St. Aidan's Episcopal Church
Alexandria, Virginia
April 20, 2014
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed!
Really? What exactly do you mean by that? Are you sure? Would the people around you agree with your take on what this day is about? Of course, I’m just tossing those questions out there so we can all acknowledge that they’re in the room today. I’m not really asking them. If there is any day in the Church year when you shouldn’t have to worry about believing the wrong thing, or not believing enough, it is Easter Sunday. When it comes to Easter, we are all in the same boat, floating on a sea of tradition and mystery whose changing surface reveals only some of the great depth beneath us. Consider the story we just heard.
In this story, Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple all go running out to see what has happened. The three who went to the tomb each approached the tomb in their own way. One ran eagerly and got there first but didn’t go in. Peter, as soon as he arrived, went inside. Mary waited outside. That first disciple looked into the tomb and saw the linen wrappings. Mary looked into the tomb and saw angels, but it took her while and she needed some help to recognize Jesus when he showed up. We are told the one who arrived first eventually did go in, and upon entering, saw and believed, “for as yet, he did not understand.” What an interesting little snippet about understanding and belief. Does understanding make belief difficult? Are they opposed? Do they come at different times? Apparently you can have one without the other. This is a wildly inclusive story. There is something in this story for everyone.
Maybe you saw the Washington Post yesterday and the articles in the B section on faith, one article about belief in the resurrection and one by Sally Quinn on belief in God. The article on the resurrection quoted a James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author who said belief in the actual physical resurrection of the body is essential, that there can be no Christianity without that core belief. That same article quoted the retired Episcopal bishop, Jack Spong, who has been writing and teaching for years that it is quite possible to be a faithful Christian and understand the resurrection in a metaphorical way. He says “Jesus was raised back into the life of God……and it was out of this, not his body, that his presence was manifested to certain witnesses.” Sally Quinn who writes regularly in the Post on faith and religion says she used to consider herself an atheist, but no longer does. Speaking about her belief in the resurrection, she says simply, “I don’t know.”
Here again is a group of people with different experiences, different backgrounds and upbringings, people each with their own temperament and ways of perceiving the world, all looking into the empty tomb and seeing something different. There is something in this story for everyone.
The disciples went looking for Jesus. I recommend that, looking for Jesus. That was the beginning for them of experiencing him in a new way. And they even looked for Jesus in different ways, some rushing in hopeful, some holding back, maybe not wanting to be taken in by some kind of hoax. They each approached the story in their own way. They did not all have the same experience. And, they all became part of the story.
This story only gets better with more perspectives and more voices. Jesus can come to life in some new way for us as we receive the version of the story only our neighbor could tell, or only our friend, or even that person over there whose version of the story seems so different from our own. Remember, another part of this story-for-everyone today is the part where Mary has to come to terms with a new Jesus, one she didn’t even recognize though she had loved him as much as anyone. The Jesus she had known died, and the Jesus who came to life in his place kind of was and kind of wasn’t that same Jesus. He became new to her. New for her.
It can happen that way with us. It has happened that way with me. There have been times when the Jesus I have known has faded, died even, and been replaced by a Jesus who is new for me in some important way.
I was eating breakfast with some clergy friends the other day, and the priest next to me asked me something about the atonement…..(yes, we do sometimes talk such heady subjects over breakfast. Pray for us.) Anyway, I told my friend that I didn’t have much use for the doctrine of atonement any more and he asked me how I could call myself a Christian and say such a thing. I have practiced the answer for that sort of question, so I just smiled an told him I was baptized and I loved Jesus and I figured that was enough. “Love Jesus?!” he asked. “What?” I do confess that I probably enjoy those little exchanges a bit more than I should.
I haven’t always been able to say I loved Jesus. A few months ago I began meeting with a spiritual director, something I haven’t done in several years. I had trouble finding someone I thought could put up with my spiritual vicissitudes. A few weeks ago, she asked me how I imagined God and as I tried to explain, without noticing, I began to talk about Jesus. She pointed out the shift and asked me about it and I said I was a little surprised too. I told her that most of my life I hadn’t been very comfortable talking about Jesus. I had wanted to be a priest because I loved God, but I had been raised around people who spoke of Jesus often, and in ways that made me not want to be among them. I told her that only in the last ten years or so, and only by consciously working on it had I been able to begin to imagine the God I love and talk to regularly as Jesus. That it had been a real shift.
She asked me why I had wanted to make that shift. I told her I figured it was my job to talk about Jesus and I should probably learn to do it. She too is a parish priest, she laughed and said, “if our parishioners only knew.” I have to tell you, there have been times in my life when I was afraid my belief in Jesus wasn’t certain enough, or I didn’t believe deeply enough, or that I didn’t believe the right things about Jesus. There is nothing like a bit of accepting laughter to scatter the clouds of that kind of self doubt. It is even more recently that I have learned that worrying about the quality of my faith has always had more to do with doubting myself than with doubting God.
I am here this morning to tell you the good news about the resurrection. I’m here to tell you about Jesus coming back from the dead. I know there are probably as many takes on what those words mean as there are people in this room. I can only attest to what I have experienced. Jesus has become new for me many times. I have, once or twice, thought Jesus was gone, dead, only to find myself recognizing him in a new form and with a new face, familiar, but still new. I don’t understand that process. I’m sure it has much to do with me and what I am open to at different times in my life, and I am also becoming more convinced that it has to do with this God-as-companion that I have finally learned to call Jesus. One of the new faces of Jesus coming into focus for me is that of trusted guide.
My message today is that Jesus, even though he may seem, dead and gone, can……does rise again, not just in ancient story, but in the lives of people like you and me. May it be so for all of us in this Easter season. Amen
JB
The Lord is risen indeed!
