Meditations on the Resurrection

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, Jan. 12, 2025

I've been preaching on what scripture says the crucifixion of Jesus means to us, and today I want to talk about the resurrection.  Let me just say that without the resurrection and the loosing of God's Holy Spirit on those waiting for it, the crucifixion is just another death of a good man. One meaning of the resurrection is that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and he is a reliable witness to the character and purposes of God. Now on to the rest of the sermon.

I have a friend I’ll call Dorothy whom I met at the Pacific Northwest Quaker Theological Conference. This was a biennial meeting of women from North Pacific Yearly Meeting, what at the time I called liberal Quakers.

Dorothy stood up in our closing unprogrammed worship and said the following: “Some of you know that i occasionally see Jesus.” I was not expecting this.  She went on, “I first saw him while I was in heavy traffic in Seattle, and other drivers were getting on my nerves. I looked over at the passenger seat and there he was. He said, "Dorothy, do you have to use such language?” This was not all of the conversation, but I remember only this. I was both impressed and a little envious. I’d love to see Jesus in his glorified and yet identifiable physical self.

Some years later, Dorothy stood and said that Jesus had shown up  (while she was exercising, if I remember correctly) and told her he would be her personal trainer for the following year. She was looking forward to this. As it turned out, her personal training took her through breast cancer. She survived both the cancer and the treatment, and she learned about accepting help rather than being the one giving help.  

For many, the thought of seeing Jesus, or for that matter, his mother Mary, fills them with skepticism. People who see what they call apparitions are particularly credulous or vulnerable in some way, and their experiences can be dismissed as delusions.

But not dismissed by me. Dorothy is a grounded, sensible, scientific type person, and she occasionally sees Jesus. And she isn’t the only one. 

I’m not sure whether it was Jesus or a messenger from God that I met one despairing day.  I was sitting in church, weeping quietly over my pain over memories of my childhood, and I couldn’t bear it. So I got up and drove toward Champoeg Park. I came to a place in the road where the pavement had been removed and there were barriers with “No Through Traffic”; as I sat there stuck about what to do next, a big green boat of an American car came from the other direction.  The driver, whom I did not see clearly, leaned out of the window and said, “You can make it through.” I received this as the word of Jesus to me, and it comforted me.

You may have your own stories about hearing or seeing Jesus.

Robert Willis, the Dean Emeritus of Canterbury Cathedral, put morning prayers on youTube during the pandemic. He helped me through the pandemic and to this day. Dean Robert said the best evidence for the resurrection (for those who have not seen Jesus personally) is in the book of Acts. This chronicles how people behaved who had seen the risen Jesus, and there is no other good explanation for their behavior and their attitudes. (YouTube "How We Know the Resurrection Was Real, start around 11:28)

In the culture of a religious power base, the one that manipulated the Romans into killing Jesus: 

they are unafraid 

they speak their truth 

their confidence knows no limits

they hold authorities accountable for wrong-doing

they urge everyone to repent (which means to change one’s mind)

they promise hope

they forgive

Here are some of the things those first Christians said:

After healing a well-known beggar on the steps of the temple, Peter and John were hauled in before the priests, the temple guard, and the Sadducees, the religious power base and their muscle. These folks told them to shut up and lie low.  Here’s what they replied: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19)

Not long after, the apostles were imprisoned for preaching, and an angel let them out.  They were again brought before this group of powers that be, who said, “We commanded you not to teach in this name, and instead you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to blame us for this man’s death.”

But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered, raised him up to his right hand to be prince and savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, and we are his witnesses to these things and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” When the leaders heard this, they were furious and plotted to kill the apostles.… They beat the apostles and again commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Jesus’ sake. (Acts 5:29, 60)

Ignoring these orders, Stephen, a man full of faith and grace, preached and did miracles. A conspiracy arose to accuse him of blaspheming Moses and God, so he was brought before the council.  He took the opportunity to review the history of the Jewish nation at length and God’s call on them, ending like this: “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! you always resist the Holy Spirit as did your fathers before you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers.” They ground their teeth in rage. Then Stephen said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56)

They hauled him outside the city and stoned him to death, leaving their coats with a young Pharisee named Saul.

