Easter: The Cross, the Resurrection, What Does It Mean?

I am blessed beyond measure to have friends like the Rev. Debra Avery, the Rev. Dr. Kirk Jeffery, and Pastor Terry Ramone Smith. As you can see in the following sermon, the conversation with them this past Friday was crucial to the writing of this sermon.

Some of the words in this sermon are taken from an earlier sermon. Many are Kirk and Deb and Terry's words, and the words of many other scholars and friends I am blessed to learn from every day.

The comment about Christ's death being an act of solidarity with victims is from Liberation Theology.

And because I like it, here's some music for your read:

MATTHEW 28:1-10

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. Easy, because, all too often, it’s just words, isn’t it? We are Resurrection people, after all. We live in this reality, the reality that says Jesus “is,” not Jesus “was.” We are Resurrection people. We associate springtime with resurrection because it’s an integral part of our vocabulary.

We forget, all too easily, that there was a time when, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “only place springtime happen[ed]… [was] on the graves, not in them.”

The women weren’t going to the tomb that morning to check the status of the body. They were going to the tomb to grieve. This was the place where Mary Magdalene could get closest to the one person who had looked on her as if she were human, as if she were valuable, as if she, a woman, were equal. At least there, in the twilight before dawn, she could be close to him again, just on the other side of a stone, close enough to touch, really. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Do you see how it was? No one was thinking about Resurrection, not because of a lack of faith or because Jesus hadn’t told them again and again, but because it made no sense, it was dancing to architecture, it was painting with math, completely beyond comprehension.

Jesus was dead. End of story. All those years, all those miles traveled, the stories and parables and healings and dangers and triumphs and evenings in a group around a fire, everything, all of it, gone.

So Mary Magdalene walked with “the other Mary” toward the tomb in the darkness. But it wouldn’t be dark for long.

One of the things that is most interesting to me in the accounts of the Resurrection is that each Gospel account is different. Our reading this morning is dramatic: a mighty earthquake, big, bad guards fainting in terror, and an angel relaxing on a tombstone. The Marys see Jesus as they return to tell the disciples what has happened.

Mark's Gospel is (of course) brief; this time the other Mary is identified as the mother of James, and Salome is with them. No earthquake in Mark, they find the stone already rolled away. And instead of being told they saw an angel, they meet a young man robed in white. Mark's Gospel appears to end with the women telling no one.

Luke tells us that it was a whole group of women that went to the tomb. Again, the stone was already rolled back, and the tomb was completely empty until two men in glowing clothes appeared to announce the Resurrection. The women run back and tell the disciples, who don't believe them. Peter goes and checks it out, finds the body missing, and doesn't get it.

In John's Gospel, Mary Magdalen is alone. The stone is already moved, the body missing, and she thinks the risen Christ is the gardener.

Let me ask you something this morning: what does it mean to be Resurrection people?

Judging from the Gospel accounts, it doesn't mean we get the story right every time. The writers who tells us about the most important thing that has ever happened, the central event in all of human history, can't agree on the details.

This is true of the Cross as well. The Gospels tell the same story quite differently. The main points, of course, quite agree; it's the details that are fuzzy.

So being Resurrection People doesn't mean we agree all the time.

I had a conversation this past Friday with some friends: The Reverend Doctor Kirk Jeffery, an Episcopal priest; the Reverend Debra Avery, a Presbyterian pastor, and Pastor Terry Smith, who operates The Van Atlanta, a homeless ministry. Since it was Good Friday, the subject was the Atonement: why did Jesus die on the cross?

Please understand: we Christians all agree that Jesus died on the cross, and that the purpose of his sacrifice was to reconcile humanity to our loving Creator. Where we get fuzzy is in trying to articulate exactly how that happens. Is it Penal Substitutionary Atonement, is it Ransom Atonement, was the Cross an avoidable tragedy that God redeemed? Is it something else?

What I took away from that conversation was not a clarified comprehension of Atonement, and that's OK, that ain't what I was after. What I learned from that conversation, and from reading the Gospel accounts of the Cross and the Empty Tomb is that we see different things, we hear different things, we believe different things not because some of us are right and some of us are wrong... but because God meets us at the point of our deepest need and directly addresses that need.

We are Resurrection people, but we live in a place that, all too often, feels much more like that dark path through the cemetery than anything else.

How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. And how hard it is to make those words more than just that – words.

Perhaps there is a purpose to the Gospel writers varying so widely on the details surrounding the Resurrection: was it an angel, was it a man in white or was it two people in white? Was Mary Magdalene alone, with one other woman, with two other women, or a group of women? Did they tell no one, did they tell the disciples to go to Galilee, did Peter run to the tomb alone, did John run with him? Did Jesus appear to no one, did he appear to everyone at once, did he appear to the two Marys?

