For the First Time Again
March 27, 2005
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10
The resurrection of Jesus is an affront to many scientifically trained minds. In fact, one of us said to me, I can’t wait to get through this season so that we can quit talking about this Post Easter Jesus. Isn’t that great? We have scientific skeptics here in our presence. These skeptics agree that the disciples’ feeling that Jesus was still present with them “in spirit” is credible, however, the story of the empty tomb is dismissed as a pious legend. The church’s celebration of Easter is sometimes perceived by such persons as an embarrassing fraud. Science says close your eyes to the story.
If we had to submit the case to a jury, we’d have no hope of getting representation. The story is seriously flawed. The four gospel witnesses are packed with discrepancies: Who found the tomb empty? When? How and when was the stone rolled from the mouth of the tomb? And, let’s face it, introducing angels into the plot doesn’t increase the credibility of the story.
Because of these factors the defense lawyers would have to support the argument that the earliest Christians didn’t conspire to create the legend. If they had, they would have shored up their testimonies to agree. But, that’s still not enough “proof” to impress the jury.
The prosecution is left to ask, “Regardless of the disagreement in the gospel stories, is there any truth in the underlying story that the tomb was found empty?”
Matthew’s addition of hostile witnesses, the detachment of Roman soldiers guarding the tomb, guarding the tomb to prevent any mayhem from occurring with the body, will not be convincing to the jury.
Some rumors hold that the disciples themselves stole the corpse.
Once again…it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a story for a jury or to be told on CNN. This is a foundational story of faith for the Christian tradition. It is a story for believers, insiders, it’s a story for those who already have a relationship with God. It’s not supposed to be a story about Jesus, it’s really a story about God.
As Marcus Borg taught us this Lenten season, Jesus was a Spirit person. Jesus’ ministry in Luke begins with him saying, “The Spirit is upon me.” At the center of Jesus’ life was a profound and continuous relationship to the Spirit of God. This daily experience of God changed reality for Jesus. If we look at cultural anthropology or other world religions it’s easier to see these Spirit People because they don’t have the baggage of our Jesus for us. They all are funnels or conduits for the power or wisdom of God to enter into this world. They are delegates of the tribe to another layer of reality, mediators who connect their communities to the Spirit. People like Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa…
Since the Enlightenment the modern worldview has become one-dimensional. We only try to see reality in material terms as constituted by the world of matter and energy within the space-time continuum. The worldview of spirit persons differs from this and obtains a multi-dimensional view of reality. The spirit person’s experience suggests that there is more to reality than this, that there is, in addition to the tangible world of our ordinary experience, a nonmaterial level of reality, actual, even though non-material, and charged with energy and power. We’ve heard about this contagious energy presence that people caught when they were with Buddha, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, St. Francis and also our Jesus.
Most of us seem to have hard rinds of consciousness that do not allow this to happen but Spirit people have flexible, or porous screens that drop away through meditation, dreams, visions that bring another experience of reality…burning bushes that aren’t consumed, the world filled with glory which translates to radiant light, a dove coming down from heaven, a voice from above, etc.
This multidimensional faith is ancient and contemporary in the lives of the mystics. Jesus was part of the sect of Jewish mystics. Other Jewish mystics of the time were Honi the circle drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, both known to still their hearts before God before they would heal. Both full of quiet, wordless meditation which is as central to our faith as to the Eastern Traditions. Jesus was a Spirit Person experiencing God through a relationship with God’s Spirit.
Easter is God’s comment about Good Friday. It is only in the light of God’s affirmation that the disciples are able to understand Jesus’ death as a victory instead of a tragedy. Two words that have been added onto our rolodex of terror by the historic church are victory and salvation. God’s victory in Jesus’ death has to do with breaking the bonds of death, in triumphing over evil, in the word living on in another reality. Victory in the presence of Jesus can still be felt in spite of the culture’s narcissistic greed which had too much at stake to allow this story of mutuality and compassion. Victory meaning evil did not win. Just as our evils today – individualism, capitalism, sexism, racism, religionism, homophobia, classism – will not win. This story of Easter is a win-win solution for our faith. It’s central to our salvation history. Not in saving souls but in saving the story of faith from the power of evil. Even when evil is embodied by the dominant culture, even when evil is embodied by the church and its leadership, even when evil takes some of us to the cross. Evil does not win. Our God is larger, more compassionate, more powerful than any evil we can create.
