First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: I Corinthians 15:3-19
Easter Sunday - March 27, 2005
Thomas Long is a most interesting fellow who presently does full-time what I am soon to do part-time….namely, teach divinity students a little bit about preaching. In his most recent book, Testimony: Talking Ourselves Into Being Christian, he reports the following:
Recently I was driving across town at rush hour and scanning the radio for a traffic report when the dial happened to pause on a Christian talk radio station. The talk show host was taking telephone calls from listeners that day, and a woman named Barbara had called in. Barbara had problems; Barbara had a lot of problems. She had problems with her boss at work. She complained about trouble in her marriage. She was at odds with her teenaged children. She said she had occasional bouts of depression.
As she unfolded her litany of troubles and woes, suddenly the talk show host interrupted her. “Barbara,” he said, “I want to ask you something. Are you a believer? You know, you’re never going to solve any of these problems unless you’re a believer. Are you a believer?”
“I don’t know,” said Barbara hesitantly.
“Now, Barbara,” said the host, “either you are a believer or you aren’t. If you’re a believer, you know it. You know it in your heart. Barbara, tell me, are you a believer?”
“I’d like to be,” Barbara replied. “I guess I’m just more agnostic at this point in my life.”
The talk show host reacted quickly to that. “Now Barbara, there’s a book I’ve written that I want to send to you. In this book, I prove that Jesus was who he said he was and that he was raised from the dead. Now, if I send you this book and you read it, will you become a believer?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of trouble from preachers.”
“We’re not talking about preachers,” the host said. “We’re talking about proof! I’ve got proof, irrefutable proof, that Jesus was who he said he was and was raised from the dead. Now, if I send this book to you, will you become a believer?”
Barbara was frustrated. “I don’t think you’re listening to me,” she said. “I’m having trouble trusting at this point in my life.”
“Barbara,” he said, “we’re not talking about trust. We’re talking about truth. I have unassailable proof. Now, if I send it to you, will you become a believer?”
“I guess so,” Barbara said. “Yeah, I’ll become a believer.”
I only know a handful of people who would call that good evangelism. And, frankly speaking, I don’t know anybody who would call that good pastoral care. If Barbara sounds far from convinced, there are understandable reasons for her skepticism. Beginning with the talk show host. Had he really heard her? What was he trying to sell her? And why had he turned the conversation so quickly from her problems to his book?
But quite apart from the personality of the host, there remains the veracity of his claim to have proof. The fact is, there isn’t any. There is no scientific proof of the resurrection….no videotape of Jesus vacating the tomb….no seismograph of any Easter weekend earthquake….no first person interviews and news at 11:00. Which is why the endless sifting of the scanty sources (which has been carried out for centuries by amateur sleuths as well as scholarly analysts) convinces no one and is always so unsatisfying. The most recent case in point being the Shroud of Turin.
What we have is testimony, not proof. Someone saw him and told someone else. Women saw him and told the story to men. Men saw him and told the story to each other. Those first to hear it were frightened. Eventually, however, the frightened became emboldened. And it was clear that the story had life-changing capability. Leading generation after generation to say: “How can it not be true, because look at all the wonderful things it has accomplished.” Do not diminish the power of the testimony. I have heard it. I have read it. I have preached it. I believe it. Although I can’t prove it. And, in point of fact, stopped trying to prove it 25 or 30 years ago.
Preachers, when they are young, get all caught up in the literalness of what happened. But there comes a point when the more interesting question becomes the meaning of what happened. I am talking about the movement from “what” to “so what.” In today’s text, Paul tells us “so what.” Paul says: “If it isn’t true (that Christ was raised from the dead), then we’re liars. Worse yet, we are pitiable liars. And worst of all, it means that everybody else who has died is as dead as Christ is, and when we die we shall be as dead as the entire lot of them.”
Which cuts to the crux of the matter, does it not? The primary reason most of us wrestle with the resurrection of Jesus is because of the implications it may have for the resurrection of ourselves. I suppose it is possible to consider the resurrection of Jesus as something that happened one time to one man, but makes no promises concerning other times and other men (or other women, for that matter).
And I suppose it is possible to applaud that, as well as affirm that. “Yes, if anybody should be raised from the dead, it should certainly be Jesus….good man that he was….God’s man that he was….young man that he was….horribly mistreated man (I mean, did you see Gibson’s film?) that he was. Yes, if anybody deserves to be resurrected, Jesus deserves to be resurrected.” But in forty years of Easter preaching, I’ve never heard anybody say that. Churches don’t fill up on Easter with people who say: “I’m glad it turned out so well for him.” Rather, churches fill up on Easter with people who, if pressed, will say: “I hope it will turn out so well for me.” There is, at the heart of our faith, a certain selfishness. Given that most of us come to church on Easter, not so much to say “Good for him,” but “Good for us.”
