Jesus: Changer of Hearts

Texts:
     Acts 5:27-32[i] (See the end of this teaching for a copy of these texts)
     John 20:19-31[ii]

Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia.

There are many things I’d like to talk with you about today, but there are three aspects of this remarkable Resurrection story.  There are three streams that have come to my awareness in working with these two passages, both John 20 and the amazing Acts 5 passage.  I want to bring three stories together.  One is the story of one person’s individual resurrection experience, after having a near-death experience, and after coming through that his view from the other side.   He is talking about the experiences that led him to believe.  The second piece is the belief that comes through this remarkable book, Jonathan Sacks’ Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence.   There is a stream of belief that comes out of his ability to integrate the three Abrahamic Traditions and really confront some of the ways violence is a temptation but not a necessity when dealing with all of these traditions together.   In fact he uses the Genesis passages as well as lots of other contexts to express a belief in something he calls covenantal listening.   This kind of listening makes it possible to interpret scripture in a new way.   I’ll talk more about that later.   The third stream I want to bring in is how these resurrection awarenesses show up in our community.   So, hopefully I’ll bring those three stories together today.    

So, we have come through an Easter Resurrection experience which finds the apostles in a closed room, huddling--maybe cowering--against Empire and against, as it says in the scriptures read, the religious officials.  The religious officials are very much a factor in this whole business.  Jesus comes to the disciples.  How does Jesus come to them? Jesus reveals his presence to them with an openness, a peaceful presence.  He changes their hearts.  How did Jesus change their hearts?  How did Jesus change their minds?  As Jesus later says to Thomas, believing is one of the keys to changing of heart.   Believing is one of the keys to changing consciousness, the awareness of what Jesus is and means; and believing makes the difference in how we even integrate the reality of resurrection in the first place, this mystery.  You just cannot get your head around it.  The disciples sure couldn’t.   How can we?   What kind of conscious belief has you align yourself with God’s awareness of what’s real and true, God’s way of seeing, touching, and bringing Jesus to us in the flesh?  “Belief matters!”  What you believe changes what you see and experience.  It changes your consciousness, your awareness of everything. 

This is something that is at the center of the enigma of something as powerful as quantum physics that actually addresses this same kind of problem.  In fact, a man named Eben Alexander addressed this in his own near-death experience.  Something like quantum mechanics brings consciousness into the fact of evidence.   Quantum mechanics is a science we’ve wrestled with for more than a century.  Yet at the center of the enigma of quantum mechanics there is an assertion: “Consciousness is primary and fundamental in the existence of this universe.”  It doesn’t say matter is the center of the known existence of the universe.  Quantum mechanics is as far as we’ve gotten in our understanding of the physical world.  As a founding physicist, Max Planck, said: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.”

A brief story about how I noticed this in a new way this week after Easter: Carol and I watched a video of Eben Alexander, a man who wrote a book called Proof of Heaven, and looked at his YouTube talk on his near-death experience which he titled, “A Neurosurgeon’s Journey through Afterlife.”  I strongly recommend it to you.  To summarize a much longer story, this is a Harvard trained Neurosurgeon/Professor for 15 years, who was in a phase of his own faith journey when he was an atheist, came to a place where he experienced and wrote,

By being conscious beings, we have access to far grander knowledge than I ever could have imagined before.  And that’s because we have access to Infinite Underlying Universal Consciousness, which is something we can get to with deep prayer, meditation and centering prayer. 

I’ll take it further:  I think we can get to it in our own community, in our experience of and believing in God through one another.  Eben Alexander prided himself on his rational, scientific precision, that science is the pathway to truth.  The science he worshipped stated that the brain creates all knowing, and that the scientific view of awareness we actually have is “the illusion of consciousness.”   He says this kind of science is fading out, that it--the science that believes consciousness comes just from your own brain--is a faith-based religion that has almost nothing to support it.  (Does that blow all your categories of truth?  It blew mine!)  He came to understand that the brain, which he knew before to be the source and creator of consciousness (the quality and state of our knowing awareness) could not explain how the brain actually has access to consciousness, awareness.  This comes directly out of his story.  He says the brain “acts as a reducing valve, to let [higher] consciousness in.”  He claims science and spirituality are converging.   He states, “Spirit-soul consciousness is the fundamental reality of existence in this universe.”  Prior to his near-death experience, he had a sudden and potentially catastrophic infection, a bacterial infection of his brain, his whole central nervous system, a rare menningo-encephalytis, that left his brain so enflamed and soaked in bacteria that the whole outer layer of his brain, all eight lobes of the brain, were completely saturated with this disease.  The whole outer layer of his brain, the neocortex--that which makes us thinking beings--was completely non-functional.  If he had survived at all (he had only about a 2% chance of doing, at the end of a week in a coma), he should have been unable to function at all mentally.  He should only been in a vegetative state.  He should have been unable to have any conscious awareness at all.  Yet he awoke, after seven days in a coma, with a very vivid and powerful near-death experience, which was complete in his memory.   He should not have been able to remember at all!  Based on his experience and the fact that he should not have had the capacity for any awareness of his experience while his brain was such infected state, he states: “I was entirely unable to remember anything of my prior life as Eben Alexander; all my studies and experiences were gone.  But I knew full well the entire journey” of my near-death experience.  The scientific, rationalistic, reductive materialist way, that breaks down all matter into its component parts, into sub-atomic particles, simply didn’t fit with his new world view.

