Living the Resurrection

photo © 2007 fester_franz | more info (via: Wylio)
Matthew 28:1-10
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Colossians 3:1-4

Last Sunday when we were leaving church Karoline, my 5 year old daughter, was walking in front of me, a little too close in front of me. She has this habit of walking right in front of me, and it's sort of cute and sort of annoying. I try to remember it's cute when I'm feeling mostly annoyed by it. It's like she wants to be independent and walk not right next to me, but at the same time there's some kind of tether that pulls her to walk closer because she also doesn't want to get too far. She ends up walking right in front of me, criss-crossing across my path really just about 3/4 of a step in front of me. See the annoying part?

Well, she was doing it last Sunday as we were walking across the parking lot of the church to our car, but not only was she walking annoying closely in front of me, she was also bopping her head up and down, starting and stopping, and generally just driving me nuts with it. With the baby in my arms and simply trying not to fall over her, the cute part had definitely left a while ago. I begged her to stop and just walk when she told me, "But we have two heads! I want us to just have one head!”

Uhhhhh…what? I didn’t get it. “We have one body, but two heads!!!” she insisted, pointing to the parking lot pavement in front of us. She was right. On our combined shadow in front of us we had one body, as my shadow engulfed hers, but we had two heads. “I want to hide my shadow in yours,” she said.

I wonder if that’s what the women were trying to do when they went to the tomb early in the morning on the day after the Sabbath. It wouldn’t have been right for them to go any earlier. They couldn’t travel, especially not to the place where the dead are buried, on the Sabbath. But as soon as there was light on the next day, they made their way to the tomb, not in Matthew’s gospel to take care of his body, but just to see, to know with their own eyes, their own minds, their own experiences where Jesus’ body lay, just to lose themselves in him.

But on the way there, the earth shook, the stone rolled, and everything in the world, everything they had ever known or believed or trusted was changed. “He is not here; for he has been raised,” they were told by the angel they saw instead of Jesus. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Go, the angel told the women. Go and tell the rest of the disciples. Go, all of you, to Galilee and be with him. Hide your shadow in his.

Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor and author of the Bible version called The Message, likes to tell how this passage, these words from the angel, helped him get over his anxiety whenever he was thrust into a difficult situation. It reminded him that no matter how fast he could get to the hospital when word came that a church member was ill, Christ was already there. When I worked as a chaplain in an Atlanta hospital we talked about how even as ministers it wasn’t up to us to bring God into a patient’s room. God was already there. Our job was just to seek where God was already working in the room and join God in the ministry taking place.

Jesus went ahead of them to Galilee. He was alive and already there. They just had to join him. They just had to find him, what he was doing, and hide themselves in him.

This is what Easter is about. Or at least this is what the resurrection is about according to Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and the resurrection is what Easter is about. We all know it’s not about bunnies and eggs and chocolate and jelly beans, although, who was sad to get any of those this morning? We know that Easter isn’t about all of those things, and we probably even know it’s about the resurrection, but then that’s where we get tripped up sometimes.

We get caught up in thinking that the resurrection is a story to believe (or even disbelieve). We get caught up in trying to work out the historical details, so that we can know what really did (or didn’t) happen. We debate whether it was physical or spiritual, whether it was literal or metaphorical. We get stuck in the details of the resurrection event itself, of Easter day itself, and completely forget or never even realize that even more than one event on one day, the resurrection is about life.

It is about a life-altering, transformative way of life. It’s not just something that happened to Jesus. According to Matthew’s telling, according to Paul’s letter, it’s a whole new way of being, a way of being with Jesus who is alive and in the world and calling us to join him. Resurrection is for us even today!

When we gathered for worship with First Baptist Church on Good Friday the scriptures we heard and the word I was called to preach reminded us that in Jesus of Nazareth God became human. Willingly and loving, Jesus emptied himself, gave up some of what it meant to be God to also be human. He submitted himself to the limitations of our life even to the point of death, death on a cross. By joining us on earth, by taking on our flesh and living our bodily life, Jesus joined himself to us.

