Something Happened
March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Jeremiah 31:1-6; Matthew 28:1-10
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
We say it as if it were an accepted fact, and perhaps, in this room and millions like it, it is, and yet, even in this room, some of us are wondering how to think about the resurrection story. Garrison Keillor, in his column this week titled “A pagan’s thoughts at Eastertide” confessed his own Easter doubts. He wrote, “Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won't start on a cold morning, you've got friends.”
Keillor is not alone – many of my favorite people, including some who worship here, find the resurrection impossible to believe as something that really happened. Most of us struggle with some dimension or another of it – and even among the many people, also including some who worship here, who believe the resurrection, we wonder how to relate the resurrection of Jesus to our own real lives.
In recent years, there have been many discussions – well covered by the news media – regarding whether the Christian understanding of the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are indeed historically factual. If not, one supposes, God will be voted “off the island” – Jesus will hear “You’re fired” and the Holy Spirit will prove to have been, in fact “the weakest link”.
In a culture where TV defines what is real, God has to prove himself all over again…and yet sometimes it seems as if we Christians are somewhat embarrassed by the resurrection. Is it because it doesn’t fit into our scientific, rationalistic worldview?? Rather than deal with the power of a real resurrection, we’d prefer to keep it in the distant past and in the unimaginable future so that we won’t have to engage it in the present. We keep our distance from it, and, as one of my colleagues wrote – we just put it away by saying, “Good, Jesus was raised and so I’ll live forever. Now, let’s go have some Easter ham and watch a basketball game.” We think that as long as we can say, yes, Jesus was raised from the dead (distant past) we can know we will have eternal life (unimaginable future) and we don’t have to deal with what the resurrection should imply for our lives right now.
There is plenty of evidence that the resurrection actually occurred – after all, if it was a fraud, it was a fraud perpetrated by the disciples, and virtually all of them were martyred. Not only did they give their lives TO their faith, they gave their lives FOR their faith. It is not plausible that all of them would stake their lives on a story they knew to be fake.
Also, in the ancient world, the word of women was not really acceptable as reliable testimony, women were not even permitted to bear legal witness – if the early church were trying to tell a false but convincing story, they would not have started it with women as witnesses. They would have trotted out some really reliable men to start spreading the news. But, as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction and so the true experience of the resurrection began with women as witnesses.
Finally, perhaps the strongest case for the believability of the resurrection is how unbelievable it was. While Jesus had indeed said he would be raised, it was not a centerpiece of his preaching. It was a couple of marginal comments. If he hadn’t risen, they could have just focused on the bulk of his teachings, and spread that word. But in fact, Jesus surprised them. They did not expect it all to go as it did – they were like the rest of Jewish culture at the time expecting a military victory. Part of their grief at his crucifixion was the death of their hopes. It was the resurrection that taught them how to understand his ministry up to that point. That’s part of the reason for the difference in the disciples at the time of Jesus’ arrest and later in the early Church. When he was arrested, they were bewildered, shocked, and feeling probably a little fooled – I can just imagine them saying, gosh, we thought he was the real deal, were we ever wrong.
But later, after his resurrection, they understood his ministry in a completely different way – they finally knew that it wasn’t about military victory, but about something much bigger, and much more different, than that. It was about changing the whole world, not just the government of Israel, and accomplishing this by winning and transforming human hearts – which had been God’s project all along. And so the disciples were as surprised as anyone at the resurrection.
But we miss the point if we see the resurrection as being some kind of resuscitation – gosh, he was dead, and now he’s alive. Way to go, Jesus. It’s much much more than that – Jesus is resurrected. The crucifixion wasn’t undone. God didn’t go backwards, he leapt forwards. And the Church doesn’t say, Jesus was risen, we say Jesus IS risen. He IS alive. A couple of years ago, there was an article by Presbyterian theologian and professor Cynthia Rigby which has helped me to see that understanding the resurrection as a present reality has some very important implications which I’d like to share with you. [“The Significance of the Resurrection” in The Presbyterian Outlook, March 21, 2005]
First of all, it tells us that the incarnation was not merely a 33-year experiment. Nor is the incarnation a past event. Because Jesus IS risen, it means that his participation in the human experience continues. He still understands what we experience, he still shares what we experience. Emmanuel, which means God-with-us, continues. It means that God is with us and God is for us in a way that is quite powerful and amazing. None of us is ever alone. God did not create the world and walk away. God did not send his word and walk away. God did not even come among us and walk away. God doesn’t walk away, God walks with us, in every experience, through each heartache, each joy, each challenge. As Paul writes in Romans, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ….No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Secondly, the resurrection shows us that this life, and this creation, and our bodies matter to God. The resurrection is not so much about triumphing over this world as it is about embracing this world, loving this world and working to heal this world. The resurrection was a physical resurrection – Jesus ate, showed his hands, and in the account we read this morning, could be held. The resurrection should help us to resist any so-called Christian thinking that this life and this world don’t matter, because they clearly matter to God. God is not only the creator of the world but the healer, the re-creator, the lover of the world. American artist Brian Andreas has created a work depicting a knight and a dragon, and the knight is saying, “Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.” Easter dawn, Jesus came to love the world all over again. In a world where heroes are in short supply – baseball stars may build their records on steroids, financial wizards end up on trial, political figures end up frauds, TV leads are anti-heroes such as the Simpsons, Seinfeld and Ray Romano – Jesus is not the hero that any of us would have imagined, but the resurrection shows that he is the real hero that not only saves, but loves us.
