RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - April 26, 2009

“The Fact of Resurrection”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Luke 24:36-48

First there was Easter Sunday itself. That was two weeks ago. You remember. The church was filled with over 100 men, women, and children. Lori was in her flower-splashed springtime attire complete with open toed shoes and bare legs.

From seemingly out of nowhere, lilies, tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils arrived on Saturday to adorn our sanctuary. The cross we raised so sadly on Palm Sunday while Andy and Frank sang lay on its side, conquered by an array of flowers.

It was on Easter that we learned about the empty tomb – and thinking back on it all, we get that part. Like the disciples, we can proclaim that the rumors all seem to be true that Christ had risen. Christ had risen indeed.

Then there was the first Sunday after Easter. That was last Sunday. Attendance was a bit sparser. There were fewer flowers, and the cross was gone. However, we experienced enough hints, and there were enough remnants of the celebration from the week before, to remind us once again that indeed Christ had risen.

And more than that, Christ was said to have made a few appearances to small groups of his disciples – Thomas, Peter, and the others – and, thinking back on it all, we get that part too. Like the disciples, we accept, if not exactly fathom, that in some mysterious way Christ came to those who believed in his mission.

And so here we are today – two weeks post-resurrection, and everything is pretty much back to normal. Like the disciples, we have, for the most part, regrouped after the dislocation of Easter. However, also like the disciples, we surely have the same question on the tip of our tongues.

“We get the empty tomb,” Peter and the others might have said to each other. “We get that Jesus is hovering around folks like us who affirm his Gospel message. Yet (and this is the big question for you and me this morning) what does it mean for us from this day forward? How does this resurrection business change the way we live our lives?”

That, I think, is the Gospel writer’s purpose for including this story which is both the beginning of the end of his gospel and a segue into the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which many Biblical scholars believe was written by the same individual.

Coming on the heels of the more famous Road to Emmaus narrative, once again, Jesus greets Peter, James, John, and the others with words of peace and shalom. Penned a good 50 years after the actual resurrection, the gospel writer seeks to make one thing perfectly clear to the earliest Christians.

These appearances of the Risen Christ were neither hallucinations nor gloriously vivid memories. This was not the ghost of Jesus returned from the netherworld. These appearances were different – and could only be described as vibrant, real, and alive.

And the Gospel writer offers in this story such delightfully human proof of that presumption. Besides urging the disciples to look at his hands and feet and feel his flesh and bones, Jesus eats a piece of fish – and keeps it down.

“Now could a ghost do that?” he queries. It is like that scene in the movie “Ghostbusters” when the little apparition attempts the same trick, but the food falls right out of the bottom of him.

So - what was the Risen Christ like? Kate Huey describes him this way: “Apparently, not like anything the Disciples had ever seen before! Not like Lazarus, a resuscitated corpse, and not exactly like Jesus was before the crucifixion.

On the one hand, locked doors didn't keep him out, but on the other hand, he could still eat solid food, just like them!”

In short, the Gospel writer is reporting that when Jesus appeared to his friends, Jesus persuaded them that he was not dead. As Nevitt Smith wrote, whatever happened, “was vivid enough to convince rather unimaginative people that Jesus was alive and that God rules, just as Jesus said.”

And perhaps even more astounding, the resurrection did not erase Jesus’ past life. The wounds and scars were still visible – and for us, that is more Easter good news. As Marjorie Suchocki notes, “the resurrection power of God does not annihilate the past, it transforms the past to a new reality. That which was, is affirmed, and is given a new dimension, a new context, a new direction.”

The resurrection, of course, lies at the foundation of our Christian faith. It is the cornerstone – and it is real. It is mysterious. It is not fathomable. It is beyond all of our scientific reasoning. We will never understand it – but you know what?

I think that the gospel writer of Luke would say that we need not dwell on our incomprehension. In fact, putting our energy into trying construct some rational paradigm for the resurrection detracts from our role as followers of Jesus and proclaimers of his gospel message.

That is the other important part of this Biblical passage. The Gospel writer goes on to say that Jesus opens the disciples’ eyes to what the Holy Scriptures really say (that is, to what he has been preaching all along) and then charges his followers to challenge the world to repent, but also to offer forgiveness. This commission is something radically new and different because it empowers these disciples - these learners – to be part of God’s plan.

And so it is for us as well. We are called not to waste precious time and energy debating the rationality of the resurrection. No – instead the Risen Christ beckons us to speak out and call the world on its faults – but in the spirit of forgiveness and loving kindness.

That means, for example, that we do not stand by silently as long as people in Appalachia live in poverty and without health care. We do not busy ourselves elsewhere while men and women in Darfur suffer, or any part of the world remains at war.

Why must we care about such things if we are safe and sound? It is all because of this resurrection business. We must care because the fact of the resurrection changes who we are.

You see, the fact of the resurrection means that death was not the end of Jesus. Therefore, everything he preached – the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables - and everything he represented – hope for the unfortunate, healing for the sick – and everything that was incarnate in him – a clear path to God’s Kingdom, a commitment to what happens in this world over and above the next – all of it is still real. The message and the messenger – the gospel and the Christ - are not fantasies or impossible dreams. Both are present among us now.

The fact of resurrection means that God really does rule the world – scarred hands, wounded feet, and all. It means that God really does care for us and about us. It means that the gentle shall inherit the earth in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

The fact of resurrection means that God intends for us to play a significant role in the sweeping plan for salvation. As Barbara Brown Taylor wrote: “We bear hope for the world because of that commission Jesus gave the disciples and the whole church long ago: When that world looks around for the risen Christ, when they want to know what that means, it is us they look at. Not our pretty faces and not our sincere eyes but our hands and feet--what we have done with them and where we have gone with them."

The fact of resurrection means that every one of us is capable of life renewing transformation. That is what, as Christians, we are called to do and to be. The Risen Christ lives in us – and so we are never the same.

Perhaps you have watched the video clip of Susan Boyle, the frumpy, unemployed middle aged Scottish woman, who stunned a disbelieving crowd on the British TV equivalent of “American Idol.” The audience and judges had already deemed her undeserving because of worldly standards that dictate how a "star" should look and speak.

Three notes into her song, however, there was a mass transformation of the crowd, their hearts moved by her exquisite voice, completely unexpected from such an ordinary looking woman from a humble village. The crowd pivoted from cynicism and disbelief to wholehearted support, embracing this woman and her dreams. Millions around the world have joined them, unable to explain what happened inside them as this story unfolded.

What a marvelous image of resurrection and new life. Here were minds and hearts transformed by the same woman who, when she left the stage, was no different than when she had walked out onto it, but now claiming her dream of being a great musical star.

It is like that when the Risen Christ enters our lives and turns us around, too, when we are jaded, judgmental, and closed-off in heart and mind. And the marvelous news of the resurrection is that such transformation does not happen just on Easter.

The fact of resurrection is so much bigger – and it happens all the time. The Risen Christ appears among us over and over again. That is why, in the church, each Sunday – even in the most ordinary of times – is called a little Easter.

That fact of the resurrection means that no day is ever going to be quite the same because now we are both empowered and challenged. We are part of the plan. So it was for the disciples, and so it is for us. And that surely is good news, enough to make us want to proclaim one more time – Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia and amen.

Sermon - April 26, 2009

“The Fact of Resurrection”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Luke 24:36-48

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Luke 24:36-48