Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
The Worship of God · April 4, 2010
Easter Sunday
Litany and Confession
From Psalm 118
There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous.
The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.
We shall not die, but live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing and is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Let us pray:
You are our God, and we will give thanks to you and extol you.
Just as it seems the world has crushed every hope, you arise,
O Lord of Life!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
Jacob Thorne
Gracious God and loving God, you are the power of life. You meet the cold and barren winter with the warmth and the color of spring. You meet the dark of night with the fresh light of morning. You meet grief-stricken women with an empty tomb and announce the news of Christ’s rising.
This morning, we praise you. As we gather today, we pray that you will meet us in songs, in Scripture, in the message that we hear, in the faith and laughter of each other, and in the meal we share at the Table. Reveal to us once again, O God, the risen Christ and the power of life. Raise us up in the joyous news that life is always stronger than death, that lover is stronger than hate, and that you are stronger than all powers of destruction.
We praise you, O God, for the wonder of this day and for your work of new life among us. Send us out today full of love, and awe, and gratitude sharing the transforming warmth and grace of your love.
Here us now as we say together the prayer that your Son taught us…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.
New Testament Lesson
Luke 24:1-12
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went it, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Message
Encounters of the Unknown Kind:
Road Transformed
Tim Carson
I was watching a local morning news show last week, and since it was Holy Week, they decided to interview some pastors about preaching on Easter Sunday year after year. That seemed to me to be the least possible inspirational idea to date, and I’m a preacher. It didn’t interest me. Can you imagine who would want to hear about the challenges a minister might have on preaching on Easter?
It was even more boring than I first imagined. Beyond the boredom, what really disappointed me were the responses of my fellow wizards. You had the feeling that they just had to endure one more Easter. “What do you say differently this year than you did last year? Oh, no, this again. What are we going to say about Jesus rising from the dead this year? What if there is someone out there who only attends on Easter? What will they think; that we always talk about the same thing? How are we going to spice it up this year? I mean, what do you say after, He’s up?” How sad is that?
Well, let me tell you how I feel. Look, I only have so many years to do this. Let’s say that if I’m so blessed of God, from my date of ordination until I stop preaching sometime in the future, I have maybe 40 or 50 years total. That means I only have 40 or 50 runs at this thing. That’s really nothing. It’s just a pittance to deal with the central mystery of the faith, only 40 or 50 times, and going one layer deeper than last year. It’s not enough time! Boredom? Fear that I won’t have anything to say? Or that I might repeat myself? These are the least of my concerns.
So, let’s move ahead. Shall we? Time is a wastin’. And there aren’t that many more times I get to try.
***
Has it ever occurred to you how utterly strange it is to have women serving as the primary witnesses to the resurrection? Oh, it might not seem strange to us today, but it certainly was to people living in the first century in that place. Of all things in the ancient world, the witness of women, who were not even recognized fully in a court, would not lend your case credibility. Adding the witness of women to the testimony does not increase your credibility, but just the opposite. And yet the gospel writers line them all up there: Mary, Joanna, and Mary Magdalene (out of whom all the demons were cast). They include them up front and center, regardless of how the surrounding culture and prevailing cultural views might dismiss it out of hand. The response of the male disciples to the news of the women is just an indication of how they will be received by the public in general: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” (24:11)
You might see how this is a risky way of testifying to the resurrection. You might also see how that it also contributes to its authenticity. Nobody in their right mind is going to build a case to persuade anybody using the women, but they do anyway. Why is that? Because they were probably there.
But do you know what else? What is more convincing is the fact of an enduring Christian community following the shattering events of Christ’s crucifixion, the dashing of all hopes, and the sheer disillusionment. No fabricated story will impress anyone at that point. Only an entirely compelling, earth-shattering reality could do that, can transform the depths of grief into the exhilaration of hope again. Something rose up in the faith of those who were crushed, and that is as much a miracle as anything else that happened.
One time an artist painted the great gamble of Goethe’s Faust with Mephistopheles in which Faust wagered his soul. The form of the painting was that of a chess game with Faust seated on one side and Mephistopheles on the other. In the painting, the game is almost over, and Faust has only a few pieces left. On Faust’s face is the look of total despair and hopelessness.
Chess players passed through that gallery, looked at the chessboard, and all came to the same conclusion: checkmate.
But one day a great chess master came through, then stood gazing at the picture, fascinated by Faust’s despair. But then his gaze went to the pieces on the board. He stared at them, absorbed. Other visitors came and went, and time passed as he stood in rapt concentration. And then, suddenly, all those in the gallery were startled by a loud exclamation, a voice that said, “It’s not over! The king and the knight have another move! The king and the knight have another move!”
To all appearances, to those who can only see so much but no more, the game appears to be over. But then a witness appears who sees what others could not see, or could not believe possible. It is only then, when the possible is announced, that others can believe enough to see the reality before them.
That is the kind of faithful seeing and faithful testimony on which our proclamation of the resurrection rests. And without it, our faith is in vain. But what I have to share with you this morning is much more than proofs for the resurrection in order to convince ourselves that something happened. This is about so much more than presenting concepts or ideas that might be feasible. And let me tell you why.
