Easter Sunday 4/1/2009
Today, Easter Sunday, my teaching is about the resurrection of Jesus. Some of you may think that how I understand the resurrection of Jesus is too literal. Others may think it is not literal enough. I simply ask you to hear me out. My goal is to be clear enough to enable this central Christian teaching to invade our thinking and life as a church.
I am framing this teaching around the question: what difference does Jesus’ resurrection make for us today? I submit to you that the difference it makes is huge. Remember how our many of our hearts and spirits soured when the announcement came last November that Obama had won the Presidential election. It spoke the possibility of a turning point. In a far, far deeper and more permanent way the resurrection of Jesus declares a turning point not in wistful thinking but in reality for the whole earth.
In a sentence, what I believe the resurrection stories mean is that Jesus is massively present in the church back then and right now.
By massively present I mean powerfully present, and with the term massive I am trying to say something more. I am trying to get at something that is real even though we might see, think about and describe the reality in different ways. I am even saying that Jesus is massively present in the church whether we believe or don’t believe. His presence, his love and grace do not begin and end with us. This means that Jesus somehow, someway takes up space in the midst of us ordinary people, and that he is a force to be reckoned with as long as the scriptures are read, the Gospel is preached, the Lord’s Supper is observed and Jesus is part of our worship, our conversation, our sharing of love and our witness in the world.
If we forget or go to sleep or drift away, the Gospel is still the Gospel. If it is blocked here, it will spring up there. And when it springs up those with the eyes to see and ears to hear get excited and celebrate every bit as much as we did the night of the election.
I respect your skepticism. Skepticism has its place, but again I ask you today to hear me out. In this teaching I am going to use four experiences to illustrate both the believability and the difficulty all of us have in believing that Jesus is massively present in our midst. The four experiences I will be referring to are first, the experience of Mark and his community, second, the experience of the Church of the Saviour, third the experience of a band of women in Zimbabwe, and fourthly, my own experience as a member of 8th Day Church.
Let’s start with the experience of the Markan community. One of the great contributions of recent Biblical scholarship is its ability to describe the contexts in which the various writers were writing. That is to answer important questions like what was going on in that time and place? What was the writer trying to communicate? What was the relationship of the writer to the community? In the case of our text for this morning, Mark 16:1-8, the writer is a member of the community that is being addressed. Mark is one of a small congregation caught in the cross fires of war and ethnic conflict.
This gospel was written sometime between 68 and 72 C.E. In this time span either just before Jerusalem was burned to the ground by the Romans or shortly after, the Markan community relocated en mass from Jerusalem to a town across the Jordan River. This was a section of Greater Galilee on the far side of the Jordan River in what is modern Syria.
The war had been brought on when Jewish revolutionaries called “the Zealots” seized the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 68 C.E. and set up headquarters in the inner sanctum. This revolutionary movement had been gathering steam since before the time of Jesus. Over time they came to see themselves as a messianic movement. They claimed to be called by God to put their bodies on the line to drive out the Roman occupiers. They believed that if they did so at the last minute God would come on the scene and help them destroy the Romans. They were driven by what we might call a “theology of glory” not unlike some Islamic extremists in Iraq. The early Christian community in Jerusalem believed differently. Their theology was a theology of the cross.
Read the strange 13th chapter of Mark from this perspective and it makes sense. I quote, “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains: ….” Mark saw the seizure of the temple for what it was – a fruitless provocation of the Romans which would reduce their great city to ruin. “This is not God’s way and this is not our battle. Let’s start over in a new town – on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, in fact, in Gentile territory.”
Mark is writing to settle the community down, to help them get to a new place in their spirits and to adjust to the new place in which they are living. This community was suffering from what we would call today call post traumatic shock. One of the effects of post traumatic shock is amnesia in which people are so emotionally frozen that they can’t remember their own history and stories.
Mark recalls many stories they knew by heart to mind and weaves them with great imagination into a narrative that essentially says two things: first that God was massively present in Jesus and that Jesus is massively present in the community of his followers. Mark’s story tells from many angles how Jesus was present among them the same way God was present in Jesus.
This gives us a clue to how to read Mark. This whole gospel takes on a whole new relevance when we read it on two levels –the time of Jesus and the time of the Markan community 35 or so years later.
