considered "proofs" of resurrection. They are rather in the nature of analogies -- the different kinds of flesh of living things on earth, the differences between celestial and terrestrial bodies, and the way seeds grow into plants. What he is doing is to use features of the world as it was understood in his time to make it plausible that the dead could be raised. Since then Christians have used other examples -- the phoenix (which the ancients thought of as a real bird, not a myth) or the transition from caterpillar to butterfly.
None of these are very compelling analogies for modern scientific minds, but there are others that are better today. Virtual reality, cloning, and even time travel are ideas that have gotten serious scientific attention and which can be used to construct analogies -- again not proofs -- to show that the idea of bodily resurrection should not be rejected out of hand. I discussed the application of these ideas in a chapter titled "Hints from Science for Eschatology -- and Vice Versa" in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (ed.), The Last Things (Eerdmans, 2002).
There are also analogies from other fields. In mathematics the curve called the logarithmic spiral reproduces itself under various transformations. The mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (+1705) had this curve carved on his tombstone with the inscription eadem mutato resurgo, "I arise the same though changed" (cf. Dirk J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics [Dover, 1948], p. 165).
A recent book by N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003) is a magisterial work of over 800 pages on the subject. Another very good treatment is Gerald O'Collins, Jesus Risen (Paulist, 1987). The latter book presents not only arguments for the truth of the resurrection but also discussions of the ways in which the resurrection functions in the work of several prominent theologians of the twentieth century and its implications for important areas of doctrine.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton:
Despite all the changes that have occurred in Russia, tourists can still go to Red Square and see a peculiar sight. To see it, they must venture behind the massive stone walls of an imposing building that squats in the very shadow of the familiar onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral.
Enter this hulking stone monument and you are ushered into a great hall. At its very center is a rectangular box, with a cover of pure crystal. If you look through the crystal cover, you will gaze upon the embalmed body of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to the world as Lenin.
For many decades, Lenin's tomb has been an obligatory destination for any Russian visiting Moscow for the first time. The lines of pilgrims once stretched for blocks, each visitor waiting patiently to glimpse the pallid, waxy face of the founder of Russian communism, his eyelids closed in death. Yet the long lines are no longer there. Something has changed.
During the season of Easter, our thoughts, too, turn to a tomb. Yet the tomb we have on our minds is different. In this tomb, there is no carefully embalmed body, hermetically sealed beneath a crystal cover. The stone that once sealed the doorway is rolled away. The body is nowhere to be found.
***
Not what, but WHOM, I do believe,
That, in my darkest hour of need,
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give; --
Not what, but WHOM!
For Christ is more than all the creeds,
And His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive.
-- John Oxenham, from his poem, "Credo"
***
I don't care what they say with their mouths -- everybody knows that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even stars ... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.
-- Thornton Wilder, from the play, "Our Town"
***
There once was a Lutheran minister from the Midwest who told the story of visiting one of his elderly parishioners in the hospital. Harold was a farmer; he had tilled the land for over fifty-five years. He'd been married the same amount of time, and in all those years he and his wife Maggie had never spent a night apart until now. Day after day she kept vigil outside the intensive-care unit, waiting for the five minutes per hour she was allowed to visit.
Everyone knew Harold wasn't going home again. The doctors did not, in fact, expect him to live out the night. And so to Harold and Maggie's pastor had fallen the task of encouraging her to say goodbye and go home, for she was exhausted, and truly there was nothing more she could do.
"I can't go," she replied, staring wearily into space.
Just then the nurse came, and told them it was time for her next five minutes. So she and the pastor donned the obligatory surgical masks and gowns and gloves, and went to Harold's bedside. He didn't seem to recognize the green-shrouded figures at first -- at least not until Maggie violated hospital protocol and pushed her mask aside, kissing him on the cheek. The pastor offered a prayer out loud, but all the time Maggie was whispering to her husband, talking to him like she belonged there -- which she did.
Later, outside in the hallway, the pastor noticed Maggie was weeping. "What did you say to Harold, back there?" he asked.
"I told him I loved him and that I would stay with him."
"You know he's very ill. He may not be with us in the morning."
"I know," she said. "He knows it too. He's afraid, a little; I can tell by the way he squeezes my hand. But it's all right. I told him it will be Easter in the morning."
The pastor was taken aback. It was November. Had Maggie become confused, in her exhaustion and her grief? "You know, it's not really Easter," he pointed out.
"I know, Pastor," she said patiently. "But it is for us. We've celebrated Easter together all our years. Now, for Harold and me, tomorrow is our Easter."
***
The power of God is now and has always been the power to raise us from the dead. Period. It is not about us. It is about God. Our only role is to stick our feet straight up in the air and admit that without God we might as well be put to bed with a shovel. Now that is a message that can empty a church out fast.
-- Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain
***
[T]here really is no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament. Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as a fact. Christ is risen! In fact, the very existence of the New Testament itself proclaims it. Unless something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning, there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity.
-- Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
***
When the writer of Revelation spoke of the coming of the day of shalom, he did not say that on that day we would live at peace with death. He said that on that day "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
-- Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
***
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things -- the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on -- will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen
***
Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future and faith is the courage to dance to its tune today.
-- Bishop Wayne Weissenbuhler
From Chris Ewing:
... But now Jesus, dead and gone, is among us. No entrance, no explanation, no introduction, just here. We recognize him in the hands. His breath mingles with our own breathing, his spirit with our spirit, and in the mingling spirits, a great power.
He speaks: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive the sins of any, they are not forgiven."
Imagine that power. But don't imagine it as if it were the power of judgment. Don't imagine the risen Christ authorizing us to judge sins and hand down verdicts ("You! Your sins are forgiven. You! Your sins are retained. By Christ I have the power to decide your everlasting fate.")
No, don't imagine that. What is being given is the power of forgiveness. Imagine being given the power to forgive. Or, better, imagine it as if it were the power to love. See yourself looking down into the sleeping face of a child, one for whom you would give life itself. Now hear the voice say, "If you love this child, she is loved. If you do not love her, she is not loved." You choose. You have the power.
Now imagine looking into the awakened face of your worst enemy and hearing the same voice: "If you love him, he is loved. If you do not love him, he is not loved." You choose. You have the power.
This is the power that entered the locked room. Here is the great liberation that forgiveness brings; the liberation from hatred, from shame and from vengeance. Never again will we have to carry the delusional responsibility of getting angry on God's behalf. This presence and its power of forgiveness has unlocked something and changed everything. ...
