Sermon

And he said to them, Do not be afraid. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was

crucified. He is risen. He is not here. Look at the place where they laid him.

Mark 16:6

For the historian, the resurrection of Jesus is at once the hardest claim to accept and

the hardest claim to deny. It is hard to accept because it is without precedent, because

it goes against everything we know about the human body and physical death. This is no

revival after a brief span of clinical death, such as has become almost routine in

hospitals now, but revival without assistance after almost three days in the tomb.

It is hard to deny because something unprecedented obviously happened. The disciples, in

the words of the two on the way to Emmaus, had trusted that Jesus would be the one who

would redeem Israel, who would restore the fallen fortunes of that ancient nation. The

crucifixion had shattered their hopes, and left them "like sheep without a shepherd."

Then they went out with such profound faith that they faced martyrdom with equanimity,

with such a compelling message that they changed the course of history. Something

unprecedented must have happened to transform them.

It does not seem to have been some set of private spiritual experiences. Paul had one of

these on the road to Damascus, and he had a very difficult time convincing the disciples

that it was genuine. No, while there are differences in the Gospel accounts of the

resurrection, they agree on the empty tomb and on the relatively public nature of Jesus'

post-crucifixion appearances. He appeared to groups of the disciples. This was what they

took as authorizing them to go out as apostles.

The foundation of the Lord's life after his death, though, was his life before that death.

Later Christian theology seems to have gotten so entangled in arguments about the

relationship between the Divine and the human in the person of Jesus that it regarded this

relationship as static. The early "Judaizing Christians," though, those who regarded Jesus

simply as the last of the prophets, believed that he did not receive the spirit of

prophecy until his baptism, and that the reason he received it then was that he had made

himself ready for it by his life of obedience to the law. He was not born into the

calling, he grew into it by the way he lived, and therefore the task of the Christian was

to emulate that life. Even some of the opponents of these "Judaizing Christians"

recognized that they led lives of exemplary devotion, that they were "as full of good

works as a pomegranate."

There is a vital element here which, in the view of our theology, mainstream Christianity

neglected. It is our belief that in the life of Jesus we can see a process of change. In

the beginning, the human nature was at odds with the divine, just as our self-centered

tendencies are at odds with our best impulses. Gradually, by means of the decisions of

everyday life, the divine gained dominion and, in doctrinal terms, "glorified" the human

nature. The impulses that were highest--specifically, the infinite love for the human

race--came to be the only reason for living. All self-concern became secondary to that

love. Finally, the most natural thing in the world came to be what strikes us as most

unnatural, and the Lord laid down his life for us.

This may help us focus our attention where it needs to be. It can help us or hinder us to

be sure that we are going to live after death. It will help us if it is a source of

reassurance for the facing of our daily tasks, if it helps us see our present lives in a

spiritual perspective. It will hinder us if it distracts us from our present relationships

and responsibilities, if it encourages us to procrastinate or to escape into

"other-worldliness." The primary question is and remains, "What are we doing now?" As one

individual put it, is there life before death?

Our theology is quite explicit. Everyone lives forever in one sense, but life in hell is

spiritual death. There is a kind of spiritual literal truth about the Lord's statements

that we lose our lives when we cling to them and find them when we lay them down.

Swedenborg begins his book Divine Love and Wisdom with the assertion that love is our very

life. A little while later in the same work, he defines love as "feeling the joy of

another as joy in oneself." When we cling to our self-gratifications, we close ourselves

to the feelings and thoughts of others, and we become less fully alive. When on the

contrary we forget about ourselves and try to see and to sense what others are trying to

tell us, we become more fully alive.

In a way, it is almost too obvious to need description. In the one case, we retreat more

and more into our own private worlds, and the people around us become more and more simply

cardboard figures, either means or obstacles to our own satisfaction, not worthy of

consideration except as they affect us. In the other case, we begin to be conscious of an

immense and rich world of vibrant humanity around us, a world in which we are more and

more lively participants.

Simply seeing that this is the case, however, does not mean that we easily drift into what

our theology calls "a life of charity." There are some formidable obstacles in the way.

To turn for a moment to an Old Testament image, when the Israelites first approached the

Promised Land from Egypt, they sent spies into the land. The spies came back with a report

that while it was a rich and fruitful land, the inhabitants were gigantic, fearsome

creatures. At times, when we look within ourselves, it seems as though our own fears are

just as gigantic.

"If I don't look after myself, who will?" This is one of the voices we are likely to hear.

It is not a kindly world out there, and openness seems perilously close to

defenselessness. If we look at the people we know, though, we discover that it is the most

insecure ones who are most defensive, and that the ones who are most open, least

defensive, seem least brittle, least susceptible to hurt. The holy city in Revelation had

a wall "great and high" and twelve gates that were open night and day. This is a wonderful

image of perfect security and total openness, a reminder that we never have one without

the other. Christian charity does not demand that we become pushovers. It demands that we

find our treasures where moth and rust do not corrupt and where thieves do not break

through and steal. Given these primary spiritual priorities, we will have the wisdom to be

careful stewards of more earthly things not for the sake of our own eminence or power but

for the sake of the useful life we are trying to live.

Another voice, perhaps a bit more subtle, calls our attention to all those aspects of our

own being that we do not want others to discover. Openness is a two-way street. Paul said

it most concisely, "Then shall I know, even as I am known." Knowing and being known go

hand in hand. Being open to the joys of others means becoming transparent to others, and

in some of our most familiar moods, this seems like a frightening invasion of our privacy.

The main problem here, I suspect, is that because we do not like certain aspects of

ourselves, we think that others will not like us if they discover them. In a word, we are

afraid of rejection. But again, if we look at what actually happens in our lives, we

discover that this fear is largely illusory. When we do acknowledge something wrong about

ourselves, our friends know perfectly well that there is more to us than that. They tend

to draw closer and become more supportive, to stand with the best in us and against what

we ourselves are opposing. We find that it is like a weight taken off our shoulders not to

have to pretend any more, to have something out in the open that has been festering

inside.

We can look at all the inner obstacles one by one, and if we look candidly we keep

discovering the same thing--that they are based on illusions. We can retreat more and more

into that illusory world where we and we alone matter, where everything around us is

against us. We will necessarily become smaller and smaller spiritually, less and less

alive. We will of course go on living after death, but in that half-dead state which we

call hell. Or we can do our best to live the kind of life portrayed in the Gospels, and

become more and more alive to the world and the people around us. This lays the foundation

for a true "resurrection," for an eternal vitality that we can begin to glimpse even now.

Yes, the story of the resurrection tells us that the Lord conquered death. Our theology

assures us that on the literal level, we are going to "conquer death" as well. We have no

choice in that regard, we are plainly and simply immortal. What is not decided in advance

is the question of the conquest of spiritual death. This was the battle the Lord came to

fight. This was the issue that was in doubt worldwide at the time, and it is the issue

that is in doubt with us as individuals. Can we lay down our lives for each other

consistently enough that we can receive the abundant life the Lord offers us? Or must we

cling so tenaciously to what we think we possess that there is no room for more?

The crucifixion portrays the essence of the difficulty, but we are not asked to make such

a decision all at once. We are asked instead to do the little things, day by day, that are

in fact within our power. In a sense, the crucifixion simply tells us that the Lord knows

even better than we that these little decisions are not easy. But then comes Easter and

the resurrection to remind us of what lies beyond--life overflowing, and joy in abundance.

Amen.