Third, the cross and the resurrection tell us that we humans do not define reality, and we don’t have the last word. We rejected Jesus, and yet, God was free to reject our rejection. Resurrection is God’s YES to our no. While our experiences matter, they don’t tell the whole story. Even this year, with its early Easter that comes before the warmth, before the flowers, before spring echoes the divine message of new life, this year when Easter doesn’t feel like Easter, it is good to remember that God’s presence, God’s activity and God’s reality are independent of our feelings. Christ IS risen, even though it is still cold, even though there was 15 inches of snow south of us on Friday, regardless of our feelings, Christ is risen indeed.
And finally, the resurrection tells us that we are still part of God’s story. That he is working not only near us, not only among us, not only in us, but also through us. God has chosen to invest in human futures, and so our faithfulness matters. It’s especially hard for us Americans, because our culture is so comfortable, and there are so very many temptations to ignore God’s work in favor of our own amusement or business or pleasure. But God is counting on us, and when we see suffering in the world, we shouldn’t always wonder why God isn’t doing anything about it. God has chosen to rely on us, and God is wondering why we aren’t doing anything about it.
Understanding that Jesus is still with us and sharing our experience, understanding that this world, our experiences, and even our bodies matter to God, and understanding that while we are called to fully engage in this world, God has the last word in it, and understanding that we are called to participate in God’s work – that’s a lot that our understanding of the resurrection can add to our faith.
Benedictine nun Joan Chittister writes in her Easter message this year that even if we view the resurrection as metaphorical truth rather than literal truth, it teaches us that we are called to leave behind our old certainties, our old finalities – that God’s truth transcends the limits of our understanding, and that God has possibilities for us that may lie beyond our imaginings.
Finally, theologian and scholar Walter Wink reminds us that even if the resurrection was not historically observable, something happened. [“Easter: What Happened to Jesus?” in Tikkun, March-April, 2008] Something objectively real did happen among the disciples. They experienced God in a way that transformed them, and their transformation is what led to the changing of the world. We too can be transformed in ways that can change the world. The resurrection is also about what new life God brings about in us, and through us, brings about in the world.
Let’s not let our skepticism or our romanticism about what God did then keep us from experiencing the reality of God now – a reality that transcends our own imaginings.
Easter tells us that God’s unfathomable, unreasonable, unimaginable, immeasurable love never ends, never fails, never quits, never dies. We wake up every morning to a God who has loved us with an everlasting love and is already loving the world all over again. God is loving each of us, and who is ready to love us into being more than we could ourselves imagine. An anonymous poem found in Marc Gafni’s book Soul Types: Decode Your Spiritual DNA reads:
Imagine
Be who you are
Practice what you know
Teach what you learn
And continue to grow
Just imagine!
Just imagine that
You are smarter than you know
More courageous than you guess
Stronger than you feel
Healthier than you are aware of
More creative than you recognize
You are more powerful than you think
More attractive than you assume
Wiser than you suppose
More valuable than you have ever been told
And you are able to make a difference in the world
That you have not yet begun to realize
Just imagine!
If we can imagine ourselves with God’s image of us, accept this love and to begin to love ourselves as much as Jesus loves us, and allow ourselves to breathe Holy Spirit breath, we too can experience God’s power in our lives, power to love the unlovable, to think the unthinkable, to challenge ourselves and the way things are, to be outposts of God’s kingdom in our families, our workplaces and our communities, bringing the unquenchable love of the Lover of Creation to our corner of His world. Easter living isn’t easy, Jesus never ever said it would be easy, but it is the abundant life that he came, and died, and rose from the dead, and is living in our midst to give us. May we all experience the grace and power of transformed living. He is risen! He is risen indeed! And we should never be the same. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Jeremiah 31:1-6; Matthew 28:1-10
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
We say it as if it were an accepted fact, and perhaps, in this room and millions like it, it is, and yet, even in this room, some of us are wondering how to think about the resurrection story. Garrison Keillor, in his column this week titled “A pagan’s thoughts at Eastertide” confessed his own Easter doubts. He wrote, “Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won't start on a cold morning, you've got friends.”