-- Rev. Peter Short (present Moderator of the United Church of Canada), "When Christ Sets us Free," United Church Observer, March 2005, pp. 22-23
***
A Prayer
Lord Christ, we give thanks, that even when we are locked away, you come and stand in our midst. How holy and gracious you are, gentle in your power to save, and how marvelous is your persistent love!
When our love has become locked away by years of disappointment or sorrow, you come and stand with us, reassuring us that if we take the risk of loving deeply again, we shall survive, even if we be hurt again. How holy and gracious you are!
When the failings of others hem us in, and the evident sin of the world makes us cynical, angry or ready to give up, you come and stand with us. You remind us God is dealing with sin through the power of your Cross, Lord Christ. How holy and gracious you are!
When our hope has gone underground in the face of loss, and grief buries our spirits, you come and stand with us, risen from the now-empty tomb. You show us that the power of death is empty and that death itself does not hold ultimate sway. How holy and gracious you are!
When our doors are locked for fear of the laughter of the sophisticated or the ridicule of those who think they need no faith, you come and stand with us. You urge us to be faithful to your way of trust and sacrifice. You promise you will be with us always. How holy and gracious you are!
We know there are others who hide behind doors locked by fear, disappointment, anger, hopelessness, and grief. Stand with them and bring them your peace.
Bring your world to rise up with you, Lord Christ. Strengthen us for service; steel us to endure calamity and trial for your sake; soften us to care for those whose needs press upon us. Grant us the fullness of your peace. Hear us as we raise to you our needs as children to a loving mother. (silence)
We complete our prayers with the words you taught: Our Father....
-- Rod Sykes in Gathering, Lent/Easter/Pentecost 1997, p. 21
***
A New Creed
We are not alone,
we live in God's world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
-- The United Church of Canada, General Council 1968, alt. 1998
***
The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline and make the sacrifice.
-- Henry Knox Sherrill
Worship Resources
By Julia Ross Strope
Theme: The empty tomb and the living Christ give us insight and hope for hospitable living amid a cynical and vulgar culture.
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on Psalm 16)
Leader: How wonderful are God's gifts to us!
People: During the day and at night, God is present; nothing can shake our awareness of Divine presence.
Leader: God shows us the path that leads to life.
People: God's presence fills us with joy.
Leader: How excellent are God's faithful people!
PRAYER OF ADORATION (based on Psalm 16 and Acts 2:28)
Eternal God,
You are all we have and you give us all we need.
With your presence, we are protected from the power of death.
In this hour, we sing and pray our gratitude;
In silence and with words, we seek your affirmation.
Inspire us to walk the paths that lead to life! Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"Because You Live, O Christ." Tune: VRUECHTEN
"Alleluia, Alleluia! Give Thanks." Tune: ALLELUIA NO. 1
"Celebrate With Joy And Singing." Tune: EVELYN CHAPEL
"Christ Is Alive!" Tune: TRURO
Psalm 16: "When In The Night I Meditate." Tune: ST. FLAVIAN
CALL TO CONFESSION
Leader: The high point of the year has come: Christ lives!
As we quiet our minds, be aware that Christ invites you to be free from deadness.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Living God,
You work miracles all around us. Open our eyes so we can see!
You place before us paths of life. Open our hearts so we can follow them.
You make us new Beings -- and where there is New Being, there is resurrection.
Grasp us with this truth so we may be free from guilt and shame. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE (based on 1 Peter 1:3-9)
Thanks to God for mercy and for new life! We have every reason to be full of hope. Be glad for God's love and power!
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE
"Come, Ye Faithful, Raise The Strain," Stanza 2. Tune: ST. KEVIN
'Tis the spring of souls today; Christ hath burst his prison,
And from three days' sleep in death as a sun hath risen.
Now rejoice, Jerusalem, and with true affection
Welcome in unwearied strains Jesus' resurrection!
A CONTEMPORARY AFFIRMATION (unison; based on 1 Peter 1:3-10)
In Jesus of Nazareth, we see the living God.
In the birth, teachings and death of Jesus, we see the wisdom of God.
In the resurrection, we experience renewed life.
With the Christ, we are filled with hope for a life full of meaning.
Thanks be to God for divine gifts of life and peace.
Alleluia!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT
Money and talents make the proclamation of God's love possible on this street corner. Let us share our skills and our monies.
DOXOLOGY
"The Day Of Resurrection!" Stanza 3. Tune: LANCASHIRE
Now let the heaven be joyful, let the earth the song begin.
Let the round world keep triumph and all that is therein;
Let all things seen and unseen their notes of gladness blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen, our joy that hath no end.
or
"Jesus Christ Is Risen Today," Stanza 4. Tune: EASTER HYMN
Sing we to our God above, Alleluia!
Praise eternal as God's love; Alleluia!
Praise our God, ye heavenly hosts, Alleluia!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Alleluia!
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
No more we doubt you, gracious God!
Life is full and satisfying with your loving presence.
Here we offer our whole selves and our resources.
Through us, make this world a hospitable home for all creatures. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
God of the living and the dead,
Our world seems full of death even while we celebrate new life. Reach into grieving homes and comfort those who experience loss. Cross boundaries and bring tribes to live in peace side by side. Banish philosophies that set themselves as superior to others. Guard the children of this nation and all nations from evil. Come to merchants and designers with merchandise and stories of grace. Come to young people with alternatives to destructive rituals. Restore life to places where death stalks.
God of new life,
Thank you for spring and the promise of beauty and crops and harvests. Thank you for hope of better days and nights. Thank you for the empty tomb and the living Christ. Expand our faith so that our behaviors are consistent with our words, our ethics in keeping with the Sermon on the Mount and our relationships honest.
God of then and now,
Thank you for this universe and the intricacies of its systems. Our planet home is fragile and sturdy. Work through us to protect its water, air, and soil. Halt human abuse of the environment.
God of today,
Remember that we are made of clay. Remember that we are prone to forgetfulness. Remember that we stumble and fall. Give us insight to endure the ecstasies that surprise us; give us strength to heal from the aches and pains that torment us. Touch us with fresh grace and elastic hope. Enthuse us with your Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Amen.
BENEDICTION/CHARGE (based on 1 Peter 1)
Our service here is ended.
Our service to God continues beyond these walls.
Go filled with living hope;
Look forward to blessings;
Rejoice or weep with all who turn to you;
Let your faith authentically lead to right decisions.
May God's grace and peace be yours in full measure! Amen.
