Sermons

Running, Sitting and Standing Still

Easter

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
March 23, 2008	John 18:1-20

    
As they say at every high school commencement, this morning is not an ending point, but a beginning point. And more so, it is most truly a point of continuation, the continuing story of God’s great love for the world and all of God’s people, and the story of God’s people seeking to live into that life-affirming, love-affirming promise with every breath they breathe and every action they take.

So we welcome you. We welcome long-time members and first-time visitors, believers and seekers, of all experiences and of every stripe. If you’ve discovered us for the first time, we hope you will come back. We are an active, lively place, seeking to do the things that we discern God is calling us to do. If you are searching for a church community, here we are. Join us. In fact, we have a new member inquiry class that begins next week. Check it out – even if you are still in the searching mode. But more than that, we are grateful that all of us have been claimed by this story this Easter morning. It is what defines us, gathers us in and sends us out, and something about it has drawn you here.

I have a preacher friend whose best Easter advice is simply to tell the story, sing the great music of the church, and get out of the way. That seems like solid advice.

The gospel of John’s version, which we encounter this year, unfolds in rather breathless fashion. Mary Magdalene shows up at the tomb, presumably to care for the body of her teacher. The stone has been rolled away, so Mary, unsure of what has happened, returns to the community with the news. They return to find the tomb empty. We are told that they believe, a theme throughout John’s gospel.

Mary remains heartbroken (“O, Mary, don’t you weep,” the tradition sings). She encounters a stranger, who poses many questions. He then identifies himself – it is Jesus – and Mary herself then believes. She returns to testify to the community what she had seen and heard. Again, the pattern of disbelief, encounter, belief.

What we 21st century followers most want to know – what happened, how did it happen – is not pursued in the story. Resurrection stretches our comprehension, but the story does not seem interested in our comprehension. No resurrection details. What it does is presume resurrection, and moves quickly to our response to this unfathomable news, and the story of the formation of the first Easter community.

If an explanation of what happened to Jesus that morning is not the point of the story, what is? There are, of course, too many points to consider on an Easter morning; there are, in point of fact, too many points to consider in a lifetime. But there are some suggestions, trajectories, that we who gather some 2000 years later might attend to.

The story seems to be about the formation of a community. You would think that Jesus would be the central figure in the story this morning, but it really is about his followers, and what they do with the news they receive, and how they seek to live that news out. My friend Joanna Adams talks of an “alternative community of love,” and that’s what I think is put into action this morning. They have experienced this love firsthand for the past three years; now it’s their turn. Now it’s our turn.

Whatever we make of this story, it seems clear and compelling that the story itself is insisting on the formation of a community. That community – highly diverse, filled with doubt, not altogether sure of itself – will continue to tell the story by reflecting the radical love of its teacher and lord, whose power is manifested in weakness, and over whom, because of love, death has no dominion.

A focus on community, of course, does not mean that its individual members are ignored. That is why each one of us is here – as individual and distinct as God has made us – gifted, foibled, doubting, certain, broken, grateful. The good news here seems to be that credentials don’t define this resurrection community. Look at who has gathered this morning at the empty tomb. Some have betrayed their lord. Some have doubted. Some have lingering questions. For some, the elevator hadn’t quite made it to the top floor when it came to understanding what Jesus was talking about. Some were critical. Some were jealous. Some were stingy. And this morning, it seems that they can’t even get out of each others’ way. Yet here they are – here we are. Can we recognize ourselves at all in this picture?

So it is about all of us as individuals, each of us – a beloved child of God. And it is about all of us, a community.

Scholar Diana Butler Bass imagines a church whose faith is “open and generous, intellectual and emotive, beautiful and just.” Can we recognize ourselves at all in that picture?

But never community for community’s sake. Never church for church’s sake. Institutional perpetuation is not the Easter agenda. This story seems to be about action. One almost chuckles in imagining all the people running to and from the tomb at breakneck speed. And if the story is about action – look at all those verbs, you grammarians! – then perhaps the community that arises and grows from the story should be about action as well.

Poet Wendell Berry writes about “practicing resurrection.” What would that look like? What would a community look like that actually practices resurrection?

