Really Believing In The Resurrection
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Apparently the early New Testament followers had difficulty believing in the resurrection. Perhaps we might also, if Jesus walked into our midst and started talking with us. Then again, maybe we wouldn't. At least we can say, "If Jesus walked up to me, grave clothes dangling from his arms, and wounds all over his body, I think I'd have a pretty good idea who he was." Truth via our senses -- sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell -- sensory reality as the only truth -- would make it clear with whom we were dealing.
The resurrection events that Luke describes provoke no such confidence. Today, in Luke's story the dismal, deflated disciples on the Emmaus Road, a presence joins them and says, "Peace be with you." Peace is not something they feel in their grief over the crucified Jesus. Therefore, Jesus identifies himself and shows them his wounds. Their reaction is both joy and disbelief, one of those "too good to be true" experiences. Not bothering to straighten them out about his risen status, Jesus tells them all that has happened to him the last few days. Then he calls them to a life of discipleship: "You are my witnesses...." What is so fascinating about this story is that Jesus never takes the time to make certain the disciples get the resurrection right. He sends them off on a mission with rather flimsy credentials.
Our Passion To Reduce The Gospel
To Words And Correct Ideas
We live in a day when much of the church seems bent on centering on correct words and right ideas. Some say it is the business of the church to enable people to "talk Christian." There are both liberal and conservative forms of this, but they are quite similar: Being a Christian means acquiring a Christian vocabulary and grammar. Other parts of the church give much time to teaching what they consider correct ideas and understandings of major Christian doctrines found in scripture. Watching many mega-churches at worship shows a full congregation, open Bibles on their laps, with handy pen or pencil highlighting or underlining important ideas the preacher tells them they need to remember.
We do not need to decry serious understanding of the biblical literature, nor of its saving doctrines. Samuel Miller, late Dean of Harvard Divinity School, said that too many divinity students and pastors ignore the claim of serious intellectual study. They hope in bashing around the campus or parish they might do some good merely "by their good intentions." We humans have a head as well as a heart. While there is a significant difference between a liberal and conservative intellectual effort, neither can shun it. Finally, the gospel does not hang upon correct words and ideas.
Jesus did not say that words and ideas are unimportant, but he did charge those disciples to go out into the world and proclaim the resurrection. There would be a world there that had a hunger to hear their message, for the resurrection drives to the heart of human longing -- is living goodness the ultimate truth of things? Mission overtakes intellectual activity.
Don't Narrow The Resurrection To Jesus
Some years ago, British Christian H. A. Williams wrote a little book he titled, True Resurrection. Williams said we have too narrow an understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. The New Testament witness to the resurrection of Jesus is not about Jesus alone. Instead, Jesus is what Albert North Whitehead called, the "chief exemplification" of the resurrection. By this, both Williams and Whitehead would say that Jesus "exemplifies" something at the heart of all reality -- life continually rising from death. Jesus' resurrection simply makes this truth clear.
There are many in any congregation who can be called "troubled skeptics." They are often the mainstays of the congregation, serving on many boards and committees, and holding down their pew every Sunday morning. But there is something that they hide from others, and often from themselves. They are troubled in understanding traditional Christian doctrines and the meaning of scripture. They enjoy their church and they work hard for it. They posses a critical, modern worldview, making any unnuanced approach to doctrine and scriptures difficult. They have not been able to bring the ancient world of scripture and doctrine and their modern world together. They become "closeted" by this spiritual chasm. They long for help from the pulpit and study groups, but they often find these wanting. Many pastors could do this, but they are fearful that to do this would involve them in uncomfortable and dangerous ways.
But the churches of the modern world could help. We could start with this central doctrine of the resurrection. We could say that Jesus' resurrection calls us to understand that this is a resurrecting universe. Time and again those great Greek virtues -- goodness, truth, and beauty -- seem destroyed in the flow of history. Then somehow, they rise up again with renewed power and persuasiveness. All the great values of Western civilization were in peril when the Nazi's came to power in Germany in 1933. Slowly, the great lights of tolerance, of the free flow of ideas, of independent scientific research, and of a church uninhibited by the state were snuffed out. Jews, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped, and critics of the state -- were shipped out to the concentration camps and those horrible ovens. Many never returned.
But the things that seemed to be given over to death from 1933 to 1945 have returned in Germany. Today Germany is a strong European democracy, taking its place in the emerging unification of Europe. Through Germany's resurrection it seems possible that much of the destructive history that has plagued Europe might be a thing of the past.