Perhaps there is a purpose to the fact that for two millenia, we Christians have struggled to explain what the Cross means: did Jesus take our place on a cross that we each, individually, deserve to bear? Did Jesus pay a ransom for our souls in his blood? Was Jesus' death an act of solidarity with all victims of death – all of humanity?

I think that the answer for all of these questions, all of them, is “yes.” The Cross and the Resurrection were, indeed, corporate acts, events intended for the salvation of everyone... but the Cross and the Resurrection were at the same time intimate, personal, individual.

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning, in part because it serves as a point of reference, a reminder of the fact that, and I am quoting Romans 5:8, “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

God has met us at the point of our deepest need - “while we were yet sinners” - and has specifically met that need.

The Cross, the Resurrection, and all of the questions and interpretations and scholarship and discussion surrounding these central events of human history are a reminder that we live in what the Arabic-speaking people call “al-fedjr,” the twilight that is just before the dawn. It's dark, we cannot see clearly... we see that the stone is rolled away, that the tomb is empty, and maybe we don't exactly know why... but because we really are Resurrection people, we know that someday the dawn will break.

Someday we will see the Risen Lord, and he will call us by name.

Yet...

I am indebted to the writings of Scott Shauf, The Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton, and to my dear friends Terry Ramone Smith and Kirk Jeffery for guidance in writing the sermon.

The sermon doesn't really end, I'm afraid. It made the most sense to simply segue to the Words of Institution.

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. But someone has testified somewhere, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet." Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you."

This is the Word of the Lord.

When I was young, I attended a large Presbyterian church, and one Sunday, as a way (I think) of illustrating blindness, I was blindfolded and led by a couple of youth leaders around this church.

Now, this was a long time ago, so I don’t recall much of the context or conversation, but I remember the youth leaders asking me to guess where I was at different points. I honestly had no idea; even today I have no internal compass and the world’s worst sense of direction, so the moment the blindfold was on I was completely lost, completely dependent on the hands leading me around the building – up stairs and through rooms and around corners, it seemed we walked for miles… and when at long last they took the blindfold off, I was standing on a rooftop patio, the buildings of downtown soaring above me, the sky bluer than I had ever seen it, traffic noises echoing through the air… and while the journey to the rooftop patio had seemed endless, my stroll back to the Sunday school room was short and sweet.

This is the mental image I get when I read the first couple of verses of our Lectionary today. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”

Here’s what I am getting at: There was nothing at all functionally wrong with the old ways. The lines of communication were open; humankind communicated with our Creator through worship and prayer and sacrifice, and God communicated with humankind through prophets. For all of humankind’s mistakes, all the fits and starts and getting off track and crashing and burning, it is important to note that the comparison that the writer of this letter to the Hebrews is making is not between bad and good.

One of the mistakes I have made in the past is to view Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as a kind of cosmic “Plan B:” God saw that the whole system of laws and sacrifices wasn’t working, and decided to send Jesus to be one big final sacrifice instead. You know: God’s team is losing, and none of the plays are working, so God calls Jesus off the bench to go in and make his play to win the game (maybe it would have been a “Hail Mary” pass?)…

No, we aren’t looking at a bad system versus a good system. The comparison here is between the merely good, and the magnificent.

When I was blindfolded and led around through the corridors of the church, the youth leaders who guided me, one on each arm, took their task very seriously, never letting me stumble or strike a doorframe, never letting me wander off on my own. The system was good, it worked. But it is also true that there was a better way for me to get around that church: removing the blindfold, that barrier that kept me from seeing, and using my own eyes to guide me!

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, the prophets who God speaks through go to great lengths to make sure that God’s message is faithfully conveyed – they take their job very seriously, often leaving their homes and livelihoods, journeying great distances, risking – and very often suffering – death at the hands of those God has called them to minister to.

There was a better way, though… and it was not a “Plan B,” it was not a desperation move on the part of the Almighty, it was the will of God from before the Earth was created in the first place.

Now, I want to be careful here and make it clear that I in no way believe that God lacked anything in God’s comprehension of, compassion for, and dealings with humankind. God didn’t really need to experience what it is like to be a human being in order to love and relate to human beings.

God did not need to experience potty training, or being weaned, or learning to walk and talk and read, or learning table manners, or learning to dress for God’s self. God did not need to feel the love of a parent, or the grief of loss, or sweat on God’s brow or hunger in God’s stomach or anything else. God did not need to endure the pain of rejection or the searing cut of the lash or the agony of the nails or the slow suffocation of the cross. God did not need to die, or to rise again.

We needed God to experience that. We needed God to feel that. We needed God to endure that. We needed God to die, and to rise again. We needed God, through Jesus Christ, to go through the kind of death that is separation from God, and to come out on the other side, having utterly conquered it on our behalf.