A Children's Sermon
Scars tell a story
Object: scars -- your scars and the children's scars
Based on John 20:19-31
Good morning, boys and girls. This morning we read from the Bible about a special meeting between Jesus, who had been resurrected a week earlier, and his disciples. All of the disciples believed the resurrection except Thomas, who had not been in the room when Jesus met with the disciples a week earlier. Thomas had heard about it but didn't believe. He said that unless he saw for himself the wounds in the hands and side of Jesus, he would not believe.
Have you ever had a wound? (let them answer) Do you have any scars? (let them answer) I have a scar on my arm and one on my face. Can you see my scars? (let them answer) Let me see your scars. A lot of people have scars from when they fell or cut themselves. Tell me how you got your scar. (let the children talk about their scars)
Thomas wanted to see the scars on Jesus' body. He knew that Jesus had been crucified with nails and a spear. Someone who was pretending to be Jesus would not have those scars, and Thomas thought that the other disciples had been fooled by a pretender. How could a person have been crucified with nails driven though his hands and a spear thrown through his side still be living? Thomas wanted to see the scars.
If you told me you had fallen off of your bike and landed on your face and scraped your knees and hands, would you have scars? If you did not have any scars from your bike wreck, I would think you were telling me a story.
Thomas came to the room where all of the other disciples were staying. They did not know when Jesus was coming again, but the other disciples believed Jesus was resurrected. All at once, before they even noticed it, there was Jesus standing in front of them. They didn't hear the door open. He was just there. When Jesus saw Thomas, he invited him to put his fingers in the wounds on his hands and side. Thomas almost fainted. There were the marks of the nails and the spear. They looked awful but Jesus was alive, very much alive, and he wanted Thomas to believe.
Thomas fell down on his knees and worshiped Jesus. Thomas said, "My Lord and my God." The scars convinced him, and he never doubted again.
Maybe the next time you take a look at one of your scars you will remember the day that Thomas saw the scars of Jesus and believed in him as his God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, April 3, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802
If we have indeed been "born anew to a living hope" through the resurrection of Christ (1 Peter 1:3), if we have indeed been empowered to continue Jesus' life-renewing ministry, as John's Gospel recounts, then what have we to say to people caught in terrible nightmares of absurdity -- or even the everyday absurdity that we all must pass through? What can hope mean in light of the resurrection, and how trustworthy is it?
Sooner or later in every life these become burning questions, though they may or may not be articulated. Sooner or later all of us face the absence of meaning, the death of hope; and we need then an answer that can make the enormous leap from appropriate religious language to the power to live gracefully and die confidently even in the face of hell on earth. The question underlying all the skepticism, the nostalgia, and even the fervency in our pews (and pulpits!) in this Easter season is, Does Jesus deliver? And if so, what?
One of the frustrating things about the New Testament (this week's epistle reading is a case in point) and also the church is that they so often toss around rich and promising terms like "salvation" and "hope" without giving them specific content, without any grounding in concreteness. (Given that most North Americans are, in Meyers-Briggs terms, "sensing" types, this may be more of a barrier to faith than we predominately intuitive clergy realize.) Over-specification may not be desirable, either; but for most people, particularly in our current era of biblical illiteracy where people cannot be assumed to have much ambient sense of the rich history of our hope, a nebulous religious "salvation" can lack motivating and transforming power.
Biblical Roots
The ministry, death, resurrection, and redeeming work of Jesus were initially interpreted in light of the long backdrop of Jewish history and, in particular, the eschatological hopes and messianic expectation that grew out of that history. R. J. Bauckham helpfully summarizes:
In contrast to cyclical conceptions of history, the biblical writings understand history as a linear movement towards a goal. God is driving history towards the ultimate fulfillment of his purposes for his creation. ... The forward-looking character of Israelite faith dates from the call of Abraham (Gn. 12:1-3) and the promise of the land, but it is in the message of the prophets that it becomes fully eschatological, looking towards a final and permanent goal of God's purpose in history. The prophetic term "the Day of the Lord" (with a variety of similar expressions such as "on that day") refers to the coming event of God's decisive act in judgment and salvation in the historical realm. For the prophets it is always immediately related to their present historical context, and by no means necessarily refers to the end of history. Increasingly, however, there emerges the concept of a final resolution of history: a day of judgment beyond which God establishes a permanent age of salvation. ... (Tyndale House, New Bible Dictionary, 2nd edition)
This already is quite different from what many people today imagine we mean by salvation. In modern North American thinking salvation is apt to be a purely personal matter, abstracted from life and history, a matter of the soul "going to heaven" after death. People are often quite unaware of the robust, this-worldly orientation of our faith history. Even when Jewish hopes came to be focused beyond the present age, they remained rooted in the known world of people and nations, daring to believe that God would act definitively to establish divine rule, not merely in heaven, but on earth. This hope remains a feature of Christian scriptures (e.g., Revelation 21).
As Bauckham notes regarding the Old Testament hope for the age of salvation, "it is the age in which God's will is to prevail. The nations will serve the God of Israel and learn his will (Is. 2:2f = Mi. 4:1f; Je. 3:17; Zp 3:9f; Zc 8:20-23). There will be international peace and justice (Is. 2:4 = Mi. 4:3) and peace in nature (Is. 11:6; 65:25). God's people will have security (Mi. 4:4; Is. 65:21-23) and prosperity (Zc 8:12). The law of God will be written on their hearts (Je. 31:31-34; Ezk. 36:26f)." There was also recognition that the world -- including the people of God, the nation of Israel -- would have to be judged and transformed if this were to happen. "Frequently associated with the eschatological age," notes Bauckham, "is the Davidic king who will rule Israel (and, sometimes, the nations) as God's representative (Is. 9:6f; 11:1-10; Je. 23:5f; Ezk. 34:23f; 37:24f; Mi. 5:2-4; Zc 9:9f)." He would be the agent of God's judgment and God's reign.
These, then, were the hopes and expectations applied to Jesus by his first followers. His assertion to Pilate that his kingdom was "not of this world" (John 18:36; compare his noncommittal "You say so" to the king question in the Synoptics, e.g., Mark 15:2), coupled with his assertion that he is nonetheless the Son of Man (Mark 14:62) begin what John Marsh calls the "quite drastic re-interpretation of Jewish eschatology into Christian terms" (Saint John). But if the first Christians removed the messianic rule from the realm of this-worldly politics, it is clear that they did not intend to remove it entirely to atemporality and the rarefied realm of the soul. Rather, it is something already present in the worldly life and actions of believers, yet only to be fully realized at the general resurrection and judgment accompanying Christ's future return. This, then, is the content and context of 1 Peter's "living hope," "imperishable inheritance in heaven," and "salvation to be revealed in the last time."
