April 4, 2010

Clay Nelson

Easter Day     
Luke 24:1-12


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While I know we are here to celebrate resurrection, there is a problem we tend to gloss over. We don’t want to hear that experiencing resurrection has a prerequisite: new life requires death. Death is something we would prefer to deny or put off.

Intellectually, even those of us who are not the sharpest tool in the box know that to live is to die. Nothing lives forever. No matter how often we visit the gym; no matter how many of life’s pleasures we forego to advance our longevity, few of us will receive the Queen’s congratulatory letter upon our hundredth birthday. If we were swans infamous for their belligerence we might live to 102. If we were happy as a clam we might make it to 405 like one found off the coast of Iceland. If we were content living an isolated existence, barely growing in order to just survive in exceedingly harsh conditions, we might live as long as a Bristlecone pine. The oldest found was 4900 years old. Of course we could opt for suspended animation. There is a bacterium that was in stasis in sea salt that was 250 million years old before being revived. But few of us are willing to wait so long to get a life. Eventually, if we are alive, we will die.

This existential reality is the fly in the hearty soup we call Easter. We don’t like the prerequisite. My evidence is attendance figures. Easter Day is a lot more popular than Good Friday. 

Furthermore, it is why so many people get upset with theologians and preachers like yours truly who suggest that Jesus’ resurrection was not a physical, bodily resurrection. I hate to be the one to break it to you. Jesus did not physically return from the dead, even as a holy ghost.

Theologians have for many years tried to explain that resurrection is not the same as resuscitation. Lazarus was resuscitated. Eventually he was put back in a tomb for good. Resurrection is not about turning upside down the laws of nature. I know the post-Easter stories of Jesus having a fish fry on the beach with his mates, breaking bread in Emmaus with grieving friends, and entering locked rooms to have a reunion with fearful disciples suggest otherwise, but Jesus the man died and stayed dead just like the rest of us will some day. Having no evidence to the contrary, and because it is a comforting thought, I grant the possibility of some kind of afterlife, but the Easter story is not about having an afterlife. Afterlife is not the same as resurrection or new life. Resurrection is about the here and now, not the hereafter. Resurrection is about how we live fully now the life we have, not about getting a life after death.

I know you may not be enraptured to hear this. We really don’t want to die. Aging, frankly, is tough enough. So we hang on to the idea that Jesus’ resurrection was physical and the equivalent of an afterlife. We hang on to the notion in hopes that we will experience the same. To say otherwise is to accept the reality that the death of the body we have is permanent and unavoidable.

Some of you might be wondering where the joy is in that Easter message? My answer is that the idea of resurrection as an eternal form of physical resuscitation has to die if we are going to embrace the joyful reality of resurrection. The longer we hold on to the hope of a physical resurrection, the less time we have to begin living a life full of Easter joy. The bottom line is that Easter isn’t ultimately about what happened to Jesus, but what is available to us. 

But first what exactly happened to Jesus? The truth? We don’t really know unless we believe the Gospels are the same as newspaper accounts might have been at the time, but even then we know not to trust every thing we read in the paper. 

What the Gospels do tell us is what happened to those who followed Jesus after his death. The resurrection stories are not historical, but metaphorical accounts that seek to give a sense of the disciples’ faith journey after Jesus died. That journey began in disappointment and despair. The life they planned on those three years following Jesus was not to be. It was over. The powers of oppression and domination had won…again, or so it seemed. 

Their disappointment led to unbelief. This is captured first in the story of Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb to anoint the body. It was an act of unbelief to expect his body to be there. The second act of unbelief was after she told the disciples of what she had not seen – his body, Peter and the others didn’t believe her and came to see for them selves. Later we have Thomas doubting the others when they said they had seen Jesus.

As the story unfolds it becomes clear unbelief is not such a bad thing. Joseph Campbell, a student of comparative religions, looked for the transcendent truths that under gird all religions. He noted that they all require letting “go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” Unbelief is about letting go of what we once accepted as true, as real; as possible versus impossible. It is a death experience that requires grieving. Not only did the disciples mourn the loss of a dear friend, they had to mourn the death of their belief that Jesus was a political messiah who would overthrow Rome. They had to mourn their lost opportunity to help him rule this new kingdom he had talked so much about. His death had killed the life they had planned. But letting go of those beliefs left them open to new possibilities, new experiences.

They discovered when they gathered at the synagogue on the Sabbath and listened to the Hebrew scriptures; so much of what they heard reminded them of their dead master. He seemed to be there giving new understanding to the ancient and familiar words. But where was he? After a long day working their boats, gathered around the fire for their evening meal, reminiscing about the last three years, it was like he was roasting a fish with them waiting for them to understand. But where was he? In their travels, they remembered how before walking with Jesus the sick and poor and the marginalised were invisible to them. Ever since he died they have found they can no longer ignore them and walk by. Like it was when he was alive they have to stop and engage them, offering comfort, healing and acknowledgment. But where is he? 

With time they began to doubt again. They began to doubt whether or not death had really had the final word. Their lives were changing. When they spoke of him, sharing his stories and acts of love, they experienced hope again. Joy again. It was a new unexpected life. Certainly not like the one they had planned. It seemed he was alive in them and them in him. Death had not separated them after all. They began to be aware that the divine love he embodied had been in them all along. Knowing that changed everything. No longer were they afraid. No longer were they locked up in themselves. They had new priorities. God wasn’t in their planned lives. God was in the new life waiting for them. With that awareness came knowledge of their oneness with their neighbour and with God. They had never imagined they were part of the Godhead. Yes, for the disciples who accepted the life awaiting them, Christ is risen – in them.

Now it is our turn to stand before the tomb. It is our time for unbelief. What plans for our life do we have to let go of? We have had the six weeks of Lent to consider this and other questions: Are we willing to consider the possibility that life can be better than we imagine? Are we prepared to give up our resistance to new possibilities? Are we willing to consider that there are truths beyond our own making? Are we willing to let God out of the box of our own making and lead us no matter where, no matter what?

Are we going to have the courage to walk out of the tombs of our own making and accept a life of hope, love, justice and freedom? It is the one Jesus showed us is waiting for us. Are we ready to accept it here and now? It’s Easter, how about we give it a go? The clocking is ticking. There is only so much time left each of us. Why miss one joyful moment?