During this remarkable near-death experience, he met a guardian angel, which shocked him and surprised him with incredible loving presence toward him.   And, looking at him lovingly, and translating conceptually what she was communicating to him), she said to him several things: “You have nothing to fear.”  “I love you, and you are loved unconditionally.”  “You can do no wrong.”  “You are an eternal, spiritual being, who belongs to God.”  “You are infinitely loved by an all-powerful being.”  “You will be taken care of.” 

Just let that soak in for a moment. “You have nothing to fear.” “You are infinitely loved by an all-powerful being.” “You will be taken care of.” “You can do no wrong.”  

Our awareness, consciousness, changes how we experience everything.   And conscious awareness is fully present in resurrection belief, joyous peaceful belief.  After receiving these words, Eben Alexander said he experienced something so powerful and so transcending he could not hold to his previous understanding of reality any longer.  In today’s gospel, I think Thomas, in a remarkable way, arrives at some of the same conclusions.  After encouraging Thomas to actually touch the wounds on his hands and put his finger into his side, Jesus says to Thomas: “Stop doubting and believe.”  In other words Jesus is saying, “Change your conscious awareness!  Change your heart!  We are not in the same territory any longer; you need to do more than see and touch!  Now, you must also believe.”  This kind of radical Belief is a passageway into understanding basic tenets of life itself and our connection to God.  We are all one.  We have nothing to fear.  We are loved unconditionally.  We can do no wrong.   We are eternal spiritual beings who are in God already.  These are experiences of belief that I think Thomas had, and I think we can have.      

I’ve been encouraged by my Servant’s mission group to draw some of the points from Jonathan Sacks’ remarkable book, Not in God’s Name.   There’s one passage there that struck my awareness, that I see relates directly to the Acts 5 passage from today.  At the end of the chapter on “Hard Texts,” Sacks writes, "The sacred literatures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all contain passages that, read literally, are capable of leading to violence and hate." 

Parenthetically, I think that is some of the very violence and hate we see the Sanhedrin entering into, when they hear the disciples proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection, and their responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion and death. 

Sacks writes:

We may and must interpret these hard passages.  The great work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, says those who love Divine Word penetrate beneath its outer garments to its soul.   That is how the sages heard, many generations ago, the biblical texts that on the surface spoke of war held a deeper meaning altogether.   The “Wars of the Lord” became the debates in the house of study.   They understood the deep spiritual truth that the idea of power is primitive.  What makes us human is the power of ideas.

I would say that what also makes us human is the power of our consciousness, our awareness, our awareness of our awareness, which I believe is also our belief.  This is our ability to view our own process. 

Sacks writes:

The result was that they were able to shape a pacific faith, capable of sustaining itself through centuries of exile and persecution. …   

Hard texts are a challenge to the religious imagination and to our capacity to engage in covenantal listening to God’s word as we seek to build a future that will honor the legacy of the past.  

The word given in love invites its interpretation in love.

So, how do we bring our loving presence to this text?   It seems the Sanhedrin were confronted with Jesus’ resurrection by the disciples.  They didn’t quite know what to do with it, certainly.  

It may be that the whole Gospel of John was written for the purpose, it says at the end of our Bible text, that people come to a place of belief, apex of their awareness in which belief is primary.  At the end, the Gospel of John is summarized:

30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his [Jesus’] name.

The pattern John points to in believing is:  “This is resurrection for all of us.  This consciousness we can carry into our daily duties, into our church, into our mission, into our passion for doing the right thing.”

The third stream I want to bring in is how resurrection is viewed in other forms of interpretation, like that of the great religious scholar N.T. Wright, who writes profoundly about resurrection in his remarkable book, The Resurrection of the Son of God.  From our modern standpoint, there are many struggles and conflicts when we have “belief” as the standard of our religious conviction.   “There are many problems with Resurrection.  Christianity today has the same problem as it did in the first century.”