Growth from the Roots
One suspects that, then as now, while it is helpful and at times inspiring to understand the fuller meaning of these shorthand terms, concepts like "salvation" often come up empty in times of human crisis. When a young man feels alone and rejected; when parents face the loss of a beloved and vulnerable daughter; when friends have watched their leader executed after the mockery of a trial -- at times such as these, the most beautifully articulated and earnestly believed ideas about God's future sit in the heart like dust, accomplishing little except to add to the unbearable weight of disaster. At such times the vision of hope, if we can summon it at all through the fog of despair, stands less as a beacon than as a mockery of where it seems we will never be. The contrast with present circumstance is oppressive, the distance to be bridged too great.
What, then, does the resurrection of Christ have to say to people crushed under the absurdity of this world? Maybe nothing ... directly. Perhaps the power of this hope is for those of us who stand around the hurting ones, who can bodily carry our hope into situations of abandonment. We can interpose ourselves in the tide of circumstance like trees rooted deeply in something solid, where the castaways can hang on until the waters ebb.
Look at the scene John paints of those first days after Jesus was raised. The eleven knew the tomb was empty (v. 2), and had presumably heard from Mary that the risen Christ had met her (vv. 14-18), but that evening found them still behind locked doors, fearful and perhaps also despondent. Knowing he was alive had not changed anything for them -- until he showed up in person. Then -- just as the sound of his voice speaking her name had galvanized Mary -- they rejoiced at the sight of him and the sound of his greeting. That is when they were ready to receive a new purpose and the Spirit with which to accomplish it. Not when they learned he was alive; not even when (if!) the significance of this was explained to them (compare the Emmaus road duo in Luke 24), but when their living friend and Lord showed up in person and restored gave meaning to their world. Similarly, Thomas, though hearing the excited witness of the others, could not do anything with that information, not even believe it, until the information took flesh in an encounter with the one he had known and loved.
Information alone, understanding alone, beautiful concepts alone do not help us. Hopeful understanding embodied in relationships does help us. Ask anyone who has lost a loved one. The well-meaning folks who say to them, "He's in a better place" or "She's at peace now" may well be saying what the grieving person also believes -- yet the griever may be startled by an impulse to slap the person offering such bromides. The friends who are truly appreciated are the ones who do not try to explain away the grief or reduce the enormity of the loss, but who simply say, "Come for coffee," "Let me help with that," or who say nothing, only share tears and hugs. It is in such standing with and sharing that the hope is somehow also communicated. Similarly, while a Jeff Weise assuredly needed the guidance of a good counselor, what he needed also and even more fundamentally was a friend, someone who had time for him and cared for him and believed in a future for him without being paid by the hour. Someone -- preferably a sizeable community of someones -- who could show him that his disastrous experience of home and family was not the only reality nor the only possibility for him, people who could show him that he belonged, and help him come to belong, in healthy, hopeful society.
What Jesus came preaching and living, what he delivered in his rising and gift of Spirit, was the kingdom of God, the place where God reigns in Spirit and in truth. This kingdom (or kin-dom, as many now winsomely put it) is at once a fitful and a deeply steady thing -- as flickering and uncertain as the unreliable humans who participate in it, as sure and dependable as the purposes of God. This kingdom manifests (when it does) in graceful human community, a community which can both tell and embody the message that God is in it, God is in all of it, and God's will is to redeem. This is the meaning of salvation.
Team Comments
Carlos Wilton responds: Chris, you raise the question of what the author of 1 Peter means by "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," and what difference that living hope can make for our lives today. It is a timely question for these days after Easter. Perhaps it is the question for this season.
I, for one, would recommend caution in using the Schiavo case as the basis for a sermon. This heartbreaking case has turned into a true media circus. A great many of our people have grown weary of the 24/7-news coverage of recent weeks. There is a right to privacy here for the bitterly divided family of Terri Schiavo, a right that journalists and members of Congress alike have been routinely trampling. In light of the information overload many of us are feeling, using the Schiavo case as the major theme of a sermon could be an invitation to our listeners to zone out and think about something else.
That's not to say that issues of life and death are of no interest. They are of perennial interest. I believe a sermon on the 1 Peter text could proceed with only minimal reference to the Schiavo case. Easter itself makes the topic timely.
One way of responding to the question is by investigating what the Apostles Creed says on the subject. "The resurrection of the body" is a familiar article of the creed, but it's virtually impossible to explain. The best minds in Christendom have labored for nearly twenty centuries to do so. On the face of it, the resurrection of the body seems rather simple. The earthly remains of those who have died are buried in the ground; on the day of Christ's coming, a living spirit will be restored to them, and they will rise up, to a new and purified bodily existence.
Perhaps the most literal description is this passage from 1 Thessalonians:
The Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
In this new and glorious existence, as the book of Revelation puts it:
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)
A whole host of funerary customs have been built upon scripture passages such as these: caskets to hold the body, giving to mourners the illusion of restful sleep, embalming to preserve the body from decay; concrete vaults to hold the earth itself at bay, sometimes for centuries -- to preserve the body intact, ready to be re-animated at the day of Christ's coming. Does the "living hope" of which 1 Peter speaks arise out of these funerary customs? No, not out of the customs themselves -- although the customs are a reflection of a prior hope, hope based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Powerful social customs dictate funeral practices, and most church traditions honor nearly all of them. There is nothing in scripture or church teachings to dictate, absolutely, how the body of a departed Christian must be taken care of. That's because the resurrection of the body is not affected by anything we do, physically, to the bodies of those who have died. It's entirely God's work, God's miracle.
Cremation, earth burial, donation to medical science -- it's all a matter of indifference that can be left to personal choice. This is because, at the Christian funeral, the focus is not on the condition of the body (either at the time of death or at any time thereafter) but on the power of Christ's resurrection.
Christian theologians have written some of the strangest things as they have sought to puzzle out the reality of the resurrection of the body: What about amputated limbs? Some have asked -- or sailors lost at sea? And what of the unfortunate victims of cannibalism?
