I will the read from John 20 later in the context of the sermon, but let me also welcome everyone of you to this sanctuary today.  Even though I want to be careful not to assume the mind of God, I believe God is pleased we are still here together and that this church’s ministry continues to go forward.  After all, each Sunday as we come to worship, we are intentionally seeking to make ourselves available to God.  Of course, that should be a full time venture but it is good to have the discipline of the Sabbath just in case we are God absent minded the rest of the week. 

There are, of course, many other heartfelt reasons we love this place and all who gather in it, given its history of an open door, its inclusive table, and all the individual good, true and creative talents that are willingly place on it.  Recent sermons by our own members, John Tallmadge, Bucky Ignatius, Rick Sowash, and Elizabeth Frierson, were simply inspiring.   Add to these all the graces that are so ably set to music here, makes this place both a challenging and sweet place to be.  So I hope, as you have come this morning, you do feel something in your heart akin to the Shaker hymn:

                        ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free
                        ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
                        And when we find ourselves in the place just right
                        ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

The witness of this church is incredibly important and we need everyone’s support.  What ever the challenges ahead, as in the past, let us keep our hand to the plow, as Jesus said, and not look back.  But may love and delight never be absent at Mt Auburn.

               *                  *                  *               *              *                 *    

Yes, may love and delight never be absent at Mt. Auburn. But on this particular and glorious day we surely need to focus before God just how resurrected our lives are, as well as that of this church, compared to what God is capable of offering us.  And what does God offer us this day?  The life of one of our own, Jesus of Nazareth.  For the primary naked truth of this day, the good news of it, is that it is Jesus who is resurrected from the dead and not some one else.  That is the gift of this day and  no gift to our life will continue to grow and enlarge our souls than the gift of his life – the one who lived, died and is alive for ever more. 

The gifted Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, has remarkably written that “Resurrection occurs again and again when we find in Jesus not a dead friend, but a living stranger.”  What I believe Williams is suggesting is that however we thought we knew him, Jesus this “living stranger”, must be discovered a fresh, seen as someone who is himself, and not someone our own egos have shaped or others have shaped for us. 

For certainly the outcome of this day, Jesus risen from the dead, is more than an ordinary matter or something we could have imagined.   It is a cosmic event because as Williams reminds us, that however early we run to the tomb on this day to anoint Jesus’ body, God has already been there ahead of us.

So let us re-examine and make ourselves available to this gift this morning but let me first begin with a confession.  This past week I was given the opportunity that I failed at in a couple of ways.  Many of you know of Slate, a kind of magazine on the internet, with current news articles and other essays by excellent writers about all aspects of life. Well, the person who is responsible to create news story of a religious basis, something new for Slate, ask me to write a story in 800 words about the Resurrection.  I decided why not?  Although no easy subject for a few words, I spent some time on it, gave it my best shot, knowing those who would read it would be from all walks of life.  I also knew anything I said would not receive universal approval but I thought, what else is new? 

I submitted it but a few days later my contact, much to her own dismay, replied that her editor in chief doesn’t like pieces that are “too straight-forwardly religious” and so it was rejected.  Many of you may have rejection slips but that was my first one.

However, since I know you are a congregation more accepting than most and have never tried to restrict the word from this pulpit, I have decided to re-summit it to you.  As I do, keep in mind that it was written for a different venue, but that should not make any difference.  I entitled it simply, The Resurrection of Jesus.  Here it is.

“How does a preacher make sense of Easter?  It is impossible to rationalize what happened on that first day of the week in the spring of 33 C.E.  A mystery remains.  The reports of the four Gospels report confusion, vagueness, and uncertainty.  Nevertheless, they all agree on the one incredible fact that we are left with:

Jesus was crucified, dead and buried and is now alive forevermore!  

Although that is the simplest way to summarize what those who loved Jesus came to believe, it was not quickly arrived at.  And how could they?   What they had to face was that Jesus – the one they left their fishing nets, their tax collecting jobs, their homes to follow, the one who had given them hope and a new birth, who taught them to plow ahead without looking back, to leave the dead to bury the dead and serve the living God – was now dead. 

