Sermons

 Awakening Understanding
  Easter Sunday

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
April 12, 2009	John 20:1-18

A whole lot of energy has been expended thinking about how the Bible came to be. The questions are many: how were the parts that were written written, how did it all get put together, what made it in, what got left out, who made the decisions, what was God’s role.

All of that has been punctuated by even bigger questions, and deeper ones, questions that previously simply were not asked: what does any of this mean, how can I trust this source when it feels so foreign to me, how can it have authority, and when I actually open it up, what on earth do I with it???

These are big questions, ginormous, as we say in our house, and even if I don’t answer them with clarity and wisdom this Easter morning, we will still have the Halleluiah Chorus if all else fails.

But before any of that, welcome. Welcome if you’ve been a member for decades and decades or months and months. Welcome if you are new to Rochester. Welcome if you are visiting from out-of-town. Welcome if you are a child of this church home for break. And welcome especially if you are visiting us and discerning where God’s Spirit may be leading you – this may be the place or it may not, but it is certainly a place where you can bring your questions and discover fellow travelers and conversation partners.

Needless to say, this is a big day for us. The biggest. And for whatever reasons, and under whatever circumstances – the fact that you are here means it is a big day for you as well. Something has drawn you here, and we are grateful.

Easter is the fulcrum point upon which the whole biblical story balances – past, present, future. So the earlier questions about the Bible become the point about Easter. I must confess that I am becoming a convert to a more current school of biblical thought than the one I learned in seminary. The scholars call it “canonical” criticism, but I prefer something closer to the old computer term – do you remember “WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get.” Our faith is about seeking God with heart and soul AND mind, so we do take seriously matters of history, culture, tradition. But at the end of the day, we have this book, this testimony, and to wrestle with it and what it says is wrestling enough.

To do so is to discover that the biblical story does not unfold accidentally. To pay attention to all 66 books, and particularly in this moment, to the four books called the gospels, whether you are paying attention as an act of skepticism or literary analysis or faith, is to pay attention to a purposefully unfolding narrative, using literary devices to reveal theological themes that lead us ever closer to the truth of God, resurrection truth, Easter truth.

I went through an exercise on a board retreat a few weeks ago – list the values that are most central to your work. What if we were to do the same here? That’s where the biblical narrative and the Easter story must come together. If mercy is not present, or justice, or redemption, or reconciliation, or hope, or love, most of all, love, then it is not a biblical value worth valuing, and not a key plot line in the story. What you see – love – is what you get – love. But that understanding does not happen automatically, or easily. If it did, the drama of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday need not have happened.

So the Bible’s redemptive story draws us in, and I have been intrigued this time around by one inspired way it does so. Unfolding comprehension. Awakening understanding.

Throughout the gospels, we encounter little editorial comments to the effect that Jesus did this, or Jesus said that, so that they would understand. Just last Sunday, in the midst of our ginormous Palm Sunday parade, we read that “his disciples did not understand these things at first…then they remembered that these things had been written of him.” It was not just them, of course. They are really us, the audience that would encounter all this much later.

This is not history as we understand it, not modern journalism. This gospel narrative, inspired as it was, was written less to record the moment, but to tell us now what they thought then to be important. And even though we might have different questions now – modern 21st century questions like “what actually happened?” – those are not the questions being addressed. It is not that we are dense. It is that we are human and the story needs interpretation, needs inspiration, in order for us to understand fully and enter completely.

Note what happens this morning. Note the rhythm, and how we are drawn in. Note how our understanding is awakened.

Mary Magdalene first. She discovers that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb. Though she doesn’t look in, we have the first layer of understanding.

She runs to Peter and another, unnamed disciple. They don’t believe her, a clear mistake. So they ran to the tomb – lots of running this morning. Unnamed disciple gets there first and looks in and sees the linen wrappings. A second layer of understanding.

Then Peter actually enters the tomb and they discover what they discover. And John tells us that they “saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” End of Scene 1.

As Scene 2 opens, Mary remains at the tomb, weeping. She looks in the tomb. A brief conversation with the angels, and then the sudden appearance of Jesus, who she does not yet recognize. They carry on in conversation and Mary pleads for more knowledge. He finally reveals himself as he calls out her name – understanding awakened as our names are named. She goes back to the disciples and tells them all that has happened.

If you keep following, the understandings will tumble out upon themselves – the disciples next, and then, to really punctuate the point, “doubting” Thomas, so that even those who have not encountered him personally and immediately – like us – can understand.

So, a big question on a big day. What do we get when we see what we see? What are we to understand? It begins and ends with Jesus, and the resurrection account is a culmination of everything spread across the biblical testimony – every act of justice, every transformation, every new thing.

To reduce the gospel to bumper sticker aphorisms is generally not a good idea – remember, this is a life, not a doctrine – but a new life, life eternal that begins in this very moment, is at the heart of it all, a new and eternal life defined by love.

What that looks like is teaching that defies conventional wisdom and the status quo. What that looks like is healing offered to those left out. What that looks like is a meal shared with an unlikely guest list. What that looks like is taking on religious and political power.