Saint Augustine gets himself all wrought up over the rather obscure question of whether the resurrection body will include every part of our human bodies. He's most concerned about certain organs he considers sinful or shameful. A good look at 1 Corinthians 15, however, should have set the good doctor-of-the-church's mind to rest. In this passage, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that the resurrection body is fundamentally different -- that "the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Paul compares resurrection to the experience of a seed planted in the ground. First the seed has to die to its old nature, its seed nature, in order to take on the new form that God intends for it. The seed must first wither, then crack open and "die," before the full-grown plant can emerge, soaring up strong and green toward the heavens.
It's like the old joke that has two caterpillars munching the same leaf, side by side. Just then, a butterfly flutters overhead. The two watch it pass over in silence, then one turns to the other and says, "You'll never get me up in one of those contraptions!" Little does the caterpillar know that it will not be riding in one of those "contraptions" but rather will become one.
There is so much we do not know about the resurrection of the body. Yet it is an article of faith for us, and it therefore provides the foundation for a strong and sustaining hope.
Mary Boyd Click responds: How does the resurrection of Jesus direct and empower us to live differently? It is an honest question for genuinely searching Christians. John's account of "doubting Thomas" informs us that the paradoxes of life, the struggles of doubt and faith are best dealt with in community with others. Twice in these appearance stories, John nudges us to ask the question about community make-up, i.e., Where's Thomas? In verse 24 John states that Thomas was not with them. In verse 26 the writer points out that Thomas was with them. Salvation -- that restoration of wholeness and health of living and being -- came to Thomas only when he was in community with those who had sustained his life and new-found faith.
Death is a community buster, anytime, anywhere. The crucifixion was a community buster. The disciples could easily have splintered and taken off in different directions. The risen Lord did not search out his disciples individually. He had one-on-one conversations with Mary Magdalene (John 20) and Peter (John 21), the couple on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24), Thomas, and others, but no one was totally isolated during any encounter. So it seems no accident that the risen Christ, being concerned about his now fearful and depressed disciples told them to gather together in Galilee and there he would meet them (Matthew 28:10). Throughout his ministry, Jesus restored people to wholeness and to life within a community. He gave ten lepers a clean bill of health and they were allowed to re-enter society. He raised a widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11ff.) and she was no longer bereft of family and a means of support. He healed the centurion's son (Luke 7:1-10) when illness threatened to fragment their family. Repeatedly, Jesus' miracles express God's desire that death not separate us from one another or from our belief in and sense of God's love for us. The miracle of the resurrection is no exception.
Novelist John Updike sees the truth of the resurrection as something that sustains a community, the church.
Make no mistake; if He rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
Reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
(Collected Poems 1953-1993, "Seven Stanzas at Easter" [New York: Knopf, 1993], p. 20)
The writers of Genesis remind us that people need community. God said, "It is not good for human beings to be alone"(Genesis 2:18). Babies die if they are left alone. Humans fail to thrive if they are not touched. In short, people have to be loved in order to live. For humans not to be in community is to be like fish out of water. It is certain death with varying sights and sounds. We often fail to recognize it in kids like Jeff Weise, and that is our tragedy, not his. The good news is that the kind of despairing, frustrating, disappointing life that unfolded for Jeff Weise is not the kind of life God wants for God's children. The community life which is primary to the kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus is one in which people don't go unnoticed by others, those who know sorrow find compassionate listeners, the pain of the heart, mind, and body connects with a healing balm. This kingdom of God community is not something that is promised only for the hereafter. It is one that people of the resurrection are meant to participate in daily through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Restoring people to a new life of community with one another is the primary work of the Spirit that the risen Christ bestowed on his disciples in our Gospel Reading. When Jesus breathed the Spirit on his disciples once again we are reminded of the Genesis Spirit, ruah, the breath of God that moves over the waters and makes sense out of chaos. It is the Spirit, that same ruah, the wind that drives the waters of the Red Sea back, so that God's people are delivered from the armies of the Pharaoh. The Spirit calls judges like Samuel and prophets like Elijah to lead God's people. It is the Spirit of God that fully rested on Jesus at his baptism and flowed from his new-risen Being as he breathed upon his disciples. The work of God's Spirit has consistently been to confront the agonizing and frightening paradoxes of faith and doubt, meaning and despair, life and death. The resurrection of Jesus does not begin a new story. It makes clear, even clearer, the one we've known all along.
Recently I saw an awe-inspiring film, which I've recommended to many of my friends for Easter viewing. It's titled Monsieur Ibrahim. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. There is nothing definitively Christian in the movie, but it captures in a moving way the healing and wholeness, the salvation that is God's desire for all of humanity. The movie is about the coming together of a despairing young Jewish boy, named Moses, and a grandfatherly Arab grocer, Monsieur Ibrahim. The role of Ibrahim, a Sufi Muslim Turk, is played superbly by actor Omar Shariff. On his sixteenth birthday, the young boy Moses is bursting to grow up and into life's adventures and joys, especially sex. He lives in Paris, the city of life and light. Moses' family doesn't offer much in support of his desire to experience life fully. His mother deserted the family when he was a young child. Moses has been his father's chief cook and bottle washer ever since. When he turns sixteen he makes his own birthday cake, lights his own candle, and celebrates by himself. His depressive father loses his job and deserts him in despair, later to commit suicide. Moses is utterly alone and caught in the pain and paradoxes of life. All around him people abandon him at a time when his life urge is to start learning about girls, learning how to dance, learning about faith. Paradoxically, at the same time that so many losses are occurring in his family life, Moses is building a friendship with Monsieur Ibrahim, the grocery store owner. That friendship becomes his salvation. Readers should see Frederick J. Ruf's film review for a wonderful description of how a grocery store is the place for healing community life. One can connect to http://avalon.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No1/Reviews/monsieurIbrahim.htm. When his father dies, Ms. Ibrahim adopts Moses and teaches him how to turn his anger and resentment of his father into a love for the gift of life.
The Easter hope in this film lies in the coming together of a Jew and a Muslim as one family. It is a palpable hope that many in our culturally and religiously divided world yearn to sense, grasp, and work toward. As the risen Christ pulled Thomas back into fellowship with the others, so is his Spirit continuing to work to reconcile and restore the family of God to one another. In this year when Muslims, Jews, and Christians are killing each other around the world on a daily basis, it is nice to be reminded of Easter's claim that God in Christ aims to restore all of creation to fellowship with the divine and with one another, and that salvation begins here.
