What rock?
Today God triple-dog-dares us
to believe the first accounts
of the resurrection of Jesus,
and to accept their compelling invitation
to walk out of our own tombs of death.
Today, friends
God dares us to experience
the resurrection of Jesus,
not as removed observers or historical scholars, but as active participants.
If we choose to do so,
then we, too, will be able to respond
to life’s inevitable obstacles
with a lighthearted, “What rock?”
On Resurrection Sunday,
we hear again of the inhabited tomb,
we imagine again the women
going early in the morning
to embalm the body of Jesus
(by the way, for those of you who join me
in a singular lack of appreciation
for those sunrise services…
did you notice, in Mark’s account—
the earliest written gospel—
the sun was already well up in the sky
when the women started their hike
to the tomb…
personally, I think that’s enough evidence
for a more sensibly-timed Easter brunch!). We see again in the gospel stories
the disciples’ various responses—
both women and men—
their respective fear, alarm, amazement,
terror, curiosity, sorrow, confusion, joy,
and their self-imposed silence
about the resurrection
(or their Spirit-inspired broadcast of it
to the other disciples,
depending on which gospel version we read). The gospels give us color and drama;
they are peopled by interesting characters
and unique personalities.
Written some 30-70 years
after the events they describe,
the four gospel accounts add layers
of storytelling and meaning,
metaphor and symbol and truth
that any good oral tradition offers its hearers. But these four accounts,
endearing as they are,
are not the first reports
of the resurrection of Jesus.
The Apostle Paul deserves that credit.
In his letters to the churches in Corinth and in Rome, written between 54 and 58 CE,
Paul places their content
less than a generation after the resurrection.
Repeatedly he uses the phrase,
“Christ crucified”
to speak of the power of these past three days. The last 1,000 years of Christian history
have given the phrase “Christ crucified”
a decidedly different meaning
than that intended by the original Paul. Nowadays, the death of Jesus
is understood by most Christians
as a substitutionary sacrifice.
Jesus Seminar scholars,
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan
write about this theological understanding
and seek to correct its tragic errors
in their newest book,
The First Paul:
Reclaiming the Radical Visionary
Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon.
They write that this way
of seeing the death of Jesus is very familiar.
“Most Christians today,
and most non-Christians
who have heard anything about Christianity,
think that the cross means, in slight variations: Jesus died for our sins.
Jesus is the sacrifice for sin.
Jesus died in our place.
Jesus is the payment for sin.
For this understanding,
the notions of punishment, substitution,
and payment are central.
The argument supporting it
goes something like this:
we deserve to be punished by God for our sins, but Jesus was the substitute
who paid the price…”
Opinions and responses to this argument
range from defensive to discomfort
to confusion to outright rejection of it.
Borg and Crossan note
that the understanding of Jesus on the cross
as payment for sin
traces, not to the beginning of Christian history, but to Anselm, who lived in the 11th century, making it less than 1,000 years old.
That means for over 1,000 years,
another understanding or set of understandings prevailed about Jesus, the cross, and the tomb. What were they?
Borg and Crossan put Paul’s phrase,
“Christ crucified” into its original historical context
to discover the answers.
And in that context,
formed as it was by the Holy Roman Empire,
the Apostle Paul intentionally chooses language that would pit Jesus against Caesar,
and would differentiate the Kingdom of God
from the Empire of Rome.
By using the name “Christ” for Jesus in an era
in which that name was used exclusively
by the Roman emperor and his employees,
Paul distinguishes Jesus as Savior,
and not Caesar.
Paul deliberately uses the word “crucified”
as opposed to “murdered” or “killed” or “died”
in the same century
in which Rome retained crucifixion
as the death penalty of choice
for those who dared to question Rome’s authority or challenge its rule.
Rome reserved crucifixion for those who rejected Roman imperial domination,
as a painful, public, and prolonged
form of execution that carried the message, “Don’t you dare defy imperial authority,
or this will happen to you…”
By describing the events of these past three days
with the unadorned phrase, “Christ crucified,” Paul wants to be sure that people never forget that Jesus was killed by,
none other than,
state torture and terrorism
in one of its fiercest moments.