There isn’t time in this teaching to show you how Mark works chapter by chapter with two distinct timeframes. By working with both timeframes, back then and now, he is bent on helping his own community traumatized by war and dislocation to recover their faith, their hope, and language. His goal is to take them deeper than their fear and pain. His goal is to break through their amnesia and will get them on their feet again.
The resurrection of Jesus does not stand by itself. It is inseparable in this Gospel and Christian theology from the experience of Jesus on the cross. There isn’t time to develop this either, but let me provide a brief overview. Think about two main threads in Mark. One is Jesus and his opposition, his enemies. The other traces Jesus’ followers.
The sequence of stories in Mark show how this opposition to Jesus and his movement grew stronger and stronger until it joined forces with the Romans to put Jesus to death in the most emphatic way possible – crucifixion as a condemned criminal rejected even by God. Alongside this growth of overpowering opposition, Mark describes the opposite development among his followers.. At first the disciples are winsome and friendly enough. They are like little kids following a pied piper. But then things turn dark. With regard to what is really going on, they get dumber and dumber. The closer Jesus gets to the cross, the less the disciples “get it”. In the face of the raw, naked, violent political power of Jesus’ enemies and the Romans his followers wilt and scatter to save themselves. Only the women hang around – at a distance. The disciples’ spokesman, Peter, publicly denies even knowing Jesus.
Here we have a convergence of hard violent, sinful, overwhelming worldly power confronting what appears to be abysmal weakness. In this situation, only Jesus holds steady, only Jesus keeps faith, standing alone before and with God.
His enemies mock him, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Jesus complains to the only one with power in his corner, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But Jesus doesn’t break. Then a Gentile Roman soldier gives the last word, “Truly this man was a son of God.”
Now let’s look at the strange ending of Mark. Three devout women followers of Jesus go to the place where he is buried to honor his body and his memory by anointing his body with fragrant ointments. They discuss on the way to the tomb how they are going to get access to the body because the stone would be too big for them to move. When they get there they find the stone already rolled away. They enter the tomb to find only a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side who tells them, “Do not be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”
In light of what I have just described about the context of war surrounding the writing of this Gospel, I submit that these women reflect the traumatized Markan community. At that moment they did not know what to do with the message of Jesus’ resurrection. They were traumatized. But they heard the message – that Jesus had been raised and that he would meet them again in Galilee.
This was Mark’s way of saying that God was massively present in Jesus and Jesus was massively present in the community of his followers regardless of their betrayal, their fleeing before the egregious injustice of the cross, their long history of “not getting it.” The main character of Mark’s Gospel is God. God is acting throughout behind the scenes. Jesus gets it. The enemies and the followers do not. God has raised Jesus from the dead. This is not an “everything turns out good in the end story”. The way Mark starts is with eight simple words “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” The beginning is the title which in fact is the title of the whole Gospel. The Gospel to the point of Jesus’ resurrection is to be understood as the beginning – the beginning of what we call the Christian Gospel. Now as the women leave the tomb, we get to the middle of the Gospel. The end of the Gospel is Jesus’ return and the transformation of the earth into state described in Isaiah 25:6-9.
Let’s move now from the experience of the Markan community to the experience of the Church of the Saviour.
Our founder, Gordon Cosby’s faith was profoundly shaped by life in a war zone. As a chaplain he saw that he was up against a cultural amnesia that deprived men and women of faith when they most needed it. Gordon came home from that experience determined to find a way to break through the cultural amnesia of the church in our time, an amnesia which causes people to lose the power of real connection with the Bible and experience as church.
Gordon and his wife Mary and a small band of partners staked their futures on their belief that God was massively present in Jesus and Jesus if invited is massively present in the church. Recall the words of the original membership commitment. “I believe as did Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. I unreservedly and with abandon commit my life and destiny to Christ, promising to give Him a practical priority in all the affairs of life. I will seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”
I spoke recently at a Lenten forum at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church on the topic “Saints – Call to Engagement.” They asked me to speak about Gordon Cosby whom they had identified as one of five saints they wanted to consider, along with Verna Dozier, Jonathan Daniels, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sister Theresa of Avila. I said that a saint is someone who breaks the mold and opens things up for others. I quoted Gordon as saying that all of us are called to be saints – that is to break the mold of the cultural blending machine so that loving originals can emerge.