The 19th-century theologian, John Henry Newman, drew a distinction between the knowledge we have on the conceptual level and the knowledge we have on the very experiential level. He referred to one kind as the “notions” we have and the other as “realities.” For example, it is one thing to know that a tiger is a dangerous animal and another to realize one is growling and circling your tent. It is one thing to know that cancer is a terrible disease and another to receive it as a diagnosis. It is one thing to believe that skydiving might be exciting and another to be in free fall before your chute opens (Diogenes Allen, Theology for a Troubled Believer, Westminster John Knox, p. xvi). One is a notion. The other is a knowledge of the reality.
So there are notions we may have about Christian truths or doctrines on a conceptual level, and then there, instead, is an experiential reality we discover as a lived truth. One is the way of talking about God and the other experiencing God. The resurrection is like that. Somebody else witnessed and experienced it personally, but what about us? Are we just accepting that testimony on faith? Is it simply an idea, a concept, or a doctrine to which we subscribe, like believing that such and such galaxy exists, not because we’ve seen it, but rather because someone else did with his or her big telescope?
I believe that we actually do have strong and persuasive testimony of an event of enormous spiritual power that shook the physics of the world three days after Jesus was sealed in the tomb. I believe that seismic shock rattled not only gravestones but also hearts of stone, that the resurrection took place inside of people as well as outside of them. How we try to describe that in present day terms is another matter. But here is the thing:
Unless people have already been engaged with the truth of Jesus’ teaching and proclamation, the kingdom of God that is and is coming, unless people are tuned into God in their lives, somehow responsive to the moving of the Spirit, the resurrection, however you understand it, won’t matter. It will be seen as a notion, as a curious proposition. And why? Because the resurrection is a part of a larger experience of faith. Without this larger experience of faith, it won’t matter, but with it, it can, it will.
Let me put it this way: Unless you are in love with God, and find yourself adoring the Jesus who was sent, no amount of proof or evidence will convince you that Christ is risen, much less that it means anything to you. Resurrection has everything to do with where your heart is with God in general and with Christ in particular. That’s what ends up telling the story. Based on that, the resurrection either will or will not be significant for you.
I know; it’s all counterintuitive and non-rational. But listen; this isn’t some algebra problem. If you have a living relationship with God, or a budding one, or just wish you did, or down deep in your subconscious, or even open to the possibility, then you are willing to stand in front of the chessboard and see if there is another move. But if not, then you won’t, at least now, and you’ll just walk on down the gallery.
And so, first of all, the resurrection story and our alleluias have to do with our experience of God rooted in the world right now. When it’s there, resurrection and the witnesses that point to it will make sense or sense in a certain kind of way. And then our affirmation of the resurrection will, in turn, reinforce our experience of faith now.
When John Shelby Spong wrote his latest, and perhaps last book entitled, Eternal Life: A New Vision (Harper One, 2009) he spent most of his book not writing about eternal life at all. Most of the pages are concerned with reinterpreting our understanding of God, religious language and symbolism, moving beyond the notion of church as a broker of God, and rethinking the sonship of Jesus.
Only after all that does he connect this rethinking of the faith to eternal life. When it comes to that, his words are relatively few. It is telling, I think, that he writes so much about everything else other than eternal life when that is the title of his book. But it takes a lot of thinking and pondering to set the stage for such a weighty matter. Everything is connected to everything else. And, when you think about it, eternal life is the very thing we know least about, so maybe it deserves the fewest pages after all.
In summary, he says, “I must enter into the Jesus-consciousness and walk into the timelessness of God” (186). “It is only then that we sense finitude fading into infinity… The only way I know how to prepare for death is to live in such a way that I enable each day to participate in eternity (212).
And so, in short, he says that Jesus lived and lives in the eternity of God and has been a sign for us who must do the same. And to perceive the mystery at the end is to find it first in the present, our participation in the eternal and sacred nature of life, and that is less a notion and more a reality.
As a new friend reminded me this week, the strength of a tree is found in its being rooted in a reality beyond itself. Faith takes our lives and roots them in a reality beyond ourselves – an eternal quality of life now and then.
***
In the collection of stories gathered by Yaffa Eliach (Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust; New York: Vintage Books, 1982, 3-4), the story is told about a death camp prisoner, the Rabbi Israel Spire of Bluzhov. One night, loud speakers announced that all prisoners were immediately to vacate the barracks. They were herded out into a large field, and before them were two large trenches. The SS officers announced that they had two choices, to jump over the trenches to safety or to fall in and be killed immediately. Everyone knew that the sick or weak had no chance.
One of the good friends of the rabbi was a man who had given up all hope, and he told the rabbi that they might as well just climb into the pits and wait for their cruel end. But the rabbi said to him, “Pits have been dug, and jump we must. If we fall, we will enter the world of truth in an instant. So we must jump.”
As the two men approached the trenches, and looked down toward the unfortunate who had not made it, the rabbi looked down at his two swollen feet, closed his eyes, and whispered, “We are jumping!”
In a moment, the two opened their eyes only to find themselves standing on the other side. And the friend asked the rabbi, “How did you do it?” And the rabbi answered, “I was holding onto the coattails of my parents, my grandparents, and great-grandparents.” And the rabbi turned to his friend and said, “Tell me, my friend, how did you reach the other side of the pit?” And his friend replied, “I was holding on to you.”
***
Sometimes, we hold on to the faith of those who have gone before as a great witness. And other times, someone is holding on to us. But in all times, the grace of God plants our roots in the eternal quality of life that is now and in the future.
“But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened” (24:12).
What’s left to say?
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Benediction
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
The service is ended. Go in peace!
