Embodying the Resurrection
We
live in a world where people believe and they don’t believe. Some people don’t believe the earth is round
or they don’t believe people have actually walked on the moon. Some people believe in aliens and some
believe in ghosts. Some people believe dinosaurs
once existed while other people believe the world is only about 6,000 years
old. Some people believe and some people
don’t. Life is filled with ideas,
concepts, values, rules, social norms, and we either believe or we don’t. What do you believe in? Here’s one:
Snails have 14,000 teeth and some can even
kill you! What do you think? Do you believe it or not?
Do
you believe in friendship and love? Do
you believe in forgiveness and renewal?
Do you believe in fresh starts, a new day, being a part of God’s new
creation? Do you believe in God? Because this Easter story is not an easy
story to believe in. In fact, when the
handful of women returned to the others and told them that the tomb was empty,
that Jesus was not there, and that two men told them not to look for the living
amongst the dead, that he had risen just as he said he would, they did not
believe. They just thought the women
were sharing an idle tale.
Personally,
I do not believe in the Easter story of the empty tomb and the risen Lord just because
it is written in the Bible. Rather, I
believe in the Easter story only through embodying the resurrection in my faith
journey. If I had been in that room with
the others and heard what the women shared, I would have thought the grief
these women had gone through definitely had gone to their heads. But, I do think I would have been like Peter,
I think I would want to go and check out their story for myself. That is of course, if it was safe. I’m a bit of a safety freak. I’m not sure I would have gone if I thought
maybe there would be soldiers or guards that might arrest me, but I would want
to go, I would want to go and see for myself, just because that is my nature.
Some
stories of faith are not so much to believed but rather to be experienced, to
be embodied, to be lived out. Jesus had
an impact on people. He called twelve
men to be his disciples but many more men and women joined together to be a
part of his community. He was not about
doing his ministry alone, it was relational, it involved deep friendships, it
involved sacrifice and love. The disciples
dropped everything to follow this teacher, this rabbi, this man that they believed
was the Messiah. And over the course of
three years, they witnessed healings and miracles, they heard stories of God’s
deep love for God’s people and they saw Jesus interacting with outcastes and
sinners and people that others despised.
He did not follow the rules of his faith, and by doing so, he connected
with so many that felt they had been exiled from the faith, and even worse,
exiled from God.
Jesus
sought to shed the dead skin of his faith tradition and allow a fresh and new
way to be God’s people to be born in the world and people flocked to him. They were hungry and thirsty for a God that
loved them, that accepted them for who they were, not as others told them they
should be. But power does not like
change and those that have power will do what they have to in order to stop change. Jesus was all powerful, but he referred to
himself as a servant. And sadly, because
he changed people’s lives for the better, he was stopped. Except he wasn’t. In the idle tale of the resurrection, God refuses
to take no for an answer. God refuses to
be stopped. God refuses to let
oppression and injustice and greed and self-centered interests have the last
word. And that is where I have seen the
power of the resurrection in my own life.
If
we look at history of the past two thousand years, we can see how humanity
seems to come two steps forward and then perhaps three steps back and then four
steps forward and a step back. We don’t
move in a linear motion towards healing and wholeness in this world, but if we
look, if we pay attention, if we allow our inner spiritual selves the space to
embrace our scriptures, we can see the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God in our
midst. We can encounter the risen Christ
for ourselves. Have you seen the
Lord?
The first time I saw the Lord was
up in rural Maine working on a trailer home for a family. We went in community, as a work group from
our church, and we arrived with love, love for people we had never met but we
knew deserved better housing than what they had. So we gave of what we had, our time, our
energy, our dedication to create a dryer, warmer, safer place to live. And by embodying Jesus’ teachings, by putting
faith into action, I learned that the Bible is just flat if you keep it on the
page. But when you live it, when it put
it into action, it is transformative.
I’ve
seen the risen Lord in the Dominican Republic as we helped build a health
office adjacent to a church. I’ve seen
the risen Lord on the border of Mexico as we built cinderblock homes in the slums. I’ve seen the risen Lord in Kenya as schools
and health centers are built and supported by the church to ensure that the
forgotten ones are educated and healed.
I’ve seen the risen Lord even here in NJ, as men find recovery through
Market Street Mission in Morristown. There are dead places everywhere, places where
life is not able or allowed to thrive in the way that it is intended and it is
in those places that resurrection is waiting to be born. Life can come out of death. I’ve seen it in Camden, NJ with a school
program called Urban promise. We witnessed
it this past summer in Philadelphia through Broad Street Ministry and we will
participate in it this next summer right here in Morris County. God is the power that births new things in
the world. God is the power that brings
agencies like Homeless Solutions and Family Promise into being.
For those that don’t believe,
they might say, yes, there are compassionate people out there. But for those that have embodied the
resurrection, that act in their faith, it is so much more than being a compassionate
person, it is sacred work. It is
participation in the resurrection. We
worship on Sunday because we are Easter people.
We don’t believe in the resurrection, we are to be the
resurrection. What do you believe? Do you believe in friendship and love? Do you believe in forgiveness and renewal? Do you believe in fresh starts, a new day,
being a part of God’s new creation? This
is who we are, an Easter people, building friendships based in God’s love. Seeking forgiveness when needed and
participating in God’s new creation. We
don’t always have to believe, but in faith, we take what may seem like an idle
tale and when we see it for ourselves, experience it for ourselves, we know we
have encountered the sacred, the transformative work of God. Christ is risen! For I have seen the risen Lord at work in this
world. Don’t believe the story, embrace
the story, embody the story, participate in the resurrection as we are called
to be participants in God’s new creation.
Amen.