And as Stephen was dying, he said, “Lord, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin,” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Just a side note, Jesus also viewed death as sleep, which we can understand better since the news of the resurrection.)

And then there is the meeting Saul the persecutor had with Jesus: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4) It’s worth nothing that no one else saw or heard anything. Saul’s spiritual blindness manifested in physical blindness, and he had to be led to Damascus. His personal encounter with the risen Jesus resulted in a life dedicated to making the good news known, often at great personal cost; it eventually cost him his life, as tradition has it.

Paul writes many times about how important it is that Jesus died and rose from death to glorified life. It’s too much to read all the passages, but here’s a sampling:

Romans 4 ending

Just as Abraham’s faith counted for him as righteousness, when we believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, our faith counts for us as righteousness, our faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus whose surrender to death contains our side-slips, our falling, our failing, and whose resurrection from death contains the pronouncement from God that our guilt is removed and we are just what we ought to be, innocent and righteous..

Indeed, Paul rises to exhilarating heights in Romans 8 as he lists out what the resurrection means to us: 

We are not condemned;

We walk according to God’s spirit in us; 

We are God’s children.

“If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

Paul doesn’t gloss over the fact that life here will be difficult for any number of reasons calling them “these present sufferings”: Both the creation and we ourselves groan, eagerly waiting for the redemption of the body, and the earth, For we were saved in this hope, which we do not yet see.

His hope gives him the courage to say this: These present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us…For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:18, 38-9)

This is what the resurrection means for people of faith in the God who raised Jesus from death. 

Jesus himself said that he listened to what his Father told him and did what he was told; and that he was doing only what he saw his Father doing. He told his disciples that he was going away and that the Father would send them the Spirit of truth who would guide them into all truth.

The early Quakers affirmed the idea that Jesus is present to teach His people himself. We can see that they were fearless in preaching this insight; they were confident when facing authorities; they listened and obeyed.

The Spirit that descended on Jesus and filled Him, that galvanized the first generation of Christ-followers and their descendants the early Quakers, (and other renewals too numerous to mention) is the same Spirit the resurrection lets loose all who believe, including us. How do we live according to the Spirit?

 As James wrote, “If anyone lack wisdom, let that person ask of God, who gives to all liberally and doesn’t scold.” (James 1:5)  Let us, full of the hope given us by Jesus rising from death, ask, listen, and obey.

Meditations on the Crucifixion and What It Means for Us: Taking Up the Cross and Dying Daily

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, December 8, 2024

Novelist Flannery O’Connor, in her novel Wise Blood, wrote about a street preacher named Haze Motes who has given up on religion, and preaches the Church without Christ.  He harangues people with this: “Where in your time and your body has Jesus redeemed you.  Show me where because I don’t see that place….If you had been redeemed … you would care about redemption but you don’t.”  (84, 72) I’m still intrigued about what Jesus’s crucifixion and our redemption means for us, and as Haze wonders, what it means specifically in our daily lives.  

Let us just remember that Jesus ministered and died and was resurrected in a world where the Roman Emperor was a god and demanded worship, where his own homeland and was occupied by the Roman army and governed by Roman puppet rulers, and where executions took place in public and with regularity, for offenses from theft to murder to political protest and insurrection. So what Jesus says applies under those very unpleasant circumstances.

We’ll start with what Jesus said before the crucifixion about what it would mean to be his follower. In Mark 10, with similar passages in Matthew and Luke, Jesus tells his disciples, “All those who want to follow me will have to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and then follow me.” Matt 16:24, Mark 10:24; Luke 9:23. I have puzzled about what I am denying when I deny myself, because I have also felt confident that God loves that self, and God wants me to rejoice in my life and humanity. But what I want us to consider is that denying oneself refers to saying no to the need for admiration, approval, praise, control, fame, power, position.

