Giving and following a lead

“…The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep” (John 10:11-13)

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

 New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 25 April 2021)

Have you ever stood among a group of pedestrians on the pathway beside a busy city street waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green?  You might be less than fully mindful of where you are as you think about six different things at the one time. Then, someone notices a break in the traffic and walks out while the light is still red; others follow. A whole flock of people follow.  You realise that this is an opportunity and as you scan the horizon for two seconds you decide not to move; instead you wait it out a little more. 

An everyday occurrence such as the one described here contains an important insight into human nature. A lot of human activity is like that.  Many people wait. Some people follow. Fewer still lead.  For much of the time, we are not entirely sure about this course of action or that line of thinking. Naturally, we follow the ‘main herd’. It may be that the ‘main herd’ is led by persons of some notoriety and substance. It may be that those led are not entirely happy with those who lead but are reluctant to step aside from the main herd. Indeed, challenging the leader may be a cultural or organisational taboo.

In today’s world where are the signs of leadership and following? They are everywhere. Some of us literally ‘follow’ others on Facebook, twitter or other social media (and of course they follow us).  Trends in opinions are led or shaped by those who control the airwaves, the print-media and social media.  They are also shaped by long established values and opinions inherited from previous generations and reflected in various ways in our cultural practices and laws.  It is all very much human.  ‘Leadership’, however we might define it, is hard to pin down. Actually, many organisations and situations are ‘managed’ rather than led.  Nobody is, strictly speaking, in charge. And that may be no bad thing in some instances. Then again, leadership might be called for but is sadly missing.

In the prophecy of Isaiah we encounter the servant who suffers and gives his life for his people. Servant leadership puts those served first. This is not the typical pattern of leadership in many organisations including at times, sadly, those professing to follow Jesus. What is it about servant leadership and watching over us? It is the deep, deep care of the one who watches over us like a mother gazing at her baby. It is a gaze and a solicitude that says: ‘I care for you’.

Jesus our good shepherd guides our way forward (Psalm 36:23: ‘The Lord guides the steps of a man and makes safe the path of one he loves.’). The saying of Jesus on the good shepherd is rooted in the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus was all too familiar with. For example, the prophet Ezekiel (chapter 34) speaks of a covenant between the Lord who is Shepherd and his people Israel. He will take care of his people where the shepherds have failed. The latter never cared. What was it about the true shepherd of Israel that marked him out from the false shepherds? What model of shepherding is Jesus implementing in John’s gospel? Let’s take Ezekiel 34:3-6 and recall the characteristics of the false shepherds:

You do not take care of the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed those who are ill or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.  So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals.  My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

However, images of animal submission, passivity and docility may not sit easily for many modern-day readers.  We can understand the metaphor of the Good Shepherd and the sheep for what it is – a loving relationship founded on trust, mutual recognition and following. Our leader and shepherd is not a despot. He is the One who is ready to lay down his life for us.

Psalm 22(23) is very familiar to us: The Lord is my Shepherd; there is nothing I shall want ….’.  And in the prophecy of Isaiah there are a number of references to the role of a loving shepherd (Isaiah 40:11 and 56:8). We note that Isaiah (40:11) speaks of the Lord tending ‘his flock like a shepherd:’ as ‘he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart’. He ‘gently leads those that have young’. It is a matter of overwhelming loving kindness (hesed in Hebrew), gentleness and inviting. And, in 56:8 of Isaiah, there is mention of still others ‘besides those already gathered’. John 10:16 with its reference to ‘other sheep that are not of this sheepfold’ who will be brought along and who ‘will listen to my voice’ so that ‘there shall be one flock and one shepherd.’ The Johannine vision of a united world and a single love uniting all peoples and uniting one another to the source of life, love and unity runs through that entire gospel from start to finish (John 17:20-22). God calls not just the religiously inclined or ritually pure but everyone – everyone.

From this short extract from the Gospel of John and the associated references across the sacred scriptures we can identify seven characteristics of The Good shepherd who:

1. takes care of the flock;
2. strengthens the weak;
3. heals the ill;
4. binds up the injured;
5. brings back the strays;
6. searches and looks for the lost; and
7. gathers in sheep not of this flock (in other words all are welcome regardless of who the insiders think is worthy).

