Chasing the Resurrection

“As Christians we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”

A Sermon by Jeffrey K. Krehbiel

Easter

April 12, 2009

Text: Mark 14:40-16:8,
I Corinthians 15:1-11

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures... (1 Cor. 15:3-4)

Church of the Pilgrims

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D espite Paul’s rather straight-forward account of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in his letter to the Corinthians, Easter morning is a rather elusive event in the gospels. In John’s story, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene, but in her grief she mistakes him for the gardener. When she finally recognizes him, he warns her not to try and hang on to him. It appears that she can’t quite get a hold of him. Later he appears and disappears behind closed doors, with little in the way of advanced warning, though the disciple Thomas is famously transformed from doubting to believing. In Luke, Jesus draws alongside Cleopas and his unnamed companion on the road to Emmaus, unrecognized until he stops to join them at table, where their eyes are opened– and he vanishes from their sight. First he’s here, then he’s gone. Now you see him, now you don’t. This is the pattern in the gospels. Except in Mark, of course, the most elusive story of them all, where there is no appearance of Jesus at all. On Easter morning, the women meet the mysterious figures dressed in white, and set off running from the tomb in terror and amazement, telling no one what they have seen or heard. In Mark, we are left to finish the story on our own.

So here we are, two thousand years later, still chasing after the resurrection. What are we to make of these events? Are they to be interpreted literally? Is it possible, or even desirable, to reconcile all these various accounts, as if we were investigating the assassination of JFK and the notorious grassy knoll? As Marcus Borg famously asked, if we had been there with a video camera, would we have been able to record the day on tape? Does it even make sense for us to ask such questions?

I’m actually rather orthodox about what I believe regarding the resurrection, though I’m not sure how to answer those questions. I believe something happened on Easter morning, though I’m not prepared to say exactly what. I believe Jesus will come again, though I don’t think it is for us to know exactly when. I concur with Paul’s sentiments when he writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Yet in the end, I don’t think Easter day is primarily about the past or the future. As Walter Wink puts it, ”The resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared.”

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is always out ahead of the disciples. From the moment he arrives on the scene the disciples are trying to chase him down. And here, in the very final scene of Mark’s gospel, Jesus once again is not where he is supposed to be. Even in death, Jesus manages to surprise them. The women come to the tomb, expecting to find Jesus, and instead they are told “He is not here.” Once again he has gone out ahead of them. “Go tell the disciples that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Once again, they are chasing Jesus down.

So here we are, two thousand years later, still chasing after the resurrection. And what Mark wants us to know is that we will not experience the living Christ by looking in the empty tomb, we will not experience the living Christ by looking up to heaven, we will not even experience the living Christ by looking within. There is only one place to “see” the living Christ, and that is by continuing our discipleship journey, knowing that Christ always “goes before us.”

I f Jesus is risen, then the resurrection is still happening. It is so easy to look at the world and see where we have put him on the cross again and again, but it takes new eyes to see the resurrection. Like those first gospel stories, glimpses of resurrection life are often elusive, fleeting, here, gone, now you see it, now you don’t. But as someone once said, as Christians we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. The life of faith is about chasing the resurrection down.

I see it in the astonishing forgiveness of the Amish, who reached out to the family of the man who opened fire on their school house, or victims of violent crime who seek the redemption of their attackers rather than their annihilation. I see it in the lives of those who struggle against life threatening illness, and yet manage to seek a good greater than their own healing. I see it whenever people manage to triumph after tragedy.

Just this past week, Jack Womeldorf shared with me an article about the 2005 film End of the Spear. In the grand history of cinematography, it’s not what I would call a great film, but it nevertheless tells a powerful story of five American missionaries who, in 1956, attempted peaceful contact with a notoriously isolated and violent Auca Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador. The tribe, known as the Waodani, had a series of violent encounters, not only with outsiders, but with other Auca tribes, a cycle of violence that was literally leading to their extinction. The American missionaries sought to bring not only the gospel, but the nonviolent message of Jesus as an alternative to their violent way of life. Despite months of careful preparation that included an exchange of gifts and early efforts to learn their language, the five men were killed by the tribe in a brutal attack, an event that at the time made headlines around the world.

Astonishingly, their families did not pack up and go home, or call in the military to retaliate against the Waodoni, but continued in their missionary efforts to peacefully interact with the Waodoni. Some of the Waodoni, though not all, eventually became Christian. All of the Waodoni renounced violence as a way of life. Today, the tribe is larger and stronger than ever, an one of the missionaries’ sons lives among the Waodoni, taken in by the very family that killed his father. It is his own book about that experience on which the film is based.

And the first seed that was planted by the missionaries that led to their eventual reconciliation? The missionaries, though armed, did not fight back. They shot their guns in the air, but did not shoot the Waodoni, even in defense, something their diaries show they had decided ahead of time. For years after the initial massacre, the Waodoni marveled that their victims did not use their weapons to fend off their attackers. The Gospel message that the missionaries brought was pretty simple. God doesn’t want us to kill each other. God had a son who was speared but didn’t spear back, so that we can live a new life. If we follow the markings of the trail that he left us, it is a trail that leads to life. It’s not easy for most of us to understand the sacrifices these families made for the sake of people they didn’t even know, but they knew they were Easter people living in a Good Friday world. (Now if we could only bring that same non-violent gospel message to our own violent tribe.)

Bruce Cockburn, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, has a song he wrote after living among Central American Christians struggling for justice in the midst of brutal civil war. He writes

I’ve got friends

trying to batter the system down

fighting the past till the future comes round
it’ll never be a perfect world

till God declares it that way

but that don’t mean there’s nothing

we can do or say
down where the death squad lives

ike some kind of never-ending easter passion

from every agony a hero’s fashioned

around every evil there gathers love
bombs aren’t the only things

that fall from above

O ur next hymn, “Christ is Alive!,” was written by the hymn writer Brian Wren. We’ve been singing it for several years now, but I just learned this week that he wrote it following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. At the time he was pastor of a United Reformed Church in England. Yet like many people around the globe, he was profoundly touched by King’s death. Yet when he looked through their hymnal, he discovered no appropriate hymns for the congregation to respond with. Wren writes,

“There were plenty of songs that spoke about Easter as something very triumphant that happened a long time ago or that happens again in the heart of the believer. But there wasn’t anything that suggested a combination of suffering and life.”

King, of course, was someone who knew what it meant to live as Easter people in a Good Friday world. In December, 1956, in the midst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at the First Annual Institute on Non-Violence and Social Change, King preached:

“Now the fact that this new age is emerging reveals something basic about the universe. It tells us something about the core and heartbeat of the cosmos. It reminds us that the universe is on the side of justice. It says to those who struggle for justice, ‘You do not struggle alone, but God struggles with you.’ This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us from the long tradition of our Christian faith. There is something at the very center of our faith which reminds us that Good Friday may occupy the throne for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the drums of Easter. Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but one day that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by Jesus’ name. There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, ‘No lie can live forever.’ There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ There is something in this universe that justifies James Russell Lowell in saying:

Truth forever on the scaffold

Wrong forever on the throne

Yet that scaffold sways the future

And behind the dim unknown stands God

Within the shadows

keeping watch above God’s own.

And so here in Montgomery, after more than eleven long months, we can walk and never get weary, because we know there is a great camp meeting in the promised land of freedom and justice.”

Yes, here we are, two thousand years later, still chasing after the resurrection. The good news of the gospel is this: Jesus still goes before us, just as he said he would. As Easter people living in a Good Friday world, the only place to meet Jesus is on the Way. ✞