And let me assure you of something: with all of that accomplished, with Christ risen and seated at the right hand of God, with death conquered, the Holy Spirit fallen, and the Kingdom of God at hand, and if God has truly put all things under the subjection of Christ, as we read in this morning’s passage from the book of Hebrews, it’s OK to ask, “if all that is true, why are things still so messed up?”

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them,” we read… the plural is misleading there, since most English translations of this Scripture see the quotation from Psalm 8, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet…” as referring not to humans as a whole, but to Christ specifically – singular rather than plural.

And it’s true, we don’t see everything in subjection to Christ, do we? Because if God is in control, why do children starve? If God is in control, why do storms come and wipe out entire cities? If God is in control, why do people get sick and die? Recession, war, drugs, mental illness, crime, corporate greed, political corruption, the list is almost endless…

As we look around the world for God, God is often difficult to see, difficult to pin down. And sometimes, just when we think we have the holy in our hands, it slips away as we realize we were mistaken. All too often it feels like we are groping around, still blindfolded, not sure of where we are or which direction to take.

I said last week, in looking at the absence of God’s name in the book of Esther, that God is in fact never absent. God was present long ago, speaking through the prophets, and though God may not always be easy to see in the here-and-now, God is never absent today, either.

“….we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .” This is the promise that in Jesus all we hope for and all we need is present, in the here and now, and all the time.

In the community of faith we see Jesus in the midst of a world where God is often heard to find.  We hear Christ’s voice in the readings and hymns and songs and liturgies and sermons. We see our Lord’s face in the faces around us; we see and feel and receive Christ in the meal, in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus; we feel the divine touch in the touch of another’s hand at the passing of the bread and the cup. “We do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .”

And through the community of faith, and in the holy act of taking the bread and the cup, we are given the support and sustenance we need to go out into the world, and to help those around us, near and far, to see and hear and feel and receive Jesus as well.

We are not alone, you and I. This is World Communion Sunday. This Sunday is always a particular joy for me, because World Communion Sunday was my first time sharing the Lord’s Supper with all of you, and I always feel like I am celebrating an anniversary of sorts. More than that, though, this day serves to remind all of us that we, as the Body of Christ in the world, are connected to one another. Though our ancillary doctrines may differ, though we approach the elements from differing theological standpoints, in breaking the bread and in taking the cup we affirm that, whether in lofty cathedrals or in storefront, inner city churches, whether in modern megachurches or mud huts, as this bread is one loaf and this juice is one cup, we are one body, the Body of Christ.

And on the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread…

Advent 1 - "Are We There Yet?" version 2.0

Much of this sermon first appeared on November 29, 2009. Please reference the link for original sources.  In adapting the text for 2011, I was blessed with the efforts of my good friends J. R. Daniel Kirk and Terry Ramone Smith.

Isaiah 64:1-9

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence — as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil — to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Are we there yet?”

It's a pretty universally accepted truth that if you put kids in a car and go on a journey of any length at all, that question (or one of its variations) will be asked about a hundred times per hour per child. The excitement of going someplace, the anticipation of what awaits, and the tedium of long car rides are a pretty bad mix, so it's no wonder so many cars and SUVs come equipped with DVD players.

Now, as a child I'm sure I asked that question a lot when we went places, but I don't remember that. What I do remember is, when we were headed to one set of grandparents or the other, looking for landmarks that would tell me that we were almost there. When we went to Huntsville to see Grandma Hazel, my mom's mom, there would come a point after we passed the Jetplex that you could see, off in the distance, the very tip of a Saturn V rocket. The bigger and closer the rocket got the closer we were to Hazel & Hunt's.

When we went to Tuscaloosa, to my dad's parents' house, my landmark was the “Burger In A Hurry” at the corner of University Boulevard and 15th Street, it was a small building with a v-shaped roof and a big sign promising fifteen-cent hamburgers. That's where we turned, so I knew we were getting close to Hilda and Red's.

Though I may have asked, “are we there yet? How much longer?” and things like that, in fact when I looked at the signs around me, be it the jetplex or the rockets in Huntsville or the miles of kudzu and the long-since-closed burger joint in Tuscaloosa, I knew we were almost there.

This is the first Sunday in Advent, and the first Sunday in the liturgical church year. The Thanksgiving turkey is almost digested, we've just about rested up from Black Friday, and we're entering in to a wonderful season of building anticipation, waiting for the birth of our Savior and King! The Wise Men are scanning the heavens, the shepherds are moving their flocks through the fields, the angels are tuning their harps.

Yet we start this season of new beginnings with a discussion about the end of time – the words of a Savior not very far from the whip, the crown of thorns, and the nails. Because Advent is not just about Christ who has come, but Christ who will come again.

It's a strange mixture, isn't it? The wise men, the manger, the tree and the ornaments, the gifts and the kids who wake before the sun is up to see what Santa's brought them, peace on earth and goodwill toward humankind – and are we there yet?