And it is over to us..

We have a sure foundation in Jesus who cares for each of us deeply and continuously as a mother does for a new born baby and as a dying person does for those whom we have loved.  But, if we recognise the light and the life of God in the gentle, kind and inviting voice and face of Jesus who is the Face of God (another take on ‘Son of God’) then we, too, can be a gentle, kind and inviting voice and face for others who seek life and light.  We can chose to radiate kindness if we want and if we are serious about doing so.

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

Images of shepherding are spread across the scriptures. In this parable, Jesus is presenting himself as the Good Shepherd as distinct from other Shepherds. The Good Shepherd cares for his flock and will stand by them. More than that, there is a reciprocity between Shepherd and sheep. Above all, it is communion with his Father that Jesus lays down his life for his flock and, thereby, draws all the flock into one sheepfold of everlasting life.

11:       The Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep

‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 

The Good Shepherd is not in it for himself. It is all about serving others. This turns our worldly notions of leadership on its head.

12-13:  The importance of attitude

The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 

In our roles in family, community and workplace, are we in it purely our own interests or do we see each and every responsibility?

14-15:  Knowing one another

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 

‘Knowing’ the other, in biblical language, is more than recognising face or voice. It is about entering into a personal relationship with the other.

16:       one flock and one shepherd 

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 

The goal of our journey is unity. May the world be united by one love and one bond!

17-18:  Jesus and the Father.

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

We may enter into a new communion because God is communion and in God there is no strife or discord but goodness, purity, truth and love.

The cause of our joy

“…because of joy and amazement” (Luke 24:41)

Acts 3:12-19

Psalm 4

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36-48

 New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: The Third Sunday of Easter, 18^h April 2021)

In daily life, what is it that gives us joy?

How do we know real joy when we experience it?

These are simple but extremely important questions to ask ourselves from time to time. In all our busyness and distractedness we can miss what is really important in life.

But, ‘Joy’ is not so simple to define.

Let’s say we know it when we feel it.

We hear a lot about being happy or being satisfied in life. We hear about the pleasures of the good things in life and the great blessing of health for those fortunate enough to have it.  But, we don’t hear so much about ‘joy’; it lurks somewhere on the scene but it is more elusive.

Indeed, we might be just a little guarded about using the word ‘joy’ especially when it might be associated with what might be termed a ‘religious’ experience. It is not difficult, perhaps, to be carried away by emotions especially when accompanied by music, group sentiment and expectations of something great and wonderful. Too often people can be misled by mere feelings or gullible claims of uplifting of the spirit. Yet, we should not disregard the importance of feeling and shared feeling whether in an explicitly religious context or otherwise.

God is not so remote and so other-worldly that it is not possible from time to time to experience or ‘see’ a chink of light for a few moments.  If we have never been moved by some emotion in the context of shared love, common worship or an act or a word of kindness, then we have never fully lived as Christians. Living the Christian life surely means meeting with the living Christ in the very ordinary and wonderful things of life.

The mystery of our faith did not stop on Good Friday and evaporate in some mist of heavenly apparitions to the early disciples of Jesus. No. When Christ rose from the dead, he showed himself in very physical ways to his disciples. Whatever the precise historical detail of the events following the first Good Friday we can be sure that the Risen Christ is not some phantom of religious imagination and feeling. The Risen Christ is present today wherever two or three are gathered in his name.

It was about 8.45pm on the evening of 24th May, 1738 when John Wesley, the person most associated with the Methodist movement which sprang from what, nowadays, we call Anglicanism, had an ‘experience’. This was in Aldersgate, London, while someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Letter to the Romans.  Wesley wrote of the experience, afterwards, that, "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

‘I felt my heart strangely warmed’ wrote Wesley.

Have we had an ‘Aldersgate’ moment in our lives?  Have we had a few?

There is one way of checking in our subjective feelings. We should not travel alone. Where two or three are gathered – as on the road to Emmaus, there stands a loving presence – Jesus in the midst of us (Matt. 18:20). Church (‘gathering’) is everywhere if only we could open our eyes. The surest sign of God’s Holy Spirit is the joy that is placed in our hearts. It is like a burning fire that lights one step ahead and protects from everything else around us. However, discernment, care and spiritual companionship are essential to test every fire. Not every fire leads to God or comes from God. 