What does this mean, then,
about our preconceived notions
of the substitutionary death of Jesus?
Well, it means we were wrong…
but only for the last 1,000 years!
And what does this meaning of the death of Jesus
as a state-sponsored act of terror,
offer us in our evolving understanding
of the resurrection?
For after all,
we are here today to talk about life,
not death,
though the Apostle Paul
would be quick to cleverly remind us
that the two are intertwined.
Again, Borg and Crossan state it well:
“To proclaim ‘Christ crucified’
was to signal at once
that Jesus was an anti-imperial figure,
and that Paul’s gospel
was an anti-imperial gospel.
The empire killed Jesus.
The cross was the imperial ‘no’ to Jesus.
But God has raised him.
The resurrection was God’s ‘yes’ to Jesus,
God’s vindication of Jesus—
and thus also God’s ‘no’
to the power that had killed him…
The issue [for Paul]
was not simply Roman imperial authority,
as if Rome were worse than most empires,
and that a Jewish or Christian
[or dare I say, American]
empire would be better.
Paul did not simply indict Rome,
but [he indicted] what he saw in it:
Rome embodied the wisdom of this world—
the normalcy of this world,
the way life most commonly is,
the way things are…”
And the way things were then,
and far-too-often,
the way things continue in our age,
is according to the “domination system”
of doing business.
Domination systems are ways of forming societies
that are then ruled by a few
who use their power, wealth,
and so-called wisdom to shape the social system for their own self-interest.
Sound familiar?
America in the era of
“The Project for the New American Century…”
Wall Street until it collapsed in on itself
a few months ago.
Border guards,
less than 125 miles from this sanctuary,
acting under strict orders
from powerful imperial authorities,
who shoot first, then ask questions later.
And on and on…
these systems of domination
are neither new nor unfamiliar;
we each bear the weariness of their power…
and so did Paul.
The hope Paul offers us on this day
is to do as he did:
to acknowledge that
in the dying and rising of Christ,
the world of imperial normalcy—
the world that thrives on violence
and hatred and bigotry and fear—
is both crucified
and also waiting
to be transformed by resurrection.
On this day of resurrection,
we look to the empty cross
and gaze into the even emptier tomb,
and there, with the risen Christ,
and in contrast to the so-called
wisdom of the world,
we see the kingdom of God beckoning,
holding out to us the offer of love,
of compassion, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of barriers overcome
and of rocks grace-fully rolled away.
What rock? we ask.
For on this day,
and on each day that follows,
we are invited to follow Christ,
to die to the power of violence, injustice,
division, domination,
and to rise and live joyfully
in the power of seeing this same world,
but in a transformed way,
of seeing it through the perspective
of an entombed Christ
with no rock barring his exit.
We are told in the gospels
that the disciples looked in
and saw the gravecloths lying, neatly folded…
nice to know the risen Christ is tidy…!
Then we hear story after story
of how Jesus “appeared” to them
in a body that could be seen and touched,
eating with them
and even cooking breakfast for them
on the beach.
We puzzle over these appearances,
wanting them to be literal, factual,
and hoping beyond hope
that, if we are only good enough
or forgiving enough or wise enough,
then the same risen Christ
will appear in our kitchen
and pull the eggs out of the frig
with a wink and a smile.
The resurrection story, according to St. Paul,
is a quite different experience.
And that is the key word…
for Paul, and for us if we choose,
the resurrected Christ is an experiential reality.
“I have seen the Lord,”
Paul repeats enthusiastically to anyone who will listen! And that affirmation,
for Paul and for us if we choose,
comes with an imperative:
it calls for commitment, allegiance, loyalty.
If Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar,
the imperative follows immediately
that we ought to follow Christ,
not the would-be lords of this world.
The imperative of this empty cross
and even emptier tomb, however,
challenges us further.
As the resurrection is God’s “checkmate”
or “game over” to the violence of the world,
so is the resurrection also
an open-tomb and riotously joyful invitation
to all people to join God
in the great cleanup of the world.