This is new. And it is love that is wondrous, deep, broad, high, that lays down its life, all loves excelling. That vision of life and love was nailed to a tree, emerged from the tomb, lives even now.

As we understand that vision, as our understanding of Christ’s love and new life is awakened, other understanding is awakened.

Perhaps our understanding is awakened about the world this Easter morning. Two examples. One would not wish economic hardship on anyone – lost jobs, foreclosed homes. One would not wish reduced endowments for organizations doing good works, evaporated retirements, college funds under stress (especially that last one!). But perhaps this economic crisis provides an opportunity for clarification. Garbage collectors are reporting a 25% reduction in things being thrown away – how can that not be a good thing. We are reducing, reprioritizing, reevaluating what matters. A moment of clarification, not about capitalism so much, but about the kind of unbridled capitalism we have been practicing: unregulated profiteering, salaries out of whack, predatory lending, rampant self-interest. To connect Easter with financial meltdown is no stretch when we connect the values Jesus embodied with the values we seem to be recovering in this moment.

Nor is it a stretch to connect them with what seems like a diabolical epidemic of gun violence – the shooting of Officer DiPonzio, or the shooting two weeks ago in Binghamton. Has it come to the point when we see a story in the paper and turn to the next page with nary a pause? And if so, why? We who follow the Prince of Peace, who embrace this ethic of love even as we are embraced by it, must simply lead our city, our nation, into a new discussion about guns, their availability, and the seeming acceptability of using them to solve every kind of conflict.

And perhaps our understanding is awakened about the church this morning – what it believes and how it behaves. What we read about the church is conflict about all types of things, not least among them SEX, and decline, decline in dollars and participants and cultural influence. But just as the broader culture is facing a moment of clarification, perhaps we are as well – the big church and this particular one, in who we are, what we believe, what we do.

Jon Meacham writes in this week’s Newsweek (April 13, 2009) about the fact that 15% of Americans claim no religious affiliation, an increase from 8% in 1990, and that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped 10% in that same time. I would never make the case that decline is good, in this congregation, in our denominational family, in the broader American church. But perhaps we are being presented with an opportunity.

You may have read Time’s list of “10 Ideas That Are Changing The World.” Number 3 is “The New Calvinism.” While I might quibble with author David Van Biema’s analysis – I am a Calvin geek, after all – I am intrigued by a reemergence of Calvin’s notion of sovereignty – God being in control, rather than us – and an insistence on God’s radical grace – that we are saved not by who we are or what we do, but because of who God is and God’s gracious love for us. Who would have thought that a little Calvin, whose 500th birthday we are now celebrating, would be just what it takes to help our culture and church face a new era.

And about that church. Whether the big one or this particular one, our understanding is awakening to new ways of doing things. Less institutionalized. More nimble. With a greater focus on connecting people and providing venues for question-exploring and meaning-seeking and difference- making.

“Today’s church is in the midst of a "hurricane of change,’” church leader Brian McLaren asserted recently, “but there are signs of hope…for out of this stormy period is emerging a new and more authentic kind of Christianity.” (Eva Stimson, Presbyterian News Service, March 19, 2009) We must find, Diana Butler Bass says, a “language that carries the deepest sense of our passion to the world.” McLaren says that kind of church would be a “disciple-forming community that helps people learn, believe, love and serve in the way of Jesus.”

A resurrection community, we might call it, that would order and re-order this church’s worship and education, fellowship and service and caring, and help us think as much about who is not here as who is.

To think about all of that, the kind of church that is born from this morning’s proclamation, is to think about community, and it is also to think about each one of us, each disciple, who is called into the church.

So perhaps finally our understanding is awakened about ourselves this morning. I do not know what transformation you seek, or what understanding needs awakened. But here it is.

While Jesus is the main character, this morning’s story is about his followers, and in particular Mary Magdalene. She is our stand-in. As she finds Jesus, Jesus finds her.

Beverly Gaventa writes that “Hearing her name spoken by Jesus’ familiar voice brings a transformation of her grief and the opening of a new world...(her) closed world (and ours) is broken open when Jesus calls her name. Something illogical, impossible and unnatural takes place...The old plausibility structure is left in shambles. It is a new day…The voice of Jesus calling her name shatters her customary world…and opens up a brand-new future.” (Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 275-276)

It is a new day and new future for us. Jesus calls our name and sees the truth about us so that we can understand the truth about ourselves – embrace the new directions we need to embrace, live into the formation, reformation, transformation that he offers. It is not easy. It is not magic. But it is true, and it is good news.

Which leads us full circle to where we started, to Jesus, who awakens every understanding, and to this empty tomb, and to the unfolding and ever-broadening appearances to his followers.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote that “Easter says to us that despite everything to the contrary God’s love for us will prevail, love will prevail over hate, justice over injustice, peace over exploitation and bitterness.” (Irish Times, April 11, 2009)

I believe that. I believe it for me. I believe it for you. I believe it for the church. I believe it for the world. I do not understand it completely and never will. But might we run to the tomb with the disciples, who never fully understand. Might we take a peek in, a tentative peek. And might we let the power and truth and love of the resurrection make all things new. All things. New. For Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.