There are anomalies of the resurrection stories in all four gospels:

1. There’s a lack of mention of other scriptures.
2. There’s an absence of personal hope expressed by people in those gospel accounts.
3. There’s a strange portrait of Jesus.  As Joe Deck mentioned last week, Jesus is kind of “offish,” he doesn’t want people to cling to him.  He doesn’t want people to relate to him very directly in resurrection passages.  In this one, John 20, Jesus does have Thomas relate directly to him.  But it’s a different portrait of Jesus we get in the resurrection accounts than we got in the rest of the gospels.
4. The strange presence of women as reporters, who in first-century Palestine are not acceptable as legal witnesses to any.  They were not trusted.

Wright goes on:

Supposing these stories of resurrection are shared in an oral tradition as well-known until after Paul writes his letters--and only then (which is about 12-20 years later, after 45 or 50 C.E.) written down.  Suppose there are written down in the puzzled air of “I didn’t understand it at the time, and I’m not sure I do now, but this is more or less how it was for us.”  When Matthew, Luke, and John write about the historical Jesus and the risen Jesus, they record very early oral tradition, representing at least three ways the astonished participants witnessed the events.  Stories as earth-shattering and as community-forming as this are likely not easily modified.  Too much depends on them.  This is the best argument for the gospel accounts being chronologically prior to anything Paul had to write about resurrection.” 

The gospel accounts of resurrection are oral accounts, within an oral tradition, person-to-person stories.

So, belief and resurrection, although suspect in the culture, really do make sense only within the context of our belief, our community, our oral tradition with one another.   Is this making sense?   

So, how do some of these themes show up for us?  How do we receive resurrection purpose and meaning in our life?  I think we get a certain direction 

Resurrection of Meaning and Purpose

My hope in sharing about how we get direction from the resurrection is that we can unwrap the gift of Jesus’ rising with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose in our own community life.  Thinking of “obedience” as more than just moving blindly forward in the Word “because that’s what it says to do in the Word somewhere” in a fundamentalist way, I would like to cultivate the “Resurrection Meaning and Purpose” as an active discernment of how we follow, how we obey, where we are entirely open to God’s call on our lives with each step forward, each decision, each invitation, each witness to one another’s journey in loving community.   I’ve experienced this several times in our own mission group, where in working with decisions they’ve helped me tremendously.  I think we all do in our faith walk. 

So, where do we get direction? 

Get Direction:  Resurrection of Meaning and Purpose

We get resurrection of meaning and purpose from our preaching and teaching from this pulpit: 

• Wrestling with what it means to “let go of Jesus” after the Resurrection, rather than embrace him; to get up and get on about our business rather than “hold on to Jesus” as something that could be contained or only related to.  We need to “just get up” (as Joe Deck said, and get on with what that means for our life.  Even when don’t feel like it or want to.
• I think we also get this from the preaching and teaching that witnesses to change in our world every moment.  As with the invention of the printing press in the age of the Reformation, in our modern world—as Sacks point out—we have a new technology to deal with now.  So, when the popular access to new levels of information and sharing rise in cultures, “it leaves traditional religious institutions and establishment religion being flat-footed and tired,” kind of reactive.  Such flatness and passivity is not really present in 8^th Day, I think.  It’s counteracted by 8^th Day’s weekly publication of our sermons, for instance, David Hilfiker’s hard work on the web site; Internet dissemination of sermons; web-site connections with Inward/Outward; direct connections with the Potter’s House, Festival Center and many other communities. These point to our offerings and life together, our actually sharing their Good News, their “saving truth,” also known as kerygma.  There is an open channel of information, access, and ongoing invitation to the vitality and change of heart available in our resurrection community.  Technology is part of the “saving truth,” it looks like, the Good News of Jesus Risen.

Another evidence of this resurrection meaning arising from our shared traditions with the other seven Church of the Saviour churches:

• Where twenty-three folks from 8^th Day stayed overnight at Wellspring cottages, and even more drove up to attended the Easter Sunrise Service at Wellspring just last week.  This was all before we had the service we had here at Festival Center.  It represents an inter-Church of the Saviour coordination, joy and Resurrection Spirit I have not witnessed in our church for decades.   
• Meaning and purpose arise out of our spiritual practices.  Collaboration and encouragement of doing disciplines, our choice to be accountable to one another, fulfill our agreement.  I think this is some of the kind of covenantal listening that Sacks is pointing to.  The attunement with various people, in their backgrounds and traditions, coming together and trying to make the deep connection within our common understanding of how we function on the life of Jesus.    The continued exploration of what prayer means and how it resounds, how journaling echoes, how work with scripture reverberates, and how critical contemplation of our own life and our life in community resonate also.  But, all these are essentially void, if they are not held in the covenant agreement and the covenantal listening of our larger community, our responsiveness to one another.  It’s critical, I’ve learned, that you don’t just practice when you feel like it in order to become more consistent and directed.  You continue to show up.  You continue to show up for morning worship.  You show up in the morning to run through some hymns, even if your voice is a little tired, or if you’re a little weary from the week.   We have to show up, to be there whether we feel like it or not.  Then something happens out of that conviction: Something larger takes over, some kind of larger resurrection enthusiasm and life takes over, when we show up.  I’ve experienced that again and again in many of us in this community. 