Although life inevitably surrounds many of us with absurdly painful paradoxes, our hanging on in faith is as good as the faith and hands of those we hang onto. Therefore, the kind of community life we choose is important. The church offers us an opportunity to hold hands with other people of faith in the Spirit of Christ. I believe that Jesus delivers, but it's not something I'd put on a bumper sticker, because it really does have to be discussed. He delivers us once again to our graceful and loving God and once again to one another. Our divine lover delivers us for a community life of peace and justice, one with meaningful work, meaningful loves, and meaningful mission. It is such a joy to discover the signs and promise of that kingdom this side of eternity.
George Murphy responds: I've always been fascinated by this Sunday's gospel, John's account of the appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples. One of the intriguing things about this is the way it reverses the "locked room" motif of mystery stories. In the standard form of the story, the murdered man is found in a room locked from the inside, and the detective has to figure out how the killer committed the crime and escaped. John's story flips this theme on its head. It's about life rather than death, and the man who has been unmurdered breaks into the locked room to rescue his frightened accomplices.
A critical part of the story is that the disciples have locked themselves in "for fear of the Jews." There was probably no real reason for their fear. If they'd just gone back to Galilee and kept their mouths shut, the authorities wouldn't have bothered them. But it's very easy for us to lock ourselves in, to close ourselves off from the world, for various reasons. When you're depressed, pulling the covers up over your head and hiding from the world seems like an excellent plan. I think of the men Ezekiel was shown in his vision of Jerusalem, closed off in a dark room worshiping idols (Ezekiel 8:7-13). Or there's Solzhenitsyn's brilliant portrayal of Stalin in his night office in the Kremlin (in the chapter "Old Age" in The First Circle [Bantam, 1969]). The elderly dictator pondered his triumphs, still thinks of becoming emperor of the world, and can't let go of the hope that somehow he can live forever. The concluding sentence of the chapter is, "Death had already made its nest in him, and he refused to believe it."
The whole human predicament is like that -- think of Augustine's description of original sin as a state of being curvatus in se, closed in upon the self. In that state we may be hopeless or we may have illusory hopes, but real hope is absent.
Our readings of course announce the genuine "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). It's a hope that Jesus announces when he says "Peace be with you," and of which he invites the disciples to become active participants by giving them the authority to forgive sins. If Christ really is risen, then in an important sense nothing in life or death is completely hopeless. Everything then depends on how seriously we can take this message that "Jesus is risen."
Who is supposed to be risen is the first question to ask. Prepare for the strange looks when you ask that question in church -- it's Jesus, of course. But the way in which the resurrection is often discussed doesn't make that obvious. Sometimes Easter is treated as if its message were some kind of general truth that people can survive death, and at worst as a kind of strange "believe it or not" story. And the message that "someone is risen" would not necessarily be good news. If the message were that the emperor Nero had risen (as rumors in the late first century said, rumors that may have contributed to some of the imagery of revelation), it would have been bad news. But the one whom the gospel proclaims as risen is the one who "showed them his hands and his side," the one who died because of his faithfulness to God and his message of forgiveness. If he is risen, then there is hope that his life and message are what the future of creation will be like.
What is risen? At first this question seems redundant: We just said that it was Jesus. But is it in fact Jesus in his full bodily reality? We may have different ways of understanding human nature and can talk about the human soul, or spirit, or mind, in addition to our bodily aspect, but the one undeniable fact is that we are bodily entities. We aren't ourselves without bodies -- and, in fact, without our bodily relationships with the rest of the physical world. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:44 that it will be raised a "spiritual body," a body fully in the right relationship with God. It is a transformed body -- transformed in ways we can only guess at -- yet a body.
It's rather odd that some Christians who consider themselves very down-to-earth people and who claim to accept the idea that science can explain what goes on in the world in terms of the interactions of matter nevertheless think that it's satisfactory to speak of Easter as if it had to do with some kind of disembodied "spiritual" reality. If Jesus -- and not just some ghost of Jesus, or idea about Jesus -- has been raised, then we have to talk somehow about the resurrection of the body that hung on the cross and was placed in the tomb. And if we have to cross our fingers when we say that we believe in "the resurrection of the body" then there's considerable dissonance between the kind of hope we have and the way we live our lives in the world now.
But how can Jesus be risen? And, to repeat the questions Paul imagined being posed, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" (1 Corinthians 15:35). The idea of resurrection has been challenged from the very beginning: At Athens "some scoffed" when Paul spoke about "the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 17:32). Since the rise of modern science the challenges have been particularly severe. Resurrection of the body seems to go against almost everything that we think we understand about the world.
It's interesting to see how Paul responds to the question, "How are the dead raised?" The arguments he presents can't be considered "proofs" of resurrection. They are rather in the nature of analogies -- the different kinds of flesh of living things on earth, the differences between celestial and terrestrial bodies, and the way seeds grow into plants. What he is doing is to use features of the world as it was understood in his time to make it plausible that the dead could be raised. Since then Christians have used other examples -- the phoenix (which the ancients thought of as a real bird, not a myth) or the transition from caterpillar to butterfly.
None of these are very compelling analogies for modern scientific minds, but there are others that are better today. Virtual reality, cloning, and even time travel are ideas that have gotten serious scientific attention and which can be used to construct analogies -- again not proofs -- to show that the idea of bodily resurrection should not be rejected out of hand. I discussed the application of these ideas in a chapter titled "Hints from Science for Eschatology -- and Vice Versa" in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (ed.), The Last Things (Eerdmans, 2002).
There are also analogies from other fields. In mathematics the curve called the logarithmic spiral reproduces itself under various transformations. The mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (+1705) had this curve carved on his tombstone with the inscription eadem mutato resurgo, "I arise the same though changed" (cf. Dirk J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics [Dover, 1948], p. 165).
A recent book by N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003) is a magisterial work of over 800 pages on the subject. Another very good treatment is Gerald O'Collins, Jesus Risen (Paulist, 1987). The latter book presents not only arguments for the truth of the resurrection but also discussions of the ways in which the resurrection functions in the work of several prominent theologians of the twentieth century and its implications for important areas of doctrine.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton:
Despite all the changes that have occurred in Russia, tourists can still go to Red Square and see a peculiar sight. To see it, they must venture behind the massive stone walls of an imposing building that squats in the very shadow of the familiar onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral.
Enter this hulking stone monument and you are ushered into a great hall. At its very center is a rectangular box, with a cover of pure crystal. If you look through the crystal cover, you will gaze upon the embalmed body of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to the world as Lenin.