Jesus, who had embraced them equally as God’s sons and daughters, who was himself so fully alive and life-giving, so loving, gracious, and empowering, was crucified and buried as a common criminal.  His truth had been crushed to the ground!   And he didn’t even put up a fight or defend himself.  He was gone like a hopeful morning, and the God he prayed to was silent. 

So the claim, Jesus is alive and alive forever, seemed a stretch even then.                            

That is why the scriptures indicate that the disciples’ initial response to this incredible news was with silence, doubt, fear, and disbelief. Most returned to whatever they did before they met him. 

Eventually we know they did come to believe that Jesus was indeed alive, the most alive persons on the face of the earth, and their doubts were overcome by trust and their fears were cast out by love.  But initially was a shock.

Of course today we read in the scriptural record of the many stories of Jesus’ live appearances, of an empty tomb, of those who came to believe by touching his crucified wounds, but all of these accounts, different and inconceivable as they may seem, were written down fifty to seventy years later.  None of the Gospel writers were eyewitnesses to these events and their accounts do differ. Undoubtedly these resurrection stories were re-shaped, colored and added to by the authors own faith experiences. 

But what ever they heard and thought they saw, however they experienced Jesus alive, they truly believed. 

Primarily, the only ‘proof’ of the resurrection that we are left with is that there was a now a host of peoples, from all walks of life, who lived with Jesus in their hearts, and they became ten times the persons they were before they met Jesus.   

How then does this square with modern thought?  The other day after playing tennis, an old friend substituting that day, asked me, “Hal, do you believe in the bodily, physical, resurrection?”  “No,” I quickly replied.  He sighed, “That’s a relief to me, even though I thoroughly believe in Jesus life and message, such a view doesn’t seem realistic.” 

Well, most of us are convinced when we die that is the end of our physical being and that there is no chance our bodies will be reconstructed.   Surely, what ever our future after death is, it will not be, as some scriptural texts seem to suggest of Jesus, as that of a resuscitated corpse.  Even if such were possible it would only be temporary, for our bodies, like our cars, have a built in obsolescence.  Even Jesus, who certainly believed death was not the end of one’s life, thought our future’s history after death will be like the angels, a spiritual presence, and its everlastingness will be in the embracing hands of God. Mt. 22:30

Many years ago there was an airplane crash near O’Hare Field.  Several hundred were killed except for one passenger and the pilot.  The passenger was truly convinced it was God who had saved her life.  When the pilot was asked if he though God had spared his life, he shrugged, “I am not sure about that because then I would have to ask why not the others?  Besides my life has only been spared temporarily.”

Yes, death is real for all of us, as it was for Jesus.  It is an inescapable part of our living.  And no matter how we fear it or not, or how we are uncertain about what occurs after it, what death primary forces us to consider is what we believe and do before it comes.

In attempting to understand the various views Christians understand the Resurrection, there is a passage in Dying We Live, by Eugene Drewerman that I have found helpful.  “Whenever we encounter a human being in such a way we feel absolute certainty of the infinity of that person’s worth and the eternity of his or her life, that is Easter.” 

As I look at Jesus life, not his tragic and unfortunate death, that it what I have experienced.  I have come to believe that Jesus was already resurrected before he was crucified.  Even as he hung on the cross, the infinity of his worth and the eternity of his life were already established.  What more could be added to his life after death than what he put into his living?

As one who will climb into the pulpit on Easter, I am mindful that it is Jesus life not his death that needs celebrating. As it has been said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  That was Jesus.  He served the unbounded love of God which was to be generously shared with all persons.  His daily ethics were a response to God’s goodness and he thought that to be the only response anyone should make.  He knew God could resurrect the dead lives of any of us.  As a revealer of God’s good heart and that all persons are created for life and life abundantly, may his way of life continue to rise in this world.”

Well, that is what I wrote, and that is what they sent back with thanks but no thanks.  I really was not surprised because why should Slate give me a private pulpit?

But I said that I had a couple of failures this week.  The first was the rejection slip but I also realized that what ever I wrote was also a failure of sorts.  There is no way one can clear up, or make perfect sense of, this subject I was ask to write about.  It is finally an unspeakable event, one we can only confess and embrace by faith.