On the other end of the spectrum from the scientific skeptics are Christians who miss the point of Easter by treating it as automatic. It’s a conclusion that Jesus arose because he was divine. This deprives Good Friday of its significance…If Jesus rose due to his nature as fully divine, then his death becomes an empty charade. For Matthew, the resurrection is understood as God’s act. Even in the writing of the story the verb is true passive tense, “He has been raised.” Only because Jesus must have been as dead as we become, as dead as those who have gone before us, as dead as any mortal, can the resurrection become a meaningful statement about salvation history. Even with the soldiers present making the tomb tamper-proof, the tomb is not proof, it’s only a sign. The angel and earthquake are added in Matthew’s telling of the story. An earthquake mimicking Friday’s. An angel who has come from the other world, sitting on the stone that sealed the tomb mocking the futile efforts of Jesus’ enemies to confine him to the tomb…All of this is to point to the majesty and power of God. The resurrection for the writer Matthew is ushering in a new era. A new era of anticipating when and how God will come into our lives again. How evil will try to take us apart, kill our experience of God, distance us from our experience of the Spirit and how God’s majesty will find another way to proclaim love, compassion and justice. This Easter story is a story about God.
In Matthew’s story, the women who were present at Jesus’ death, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, open their eyes to the empty tomb and the angel’s message. They are afraid, overcome and yet it cannot stop their elation. Jesus greets the women with a common greeting of the time, rejoice! Jesus’ message for the disciples is not much different from what the angel says. But, the word “disciples” is replaced by the word “brothers.” This substitution indicates Jesus’ forgiveness of the eleven who left him and Peter who denied him. Since women were not regarded as competent witnesses in the courts, it’s clear that their presence in this narrative guarantees that it was created for insiders, it wouldn’t impress outsiders. This is a story to be cherished by the faith community, in which women play an indispensable role as witnesses to the power of God. We can all be open to the presence of the Spirit and we all have the ability to share our experiences of God.
This meets our song from this morning. When we take the time to push the other characters in the story, we have the most luck finding our own person, our own thoughts, our own realities of living. The characters teach us quite a bit about the difference between Spirit people and ourselves. We can identify with Peter’s story today. Peter who was so afraid, afraid of prison, afraid of being put to death, afraid of the authorities. Who isn’t? There is a fine line between living and dying and Peter respected that line. But, to promise his mentor, his friend, his brother, his guru and then to break his promise as surely as his mentor is dying for the truth of his word. For Peter to know he mortally wounded his relationship with this man he respected, loved, followed when he thought he needed it most. Peter wept. Peter was crushed. Peter was filled with shame, loss, anger, and felt hopeless and empty. Yet in anguished prayer, Peter slid into that other piece of reality, when we are overcome with the Spirit of God…to see the light and feel the peace, to experience the love of the brother. It heals. That spirit heals our deepest fears, our shortcomings, the painful hurts…That is the Easter message.
That everything doesn’t happen within this enlightened flat world of time and space. That God’s energy and presence pushes us in contemplation and prayer to a contagious energy that connects our own Spirit to God’s. Our work as people of faith is to work every day on loosening that tough rind that keeps us from experiencing the presence of the Spirit. That we embrace the mystery of this important work. That we celebrate the life and death of the one who taught us how this experience of being a Spirit person looks. That we acknowledge a God who works to tell us over and over again, that we are not alone and that we can have more than just belief in God we can have a relationship with God.
Hallelujah! He is risen! We have nothing to fear. Our God’s compassion has been to the depth of pain, fear, hurt, hate, grief, and loss and has overcome it with life, passion, peace, hope and a new way! Let us all work this Eastertide to deepen our experience with God’s Spirit. Amen!