I think it’s one of the reasons why people like Dottie, after her fall, can keep coming back and heal so quickly.   She has a mission group to hold her and a community to come to.   I suspect the same will happen for Eve as she recovers.   We’ll hold her.

Get Present:  Resurrection of Service and Presence

There are a couple of other ways this shows up in our community.  I think it shows up in our presence to those God gives us, in the present moment.  In our common worship:

Just last Sunday, attendance at Easter Sunday worship of a large number of people I haven’t seen on a regular basis showed up!  Many of the young people of our community came: (new and better-feeling) Eugene, Grace, Patrick, Zach. 

It happens in our life together.  For example, on Sunday, after she heard her birthday song sung so beautifully by our community, Eleanor Triplett asked for a gift: “I would like a large-print Bible,” she said.  And so she’ll receive that today after worship.

More importantly, there are thousands of small prayerful thoughts, actions and services each of you do for (and with) this community and others throughout the week that manifest a Resurrection presence, There’s a realistic possibility of peace and connection, the reality of Jesus’ face, hands and feet present in our own face, hands and feet--when we show up in those ways.  It’s a remarkable connection.  It’s a sign of resurrection.      

Get Action:  Resurrection of Passion and Mission

And so I want to start to wrap up by sharing how that resurrection action of working with God is greater--how we don’t want to be found, ourselves, “fighting against God,” as the Sanhedrin were accused of essentially doing.   As Peter says to the Sanhedrin: “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins.”   Peter defines God’s purpose in this whole exercise in crucifying Jesus as bringing Israel to its knees.  This is the same group that sent Jesus to Pontius Pilate.  Peter believes the changed mind and heart, the change of consciousness, the metanoia, the complete repentance, may allow Israel to ask for mercy and be forgiven for its wrong.   Of course, to the Sanhedrin, this is utterly insulting and infuriating!  And then Peter goes on further, to proclaim something so true to the Spirit of Resurrection with unstoppable confidence, “We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Peter is drawing the line of Belief in the sand.  We WITNESSED, he says, we’ve seen, touched and heard, and we believe that Jesus was present, in resurrection, and so has the Holy Spirit among us, God-given to those who obey.  If you don’t Believe as we do, you are not obedient and, further, you are “fighting against God.”   

Despite the murderous fury of the Sanhedrin Council at that point, who were apparently ready to line up perhaps another dozen crosses on the Calvary hill for the rest of the disciples, there was one trusted and admired member of the Council, Gamaliel, who “got” what Peter had said.  Gamaliel may have heard it as a call to do the right thing, but he certainly heard it as a call to take a clear stand against the “mob mentality” that prevailed in that moment.    Gamaliel stopped the lynching mob by reviewing the history of the last two “would-be messiahs” who had gone through in Jerusalem: Theudas, who had more than forty followers, and Judas of Galilee, who had had more than two hundred followers.  And only a short time after these charismatic leaders were killed, after their crucifixion, Gamaliel points out, their followers dispersed.  But Gamaliel tells the Council to leave these Jesus-following men alone, because if this is of God, he says, they will prevail, and the Sanhedrin would not want to be found “fighting against God.”    So clear was Apostles’ determination and witness of God’s power and presence, their boldness and unsurpassed conviction made them joyous enough to rejoice even after they were flogged by the Sanhedrin. 

My point in saying all of this is that we have to “get out of God’s way,” too.  Our capacity to believe, change our consciousness, is the best possible way to do that.   Anything that is not “of God” needs to get out of our way, in order to allow this larger belief to shine through.

When we are Resurrected, individually and corporately, to know and live this truth, we:

1. Get Direction:  Resurrection of Meaning and Purpose,
2. Get Present:  Resurrection of Service and Presence, and
3. Get Action:  Resurrection of Passion and Mission.

For me, for us, I believe.  I believe there are powers in the Resurrection and work of God in renewing life, in renewing belief and the awareness of new life, at work at all times in our community.  I see them.  Yes, you do, too.  Yes, Resurrection has the power to heal and lead us to deeper devotion and commitment.   I touch it.  Yes, you do, too.  I see it in the evidence of peoples’ lives, their disciplines, in their showing up.   Yes, Resurrection has the power to open doors of opportunity and connection with new people and opportunities outside of our community, especially in pursuing and realizing our gifts in living out our call in mission.   I hear those gifts, and I see those things.  So as we get direction, as we get present to the people God gives to us, and as we get the action of resurrection in our lives, yes, Resurrection has that power…    Do you believe?  Do YOU believe?  Amen.