But speak we must for this we know.  The world has not been the same since Jesus.  The history of Christianity, mixed as it is, remains incredible – especially the Jesus part.  So much so that it isn’t really strange that all the mass media, films, TV dramas, and magazines have stories these past few weeks about Jesus’ life.  And there are more to come.  Jesus is a hit!  And for Mel Gibson he is millions.

How then, in Rowan’s word do we, even as a church, still meet him as a “live stranger” when everyone seems to be speaking of him as a friend?  Perhaps it is because of who Jesus was.  That he is still rising, unfolding, today.  I can only hope so but our world, itself, seems, to be shaking at its foundation.  We are a peoples of violence. 

So much so we need ask if this is a Good Friday world or an Easter world? Is it a world that continues to crucify or a world that is becoming more just and compassionate, as was Jesus?  And we need to ask which world do we serve?  And where in it is Jesus, the living stranger? 

The wonderful actor Peter Ustinov died a week or so ago.   As I was watching an earlier news clip of his life, a reporter asked him given his long life, how did he think the world was doing today?   He replied that long ago he remembered in London there was a giant poster of Jesus and a Boy Scout hand and hand. No, the Scout wasn’t about to help Jesus across the street as good scouts are taught to do with the elderly.  It was Jesus holding the Scout’s hand and with the other hand Jesus was pointing to a large map of all things, the mighty British Empire.  Ustinov shrugged and said perhaps we have come a long way since that poster.  But have we?  Was that Jesus’ vision for the world?

We do have the habit of holding on to Jesus for many reasons, and that is a good hand to hold, but what his other hand be pointed to would today?  After all, however Christianity came about, and we are part of it, its impetus was the man Jesus.  He is the one that we must return to, again and again, if we are to make sense of all we do here in this place.  Apart from this live stranger, I don’t think we will have good news for this world. 

Yet, when you stop to think about him, Jesus is hard to describe.  It was difficult for those who first wrote about him and it remains so with all of the churches who bear his name today. 

Actually there is no one way that Jesus is described in the scriptures and some descriptions seen contradictory.  He is call a rabbi, the Son of God, the Son of Man,  the Lord’s chosen, the Messiah, God in human form, the only savior, the High Priest, the lamb of God, the King of Israel, God’s only begotten son, to name a few. 

Modern scholars who have searched for the historical Jesus use other terms to describe him such as teacher, a classical sage, the wisdom bearer, the Sophia of God, a peasant artisan, a mystic, a healer, a social prophet, the first stand up Jewish comic, an iterant pundit, and even Israel’s prodigal son.  And I must confess I find the modern scholars more helpful and closer to the historical Jesus than how the church eventually describe him in many of its creeds.

Jesus is a difficult person to categorize by anyone but when you examine Jesus actual behavior one thing does seem clear, he was a social deviant and remains so today.  As such let me briefly address some of the major claims about him that we need to revisit and challenge.   

Some thought Jesus was the Messiah, the liberator of Israel, a country which certainly needed liberation from Roman rule.  But, as Bill Hardy noted beautifully last week from this pulpit, when Jesus came into Jerusalem to face head on the powers that controlled the world of that day,  he rode in only on a donkey.  Instead his actions reflected Psalm 33:17, “The war horse is a vain hope for victory and by its great might it cannot same.”  There is no hard evidence that Jesus saw him self as this Messiah, the one with sword in hand chosen to bring God’s wrath on all the unfaithful.   Regardless of the projections of others, Jesus did not exhibit such a savior ego or sought or any exalted status during his life.  Nor did he declare he was God’s only or favorite son.  If we are to use the term Messiah for Jesus we would have to completely redefine it. 

Another view of Jesus that prevails to this day, the one most in the church believe to be the orthodox view, was that he is the Lamb of God, the perfect  and needed scapegoat sacrifice to God – perfect in that he was unblemished and sinless. In one of the recent TV dramas of his life, we hear Jesus answering his mother’s question as he was about to be crucified, “Why?” And he replies “this is why I was born.” 

That is hardly the case.  Jesus rejected the sacrificial system as did the great prophets before him.  He did not believe God wanted him as a sacrifice.  Further he taught that God forgives us before we ask.  Forgiveness is a necessary element between humans and Jesus taught that forgiveness will only come to us as we forgive others.  But forgiveness with God cannot, need not, be earned.   It is already there! 