Signs in the heavens, stars falling, the moon and sun extinguished, and angels gathering the elect to Christ, who returns in clouds in great power and glory… are we there yet? How much farther?

My friend, J. R. Daniel Kirk, who is Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, worries that Advent has become too much about Christ’s first appearance, and not at all about the next, final appearance of Christ. He has a point.

He says that we too often slip into the language of “preparing for the arrival of the Christ child” rather than either preparing ourselves to celebrate the arrival that already happened, or preparing for the future advent for which we actually await. We’re celebrating Jesus, but the idea that we’re waiting for his birth too often takes center stage, so we go around shouting “Jesus is born!” as if it had actually just happened, as though the Messiah we’d been waiting for had finally come. In all the talk of “waiting” we too often use language which indicates a posture of waiting for the birth of the Messiah–something for which we are not waiting at all, it has happened! Worse, to say that we are is a denial of the good news itself!

Could it be that the message of Advent is not so much one of two arrivals, one past and one future, or of a great and glorious beginning and a cataclysmic and permanent ending, as it is about one thing: “God's passion, God's dream, for a transformed earth,” (to quote Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan)? I'm not suggesting just a transformed planet, some political Nirvana where wars have ceased and harmony prevails. This is what Crossan and Borg seem to envision in their book “The First Christmas.” Rather, I am speaking of a world full of transformed people whose needs have been met by God's people, and whose lives are defined and founded upon that Christ who has come, who has died, who has risen, and who will come again.

Are we there yet?

Crossan and Borg suggest that Advent is a season of repentant preparation – not “repentance” in the sense of being sorry you did something, confessing and promising to not do it again, as we have come to understand the word, but “repentance” in the original and most correct sense of the word, where we change something. Where we work to make what is into what should be, yes, personally, but also in a larger sense – in the lives and experiences of those around us and by extension everyone on earth.

When did the Christmas season become a time of stress and traffic jams, of holiday jingles playing and commercials running even before Halloween, of searching store after store for whatever the television tells us is this year's hottest gift, of endless shopping lists and Black Friday predawn sales, where all we're left with on December 26th is exhaustion and credit card bills and a stack of gifts to return? We buy things we cannot afford in order to give them to people who, in the grand scheme of things, don’t need them, often only because they are going to give us something that, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t need.

Where I part a bit from Daniel Kirk’s points is that I worry that this time of year is less and less about remembering the birth of the Savior, and more and more about the biggest gift, the newest gadget, the shiniest trinket. We have become so wrapped up in when and whether the next iPhone is coming out, how big a big-screen TV we can buy, what video game or DVD is the newest sensation, that we forget why December 25 is a special day in the first place.

I want to suggest to you this morning that Advent is not about commerce, but about worship: “It starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus.” Is this not the approach God had in mind for Christmas? “A season where we are called to put down our burdens and lift a song up to our God. ...a season where love wins, peace reigns, and a king is celebrated with each breath.”

Are we there yet? I can't speak for you, of course, but for me the answer is “no.”
Can we get there from here? Yes!

It begins with a simple statement of faith – one which echoes Isaiah’s plea to the God who brought slaves from captivity into the freedom and prosperity that was Israel – “Yet…” that is, “but, however, nevertheless”… “O LORD, you are our Father…”

With God as our Parent, can we not once again find the balance between honoring our loved ones and friends with gifts, honoring the birth of our Savior, and actively waiting on that Savior’s return in glory?

I use “waiting” in the way that Terry Ramone Smith, one of the facilitators of Atlanta’s “Church of the Misfits” uses it – “waiting” in the sense of working for, attending to, providing for needs. Yes, we wait in the sense of patiently – and sometimes impatiently – watching, but we also actively wait, doing the things that Jesus saw as most important – the activities he himself listed in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew as the criteria for inclusion in the eternal Kingdom: Feeding the hungry, because every hungry person, be they a homeless man in downtown Bessemer, or a malnourished child in Malawi, is Christ. Providing water for the thirsty, because every thirsty person, be they a child on a playground in East Lake, or a mother of three in Mumbai, is Christ. Clothing the naked, because every person without adequate clothing, be they a coatless woman waiting on the bus in downtown Birmingham, or a shivering orphan on the streets of Bogata, is Christ. Visiting the lonely and the imprisoned, because every lonely and imprisoned person, be they on Donaldson Correctional Facility’s Death Row or in a bed in the nursing home down the street, is Christ.

This, more than trees and tinsel, more than gifts and carols, is the real message of Advent. It’s a time when we not only put down our own burdens, but we help others lay down their burdens as well. Where we show that love truly does win, peace most certainly reigns, and we celebrate the birth – and the return – of our King with each breath, and every fiber of our being, singing as one voice, as one actively waiting and celebrating Body, “O come, O come, Emanuel!”

Alleluia! Amen.