This larger view of the resurrection can be seen on the personal level, too. Fate and decision to a death short of physical death drive some of you. You may have been near spiritual and emotional death after a great loss. Then after some healing has taken place you have rejoined life and are now working to eliminate whatever caused your great loss. Others of you have been your own executioners. You have allowed yourselves to be given over to a destructive lifestyle of alcohol, drugs, or that slower death -- making money. At some point it occurred to you that you were creating your own self-destruction. You stood up out of your death and began to live once more. This is resurrection, too. You are the ones who really believe in the resurrection.
The Resurrection Is A Call To Witness
We have taken a few knocks at head trip religion, so what follows is no surprise. The resurrection of Jesus, calling us to notice the power of new life all around us, is not something to be believed in its narrower form. The resurrection is not a matter of believing it in a literal manner. Millions of Christians are stuck with this narrower form of the resurrection's meaning. They think all that is required is for them to say: "Yes, I believe Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to his disciples." But this is no more a life truth than to say, "I believe that General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in April, 1965." This costs us nothing to believe this. We are not asked to redirect our lives in relation to this historical truth. There is nothing exciting or heroic in affirming this unless the professor asks it on a midterm.
The wider form of the resurrection truth is not that it happened. The wider form implies that the powers of life and goodness are stronger than the powers of defeat and death. To believe in the resurrection in this wider or larger form, has exuberance and vitality, pulling our lives into ventures of caring and pain, yielding the strange blessing of Jesus' peace.
For many in our world today, they have no belief in anything like this. Life is a losing struggle against disappointment, destruction, and death. None of the narrower forms of Christian claims are going to help them. They don't need correct language or words. They need the presence of people who know the resurrection sufficiently to care for those damned by the grimness of life. A sick, lonely woman died in her apartment. When the emergency folks arrived, they found her diary. On each page she had written, "No one called today." The resurrection in its wider claim calls us for such caring.
Others of us have the knack of dealing with structures and systems beyond individual caring. Here the claim of the resurrection is to give oneself to reforming and changing the structures and systems under which we live. The result can be fewer lonely and uncared for, fewer with no medical attention, fewer without a decent job, fewer students in inferior schools, fewer abused children, fewer abused mates, fewer suffering rejection because of sexual orientation, and fewer suffering any sort of discrimination.
This is what really believing in the resurrection is all about.
The resurrection events that Luke describes provoke no such confidence. Today, in Luke's story the dismal, deflated disciples on the Emmaus Road, a presence joins them and says, "Peace be with you." Peace is not something they feel in their grief over the crucified Jesus. Therefore, Jesus identifies himself and shows them his wounds. Their reaction is both joy and disbelief, one of those "too good to be true" experiences. Not bothering to straighten them out about his risen status, Jesus tells them all that has happened to him the last few days. Then he calls them to a life of discipleship: "You are my witnesses...." What is so fascinating about this story is that Jesus never takes the time to make certain the disciples get the resurrection right. He sends them off on a mission with rather flimsy credentials.
Our Passion To Reduce The Gospel
To Words And Correct Ideas
We live in a day when much of the church seems bent on centering on correct words and right ideas. Some say it is the business of the church to enable people to "talk Christian." There are both liberal and conservative forms of this, but they are quite similar: Being a Christian means acquiring a Christian vocabulary and grammar. Other parts of the church give much time to teaching what they consider correct ideas and understandings of major Christian doctrines found in scripture. Watching many mega-churches at worship shows a full congregation, open Bibles on their laps, with handy pen or pencil highlighting or underlining important ideas the preacher tells them they need to remember.
We do not need to decry serious understanding of the biblical literature, nor of its saving doctrines. Samuel Miller, late Dean of Harvard Divinity School, said that too many divinity students and pastors ignore the claim of serious intellectual study. They hope in bashing around the campus or parish they might do some good merely "by their good intentions." We humans have a head as well as a heart. While there is a significant difference between a liberal and conservative intellectual effort, neither can shun it. Finally, the gospel does not hang upon correct words and ideas.
Jesus did not say that words and ideas are unimportant, but he did charge those disciples to go out into the world and proclaim the resurrection. There would be a world there that had a hunger to hear their message, for the resurrection drives to the heart of human longing -- is living goodness the ultimate truth of things? Mission overtakes intellectual activity.