Jesus taught, as did no other, that God is generous and always gracious.  God’s benevolence of sun and rain, Jesus taught, falls on the evil and the good, the just and the unjust.  Jesus’ message was invitational.  Accept God’s goodness. That will lead to life and life abundant; the path of wholeness, a life of eternal worth. 

To Jesus, unlike most all who came before him, God was not a brutal, violent, wrathful, vengeful judge.  Perhaps that is why Jesus remains even a stranger to us because as a last resort we want God to be violent to protect us from our enemies. Or when we, thinking our cause is right do enter into violence, we want to believe God is on our side.   The fact that Jesus said that we should not react violently against the oppressor, only overcome evil with good, is often noted but it is usually ignored.

Many have wondered why Jesus had to die.  That’s the cover story of this week’s Time magazine.  Read it and you won’t get a definitive answer.    But the answer is that he didn’t.  His death was an unjust act.  But when he rode into Jerusalem to confront the powers of his day with his vision of God’s reign for this earth – which was that of an indiscriminate love and equal justice for all persons, that no one is to be a slave of another, that the least are as important as the greatest – he knew he was risking death, even as such a message might mean today. 

So, even though he loved life, thought longevity a good thing, he stood on his message and would not flee from the struggle.  He was truly a non-violent resistant fighter.  He was the precursor of Martin Luther King, Jr., another rarity.   No wonder Jesus alive after death brought immediate fear to those had followed him.  We, too, know such fear.  But as to the cross, we should not glorify it, only abolish it and use its wood to construct a table with a place set for all.

The modern scholars who have most studied the historical Jesus do find clear support that Jesus was a healer, an exorcist, an egalitarian, and most assuredly a great and wise sage.  But, again, they also know Jesus didn’t claim to be a prophet or claim similar eminent intellectual status.  They also know that as a social deviant he was in conflict with the world’s status quo – and that what he taught hardly made common sense to his hearers. 

Think of it. Jesus thought children understood him better than the wise. That would make intellectuals cringe.  He certainly turned the prevailing social structures up side down. 

He taught that God’s kingdom was for the poor, the paupers, and that the rich can hardly find its entrance.  Even as an adult, he shockingly called God Papa.  

Although Jesus would hop knob with everyone, Jesus always identified with those at the bottom, the marginalized, the impure, the moral outcasts, social deviants and not societies power brokers.  He did not even claim for himself social or personal virtue.  “Why call me good,” he asked an enquirer. 

Jesus even opposed the bed rock family values of his day, especially patriarchy that excluded or misused any of the spouses or siblings in it.  He taught his true family was all those who believed in God’s goodness and sought to emulate that goodness.

He didn’t claim any freedom for himself other than what all should be able to exercise.  He wandered where he willed, often with no place to lay his head, but he was never God absent.  With those so caught up with the strict laws of purity, he called all foods clean.   And as to behavior, he taught it is not what that goes into us that defiles us but what comes out of us.  It is our character that determines our actions and a person’s character depends on replicating the character of God – and God’s character is always just and wed to compassion.  What is more, he taught, any one at all could act in response to God’s character, because God is freely and directly accessible.  

He taught that the Sabbath was meant not to restrict behavior but to do good.  He taught the first shall be last and the last first, and enemies are to be loved.  The persons he had the hardest time with were those with oversized, self-regarding egos, or with any one who claimed righteousness at the expense of others.  To find life, he taught, you must lose your self and find it again by becoming a gift to others and they a gift to you. 

Jesus, in a society sharply delineated by shame and honor, shamed no one and sought no honor.  But he always sought to enable persons who thought they were unworthy to embrace themselves as equally chosen sons or daughters of God.

Further, he claimed no authority for his teaching and when he was asked for a sign to prove his message true, he offered only one sign, the sign of Jonah, which was a message of forgiveness.

Of course he created all sorts of enemies.  His own family thought he had gone off his rocker.  When he used exorcism to heal, they charged that he could do so only because he was Beelzebub, the prince of demons, himself.  Because he associated with tax collectors and sinners, and other uncouth and impure types, they called him a drunkard, a glutton and a betrayer of the Torah.