We can see that no one wanted to hear that message, because shortly after, two disciples, expecting him to become king, wanted Jesus to promise them pride of place on his left and right hand. Understandably, this infuriated the other disciples (who may have regretted not getting in there first) until they heard Jesus’s answer:  You don’t know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? They answered: We are able.  In hindsight we can see the giant warning in Jesus’s metaphors, but they didn’t have our understanding that the cup was his suffering and the baptism was his death.

Jesus said, “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink and you will be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, but those seats of honor are already assigned.“ 

Then he went on to say some home truths about power vs discipleship to his followers then and now; “The nature of rulers is to lord it over their people, the great ones exercise authority over the people; You can’t be like that. Whoever wants to be one of the great ones must be your servant and whoever wants to have first place must be the slave of all.  

For even the Son of Man (namely Jesus) did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Remember this verse: 

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in this body I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Gal. 2:20

So what does it mean that we are with Jesus in his crucifixion? What does it mean to pick up the cross daily? St. Paul was working on this when he wrote, “I die daily.” Or this: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:12)

The idea of “denying one’s self” links up with “the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world” and “Christ lives in me.” These truths can help us live meaningfully and hopefully and humanely in troublesome times.

In early November, I pulled out The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil by Ervin Staub, which I referenced last time I was here. Staub was sheltered from the Nazis by a Christian family, which began his interest in why people choose goodness in circumstances which make it dangerous to get involved, circumstances where evil is easier.  The writer I want to bring in today is Tzvetan Todorov, who grew up in totalitarian Bulgaria. As a scholar, he inquired into the nature of virtue under the Nazis and in the concentration camps and wrote about it in Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. 

One of his main conclusions is to differentiate between heroic and ordinary virtues. And this is where we can see how dying to the world, denying one’s self, and Christ living in us can help us make decisions about our responses and responsibilities.

We aim for ordinary virtues, rather than heroism.

Heroes are courageous and willing to risk their own lives for an ideal; but also Heroes are careless of others’ lives. Heroes are willing for any number of  people to die so that the ideal can survive; the beneficiary of their deaths is an abstraction such as humanity or history or democracy or freedom. heroes prefer the ideal to the real.

People of ordinary virtues are also courageous and willing to risk their lives, they also refuse to accept that things have to be this way, they also do not mindlessly follow orders. But, unlike those of heroic virtues, they prioritize the safety and escape of other people.  They embody the ordinary virtues of dignity (remaining a subject with a will) and caring (contributing to the welfare of others). In complete contrast to the heroes, they live or die for individuals rather than for ideas. The beneficiaries of their courage are real individual persons. They will be active bystanders, aware of their surroundings and their companions and choosing to disrupt the actions of hatred and violence that afflict them. At the same time, it is best not to be a martyr if possible. As Jesus advised, “Be wise as the serpent and as harmless as the dove.” Pay attention, be aware, and intervene with as little harm done as possible.

I grew up in Central Africa under a military dictatorship, and during two civil wars.  In the one from 1960, a young man who had studied in the U.S. and was on the army's hit list took refuge in the house of a Quaker missionary doctor. When the soldiers came to his door, Perry met them and said, "This man is a guest in my home. If you want to take him, you will have to take me also." This seemed too risky to the soldiers, since they were afraid that the U.S. might retaliate if they harmed an American, so they went away.  The young man was spirited across the border and eventually found safety in the U.S.  Perry used his privilege as a white American to deflect violence without making the situation worse and without harm to anyone. He exemplified a person of ordinary virtue.

How does this relate to taking up the cross and dying to self?  First, dignity and caring, the ordinary virtues, are not about exercising power, only choice.  It is hard for humans to give up trying to be the powerful one, the leader, the charismatic prophet, particularly if there are followers to be had.  Second, recognizing that I am responsible to do all the good I can for as long as I can removes the impulse to go out in a blaze of glory, glory being another kind of ego trip.  Third, my impulse to remain as safe as I can takes a back seat to my choice to disrupt violence, hatred, and evil. Fourth, I don’t waste my time saying I care; instead I do caring actions.