What Paul tells the Colossians and even tells us is that just as Jesus joined himself to us, made himself more like us and brought us closer to him, by dying like we will die, at the same time he also lifted us up with him when he was raised again to new life. Our lives are tied to his life, so as he died we will die and as he lives again, so do we. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, Jesus’ new life after the grave is our assurance that death does not win, that hope is not lost, that God’s promises are not forgotten. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the fulfillment of the promise that God is still active. God is still here. God will not abandon us, not in the life to come and not in the life we live today.

Yet it doesn’t always seem that way. It’s no secret, and it’s not unfaithful to talk about it. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is still here. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is transforming life. Sometimes it feels like we have been abandoned. The earth that quaked when Jesus rose from the dead, quakes again, bringing death, distruction, and fear. Bodies that have been well cared for and healthy for years are suddenly stuck with disease and illness. Nations are at odds with nations; innocent people are caught in the middle. Health care is unattainable and those on the margins are left suffering. Human beings are caught in the bondage of slavery, and God’s creation is at the mercy of irresponsible and devastating hands. No, it doesn’t always feel like the resurrection has made any bit of a difference. It doesn’t always feel like anything has changed at all.

And it probably didn’t for the women at the tomb either, or the disciples when they first heard the news. Simply hearing about what had happened wasn’t what they all needed; simply believing it is true doesn’t change the world. They had to step out and do something about what they heard. They had to go and see Jesus, meet him where he was waiting for them in the world. They had to go out and get involved in his resurrection life.

The resurrection becomes real when we set our minds on the things from above, the things that are from God. The resurrection becomes real when look for the signs of new life where God is active in the world and then we join God in that resurrection life. Resurrection life is happening wherever the old is being made new again, wherever people are rebuilding what had been knocked down, wherever vineyards that had been trampled are being replanted. Resurrection life is happening wherever God is bringing life out of death, and THERE we must join in and be a part of Christ’s new life in the world.

Seek the things that are above, Paul writes, where Christ is. Seek out what God desires, what Christ is already doing, where Christ is already going ahead of us. Seek out the places in this world where God is already active, waiting like Jesus waited in Galilee for the disciples to come and join him. Seek out the places in our community where Jesus is blessing others, serving the poor, tending to the sick, bringing comfort to the lonely, and go, hide your life in his. Join his resurrection life bringing hope into a world over-shadowed by death. Join him in revealing God’s glory!

The resurrection isn’t an incident to be remembered, it’s a life to be lived.

One Body

Colossians 3:12-17
1 Corinthians 12:14-27


I once worked with a pastor who couldn’t stand that little finger play up there on the screens. Join with me if you know it -- “Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people.” It’s cute, right? I’m pretty sure I knew that game before I knew any Bible verses, maybe even any Bible stories. So what’s the big deal? What did this pastor have against a nice little kids’ rhyme?

Well, it was the church part. This colleague was pretty particular about the way the word “church” is used. “The church is NOT a building,” he would say. It’s not our sanctuary or our Sunday School rooms, our offices or our Fellowship Hall. The church is not bricks and mortar.

The problem with that finger play for my colleague is that for him it’s all backwards. “Here is the sanctuary,” he might say. “Here is the steeple.” (That part doesn’t change.) “Open the door and see...the church!” OK, so it doesn’t rhyme. It loses a lot as a kids’ game without the rhyme, but the theology is so much better.

The church, my colleague was getting at, is the people. The church isn’t a place; it’s a community. It’s the people of God created, redeemed, and blessed for ministry. It’s the gathering of believers called together, but also sent out to be active in God’s work in the world. The church, Paul described in his letter to the Corinthians is a living, breathing, active, creative, responsive, body, Christ’s body, to be sure.