Keillor is not alone – many of my favorite people, including some who worship here, find the resurrection impossible to believe as something that really happened. Most of us struggle with some dimension or another of it – and even among the many people, also including some who worship here, who believe the resurrection, we wonder how to relate the resurrection of Jesus to our own real lives.
In recent years, there have been many discussions – well covered by the news media – regarding whether the Christian understanding of the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are indeed historically factual. If not, one supposes, God will be voted “off the island” – Jesus will hear “You’re fired” and the Holy Spirit will prove to have been, in fact “the weakest link”.
In a culture where TV defines what is real, God has to prove himself all over again…and yet sometimes it seems as if we Christians are somewhat embarrassed by the resurrection. Is it because it doesn’t fit into our scientific, rationalistic worldview?? Rather than deal with the power of a real resurrection, we’d prefer to keep it in the distant past and in the unimaginable future so that we won’t have to engage it in the present. We keep our distance from it, and, as one of my colleagues wrote – we just put it away by saying, “Good, Jesus was raised and so I’ll live forever. Now, let’s go have some Easter ham and watch a basketball game.” We think that as long as we can say, yes, Jesus was raised from the dead (distant past) we can know we will have eternal life (unimaginable future) and we don’t have to deal with what the resurrection should imply for our lives right now.
There is plenty of evidence that the resurrection actually occurred – after all, if it was a fraud, it was a fraud perpetrated by the disciples, and virtually all of them were martyred. Not only did they give their lives TO their faith, they gave their lives FOR their faith. It is not plausible that all of them would stake their lives on a story they knew to be fake.
Also, in the ancient world, the word of women was not really acceptable as reliable testimony, women were not even permitted to bear legal witness – if the early church were trying to tell a false but convincing story, they would not have started it with women as witnesses. They would have trotted out some really reliable men to start spreading the news. But, as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction and so the true experience of the resurrection began with women as witnesses.
Finally, perhaps the strongest case for the believability of the resurrection is how unbelievable it was. While Jesus had indeed said he would be raised, it was not a centerpiece of his preaching. It was a couple of marginal comments. If he hadn’t risen, they could have just focused on the bulk of his teachings, and spread that word. But in fact, Jesus surprised them. They did not expect it all to go as it did – they were like the rest of Jewish culture at the time expecting a military victory. Part of their grief at his crucifixion was the death of their hopes. It was the resurrection that taught them how to understand his ministry up to that point. That’s part of the reason for the difference in the disciples at the time of Jesus’ arrest and later in the early Church. When he was arrested, they were bewildered, shocked, and feeling probably a little fooled – I can just imagine them saying, gosh, we thought he was the real deal, were we ever wrong.
But later, after his resurrection, they understood his ministry in a completely different way – they finally knew that it wasn’t about military victory, but about something much bigger, and much more different, than that. It was about changing the whole world, not just the government of Israel, and accomplishing this by winning and transforming human hearts – which had been God’s project all along. And so the disciples were as surprised as anyone at the resurrection.
But we miss the point if we see the resurrection as being some kind of resuscitation – gosh, he was dead, and now he’s alive. Way to go, Jesus. It’s much much more than that – Jesus is resurrected. The crucifixion wasn’t undone. God didn’t go backwards, he leapt forwards. And the Church doesn’t say, Jesus was risen, we say Jesus IS risen. He IS alive. A couple of years ago, there was an article by Presbyterian theologian and professor Cynthia Rigby which has helped me to see that understanding the resurrection as a present reality has some very important implications which I’d like to share with you. [“The Significance of the Resurrection” in The Presbyterian Outlook, March 21, 2005]
First of all, it tells us that the incarnation was not merely a 33-year experiment. Nor is the incarnation a past event. Because Jesus IS risen, it means that his participation in the human experience continues. He still understands what we experience, he still shares what we experience. Emmanuel, which means God-with-us, continues. It means that God is with us and God is for us in a way that is quite powerful and amazing. None of us is ever alone. God did not create the world and walk away. God did not send his word and walk away. God did not even come among us and walk away. God doesn’t walk away, God walks with us, in every experience, through each heartache, each joy, each challenge. As Paul writes in Romans, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ….No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Secondly, the resurrection shows us that this life, and this creation, and our bodies matter to God. The resurrection is not so much about triumphing over this world as it is about embracing this world, loving this world and working to heal this world. The resurrection was a physical resurrection – Jesus ate, showed his hands, and in the account we read this morning, could be held. The resurrection should help us to resist any so-called Christian thinking that this life and this world don’t matter, because they clearly matter to God. God is not only the creator of the world but the healer, the re-creator, the lover of the world. American artist Brian Andreas has created a work depicting a knight and a dragon, and the knight is saying, “Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.” Easter dawn, Jesus came to love the world all over again. In a world where heroes are in short supply – baseball stars may build their records on steroids, financial wizards end up on trial, political figures end up frauds, TV leads are anti-heroes such as the Simpsons, Seinfeld and Ray Romano – Jesus is not the hero that any of us would have imagined, but the resurrection shows that he is the real hero that not only saves, but loves us.