The resurrection stories nearly all involve an encounter between the Risen Lord and a group of disciples. The Risen Christ is revealed in the new communion called and blessed by his Name.

And today in 2021 we are witnessing these events.  What happened on the road from Emmaus as well as to Emmaus is that Someone walked into our lives – unexpectedly. It was a natural encounter, so it seemed. Then in conversation with this stranger our hearts were lit up and something sparked deep within us. Jesus spoke about the words of scripture. But in doing this he joined a conversation among the disciples. Such was the joy and the warmth experienced by the disciples that they felt an irresistible urge to share what they had experienced with other disciples. And this continues today among us. ‘Joy and amazement’ (verse 41) together with ‘peace’ (verse 36) are the fruits of such learning and encounter.

There is something that we have seen and have touched and have experienced…

It is the joy of having met – really – the living, Risen Christ.

 

(words above = 820)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

The story in this Sunday’s extract from Luke’s gospel follows on from the ‘Emmaus Story’ where Jesus walks along with two disciples and ends up staying the evening with them before disappearing. The Risen Christ turns up, unexpectedly, and departs similarly.

36:       Jesus Appears to the Disciples

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

While the disciples conversed with the witness who had met the Risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, Jesus stood among them. His message is Peace. Christ comes not to condemn or to judge but to heal, to set free and to give Peace – real, lasting peace and not the sort of peace this world promises but fails to give.

37-43:  Not a ghost

They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

A common feature in all four gospels is a strong emphasis on the physical risen body of Christ. There is eating together with displays of wounded hands, feet and sides (Luke goes for feet and hands, only). The gospel writers are anxious to dispel any notion that the Risen One is a ghost or a phantom of collective or individual psyche. Christ is one of us among us but in a way that is altogether new and that defies space and time limitations.  The disciples have entered into a new reality where Christ is present to them in their midst and within their hearts. We read in the Acts of the Apostles (thought to be written by Luke) that (Acts 10:40-41):

God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

44-46:  Opening up the Word

He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.  He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 

Jesus spoke about the words of scripture. But in doing this he joined a conversation among the disciples. In other words, he spoke with them more than at them. This is how we learn from others – others who speak with us and not down to us, or up to us or at us. People who speak with us in active conversation bring out something new and old within us. And this is educare – to educate.

47-48:  Witnesses to joy

and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.

The cause of our joy is Jesus – the Christ who has died and is now risen.  We are witnesses to his freedom.

Faith and doubts - a human dialogue

“…Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29)

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

 New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: Second Sunday of Easter, 11^h April 2021)

 No doubt = no faith

Without doubt there is no faith. What? Read that again. To have faith implies that I trust and entrust. That means taking a step and making something of a leap. Put another way, it means trusting without full certainty. Doubt has an inevitable place in the act of trusting. We entrust our doubts to God in the act of trusting and God in whom we trust takes care of our doubts. Sounds simple? Yes and no.  Life is always a struggle and the edges are not always so clear cut on a particular question or issue.

If what we believe in were certain, provable, ‘scientific’ in the usual sense of this term then there would be no need to trust anyone or anything. It would be a matter of a more or less certain conclusion. Or, at least, we may say that the evidence allows us to conclude so much and no further. Because we are human we live in a reality of uncertainty, questioning, evolution, struggle, victory and growth. This is what makes us human. Now, my favourite definition of faith is what Paul wrote (using, in this instance, the King James version of the Bible in English) in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Bereavement as faith in doubt..

People passing through bereavement (it happens to all of us at some stage) feel a mixture of emotions. Sometimes, people of strong faith believe that their loved ones have left clues and signs – establishing a kind of benevolent and watchful presence as they continue to care for us.  Other times, the bereaved have such a strong hope and a strong love and a strong faith that they look forward to being reunited with their loved one after death. These emotions and insights should not be dismissed as mere psychological coping strategies or imaginings. Yes, we do need to cope and to find ways of dealing with realities. However, the seeds of faith – of trusting – are sown deep in the human soul. And we ought not to resist the natural growth of such seeding. What feeds such seeding is the rough soil of turmoil and doubt – never being entirely certain or sure of what it is that is growing in our hearts and minds. Nonetheless, look for clues, we look for certainties, we look to cling to something or someone.