Even so, he simply thanked those who believed in him and was always grateful for those who found him not offensive.

No where was his strange wisdom found more than in the parables he shared.  Let me mention but two.

His message of the Good Samaritan was not only shocking because the despised Samaritan did a good deed to those who despised him, but Jesus felt that not only should emulate the Samaritan’s generosity but accept him as a friend. Jesus believed all human boundaries should be crossed.  The Kingdom of God is both diverse and inclusive in its embrace.

His incredible story of the Prodigal Son up ended and challenge  the whole notion of the prevailing view of God!  The prodigal, with his miss spent life comes home, down and out, because there was no where else to go, and the Father doesn’t even let him apologize before he hugs and restores him – as quick as Jesus did with the criminal on the cross. And then the father throws a party! 

We ought to understand why the older brother doesn’t want to go to the party.  He simply felt his brother didn’t deserve it.  He made his bed, now let him lie in it.  All in the neighborhood would understand the older brother’s indignation. But Jesus taught that the father’s heart was the same as is God’s heart – good, generous, forgiving, completely loving.   Incredibly, the prodigal is given back his life and the righteous brother is also invited to the banquet which God always offers.  Neither is shamed and neither is favored.

Again, Jesus understood the judgment of God to be totally absent of violence or retribution.  God’s concern, Jesus thought, is to ensure equity in society not the survival of the fittest.  God does not condemn but invites.  And God’s Kingdom is now, in our very midst, Jesus taught.

Wonderfully it is Jesus’ life that we see this side of the tomb on this day, not ours.  And may his live strange presence continue to rise up in our churches, and in the social, economic and political orders of this world, for that is where Jesus served God and where God is meant to be.  That is why it was so refreshing to know that when Mayor Gavin Newson of San Francisco permitted marriage licenses for same-sex couples his only defense was to say, “There are certain principles in life that transcend patience and one of them to me is the obligation not to discriminate.”   Jesus is clearly alive, seen risen from the dead, in that action. 

Yet, what, who, is rising today?  You can check that out on your own.  Read the papers.  Turn on CNN.  It seems that it is violence, retribution, hate, prejudice and greed and the domination of others.  We who have ears to hear and eyes to see must only ask ourselves is Jesus alive or not?  Or better to ask, since Jesus is alive, do we believe it? 

But let me say that Jesus was not raised simply because of his own faith although it would not be without it. The resurrection must be seen as apart of the creative Spirit of God that cannot be thwarted, the same Spirit that hovered over the earth when it was without form and void and brought into being this glorious world as the gift of God it is.   

So let me conclude with just one event of that day, that glorious day we believe Jesus returned from the dead. 

Mary Magdalene, all alone, comes early to the tomb of Jesus.  Jesus had loved Mary.  He had enabled her own healing and affirmed her life.  Now she comes to be with him in death with a heavy heart. She carries spices in her hand, all in order to minimize the smell of Jesus’ decaying body. 

All she truly comes to the tomb with is a basic sense of grief, of great loss, a deep void in her heart.  She is not led there with a prevailing sense of guilt.  Mary had not deserted him or betrayed him as the others had.  But certainly for her “Jesus’ death is a near death of hope.”  (Williams)  We who have suffered a loss of such a loved one know how she must have felt.

But anxiously she realizes that the stone before tomb had been moved away. Immediately she runs to get Peter and another disciple not named.  “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  The two men rush back with her and enter the tomb and they realize that Jesus must be alive.  Apparently, the men then leave.

But Mary lingers at the tomb and weeps.  She then sees two angelic figures sitting in the tomb.  They ask her why she is weeping.   Mary replies, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know here they have laid him.”  Then she goes outside and she sees a figure she takes to be the gardener. He, too, asks, “Why are you weeping?”  And so she pleads with this stranger, “Sir, if you have moved Jesus’ body tell me where it is that I might take him away.”

But the stranger was Jesus, the same Jesus she knew, and all he replies is “Mary.”

In that moment, Jesus the Resurrected One, gave back to Mary her name.  Her past, present and future life was given back to her.  That is what Jesus, the Resurrected Jesus, will do for us and for anyone at all.    
 

Dr. Harold G. Porter, Pastor Emeritus

April 11, 2004 - Easter Sunday
Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church