The Message of the Resurrection
“This, then, is the message we have heard from Jesus, the Christ, and proclaim to you, that God is light and in God the light is never absent, there is no night at all.” — 1 John 1:5.
What do I believe? (Slight pause.) How should I believe? (Slight pause.) Who am I? (Slight pause.) Diana Butler Bass says these are the three questions organized religion has centered on for hundreds of years. What do I believe? (Slight pause.) How do I believe? (Slight pause.) Who am I? [1] (Slight pause.)
I have, several times before, mentioned Diana Butler Bass. She is a church historian. She is a member of the laity. She is an Episcopalian. She is a best selling author of books about the current state of the church.
I, in fact, used words of Bass as the Thought for Meditation in the Easter Sunday bulletin. (Quote:) “The point isn’t that you believe in the resurrection. Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead. The point is that you trust in the resurrection. And that’s much, much harder to do.”
In a recent article Bass said religion always entails the three “Bs” used in those questions I asked at the start— believing, behaving and belonging. [2] However, over the course centuries, the meaning of believing, behaving and belonging has been looked at in different ways.
Bass says for the last 300 years or so these believing, behaving and belonging questions have been translated into something other than what they might seem to ask on the surface. Believing has meant: ‘What does my church say I should think about God?’ Behaving has meant: ‘What are the rules my church asks me to follow?’ Belonging has meant: ‘What does it mean to be a faithful church member?’
You probably noticed the meanings of the questions have to do not with the individual and with the community and even with the church. These questions are about authority. More importantly, they are about who wields authority.
And that’s the rub. In our era, in the modern era, in the 21st Century, questions about believing, behaving and belonging as these relate to authority have become meaningless. This is especially true with young people.
Why is the data suggesting young people attend church less and less? Believing, behaving and belonging questions have been and often are being asked in ways which are alien to them. These questions are being asked as if they are about authority.
Today, states Bass, believing, behaving and belonging questions are less about authority and who wields it and have become more personal. Bass suggests these alternatives. How do I believe? What should I believe? [3] Whose am I?
Put this way, the underlying questions, the real questions being asked, become: ‘How do I understand faith, especially when it seems to conflict with science and pluralism?’ ‘How do my actions make a difference in the world?’ ‘How do my relationships shape me and shape my understanding of self?’
Please notice, believing, behaving, and belonging still matter. Those are there in the questions. But the ways in which people engage each area have undergone a revolution. The questions I just recited are 21st Century questions. (Slight pause.)
And these words are from the work known as First John: “This, then, is the message we have heard from Jesus, the Christ, and proclaim to you, that God is light and in God the light is never absent, there is no night at all.” (Slight pause.)
There is a television commercial currently running about how computers can empower and connect people. The commercial features a landscaping company in Minnesota. Except the commercial takes place in the Winter and you don’t do landscaping in Minnesota in the Winter— at least not garden landscaping. You do snow plowing.
So, the commercial explains how computers help the people of this company, who do snow plowing in the winter, react to the quick changing mid-winter weather conditions in Minnesota. And how do computers help?
Everyone in the chain of command can communicate instantaneously with everyone else and anyone in the chain of command, people out in the field at midnight, can make a determination about a change in how a job is being done, about sending a plow to a different location. Power is decentralized and placed in the hands of the people.
Everyone is empowered to react to conditions. Everyone is empowered to make changes. Everyone is an equal part of the command structure. Or, at least, that’s what the commercial is selling— individual empowerment. No they are not selling computers. They are selling individual empowerment.
And that, individual empowerment, is actually the really big discussion we are having in society today. Is each person going to be both empowered and empowering? Or, as we move forward, will we live in a society that is top down, much as it has been, frankly, for centuries, where all decisions are made for us and we are told what to do. (Slight pause.)
Earlier I quoted that Easter Thought for Meditation written by Bass. Let me do it again. “The point isn’t that you believe in the resurrection. Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead. The point is that you trust in the resurrection. And that’s much, much harder to do.” (Slight pause. The next phrase is whispered:) It’s about you!
In the course of the service on Easter Sunday I make sure I remind people about two things. First, resurrection is a Jewish premise. It predates Christianity.
I also remind people we need to understand a very basic theological aspect about resurrection. Resurrection is not and never was considered resuscitation or reanimation. It is not about a body coming back to life in the same way it had been living.
Resurrection is what it says it is: resurrection. It is, therefore, unlike any other human experience. (Slight pause.)
So, what is the message of resurrection? What does it mean? What do we, you and I, think it means? (Slight pause.)
The statement made by the writer of First John (quote:) “...God is light and in God the light is never absent, there is no night at all.” That is beautifully, wonderfully, magnificently poetic and absolutely ambiguous. It is meant to be so.
Equally, that kind of statement means discerning what the resurrection means is up to me. It is my individual responsibility to decide what the resurrection means for me.
Now, since I am called to the ministry of sharing the Word, that’s what I do. I try to share the Word. I try to share what the message of Jesus, what the message of Christianity means to me.
Equally, however, I do not try or I hope I do not try impose what I believe on anyone else. Why?
You see, the point of all of us gathering as the church is not what the resurrection or Christianity or the reality of God means to me, Pastor Joe. The point is what the resurrection, Christianity, the reality of God means to means to you, each and every one of you.
And, in the words of Diana Butler Bass, “Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead. The point is that you trust in the resurrection.” (Slight pause.)
For me at least, trusting in the resurrection— trusting God— is the point. And I cannot trust God for you. I can be a guide, a mentor, a coach, a pastor. But you need to trust God for yourself.
And that, my friends, is not just the challenge of life in the 21st Century. That is, I think, the challenge of Christianity.
So, the question to be asked is not ‘do you believe in God?’ Any fool can do that. Can you, can we, come to a point in the relationship with God where trusting God becomes central to that relationship?
So, what does the resurrection mean? Trust God. Amen.
04/22/2012
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, NY
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “I have said this here before. The theologian Nicholas Thomas Wright states that New Testament times were not unlike today, the 21st Century. In New Testament times nearly everybody believed in the gods or in a God. Very few took it seriously. And today nearly everybody believed in the gods or in a God. Very few take it seriously. And what do we need to do to take God seriously? Trust God.”
BENEDICTION: Hear now this blessing: we go into the world carrying forth God’s love. Let us go from this place and offer the peace of God which surpasses all understanding to all we meet, and may the Peace of Christ keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and companionship of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier, this day and forever more. Amen.
[1] It does need to be noted that the pastor mis-spoke in attempting to quote Bass at this point. The second question should have been “How do I behave?”
[2] This is where that article can be found:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-butler-bass/a-resurrected-christianit_b_1410143.html
[3] To give Bass her due the pastor once again misquoted her. Here it should have read: “What should I do?”
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