Thomas – ‘the twin’ – was a very modern sort of person in our books. He was just trying to be honest with himself and others and not taking on board whatever others told him to think or believe. He looked for hard evidence. Perhaps he was misled more than once before in his life. Perhaps his companions, the disciples, were not above exaggeration. And Lazarus notwithstanding, why should he have accepted this story about Jesus being alive again? God loves us in our doubts, in our questioning, in our anguish, and in our struggles to be honest with ourselves and others.

When John tells us that Jesus appeared to the apostles, including Thomas, ‘eight days’ later he shows them his wounds. However, miraculous his movements and however glorified his body, the risen body of Christ carries wounds. We should never forget this. Our peace is in his wounds and John emphasises, both in the story of Calvary and here, the source of life and renewal in the wounded side of Christ from which ‘blood and water’ flowed. As always, John is never far from the material because his gospel is steeped in mystery or, to use a Western term, the sacraments of Christ’s presence and action. Being highly sacramental (to continue with a Western term) means recognising the ‘fleshiness’ of what it is we believe in. References to body, eating, wounds, touching, seeing and feeling are not accidental. John – like the other evangelists – has news for us. Material is good. And we attain to the spiritual through the physical because the two are closely united. They are two sides of the one coin.

An early Christian writer, Origen, writing in the second century understood resurrection as ‘a spiritual transformation without loss of individual identity’. He rejected a simplistic physical reconstitution (resuscitation) interpretation. At the same time, he rejected an interpretation that saw the material as evil and entirely separate from the resurrected body. The ideas system behind this view of material as evil was known as ‘gnosticism’ and like all heresies, (i) it had elements of useful insight and truth, and (ii) it never went away but lurks under other ideas systems in our own times.  For Origen, the resurrected body shares the same ‘form’ as the physical body. The tension between the now and the past; between the physical and the spiritual (however these terms are understood) is handled by an approach that can receive the mystery of rising as embodying different truths and not rejecting anything essential through a one-sided emphasis.

Material is good..

So, material is good.  Material and spiritual (which is not merely some non-material substance or reality) are part of an indivisible whole.  The notion of the soul being released from the earthly body which waits to be reunited with the soul on the last day is surely platonic.  The squeamishness about cremation in former times may testify to such dualist and physicalist notions.

Perhaps the metaphor we need to work with, nowadays, is one that tells a story about a seed (as outlined in the first letter to the Corinthians). The seed dies (buried in the ground) but transforms into new life. There is a continuity and what was perishable in some mysterious way ‘lives on’ except in an entirely way.  It takes imagination and a leap in faith.  The intellectual underpinning is informed by a critical examination of the evidence – or the lack of it – combined with an attitude of ‘not knowing’ leading to trust. We hear the word; we do not know how; we believe.

And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.  1 Cor 15:37-38

Our faith is 2,000 years old but our thinking doesn’t need to be….

After all disputation, after all our striving, after all our pain and suffering –

and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain

. (1 Cor 15:14)

A sobering thought indeed!

(words above = 1,102)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

This passage is unique to the four Gospels. It is written some 60 years after the resurrection took place. It emphasises a number of realities that impacted on the early Johannine community which was probably located in what is today modern-day Turkey.

20:19-20          Jesus Appears to the Disciples

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

The expression, ‘for fear of the Jews’, reflects the emerging conflict and agony of the early Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean as Christianity became a distinct religion separate from Judaism. The ‘peace be with you’ is a peace that nobody or no other thing can give.  It is the eirḗnē  (classical Greek) that means joining together of parts in a whole.  In the Hebrew it would have the meaning of blessing for the welfare of the recipient. This is exactly what Christians needed in their hour of agony as churches split and reformed and as faithful Jewish Christians were expelled from the synagogues.

We yearn for peace but we sometimes seek it in the wrong places and in the wrong ways.  God’s peace bestowed by Jesus is of a different quality to anything ‘this world’ can give.  This peace gives rise to a joy that must not be confused with any shadow or resemblance of joy that ‘this world’ might promise. In the peace of God given by the Holy Spirit in Jesus is our heavenly blessing of warmth, light, spaciousness and ease that nothing, nothing in this beautiful world of ours can compare with. Yet, we can taste of this blessing in this world especially in the immediate aftermath of trauma – such as experienced by the apostles in the days and hours leading up to and following the death of Jesus.