Third, the cross and the resurrection tell us that we humans do not define reality, and we don’t have the last word. We rejected Jesus, and yet, God was free to reject our rejection. Resurrection is God’s YES to our no. While our experiences matter, they don’t tell the whole story. Even this year, with its early Easter that comes before the warmth, before the flowers, before spring echoes the divine message of new life, this year when Easter doesn’t feel like Easter, it is good to remember that God’s presence, God’s activity and God’s reality are independent of our feelings. Christ IS risen, even though it is still cold, even though there was 15 inches of snow south of us on Friday, regardless of our feelings, Christ is risen indeed.
And finally, the resurrection tells us that we are still part of God’s story. That he is working not only near us, not only among us, not only in us, but also through us. God has chosen to invest in human futures, and so our faithfulness matters. It’s especially hard for us Americans, because our culture is so comfortable, and there are so very many temptations to ignore God’s work in favor of our own amusement or business or pleasure. But God is counting on us, and when we see suffering in the world, we shouldn’t always wonder why God isn’t doing anything about it. God has chosen to rely on us, and God is wondering why we aren’t doing anything about it.
Understanding that Jesus is still with us and sharing our experience, understanding that this world, our experiences, and even our bodies matter to God, and understanding that while we are called to fully engage in this world, God has the last word in it, and understanding that we are called to participate in God’s work – that’s a lot that our understanding of the resurrection can add to our faith.
Benedictine nun Joan Chittister writes in her Easter message this year that even if we view the resurrection as metaphorical truth rather than literal truth, it teaches us that we are called to leave behind our old certainties, our old finalities – that God’s truth transcends the limits of our understanding, and that God has possibilities for us that may lie beyond our imaginings.
Finally, theologian and scholar Walter Wink reminds us that even if the resurrection was not historically observable, something happened. [“Easter: What Happened to Jesus?” in Tikkun, March-April, 2008] Something objectively real did happen among the disciples. They experienced God in a way that transformed them, and their transformation is what led to the changing of the world. We too can be transformed in ways that can change the world. The resurrection is also about what new life God brings about in us, and through us, brings about in the world.
Let’s not let our skepticism or our romanticism about what God did then keep us from experiencing the reality of God now – a reality that transcends our own imaginings.
Easter tells us that God’s unfathomable, unreasonable, unimaginable, immeasurable love never ends, never fails, never quits, never dies. We wake up every morning to a God who has loved us with an everlasting love and is already loving the world all over again. God is loving each of us, and who is ready to love us into being more than we could ourselves imagine. An anonymous poem found in Marc Gafni’s book Soul Types: Decode Your Spiritual DNA reads:
Imagine
Be who you are
Practice what you know
Teach what you learn
And continue to grow
Just imagine!
Just imagine that
You are smarter than you know
More courageous than you guess
Stronger than you feel
Healthier than you are aware of
More creative than you recognize
You are more powerful than you think
More attractive than you assume
Wiser than you suppose
More valuable than you have ever been told
And you are able to make a difference in the world
That you have not yet begun to realize
Just imagine!
If we can imagine ourselves with God’s image of us, accept this love and to begin to love ourselves as much as Jesus loves us, and allow ourselves to breathe Holy Spirit breath, we too can experience God’s power in our lives, power to love the unlovable, to think the unthinkable, to challenge ourselves and the way things are, to be outposts of God’s kingdom in our families, our workplaces and our communities, bringing the unquenchable love of the Lover of Creation to our corner of His world. Easter living isn’t easy, Jesus never ever said it would be easy, but it is the abundant life that he came, and died, and rose from the dead, and is living in our midst to give us. May we all experience the grace and power of transformed living. He is risen! He is risen indeed! And we should never be the same. Amen.