For many decades, Lenin's tomb has been an obligatory destination for any Russian visiting Moscow for the first time. The lines of pilgrims once stretched for blocks, each visitor waiting patiently to glimpse the pallid, waxy face of the founder of Russian communism, his eyelids closed in death. Yet the long lines are no longer there. Something has changed.
During the season of Easter, our thoughts, too, turn to a tomb. Yet the tomb we have on our minds is different. In this tomb, there is no carefully embalmed body, hermetically sealed beneath a crystal cover. The stone that once sealed the doorway is rolled away. The body is nowhere to be found.
***
Not what, but WHOM, I do believe,
That, in my darkest hour of need,
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give; --
Not what, but WHOM!
For Christ is more than all the creeds,
And His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive.
-- John Oxenham, from his poem, "Credo"
***
I don't care what they say with their mouths -- everybody knows that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even stars ... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.
-- Thornton Wilder, from the play, "Our Town"
***
There once was a Lutheran minister from the Midwest who told the story of visiting one of his elderly parishioners in the hospital. Harold was a farmer; he had tilled the land for over fifty-five years. He'd been married the same amount of time, and in all those years he and his wife Maggie had never spent a night apart until now. Day after day she kept vigil outside the intensive-care unit, waiting for the five minutes per hour she was allowed to visit.
Everyone knew Harold wasn't going home again. The doctors did not, in fact, expect him to live out the night. And so to Harold and Maggie's pastor had fallen the task of encouraging her to say goodbye and go home, for she was exhausted, and truly there was nothing more she could do.
"I can't go," she replied, staring wearily into space.
Just then the nurse came, and told them it was time for her next five minutes. So she and the pastor donned the obligatory surgical masks and gowns and gloves, and went to Harold's bedside. He didn't seem to recognize the green-shrouded figures at first -- at least not until Maggie violated hospital protocol and pushed her mask aside, kissing him on the cheek. The pastor offered a prayer out loud, but all the time Maggie was whispering to her husband, talking to him like she belonged there -- which she did.
Later, outside in the hallway, the pastor noticed Maggie was weeping. "What did you say to Harold, back there?" he asked.
"I told him I loved him and that I would stay with him."
"You know he's very ill. He may not be with us in the morning."
"I know," she said. "He knows it too. He's afraid, a little; I can tell by the way he squeezes my hand. But it's all right. I told him it will be Easter in the morning."
The pastor was taken aback. It was November. Had Maggie become confused, in her exhaustion and her grief? "You know, it's not really Easter," he pointed out.
"I know, Pastor," she said patiently. "But it is for us. We've celebrated Easter together all our years. Now, for Harold and me, tomorrow is our Easter."
***
The power of God is now and has always been the power to raise us from the dead. Period. It is not about us. It is about God. Our only role is to stick our feet straight up in the air and admit that without God we might as well be put to bed with a shovel. Now that is a message that can empty a church out fast.
-- Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain
***
[T]here really is no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament. Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as a fact. Christ is risen! In fact, the very existence of the New Testament itself proclaims it. Unless something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning, there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity.
-- Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
***
When the writer of Revelation spoke of the coming of the day of shalom, he did not say that on that day we would live at peace with death. He said that on that day "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
-- Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
***
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things -- the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on -- will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen
***
Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future and faith is the courage to dance to its tune today.
-- Bishop Wayne Weissenbuhler
From Chris Ewing:
... But now Jesus, dead and gone, is among us. No entrance, no explanation, no introduction, just here. We recognize him in the hands. His breath mingles with our own breathing, his spirit with our spirit, and in the mingling spirits, a great power.
He speaks: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive the sins of any, they are not forgiven."
Imagine that power. But don't imagine it as if it were the power of judgment. Don't imagine the risen Christ authorizing us to judge sins and hand down verdicts ("You! Your sins are forgiven. You! Your sins are retained. By Christ I have the power to decide your everlasting fate.")
No, don't imagine that. What is being given is the power of forgiveness. Imagine being given the power to forgive. Or, better, imagine it as if it were the power to love. See yourself looking down into the sleeping face of a child, one for whom you would give life itself. Now hear the voice say, "If you love this child, she is loved. If you do not love her, she is not loved." You choose. You have the power.
Now imagine looking into the awakened face of your worst enemy and hearing the same voice: "If you love him, he is loved. If you do not love him, he is not loved." You choose. You have the power.
This is the power that entered the locked room. Here is the great liberation that forgiveness brings; the liberation from hatred, from shame and from vengeance. Never again will we have to carry the delusional responsibility of getting angry on God's behalf. This presence and its power of forgiveness has unlocked something and changed everything. ...
-- Rev. Peter Short (present Moderator of the United Church of Canada), "When Christ Sets us Free," United Church Observer, March 2005, pp. 22-23
***
A Prayer
Lord Christ, we give thanks, that even when we are locked away, you come and stand in our midst. How holy and gracious you are, gentle in your power to save, and how marvelous is your persistent love!
When our love has become locked away by years of disappointment or sorrow, you come and stand with us, reassuring us that if we take the risk of loving deeply again, we shall survive, even if we be hurt again. How holy and gracious you are!
When the failings of others hem us in, and the evident sin of the world makes us cynical, angry or ready to give up, you come and stand with us. You remind us God is dealing with sin through the power of your Cross, Lord Christ. How holy and gracious you are!
When our hope has gone underground in the face of loss, and grief buries our spirits, you come and stand with us, risen from the now-empty tomb. You show us that the power of death is empty and that death itself does not hold ultimate sway. How holy and gracious you are!
When our doors are locked for fear of the laughter of the sophisticated or the ridicule of those who think they need no faith, you come and stand with us. You urge us to be faithful to your way of trust and sacrifice. You promise you will be with us always. How holy and gracious you are!
We know there are others who hide behind doors locked by fear, disappointment, anger, hopelessness, and grief. Stand with them and bring them your peace.
Bring your world to rise up with you, Lord Christ. Strengthen us for service; steel us to endure calamity and trial for your sake; soften us to care for those whose needs press upon us. Grant us the fullness of your peace. Hear us as we raise to you our needs as children to a loving mother. (silence)
We complete our prayers with the words you taught: Our Father....
-- Rod Sykes in Gathering, Lent/Easter/Pentecost 1997, p. 21
***
A New Creed
We are not alone,
we live in God's world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
-- The United Church of Canada, General Council 1968, alt. 1998
***
The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline and make the sacrifice.
-- Henry Knox Sherrill
Worship Resources
By Julia Ross Strope
Theme: The empty tomb and the living Christ give us insight and hope for hospitable living amid a cynical and vulgar culture.