20:21-23          The gift of the Holy Spirit for the healing of the nations

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

In this passage, three times, Jesus will repeat and give the blessing of peace.  To his apostles and disciples, he gives the Holy Spirit to go out in order to preach, to heal and to enable the forgiveness of sins to happen. This is no small undertaking. Without the direct action of the Holy Spirit, the work of discipleship and evangelism/evangelisation will not succeed. Openness to the Holy Spirit is essential. But, throughout everything the Peace of God must reign. It is to this Peace that we have been called and it is through this gift that others may find healing in what it is that we do and say.

In rising Jesus breathes new life into us (literally ἐμφυσάω or emphysáō in the Greek in John 20:22 according to Strong’s Concordance). The word, or breathing, is the only place in the New Testament where it is used. In the Old Testament it is used in Genesis 2:7 where God created and formed human life and breathed into it new life so that ‘man’ became a ‘living being’.

20:24-26          Thomas the doubter

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

Thomas was a cautious type. He wanted empirical evidence. He wanted reason. The Lord gave him evidence and reason and Thomas’ faith which was always there flourished.

20:27-29          The faith of Thomas is confirmed

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

The Risen Jesus leads Thomas kindly and gently by revealing himself as he is.  Thomas’s doubts will dissolve in the light of Christ’s healing presence, love and peace. It is more than just seeing and hearing. It is also a matter of experiencing in the depths of the soul the truth, the goodness and the beauty of the Risen Christ.

‘My Lord and my God’ on the lips of Thomas is a key moment in his life. He experiences the living Risen Christ and he accepts him into his heart and mind fully. Have we had such an encounter yet? Do we need to renew this submission in faith again or even for the first time? Where am I in my journey as a 21^st century thinking and believing disciple?

We are among those blessed with not having seen Jesus but having placed our faith in him. Our secret (tell it aloud from the roof tops with our lives) is that we have found an ‘indescribable and glorious joy’. That impossible-to-describe joy is our shield and our armour on the seas of doubt as we set our compass on the safe harbour of Jesus.

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy. (1 Peter 1:8)

20:30-31          The purpose of this Gospel

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,  the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Writing a number of years ago, the late Brother Roger of Taizé offered us the following insight:

A luminous Gospel insight has come to light after gathering dust for a long time: “The Risen Christ is united to every human being without exception, even if they are not aware of it.”

And his community prayed thus:

O Christ, you are united to every human being without exception, even if they are unaware of it. Still more, risen from the dead, you come to heal the secret wound of the soul. And for each person, the gates of a heartfelt compassion are opened.

And the fruit of trusting is joy – overflowing joy and everlasting joy.

The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord:

The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. (John 20:20)

Christ is risen and with us right now. Alleluia. Let us rejoice. Amen.

Faith in the Risen Christ

“…and they were alarmed” (Mark 16:8)

Acts 10: 34-43

Psalm 118

1 Corinthians 15: 1-11

Mark 16:1-8

 New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: Easter Sunday, 4^th April 2021)

[This blog was already published on this blog site on 1 April 2018 and has been slightly adjusted and updated here.]

A most puzzling story..?

For such a joyful day the description of women who were ‘alarmed’ (or ‘trembling and bewildered’ in other versions) and who could not say anything ‘to anyone, because they were afraid’ strikes the hearer.  Anyone would be shocked and thrown into the opposite of calm on coming across something not only inexplicable but so extraordinary and out of this world that he or she would feel over-awed. What might happen next?  On life’s journey we encounter many surprises. Some of these surprises can disconcert and upset us and those around us.  Easter presents a huge challenge to people today – at least those who consider these matters carefully and thoughtfully.  Modern-day rational and empirical ways of thinking and dealing with the world finds the Easter story puzzling. Even well regarded theologians and clerics find it hard to imagine a type of ‘bodily’ resurrection. Refuge is taken in the ‘spiritual’ message of Easter implying new life and hope relevant to people today and not in the ‘actually happened’ event of an empty tomb, clothes neatly tied together (hint for those in a hurry in the morning!) and a person who turns up like a ghost and yet can eat fish and bread.  All very fantastical and mythological, some will argue or suggest in the act of theological dodging.