This is what happens in resurrection. The mold of death as unlived life and end of life is broken and life comes bursting forth. I can see that pattern of resurrection in every mission this community has brought into being. This is what happened and is happening in the Potter’s House, in FLOC, in Joseph’s House, Manna, Bethany’s House, Family Place, Life Pathways, Wellspring, Dayspring, etc., etc. Shall I go on?
In the course of my talk at St. Albans I described a sampling of the missions that have come from the Church of the Saviour and one woman said during the discussion, “The number and depth and relevance of the ministries that emerged from that one little church is astounding.” Why is it amazing if we understand that Jesus is massively present in the church?
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, challenges us to rethink how we understand the risen Christ. “The work he now performs in our lives cannot be understood in terms of what a human individual, past or present, might do…. The resurrection of Jesus is a restoration of the world’s wholeness and equally a restoration of language.”
Understanding that Jesus is massively present in our midst means that if we seek to see and hear language that breaks through the amnesia of our culture will emerge. This is a critical promise for us as we approach a time when Gordon who has been so important in the past in offering language which has enabled us to cut through the fluff and connect with reality is not longer with us in body. The one who has inspired Gordon is here among us. The risen Jesus is our hope.
Let me now shift to the current experience of some faithful women in Zimbabwe who lead an organization called WOZA – Women of Zimbabwe Arise. It is because of these women that Sadie Healy is going back to Zimbabwe in a couple of weeks.
I have chosen their story because the situation of these women is even closer to the situation of the Markan community than ours in the Church of the Saviour.
WOZA came into being in 2002 to give voice to ordinary women in the face of the corruption and violence of the Robert Mugabe administration. They exist in groups of followers all over the country who are willing to go into the streets and risk arrest to raise a vision of hope for the larger population. Recently they went into the streets in a peaceful protest to demand immediate access to food aid given by other countries that was being hoarded by the Mugabe government. At the reception on the Hill the co-leaders, Jenni Williams and Magadonga Mahlaugu told us that as the police were arresting them they were also saying, “You are doing the right thing. You are saying the truth.” They wanted the women to know their sympathies even while they carried out the orders of their superiors upon fear of death for themselves.
This is by no means an adequate description of these courageous, creative, responsible and loving women. As much as their stories affected me what affected me most was their belly laughs. As they were telling their stories of standing in their weakness before the violent power of the Mugabe government every now and then they would let out a deep belly laugh as though they could step back from the immediate peril and look at the situation from what I would call a Jesus perspective. When they did that they saw an emperor without any clothes. They see the old tyrant Robert Mugabe temporarily still in charge while naked as a jaybird. His own soldiers carrying out his orders were on the side of the women, admiring them, praising them, encouraging them to do this also for them, but afraid at this time for their lives and their families to join them.
Here we see the Jesus pattern of strength in weakness personified.
This is how Jesus saw Pontius Pilate and the power structure he faced. Their days were numbered. This is the faith, the hope, the love, and the sense of power that Mark was trying to reignite by reminding his community that Jesus was massively present among them.
Now let me speak briefly about how I see the risen Jesus as massively present in the 8th Day church. We too suffer from amnesia. Our threat at this point is not the threat of violence as it was in 1968 when Washington, D.C. was burning and the Church of the Saviour decided it was our call to stay right here in Adams Morgan rather than flee with many churches to the suburbs. Our threat is we are at times at loss for words to speak the Gospel that has claimed us. We struggle more than in the past to have conversations that take us deeper and deeper to break through the cynicism and resignation that is competing for control in this country.
To us I say what Mark said to his fellow believers. Jesus is massively present in our midst. I can’t prove it no more than I can prove the resurrection of Jesus. But again and again in our souls we hear it and time and again we see it – this new creation of which the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the Markan community and the Church of the Saviour and the Women of Zimbabwe Arise are signs.
In a few moments when we share the bread and juice of the Lord’s Supper take this faith, this hope, this love, claim this power as you feed on the bread and drink from the cup. The Gospel story is launched. We are the middle chapter. Let us be who we are and embrace where we are – in faith. Am