Lindsey Crittenden (in an essay sufficiently well-crafted so as to be included in The Best American Spiritual Writing for 2004) remembers how, on the way home from her very first Easter service as a four year old sitting in “big church,” she responded to the resurrection by saying to her mother: “Maybe someone in our family will do that.” Interesting, isn’t it, that as a four year old, the thing that fascinated her about the miracle was that it might be repeatable.
“Maybe someone in our family will do that.”
In the small Pennsylvania town where Harvey Cox grew up, it was the tradition to gather in the park at sunrise on Easter, before heading to the church with the biggest Fellowship Hall for heaping platters of pancakes topped with ladles of maple syrup and slathered with chunks of creamery butter, with crisp bacon on the side and orange juice in waxy paper cups. After which he went home to greet his parents (who were not churchgoers) coming downstairs to breakfast in their bathrobes. It always made him feel a little self-righteous, going to worship in the dark and cold when his parents were tucked comfortably in their beds. But, at that stage in his life, it was more about the pancakes than the preaching….more about seeing his friends in the park than seeing the truth in the sermon.
But that all changed when I became a teenager and people I knew began dying. And the whole business became more urgent when I went to work, part-time, for my Uncle Frank who was the town’s only undertaker. I went out with his crews to pick up the bodies. I watched him embalm some of them with formaldehyde on the white porcelain table. I helped people carry caskets to the cemetery. Some of the people we buried were old, some young, some stout, some thin. But to me, they all had one thing in common. They all looked very dead. Yet at the graveside, whatever minister was in charge always talked about the resurrection of the dead. And, at that very impressionable age, it dawned on me that those ministers were not just talking about Jesus.
Or, as the little girl said, “Maybe someone in our family will do that.”
So what do I believe? I believe that the resurrection is not about one of us, but all of us. But I also believe that the resurrection is God’s work, not ours. Jesus did not rise from the dead. Let me repeat that: Jesus did not rise from the dead. Instead, Jesus was raised from the dead. There’s a world of difference.
As much as I love the hymn we just sang, never failing to attack the chorus with great gusto….
Up from the grave he arose
With a mighty triumph o’er his foes,
He arose a victor from the dark domain
And he lives forever with his saints to reign.
He arose. He arose. Hallelujah, Christ arose.
….the Jesus portrayed in that hymn looks a little bit like Superman, awakening from an overdose of Kryptonite, revivified with strength, vigor and vitality. For did we not just sing:
Death could not keep its prey, Jesus my Savior.
He tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord.
We’re talking Jesus as Superhero, right out of the pages of Action Comics. Meaning that you should probably go home and put a Jesus action figure in your kid’s Easter basket. A fascinating image. But a terribly mis-focused one. Nowhere does it say that Jesus roused himself from death. What it says is that God raised him from death.
Why? Because justice demands it, that’s why. From God’s perspective, eternal life is not so much about getting us together in some beloved reunion (wonderful as that idea seems to me), but about God’s getting it right….getting it fixed….getting it worked on, worked out and worked through….so that what didn’t work in this life can be made to work in the next. I have heard it said that the undergirding axiom of our faith is that “God is working his purpose out.” But it would seem that God needs a bigger stage than this world affords, and a longer time frame than human history allows, in order to get it accomplished.
People say there is no concept of the resurrection in the Old Testament. To be politically correct, we are no longer supposed to refer to the first 66 books of the Bible as the Old Testament….the word “old” suggesting things that are outdated, antiquated and tired. Instead, we are supposed to talk about the Hebrew Bible. But it is patently untrue to suggest that the Hebrew Bible lacks conceptualizations of resurrection. There are multiple conceptualizations of resurrection in the Hebrew Bible. To be sure, they differ as to how the dead will be raised or when the dead will be raised. But there is no disagreement as to why the dead will be raised. The dead will be raised so that God can make right what didn’t go right….healing the inequities…. vindicating the victims….reconnecting the disconnected (what do you think Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones is all about?)….and restoring to its essential goodness a creation gone sadly sour. Resurrection, in the Hebrew Bible, is a moral necessity, so that God who, in this life, is not able to deliver on all of his promises, gets to finish a work well-conceived but incompletely executed. For the Israelites, resurrection has less to do with our happiness than God’s fulfillment.