Don't Narrow The Resurrection To Jesus
Some years ago, British Christian H. A. Williams wrote a little book he titled, True Resurrection. Williams said we have too narrow an understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. The New Testament witness to the resurrection of Jesus is not about Jesus alone. Instead, Jesus is what Albert North Whitehead called, the "chief exemplification" of the resurrection. By this, both Williams and Whitehead would say that Jesus "exemplifies" something at the heart of all reality -- life continually rising from death. Jesus' resurrection simply makes this truth clear.
There are many in any congregation who can be called "troubled skeptics." They are often the mainstays of the congregation, serving on many boards and committees, and holding down their pew every Sunday morning. But there is something that they hide from others, and often from themselves. They are troubled in understanding traditional Christian doctrines and the meaning of scripture. They enjoy their church and they work hard for it. They posses a critical, modern worldview, making any unnuanced approach to doctrine and scriptures difficult. They have not been able to bring the ancient world of scripture and doctrine and their modern world together. They become "closeted" by this spiritual chasm. They long for help from the pulpit and study groups, but they often find these wanting. Many pastors could do this, but they are fearful that to do this would involve them in uncomfortable and dangerous ways.
But the churches of the modern world could help. We could start with this central doctrine of the resurrection. We could say that Jesus' resurrection calls us to understand that this is a resurrecting universe. Time and again those great Greek virtues -- goodness, truth, and beauty -- seem destroyed in the flow of history. Then somehow, they rise up again with renewed power and persuasiveness. All the great values of Western civilization were in peril when the Nazi's came to power in Germany in 1933. Slowly, the great lights of tolerance, of the free flow of ideas, of independent scientific research, and of a church uninhibited by the state were snuffed out. Jews, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped, and critics of the state -- were shipped out to the concentration camps and those horrible ovens. Many never returned.
But the things that seemed to be given over to death from 1933 to 1945 have returned in Germany. Today Germany is a strong European democracy, taking its place in the emerging unification of Europe. Through Germany's resurrection it seems possible that much of the destructive history that has plagued Europe might be a thing of the past.
This larger view of the resurrection can be seen on the personal level, too. Fate and decision to a death short of physical death drive some of you. You may have been near spiritual and emotional death after a great loss. Then after some healing has taken place you have rejoined life and are now working to eliminate whatever caused your great loss. Others of you have been your own executioners. You have allowed yourselves to be given over to a destructive lifestyle of alcohol, drugs, or that slower death -- making money. At some point it occurred to you that you were creating your own self-destruction. You stood up out of your death and began to live once more. This is resurrection, too. You are the ones who really believe in the resurrection.
The Resurrection Is A Call To Witness
We have taken a few knocks at head trip religion, so what follows is no surprise. The resurrection of Jesus, calling us to notice the power of new life all around us, is not something to be believed in its narrower form. The resurrection is not a matter of believing it in a literal manner. Millions of Christians are stuck with this narrower form of the resurrection's meaning. They think all that is required is for them to say: "Yes, I believe Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to his disciples." But this is no more a life truth than to say, "I believe that General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in April, 1965." This costs us nothing to believe this. We are not asked to redirect our lives in relation to this historical truth. There is nothing exciting or heroic in affirming this unless the professor asks it on a midterm.
The wider form of the resurrection truth is not that it happened. The wider form implies that the powers of life and goodness are stronger than the powers of defeat and death. To believe in the resurrection in this wider or larger form, has exuberance and vitality, pulling our lives into ventures of caring and pain, yielding the strange blessing of Jesus' peace.
For many in our world today, they have no belief in anything like this. Life is a losing struggle against disappointment, destruction, and death. None of the narrower forms of Christian claims are going to help them. They don't need correct language or words. They need the presence of people who know the resurrection sufficiently to care for those damned by the grimness of life. A sick, lonely woman died in her apartment. When the emergency folks arrived, they found her diary. On each page she had written, "No one called today." The resurrection in its wider claim calls us for such caring.
Others of us have the knack of dealing with structures and systems beyond individual caring. Here the claim of the resurrection is to give oneself to reforming and changing the structures and systems under which we live. The result can be fewer lonely and uncared for, fewer with no medical attention, fewer without a decent job, fewer students in inferior schools, fewer abused children, fewer abused mates, fewer suffering rejection because of sexual orientation, and fewer suffering any sort of discrimination.
This is what really believing in the resurrection is all about.
