So
here we are. Jesus has ascended and we
are waiting impatiently for the Holy Spirit, the promised Advocate to
come. I know that the church year ends
with Christ the King way out in November sometime, but for me it feels like
we are coming to an end here in June with the long days of Ordinary Time lying
in front of us. In our reading from The Revelation
of John of Patmos we hear the clear message “Surely I am coming soon” You may remember from last week that scholar
and professor Mitzi Minor offered a 1st C understanding of “coming
soon” not as a time frame, but as an assurance that the coming of God’s Kingdom
is inevitable – God will not be stopped.
Bishop Barbara Harris was fond of saying “the power behind you is
greater than the obstacle in front of you,”
Easter is the message for us that there is indeed an awesome power
behind us and it will not be stopped.
We
hear a similar message in the Paul and Silas story where the jails of the Empire
cannot prevent the spread of the Word of God.
Paul and Silas would definitely have understood Bishop Barbara’s
mantra. Although our John reading does
not fall at the end of the Gospel, it is part of Jesus’ Final Discourse, the
message he gave to the disciples about his death and resurrection which he
describes here as “being one with God”. As
we wrap up yet another Easter season I want to think a bit on just what it is that
we mean when we say Resurrection. What is it that you and I hold dear about that
foundation of Christianity. After all a
whole lot of our faith and our hope hangs on that word.
Resurrection
was not a new concept that was invented by Jesus or by his followers. The hope of resurrection had crept into
Jewish thought before the time of Jesus, but it bore very little resemblance to
the concept of hope in the Resurrection that is woven into Christianity
today. Jewish faith - Jesus’ faith – involved
what we call proleptic hope, that is hope that is not a single, unwavering
expectation, but rather a complex emotion and one that does not claim a
specific path or outcome. It's a hope
for renewal, restoration, or a new beginning.
Proleptic hope acknowledges that hope can be present even in the face of
uncertainty and hardship and that it can be a source of resilience and
strength.
If
you are not familiar with that term, join the club, it is a new learning for me
also. But it makes sense. We know that several Jewish sects were active
in Jesus’ time and some leaned toward the possibility of life after death. Jesus talked a lot about how the “Kingdom of
God” had drawn near. But this man was
not all about talk he called for actions that would speak louder than
words. He set about in his life to live into the
Kingdom of God with love at the center of his being - even in the uncertain
world of Roman occupation, poverty, and injustice. In the end his radical notions about love and
charity and service and worthiness got him executed but for his disciples and
for us - all of that is bound up in a proleptic hope for resurrection and the
inevitable coming of God’s Kingdom.
During
the Easter season we open our liturgy with the words, The Lord is Risen.. And the response… The Lord is risen indeed. But without empirical proof some would say
our proclamation of resurrection is just imagination. But this morning I believe that I can say
with confidence that there is indeed evidence for resurrection. For one thing there is the fact that all four
Gospels not only recount the empty tomb, but they claim that it was women
who first arrived at the empty tomb and witnessed to the other disciples. Now if the disciples had wanted to create a
hoax, I’m pretty sure they would have used male witnesses cause you know women
couldn’t be trusted. And then there is
the fact that before the resurrection the disciples thought they were waging a
military style insurrection – remember Peter took a sword with him to the
Garden of Gethsemane. That notion of
military victory went out the window on Calvary, but after encountering the
resurrected Jesus on the beach they were able to envision a different kind of
victory. And there is the attempt to
scare Jesus’ followers with gore and death – after the resurrection – that tactic failed
miserably. Instead of creating fear and
submission the disciples became imitators and bearers of the Love that Jesus
had taught. There is no doubt in my mind
that something created a sea change in those men and women who knew Jesus
before his death and that change resulted because they also knew Jesus after –
that sea change resulted from knowing a resurrected Christ.
I
remember a story from seminary about a 20th C German theologian and
political activist, Dorothee Sölle, who was asked by a reporter, “Did the
resurrection happen?” Dr Sölle responded
“That’s the wrong question.” “The right
question is what difference would it have made?” Perhaps that is the question we must ask
ourselves also. What difference does the
Resurrection make in my life or yours?
Jesus lived in a world defined by competition, kill or be killed, where
a few powerful rulers had sway over their very life or death. The Mystery that is the Resurrection changed
that dynamic. In Jesus we know the
possibility of renewal, of hope, of being loved by God. In Jesus we are all God’s Beloved Children.
In
today's world, faith in the possibility of resurrection is often dismissed as
mere fantasy or misused as a means to impose beliefs on others. Today, just like each week, the next part of
our service is a recitation of belief.
How often, in churches around the globe, do we confine resurrection to
manifesto rather than expand it to a way of life? How often is our faith a statement of rote
belief rather than a mission to love and care for God’s people as Jesus did?
Around
the time of the protests to the war in Vietnam, Dorothee Sölle wrote a poem
called Credo. I have some copies if you
would like to read the whole thing, but here are a couple of snippets:
“I
believe in god
who did not create an immutable world
a thing incapable of change…
…
I believe in god
who willed conflict in life
and wanted us to change the status quo
through our work
through our politics…
who rises again and again in our lives
so that we will be free
from prejudice and arrogance
from fear and hate…
…I
believe in the spirit
that jesus brought into the world
…I believe it is up to us
what our earth becomes
a vale of tears starvation and tyranny
or a city of god
I believe in a just peace
that can be achieved…
(I
believe) in the possibility of a meaningful life
for all people
I believe this world of god’s
has a future
amen
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