St. Paul says that our old worn-out habitual self is crucified with Jesus. Certainly the instinct of facing danger with fight, flight, or freeze are old habits that we can choose against.  Certainly the natural and unhelpful impulse to grasp the upper hand, to be or to follow idealistic leaders is something we can question. Paul says that this old mindset is dead on the cross, and that from now on we should choose not to serve it. He calls it sin, and I want us to think about this meaning something other than lust or avarice, something instead that causes us to acquiesce to systemic evil.  He says in Galatians that he is dead with Christ, and the life he lives now is lived by the faith of God’s Son. He is alive because Christ is faithful. He says that because Christ is raised, we also will live with him in a setting where death has no dominion. (Romans 6:6-9) Thus we do not fear death, but also we do not run towards it.  “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain,” is not the slogan of a man hurrying toward martyrdom.  

I want to draw attention to the number of times Jesus simply evaded dying by slipping away in the crowd. Even when he was encircled by a mob of angry and self-righteous men wanting to stone an adulterous woman, he responded to their mood quietly and disruptively, standing with the woman, but not inciting or inviting violence toward her or himself. When he protested against the systemic evils of temple merchandising and priestly corruption  by overturning tables, he exposed only himself to retaliation, and when he was captured in the garden, he made certain his followers lived to see another day. He made his choices with dignity and purpose, and he cared for those within his sphere.  This is a leader who is dead to ego needs and alive to God and his neighbors.

As we face into an uncertain and worrisome future, I encourage us to be persons of ordinary virtues, persons who recognize everyday evil and choose to act to diminish, deflect, or disrupt it rather than ignore it or comply with it. Let’s live so that we show in our time and body where Jesus has redeemed us. Let us respect our own ability to choose, let us care for our neighbor, and let us rejoice in the faithfulness of Jesus who lives in us.

Meditations on the Crucifixion and What It Means for Us: Crucified with Christ

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, November 10, 2024

Last time I was here, I talked about the Law being crucified with Jesus. I made the point that human behavior is no surprise to God, that God in the moment of creation knew that the crucifixion was necessary. I mentioned that God not only created but intervenes in creation, and not in a particularly predictable way. I also want to repeat the point that God exists outside of time; this means all times are present to God, the crucifixion is continually visible to God.  

This eternal present of God helps us understand why, even though God warned Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because “in the day you eat of it you will die,” the story goes on for Adam and he dies physically much later. To God, the death is present in God’s now, as is every death of every creature. There was and is only one remedy, and Jesus is that remedy.

Likewise, in God’s now the resurrection of Jesus is always present. In this stunning event, a body entering decay was raised from the dead and united with the spirit of that person for eternity, a new body that cannot decay and is glorified in ways we can only guess from the resurrection—recognizable by scars and mannerisms and relationships, that can eat our food, but also can walk through locked doors and materialize at will. The Bible teaches us that this is our destiny as well, because we have died with Christ.

St. Paul tries to explain the cosmic proportions of the resurrection in Romans.

 

Adam is a prefiguring of Jesus Christ in his effect on those who came after.

And if Adam involved all humanity in sin and death, how much more does Jesus involve all humanity in the grace of God. Adam’s trespass brought a condemning judgment, but Jesus’s free gift brings many trespasses into favorable judgment. 

Just as through one human, sin, error, trespass, disobedience came into the harmony of the cosmos, with sin came death, and death passed through all humans because all sinned—to repeat: if by one man, Adam, death ruled over humanity, how much more will life gain the upper hand, and people will receive abundance of grace and the gift of being set right with God and will reign in life by the one man, Jesus.

Therefore, as by the disobedience of one man all were condemned, so now by the obedience of one man all are set right with God and brought into life.

So just as sin has ruled through death, even more grace rules because grace makes people who they are meant to be even into eternal life. 

So in our history, the crucifixion is a one-time miracle that redeems us from sin and death. But in God’s eternal now, Jesus is dying on the cross.  

At the same time, if we can call it time, Jesus is harrowing hell, and leading the powers and principalities as captives, and rising triumphant over sin and death. Jesus is redeeming us in the eternal now.  If it is possible to imagine, there is no past and present in God’s now.