As Borg and Crossan once again suggest to us,
“We see [the resurrection of Jesus]
as an affirmation that the general resurrection
[of what needed to die] has already begun.
God’s great cleanup of the world
is already under way.
The imperative follows
that we are called to participate in it.
The general resurrection
is about God’s passion for justice in the world—
and we are to participate
in God’s creation of a transformed world…
Thus, for Paul [and for us]
Christ crucified
has both personal and political meanings…
it is a path of personal transformation
as we are transformed
by dying and rising with Christ…
and [Christ crucified] is also a political statement, proclaiming that Jesus was Lord
and Caesar was not,
proclaiming that God’s great
cleanup of the world has begun…”
Rock? What rock?
We’ve got no time for obstacles
to darken our doorways.
We’ve got the business of resurrection to attend,
and for us, here at
Redlands United Church of Christ,
that business includes welcoming all,
no matter where you are on the journey…
our resurrection business includes
seeking out those
whom modern-day Caesars
repeatedly try to disempower—
immigrants, GLBT folk, Iraqis, Afghanis,
the list is long—
and seeing them,
not as projects to be accomplished,
but as friends, siblings even, to love.
One of my all-time favorite Christian theologians, Frederick Buechner
(favorite because he is as honest as he is poetic) writes in his daily devotional book,
Listening to Your Life,
the following about
the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus…
“If the world is sane,
then Jesus is mad as a hatter
and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party.”
(OK, parenthetically, true confessions…
my appreciation for Buechner is really
because he references a Disneyland ride…!)
“The world says, Mind your own business,
and Jesus says,
There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course
and be a success,
and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified.
The world says, Drive carefully—
the life you save may be your own—
and Jesus says,
Whoever would save their life will lose it,
and whoever loses their life for my sake
will find it.
The world says, Law and order,
and Jesus says, Love.
The world says, Get
and Jesus says, Give.
In terms of the world’s sanity,
Jesus is crazy as a coot,
and anybody who thinks they can follow him without being a little crazy too
is laboring less under a cross
than under a delusion.”
Friends,
my sisters and brothers who stand with me puzzling about this empty cross
and this even emptier tomb,
on this Resurrection Day
we are invited to proclaim Christ Crucified…
not because we love bloody crosses,
but because we are called to say
to all who will hear,
“the path we choose to follow is one that will
take us on a course other than normal…
maybe even a little crazy
by the world’s standards…
it will lead us away from ‘things as they are’ toward ‘things as they yet can be…’
it will involve us,
each day and with every decision,
in God’s great world cleanup…”
The crucified and risen Christ leads us
away from bigotry and racism
and border crossings that end in death.
The crucified and risen Christ leads us
away from hate and cruelty and torture
done in our name.
The crucified and risen Christ leads us
away from despair and hand-wringing
and dire predictions about global warming
and the international financial crisis
and our own county’s rising unemployment rate, while also leading us toward
doing something productive,
dare I say life-giving,
about each one of these rocks
that try to block the way of life abundant.
This path we are invited to follow
on this particular resurrection morning
is none other than a path
of (what the world calls) foolish hope…
a devil-may-care attitude
and an empty-tomb perspective
that says with the power of God behind it
to any obstacle in our way, “What rock?” With this King Jesus riding into town
from the direction of the rising sun…
with this Lord Jesus
throwing out Caesar’s moneychangers
from the sacred temple…
with this Servant Christ bending
to wash the feet of his disciples
and then washing up himself
to serve them a holy meal…
with this Jesus willingly giving life, not as a victim, but as fulfillment, as completion…
with this Jesus laying silent as death
in an enclosed tomb with no door except
a large heavy seemingly-unmovable stone… with this Jesus mysteriously alive again
and apparent to them,
to me, to you, and within us…
how could we, who seek to follow this Jesus,
to be relationship with his God,
and to draw our breath from the same Spirit, say to the obstacles in our lives
anything other than “ROCK, WHAT ROCK?!”