Dismissing the Easter story as fanciful post-death imagination and handed-on story telling by the early Jesus movement is easy but based, ironically, on a particular mind-Set that deals in a limited set of empirical possibilities. 

That Jesus rose form the dead in all the meaning that this entails is a foundational principle of Christian faith and living.  Writing in a letter to the church in Corinth some decades after the death of Jesus, St Paul had the following very relevant things to say about Jesus rising from the dead:

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. (1 Cor 15:12-19)

And a very different type of story..

In short, if the resurrection is just a ‘story’ on the same level as a fairy-tale or a piece of fiction then we might hang up our boots, spend some time on beach on Sunday mornings if in Australia and find a life (not that Christians shouldn’t do such things as well on Sunday afternoons!).  Something happened on Easter Sunday that was so shocking, so profound and so capturing that the early eyewitnesses and disciples could only tell it the way they saw, heard and experienced it. Thus, Paul tells the brethren at Corinth:

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, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:3-8).

A number of possible understandings are possible including the following three (at least):

Uncritical realism – typified by a literalist, maximum reading of the resurrection narratives.  Some adherents of this approach insist on an objective approach that demands intellectual assent backed up – in case of any doubt – with historical ‘facts’.  Scripture is cited as in a law court and certainty with regard to ‘what really happened’ is part of the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’.  Moreover, great stress is placed on the physicality of the resurrection – not just spiritual rising but a resurrection of the ‘flesh’ .

Scepticism – typified by some strands of radical theology that sees in these narratives little or nothing more than the early Jesus movement trying to make sense of the experience of defeat, exclusion and new life in the immediate aftermath of the life and ministry of Jesus.  The notion of someone ‘coming back to life’ after death is excluded as impossible. Instead, the focus is on the meaning of resurrection as a story that inspires the followers of Jesus.

Critical realism – falls somewhere between the above two ‘extremes’.  Critical realism does not shy from the highly improbable ‘historicity’ of many of the details in the resurrection stories. However, it does not exclude the ‘realism’ of rising to new life which entails accepting the idea that there are no bones around because the one who died is now risen. This sounds like physical resuscitation. However, at this point the critical realist accepts that something extraordinary – supernatural – happened in the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus.  These extraordinary happenings were witnessed by many people. Something ‘real’, ‘objective’ and ‘historical’ happened and that something ignited a revolution in the minds and spirits of the first disciples of Jesus.  Exactly what happened and how it happened remains difficult to access and explain – especially at a distance of 2,000 years and the intervening world-view sea changes.  Put another way, we are not sure what a CCTV outside the tomb, at the time, would have picked up.  No Gospel account actually describes what happened during the key moment or moments.

The core issues

Adhering to both an objective and subjective view of the resurrection leaves the open the following points of doctrine and belief that are mutually compatible and reinforcing:

• The impossibility of putting limits to the sovereignty of God and the world of rational, direct experience and observation.
• The weight of tradition and wisdom of Christians down the ages who received the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
• The importance of rising from death in the challenge to change an unjust world.
• The importance of hope in life beyond this present sometimes world and with that the promise of fellowship here and into eternity.
• In the words of the Nicene Creed, we say I or we ‘look forward to’ or ‘hope’ or ‘expect’ (expecto).  Not that I (or you) have seen, touched, proved, observed or established scientifically – rather I have entrusted my limited understanding to a higher order of truth.

And so what for us now?

Those of us living through lockdown in some form and those of who cannot celebrate together – physically – the resurrection await a promising future. Yes, as the resurrection teaches us, physical realities and togetherness are important. Just as the resurrection cannot be captured online so also we cannot fully celebrate it online. Though welcome compared to no celebration, a zoomed worship is a pale reflection of the real thing.

We may be like people held in captivity and who have been suddenly released, freedom can be a daunting prospect. Adaptation takes time. Reconditioning may be necessary. This may be captured in a few lines of a poem by Gerald McFlynn:

On the morning of the third day I went to the tomb and rolled back the stone. Out came the poor and destitute, the prisoners, Travellers…the old and forgotten… blinking in the sunlight all ready for a new birth.

Therein lies a key to a living resurrection in today’s world.