So how is it that Jesus accomplished this redemption? He includes us, God includes us, in the crucifixion, and in the resurrection. Jesus didn’t only die for us, he died with us. 

Rom 6:4, 5 

For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

 Paul writes the following in Galatians. 

Gal 2:16-21 We are justified by the faithfulness of Christ, we believe in the character and work of Jesus Christ; we are dead to the Law so that we may live to God; we are crucified with Christ, and now Christ lives in us and we live by the faithfulness of Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. We do not reject the grace of God by saying that righteousness comes through the Law.

As a Christian I want to find out what it means in my mortal body and time to be crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live but Christ in me.  I have been a Christian since childhood, and my commitment to God has become more complete as I have increasingly understood God’s commitment to me.  Significant milestones included having several experiences that made the crucifixion vivid to me; finding that my sense of who I am was almost totally wrong and allowing God to rebuild me as God sees fit; realizing that just as the glory of God is most clearly revealed through the visible wounds of the risen Jesus, so it is revealed in my own brokenness more than in my strengths; understanding that God is closer to me than the air I breathe and more necessary to my continued existence; realizing that God does the loving of God’s own free will and nature, not because I am so lovable. 

I’ve had at least one spiritual experience that depends on this eternal now of God.  I recovered memories of abuse and the misery of despair and grief and self-blame and aloneness that inhabits that experience came along with the flashbacks. I went to my friends, Howard and Margi Macy, and asked them to pray for healing of my memories. In this instance, they invited me to remember as vividly as I could bear, and as they prayed, I felt in my whole self that Jesus entered into my body for that experience to bear it with me.  This memory is as vivid as any I recovered. I was able to know experimentally that the Jesus on  the cross enters entirely into human suffering and feels it with us, whether we can see that or not. But seeing this truth personally healed the feeling of being alone and abandoned to misery. I came out of that saying to myself, “I am crucified with Christ, which also means Christ is crucified with me.” And I heard more in Jesus’s statement that what we do to the least of these we do to him.  This is not a figurative statement.  

Because I cannot deny the eternal redeeming work that is God’s now and also in our now, though for us sequentially, I listen for and try to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit; this is often humbling and healing.  I pray in order to get to know God.  I read the Gospels to get to know Jesus better.  One of the best things I ever did for my faith was to read Mark three times in three weekends and fall in love with Jesus.

Julian of Norwich lived in the 1300s, the century of Black Death, which carried away 2/3 of Europe’s population. In Norwich, she would have known about the Peasants Revolt in 1381, not least because the Bishop of Norwich led armed forces against the peasants’ army, caught and executed one of the leaders on his own authority.  This makes fascinating Wikipedia reading, especially if placed in comparison to our own attempted revolt in 2021 and the ensuing unrest and now election of that party. And she would have known about the burning of followers of John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English. These folks were derogatorily called Lollards, and the Catholic Church considered them heretics. The Bishop of Norwich was keen to keep this heresy down, perhaps because they argued that people in positions of religious authority should not also hold positions of power in the government.  And Julian, despite living alone in a two room cell off the church building, was often sought out for spiritual guidance, so would have counseled many folks whose lives were disrupted by disease, revolution, and religious persecution.

So we can listen well to her when she says that Jesus said to her, “iI is true that sin is the cause of all this pain, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” This was said so tenderly, without blame of any kind toward me or anybody else. . . .

…our Lord showed two ways of understanding his meaning. One was the bliss to which we are to be brought and how he wants us to rejoice in it. The other is the comfort of our present pain by our knowing that it will all be turned to honor and our gain by virtue of his passion; and we should know too that we never suffer alone but with him whom we should see as our ground; also when we see his own pains and his own emptying, this so far exceeds anything we might suffer as to pass beyond our understanding.

Beholding this much, we will be saved from grumbling or complaint in time of pain. And though we see truly that our sins deserve it, yet his love excuses us; and with his great courtesy, he does away with all our blame, beholding us with compassion and pity like children who are innocent whom he can never reject.” (pp. 55-57).