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on Psalm 16)
Leader: How wonderful are God's gifts to us!
People: During the day and at night, God is present; nothing can shake our awareness of Divine presence.
Leader: God shows us the path that leads to life.
People: God's presence fills us with joy.
Leader: How excellent are God's faithful people!
PRAYER OF ADORATION (based on Psalm 16 and Acts 2:28)
Eternal God,
You are all we have and you give us all we need.
With your presence, we are protected from the power of death.
In this hour, we sing and pray our gratitude;
In silence and with words, we seek your affirmation.
Inspire us to walk the paths that lead to life! Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"Because You Live, O Christ." Tune: VRUECHTEN
"Alleluia, Alleluia! Give Thanks." Tune: ALLELUIA NO. 1
"Celebrate With Joy And Singing." Tune: EVELYN CHAPEL
"Christ Is Alive!" Tune: TRURO
Psalm 16: "When In The Night I Meditate." Tune: ST. FLAVIAN
CALL TO CONFESSION
Leader: The high point of the year has come: Christ lives!
As we quiet our minds, be aware that Christ invites you to be free from deadness.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Living God,
You work miracles all around us. Open our eyes so we can see!
You place before us paths of life. Open our hearts so we can follow them.
You make us new Beings -- and where there is New Being, there is resurrection.
Grasp us with this truth so we may be free from guilt and shame. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE (based on 1 Peter 1:3-9)
Thanks to God for mercy and for new life! We have every reason to be full of hope. Be glad for God's love and power!
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE
"Come, Ye Faithful, Raise The Strain," Stanza 2. Tune: ST. KEVIN
'Tis the spring of souls today; Christ hath burst his prison,
And from three days' sleep in death as a sun hath risen.
Now rejoice, Jerusalem, and with true affection
Welcome in unwearied strains Jesus' resurrection!
A CONTEMPORARY AFFIRMATION (unison; based on 1 Peter 1:3-10)
In Jesus of Nazareth, we see the living God.
In the birth, teachings and death of Jesus, we see the wisdom of God.
In the resurrection, we experience renewed life.
With the Christ, we are filled with hope for a life full of meaning.
Thanks be to God for divine gifts of life and peace.
Alleluia!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT
Money and talents make the proclamation of God's love possible on this street corner. Let us share our skills and our monies.
DOXOLOGY
"The Day Of Resurrection!" Stanza 3. Tune: LANCASHIRE
Now let the heaven be joyful, let the earth the song begin.
Let the round world keep triumph and all that is therein;
Let all things seen and unseen their notes of gladness blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen, our joy that hath no end.
or
"Jesus Christ Is Risen Today," Stanza 4. Tune: EASTER HYMN
Sing we to our God above, Alleluia!
Praise eternal as God's love; Alleluia!
Praise our God, ye heavenly hosts, Alleluia!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Alleluia!
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
No more we doubt you, gracious God!
Life is full and satisfying with your loving presence.
Here we offer our whole selves and our resources.
Through us, make this world a hospitable home for all creatures. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
God of the living and the dead,
Our world seems full of death even while we celebrate new life. Reach into grieving homes and comfort those who experience loss. Cross boundaries and bring tribes to live in peace side by side. Banish philosophies that set themselves as superior to others. Guard the children of this nation and all nations from evil. Come to merchants and designers with merchandise and stories of grace. Come to young people with alternatives to destructive rituals. Restore life to places where death stalks.
God of new life,
Thank you for spring and the promise of beauty and crops and harvests. Thank you for hope of better days and nights. Thank you for the empty tomb and the living Christ. Expand our faith so that our behaviors are consistent with our words, our ethics in keeping with the Sermon on the Mount and our relationships honest.
God of then and now,
Thank you for this universe and the intricacies of its systems. Our planet home is fragile and sturdy. Work through us to protect its water, air, and soil. Halt human abuse of the environment.
God of today,
Remember that we are made of clay. Remember that we are prone to forgetfulness. Remember that we stumble and fall. Give us insight to endure the ecstasies that surprise us; give us strength to heal from the aches and pains that torment us. Touch us with fresh grace and elastic hope. Enthuse us with your Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Amen.
BENEDICTION/CHARGE (based on 1 Peter 1)
Our service here is ended.
Our service to God continues beyond these walls.
Go filled with living hope;
Look forward to blessings;
Rejoice or weep with all who turn to you;
Let your faith authentically lead to right decisions.
May God's grace and peace be yours in full measure! Amen.
A Children's Sermon
Scars tell a story
Object: scars -- your scars and the children's scars
Based on John 20:19-31
Good morning, boys and girls. This morning we read from the Bible about a special meeting between Jesus, who had been resurrected a week earlier, and his disciples. All of the disciples believed the resurrection except Thomas, who had not been in the room when Jesus met with the disciples a week earlier. Thomas had heard about it but didn't believe. He said that unless he saw for himself the wounds in the hands and side of Jesus, he would not believe.
Have you ever had a wound? (let them answer) Do you have any scars? (let them answer) I have a scar on my arm and one on my face. Can you see my scars? (let them answer) Let me see your scars. A lot of people have scars from when they fell or cut themselves. Tell me how you got your scar. (let the children talk about their scars)
Thomas wanted to see the scars on Jesus' body. He knew that Jesus had been crucified with nails and a spear. Someone who was pretending to be Jesus would not have those scars, and Thomas thought that the other disciples had been fooled by a pretender. How could a person have been crucified with nails driven though his hands and a spear thrown through his side still be living? Thomas wanted to see the scars.
If you told me you had fallen off of your bike and landed on your face and scraped your knees and hands, would you have scars? If you did not have any scars from your bike wreck, I would think you were telling me a story.
Thomas came to the room where all of the other disciples were staying. They did not know when Jesus was coming again, but the other disciples believed Jesus was resurrected. All at once, before they even noticed it, there was Jesus standing in front of them. They didn't hear the door open. He was just there. When Jesus saw Thomas, he invited him to put his fingers in the wounds on his hands and side. Thomas almost fainted. There were the marks of the nails and the spear. They looked awful but Jesus was alive, very much alive, and he wanted Thomas to believe.
Thomas fell down on his knees and worshiped Jesus. Thomas said, "My Lord and my God." The scars convinced him, and he never doubted again.
Maybe the next time you take a look at one of your scars you will remember the day that Thomas saw the scars of Jesus and believed in him as his God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, April 3, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802
