The resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s once and for all statement to the world that he cares about this world and our lives in it. Frankly, it is easy for me to think otherwise. How about you? Just turn on the radio and your ears fill with awful stories of human suffering and much of it happens to babies and children which is especially hard for most of us to bear. When we see and/or experience terrible suffering we cry out to God sometimes with our fists in the air - God, why don’t you do something!? This is often the voice and tone the Psalmist used. God, wake up! and work for the cause of righteousness says the Psalmist in one place; and in another place the Psalmist cries out, “my God my God why have you forsaken me”. Remarkably, those words from Psalm 22 are on the lips of Jesus as he takes on the sins of the world and the full brunt of the physical agony of crucifixion, making it clear that the cross is a God forsaken place. It is important to remember that as we celebrate Easter. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God says many things to us. What he doesn’t offer in the resurrection is a polished treatise defending his benevolence in the face of evil and in response to all of our frustration with him and this world. Rather, his statement in the resurrection is the person of Christ who, on the cross, brings God into the mess of this fallen world for the purpose of redeeming it. The resurrection is not less than God’s vindication of what happened to Jesus on the cross. To paraphrase theologian Mike Lloyd, “God owns the cross of Christ and it is where he deals most powerfully with the evil and sin in world, defeating them in Christ's sacrifice. On the cross God entered the world of chaos, evil, failure, and defeat and claims the entire arena to be a place where he is at work. It is in Jesus’ moment of being forsaken by the father that God's love is most powerfully at work. It was when the hopes of the disciples were dashed that their salvation was being accomplished. And when we experience failure and chaos in our lives and we imagine that we have come to a place where hope is irretrievable God says NO! Quite the opposite is the case: through God’s son on the cross, God has entered into the chaos of this fallen world so that it is not an alien place for him. So, whatever the case may be for us (e.g. whatever terrible thing befalls us because of evil at work in the world, or, whatever calamity we have brought on ourselves through the selfishness of sin - God is not alien to us in these circumstances). His presence with us is for the purpose of reconciling us to himself and doing something new in our lives. His resurrecting love is always there for us in the very worst of circumstances.” And this is a fitting thought as we move into the baptism portion of our worship service. Through the cross, God is not alien to our experiences of hopelessness, pain, suffering, and doubts; he is not alien to our dark nights of the soul. In baptism today we portray the promise of God to always be near Matthew Bushman Jr. and William Lovell - there is no time in their lives where his love will be alien to them and that is one thing baptism says to us always, but quite loudly on Easter on Sunday!
We have already taken comfort that the resurrection is God’s vindication of the cross; now I want to talk with you about how the resurrection is not most importantly an encouragement about life after death but rather, in the words of NT Wright, an encouragement to “bring the life of heaven to earth, in actual physical, earthly reality.” In this way, we see the resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of God’s answer to a portion of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples: “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”. To be sure, the resurrection is an encouragement that our bodies are meant to be made new so that we might reign with Christ in the world to come; this is tremendous comfort to us when we face the prospect of our own death and when we are faced with the death of loved ones! But most of the teaching about the resurrection in the New Testament is focused on the difference Jesus’ resurrection makes in our lives right now. The resurrection is foremost God’s encouragement to us that the new creation has begun in the resurrected Jesus Christ.
This is the point of what Saint Paul was saying to the church at Corinth and through them to us. He is not saying get me out of this terrible world God - give me heaven; what he is saying is that your work here in this fallen world is not in vain. Again, to quote NT Wright on that passage “What you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable until the day we leave it behind altogether.... They are part of what we may call building God’s kingdom.... You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff … all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.” (From his book, Surprised by Hope)
I don’t know about you but I need the promise of the resurrection to meet me in the moments where I am tempted to regard all my work here on this earth as vain and pointless. I need God to speak to me through the resurrection when I am tempted to turn in on myself and walk away from my responsibility, as Jesus’ disciple, to bring the life of heaven to earth. The power of the resurrection speaks to us at the point where we are about to give up hope and say so what!?! God knows us - he knows that all too human moment when we say in great frustration, "what difference does it make if I serve God and others in the self-giving love of Christ... look at what a mess things are... what difference will my faithfulness make?!".
The gospel speaks to us in these moments of our self-absorption when either simple selfishness or despair have choked out the hope that spurs us on to serving others in the love of Christ; when we say to ourselves, "what difference does it make if I confess my sin"; when we say to ourselves, "what difference does it make when our children need us to make sacrifices to spend good time with them during the week"; when we ask ourselves, "what difference does it make when my friend needs me to help her with a problem"; "what difference does it really make if I leave work early and go serve at the homeless shelter; what difference does it make, really, if I sign up to tutor a child". In all of these moments, when we teeter towards apathy or unbelief, the resurrection speaks to us this truth, as one preacher has put it - and I paraphrase a tad: “ the deepest truth of the universe is God’s indestructible love as shown forth most powerfully in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead... and because of that great power, even the smallest act of service or compassion is worthwhile, a way of being in contact with the truth. It may seem to make little difference, it may not guarantee success as we usually understand it, but it becomes part of the current of truth flowing eternally against the lies and injustices of a world in which our own interest or safety takes precedence over everything (Rowan Williams from his Holy Week Letter).”
Questions for discussion:
1. How much of an impact does the suffering in the world have on your faith and faithfulness? Can you think of examples of terrible things that happen in the world that cause you to call into question whether God is at work in the world? Can appropriating the truth of the resurrection help you build a bridge back to faith in these circumstances?
2. When Mike Lloyd (see above) says that, on the cross, God was entering into the chaos and pain of the world and goes on to say that this chaos and pain is not an alien place for him he obviously thinks this should be a comfort to us. Is it a comfort to you? Can you imagine God wanting to be near to you in moments where you are out of control and really at your worst? Should you be able to imagine his love for you and his nearness to you in those moments?
3. Do you think that you sometimes fall into a place where your own interest or safety takes precedence over everything else (see Williams quote above)? When thinking about your spiritual formation, what sorts of disciplines (individually and in the context of community) can you embrace that would help you avoid placing your interest or safety before the mission of the Christ’s church?
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