It would be wildly inclusive, as inclusive as Jesus was. Throughout Lent, we have been tracking lengthy encounters that Jesus had with people outside the boundaries of the status quo. A seeking religious authority, a foreign woman, a man born blind, poor and outcast, even a dead man’s grieving family. Every time, Jesus breaks convention, stretches the accepted bounds of religious and political practice. It gets him into trouble, serious trouble. It may do the same to us, this clear Easter mandate.

To say that this wildly inclusive Easter community is comprised of people like us, with all of our faults and shortcomings, does not mean that we are given a pass when it comes to moral and ethical accountability, nor are we to wave as moral challenges parade by. To the contrary.

Allow me an ecumenical detour. My quibbles about Roman Catholicism could fill several sermons, though to be honest, my quibbles about Presbyterianism could fill many more. But one thing I like about Catholicism is its ability to issue bold statements and make news. While it would take us Presbyterians 48 years to decide which shade of blue for our hymnal covers, Catholics issue proclamations and the media takes note.

Perhaps you noticed a recent story about the so-called seven deadly sins. Can you name them? Pride. Envy. Gluttony. Lust. Anger. Greed. Sloth – though there are moments when I am not so sure about sloth.

A Vatican monsignor has issued a new list of sins. It included polluting, genetic engineering, obscene wealth, drug dealing, causing social injustice. (The monsignor did not define obscene wealth, but our upcoming capital campaign can help you with that.)

What seems interesting to me is that the list – like faith itself, like our resurrection response – is individual and communal, personal (though never private) and public. Each of us, created in the image of God, has a soul, to be sure, but it seems as if the church does as well, and society. And we have something to do with the wellbeing of those souls – not just ours, but everyone’s.

Or to be very Presbyterian about all of this, to insist that the sovereignty of God matters in every aspect of life would be to insist that Easter matters, resurrection matters, in every aspect of life as well.

Here is another way to look at it. Over these past several weeks, we have been pulled more deeply into difficult and challenging issues – in our state through the stunning fall of a governor, and nationally, through an intense debate about race (and to some degree about gender).

There are political issues to be sure. They are moral and ethical issues as well. But they are matters of faith at their core, and an Easter community, an alternative community of love that practices resurrection, must be able to sustain an internal conversation even as it leads our culture and body politic in life-affirming, love-affirming discourse.

* Surely we have something positive to say to one another and to our daughters and sons about human sexuality.
* Surely we have something to say to one another about the sins of racism and sexism. Surely we in the church have something to say to one another, so that they will know us by our love and not our squabbling, seeking unity within denominational families and across the ecumenical church.
* Surely we who live in Rochester, or Monroe County, or upstate New York, can have something to say about gun violence in our city, education, economic opportunity, how we will work and live together in the face of challenging times.
* Surely an Easter community can find its resurrection voice to make a difference in the lives of all who suffer, physically, emotionally, economically, spiritually, in the church and beyond it.

Tell the story, my friend says, and get out of the way. Here it seems to be. People show up, and are surprised and transformed by the news of the empty tomb. They encounter the risen Christ, and are empowered to love the world on his behalf.

Place yourself in the middle of the story. Perhaps you are Peter. Perhaps Thomas. Perhaps even Mary – at the center of it all, whose transformation following her encounter with the risen Christ is the stuff of which true faithfulness is made. Place yourself in the middle of the story. And then place yourself in the middle of all of the rest of us doing the same thing. Call it a resurrection community, an Easter community, an alternative community of love. You are a member of it. We all are.

Practice resurrection, Wendell Berry says: “Every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world.”

We have been given a story, and more than read it and consider it, we have been invited into it. It dwells within us. Our understanding and interpretation of the story matters, and we should examine it and study it like the most precious jewel that it is. But our internalizing – letting it live within us – and our manifesting – letting it flow from us – matters even more so.

If we pay attention to the action of the story, we will be left with a kind of breathless mandate. To live life as if this good news matters. To live life as if we matter to its telling. It does. We do. Christ is risen, we say with the ancient church and every seeker and follower since. Christ is risen indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.