Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Resurrection... Real or what?

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…

 …I believe in jesus christ

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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Resurrection... Real or what?

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 ch...