Let me ask you some tough questions. Do you think that God designs everything that happens…. wills everything that happens….desires that everything should happen exactly as it happens? I don’t. And if you are with me in that conviction, you have no choice but to conclude that God does not like everything that happens, to the point of feeling pain (and more than occasional anger) over a lot of things that happen. Some of which can be fixed here. But not all of which can be fixed here. Seen from the pages of the Hebrew Bible…..and from the perspective of a Jewish mindset….Easter is simply the logical extension of another word beginning with “E”….or another miracle beginning with “E.” I am talking about the word “Exodus”….with both Exodus and Easter being different, but highly-complimentary ways in which God delivers his people.
In the wake of some beautiful things that have happened over the past weeks and months of our lives, both Kris and I have recently said….out loud….to each other….that if the curtain were to ring down right now, we would have no regrets. Sure, we want to do more. But we’ve done plenty. Sure, we want to see more. But we’ve seen plenty. We don’t feel we are owed anything. Nor do we feel that we have been cheated out of anything. For us, from here to wherever is largely gravy.
But every day we either run into, or read about, people who don’t say that because they can’t say that….who, from the great poker hand of life, have drawn an extremely low card (would you believe the two of clubs?)….or from the tight-fisted hand of fate have drawn an extremely short straw. Or maybe the straw they drew was long enough in the beginning….even strong enough in the beginning….but the randomly-swinging sickle of chance chopped it down, sliced it up, or whacked it off before it ripened into the full flavor of its promise. The fact of the matter is, some people get the shaft. Other people give the shaft. But, in the short run, it is God’s dream and design that gets shafted. Resurrection, biblically considered, is less about human reward than it is about divine reconstruction….God working his purpose out.
Which means that whether Terry Schiavo dies tomorrow or twenty years from tomorrow is really secondary. Any pleasure God takes in whether the tube stays out or goes back in….whether her parents win or her husband wins….whether the Religious Right wins or whether the equally-religious Left wins….I think is minimal. Compared, that is, with the pleasure that God will take in seeing her life restored more than merely sustained. If it were me, I would hope it would happen immediately. But if it does not, I believe it will happen eventually….and inevitably. Because God’s purpose will be worked out. And because God is good.
The resurrection:
Did it happen once?
Yes.
Will it happen again?
Yes.
Will it happen to anyone we know?
Yes.
(and here’s the controversial one)….Will it happen to everyone we know?
Yes.
Will we be universally happy if it happens to everyone we know?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The phone rang frantically in the home of a man locally. It was a call from Israel telling him: “Your mother-in-law fell from the back of a camel while on a tour of the Holy Land and died. But I have done some checking before calling. And I can tell you that flying her home for burial will cost in the neighborhood of $15,000. But if you allow her to be buried here in the Holy Land, we can do it for $150.”
Without missing a beat, the son-in-law said: “I’ll wire the $15,000 tonight. Put her on the first plane tomorrow morning.”
“Will do,” said the tour operator. “But might I ask, given the huge differential in price, why you passed on such a deal?”
To which the son-in-law said: “The last person I knew who was buried in your country was up and walking around again in three days. And I simply can’t take the chance.”
Well, I would love to see my mother-in-law up and walking around again. Truth be told, I would love to see my worst enemy up and walking around again. Not because of what it might say about the merits of my enemy. And not because of what it might say about the merits of me. But because of what it will say about the goodness of God. God is working his purpose out. But the only way God wins is if everybody wins.
Note: For a concise discussion of the “justice theme” of resurrection narratives in the Hebrew Bible, let me direct you to Harvey Cox’s treatment of “The Easter Story” in his recent book, When Jesus Came to Harvard. I have benefited greatly from Cox’s treatment of the Holy Week themes throughout this Lenten season.
Thomas Long teaches preaching at Emory University in Atlanta. His recent book, Testimony: Talking Ourselves Into Being Christian, is part of “The Practices of Faith Series.”
Lindsey Crittenden’s essay is entitled “The Water Will Hold You” and can be found in The Best American Spiritual Writing, 2004 edited by Philip Zaleski.
As concerns “testimony” as the primary source of evidence for the resurrection, that position is held by scholars of all stripes including those firmly rooted in the evangelical connection. Oxford’s Richard Swinburne gives primary credit to the apostles’ Easter “testimony” for the dramatic spread of the gospel. To which Notre Dame’s Alvin Plantinga (whom Christianity Today magazine calls the most important philosopher of any stripe) says: “Maybe it’s not knock-down, drag-out, one-hundred-percent-conclusive evidence, but it’s pretty strong evidence.” To which Plantinga adds another factor emphasized by Aquinas and Calvin….internal knowledge from the Holy Spirit that convinces an individual that such testimony is true.
