First Presbyterian Church
Resurrection Thoughts
Sermon for 02-15-04
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our unison reading is found on page 489, the first psalm. The psalmists' definition of happy or blessed, as other translations have it, is to be known by God, to find refuge in God, even in hard times. It's not eternal prosperity, nor mere enjoyment or self-fulfillment. Happiness doesn't mean we won't suffer. Happiness means being open to God's direction and teaching. Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 1.

1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

This ends our reading from the book of Psalms. The way of the righteous isn't a reward, but a result of living connected with God, the source of life. That connection means knowing about God's justice and that God's justice stands against the world's definitions of prosperity. But psalms like these have been misinterpreted and used to support the idea that wealthy, powerful people are more blessed by God, that they are holier than those who are poor. Jesus, like other Jewish rabbis, interprets the scriptures differently.

Our gospel lesson is on page 64. It includes the beatitudes, which many of you know from Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount. But this is the gospel of Luke, and Luke is interested in portraying Jesus preparing the way by making the crooked straight, the high low, the rough places plain. Jesus doesn't speak from a high mountain in Luke. Listen for the word of God as it is found in the gospel according to Luke 6:17-26.

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea , Jerusalem , and the coast of Tyre and Sidon . They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said :

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God .
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude you, revile you,
and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven;
for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."

This ends our gospel reading. Jesus is fulfilling the words of Mary's Magnificat, her song that starts out “My soul magnifies the Lord” in Luke 1. Jesus warns the rich, the well-fed, the content, and well-esteemed that their good fortunes are limited; he makes promises to the poor, hungry, and oppressed that theirs is and will continue to be the realm of God. He preached during a time of civil unrest, when the very few rich were very rich, and the very many poor were very poor.

After Jesus' death, his disciples were excluded, reviled, and defamed for their association with him. The early church was persecuted. It was sometimes dangerous to be a Christian. Paul writes to members of the church in Corinth who were downplaying the importance of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20.

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,the first fruits of those who have died.

This ends our reading from God's word. Let us listen to the choir interpret God's promise that Christ lives and reigns, even today.

The choir sang “my redeemer lives.” What does that mean? To Paul, it meant that the Corinthian Christians have no business speaking of the resurrection as if it didn't happen. Why would they say the resurrection didn't happen?

I have heard Christians discuss the resurrection, wondering if it physically, actually, historically happened. They go like this: “I can't believe in Christ's resurrection, but I want to hope in it.”

“When I say I believe in the resurrection, I believe Christ lives in us. I can't believe in the physical resurrection of the body.”

“How can a body physically disappear? If I don't believe this can I still be a Christian?”

These are all questions to chew over and think on and discuss. Theologians have been doing that for nearly 2,000 years.

I was at a biblical interpretation seminar, with theologian Marcus Borg. He speaks of the pre-Easter Jesus, the post-Easter Jesus, how the gospels differ with one another on what Jesus did and where, and especially how the gospels differ with Paul's writings. Jesus himself never claimed to be the Messiah, he never claimed to be God; other people said that about him after he was resurrected. The discussion was fascinating, and very, very scholarly. They deconstructed elements most of us take on faith, and I could feel the tension rising from the other pastors in the room.

And one pastor asked Dr. Borg “Do you believe the resurrection physically happened?” And he said, “Yes, I believe something extraordinary did happen. Why else would the gospels all record the same thing: the body was gone, and they saw the risen Christ?”

And in that moment, I could see the pastors around me relax. The resurrection is a belief available even to the most scholarly of professors.

But in today's epistle, Paul wasn't answering any of those questions.

He was answering the question, ‘Is God more powerful than death, or not?' For Paul, the answer was ‘Yes, God is more powerful than death.'

The Corinthians' loved ones had died, or been executed before they heard the gospel; was that it for those beloved people, or could they dare to believe that there was some sort of life with God after death? If Jesus wasn't really God, but just human, his body must have been stolen, or never put in the grave. If Jesus wasn't really human, then he wasn't really suffering, just acting it out.

If Christ was raised, it means you too, will be raised. Because Christ was raised, you do not have to worry. You can live free, knowing that God is more powerful than death. If God is more powerful than death, then you can face the persecution by the state with confidence, doing what is right in the eyes of God, rather than capitulating to what the state considers right. I expect those words encouraged the Corinthians; I hope they can encourage us.

Jesus preached on the plain, explaining that God does not smile on the rich and frown on the poor. The poor and powerless are blessed. That's a popular message with the poor; but it's not so popular with the powerful. And the powerful are the ones with the power of life and death, of reward and punishment. If too many people believe Jesus, they will ask the hard questions of the people in power. Why are people starving? Why are people fighting? Why are people sick? The people in power don't like it. They either deny they have power, or say they've already addressed the question, or refuse to admit the problem exists.

Lutheran writer Martin Marty says, “It always puzzles me that Christians want to be countercultural, prophetic, and judges of corrupt society and then want everyone in the society to speak well of them, as if a bit of being culturally inconvenienced is unheard of in Christian history.” (1)

Following Christ is usually culturally inconvenient. Nevertheless, we all work at following Christ. Can we dare to have this sort of confidence in Christ? That somehow, he is here with us, helping us to delight in God's law? I want that sort of confidence.

Poet Kathleen Norris admitted she experienced Jesus only as a stumbling block and foolishness. She writes that her “Christianity seemed to be missing its center. When I confessed this to a monk, he reassured me by saying, ‘Oh, most of us feel that way at one time or another. Jesus is the hardest part of the religion to grasp, to keep alive. I told him that I probably felt Jesus' hand in things most during worship, whether I was in church at home, or at the monastery. Just a look around at the motley crew assembled in his name, myself among them, lets me know how unlikely it all is. The whole lot of us, warts and all, just seems so improbable, so absurd, I figure that only Christ would be so foolish, or so powerful, as to have brought us together.

Once, when I was the only guest one Sunday night at a women's monastery, the sisters invited me to join them in…the community's procession into church. …I didn't realize it at the time, but the sister' invitation was an uncommon act of hospitality, and not being able to amble into church on my own to find a choir stall pushed me into recognizing what the sisters already sensed, that Christ is actively present in their worshipping community. Not as a static idea or principle, but a Word made flesh, a listening, active Christ who in the gospels tells us that he prays for us, and who promises to be with us always.

Walking slowly into church in that long line of women taught me much about liturgical time and space. I found to my surprise that the entire…. service had more resonance for me because of the solemn way I had entered into it. Our procession was also a reminder of the procession of life itself; the older sisters with their walkers and canes had set a pace that the younger women had to follow. The prioress was my partner; we brought up the rear. ‘We bow first to the Christ who is at the altar,' she whispered to me, as the procession lurched along, ‘and then we turn to face our partner, and bow to the Christ in each other.' ‘I see,' I said, and I did.” (2)

We are supposed to look for Christ in the people we meet. As Christians, we bear the name of Christ, and we are to be Christ to the people we meet. That's part of what it means to say that ‘I believe in the resurrection.' I believe that Christ lives in us, that he is present with us in church, and that every time we celebrate communion, we remind ourselves that he nourishes us, we are a part of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is a part of us. Amen.

(1) Marty, Martin, Context, January 2004, p. 2.

(2) Norris, Kathleen, Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith, p. 162-3.