I think this is a vital part of our faith. As Christians we claim to be more than just followers of a Jesus, more than just worshipers of God, more than just recipients of the Spirit. We understand ourselves to be collectively, the representation of Christ himself on earth. The church, the holy community, at its very best, is called to the best expression of Christ’s body on earth. This is what we claim to be - - together - - when we’re living and working the way God calls us to.

There are a couple of key points to that idea. One is that it only works when we do it TOGETHER. No one person among the faithful can be the body of Christ alone. No one person expresses Christ-likeness well enough alone to claim that role for himself or herself. It’s why we Presbyterians LOVE our committees. When God’s people work together, we claim, the Spirit of unity makes us the body of Christ. We aren’t the body of Christ on our own; we are individually members of it, but we are not it. Like Paul said, an eye is not the body alone, and an eye cannot function alone. The eye needs the ear and the mouth and the nose and the hands and the feet and the torso and everything other part of the body to make it work to its fullest potential. Each part does not a body make, but together we can be the body of Christ, the church.

The second point is that little caveat “at its best.” The church, we all know, is made up of human beings. We run the same risk as ever other human institution to fall into the way of sin. I remember an old bumper sticker I saw ages ago that said it best, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” I’m not saying that others aren’t forgiven, too; that’s another sermon for another day, but I love the admission and realization in that statement that following Christ does not mean we are perfect people. And imperfect people make an imperfect church.

We make mistakes large and small. As denominations and faith traditions within the larger body of Christ we have covered up abuse out of fear of scandals. We have persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ and people of other faiths or no faith at all. We have ignored the poor, the hungry, the naked, the less-educated, the mentally ill. We have bullied people based on theology, race, and sexual orientation.

Within this congregation and in others we have failed to honor one another as we should. We have reacted rashly out of anger and hurt. We have talked behind each other’s backs or left hard feelings unresolved altogether. We have put our own desires first and disregarded the likes of others. We have been slow to forgive and seek reconciliation with one another. We are an imperfect gathering of imperfect people, and it is difficult, no, impossible for us to be “at our best” by our own efforts.

On our own, even in the church we resort to the ways of the world. We are a broken body. We forget that we are called to a different kind of community than the kind we experience away from the body of Christ. We forget that we aren’t a corporation or a business or a city council or any other earthly institution. We forget that we are the body of Christ, God’s chosen ones, who by a heavenly voice are called to live with one another a different way.

We are called to drape ourselves with compassion, the act of suffering along with those who suffer, humility, where we honor others more than we honor ourselves, patience, where we wait for one another without grumbling. Most of all, I believe, we are called to be a loving, forgiving people, recognizing the imperfections we see so clearly in others are also very present in our own lives. We are called to offer grace when we are hurt, not revenge, not vindication. When we are wronged and we have a complaint against any other, our response should not be a distancing through negative speech and giving up on relationships.

Our response should be to seek one another out that we may find peace and offer forgiveness as we are forgiven by the Lord. Our response in the body of Christ should be different than the response that might come from within a secular gathering. Our calling is to demonstrate the way of Jesus to the world, and the way we treat each other is an important part of doing just that.

But just as we are broken, so was Jesus broken. And just as he is resurrected, we are resurrected. By his grace, we are redeemed and raised to new life. By his overcoming of death, we can overcome the pockets of life-killing imperfection in our life as the body of Christ. Through his forgiveness we can find the strength and courage and grace to forgive one another.

When Jesus calls us together, he calls us to new life, and he unites us with the gift of sacraments, the gift of the holy community, the gift of his Spirit, that together we can be the best expression of his body on earth. Together our hands can be his hands that heal the sick, give food to the hungry, and comfort those who sorrow. Our mouths can be his mouth, praying for the lonely, speaking to the shunned, advocating for the forgotten. Our feet can be his feet, taking the long way to include the excluded, stepping into public places to make his presence known, walking along side those who are seeking the presence of God in their lives. Together we can be his one body.