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: The Law

 (Note: some of this sermon was posted earlier as The Law Is Dead. This version is the first in a series of what the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection means to us in our daily lives.)

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, October 13, 2024

When God created the universe and set time in motion, God made a place for us humans to live and love and make choices.  God made us so that we start as infants absorbed in our own needs and ready to absorb the sights and sounds and relationships around us into our frames of reference. God was and is unsurprised by our capacity for selfishness and our capacity for generosity, and God was prepared from the beginning to do whatever it takes to make it possible for us to know God personally and positively.  God is not a human parent, limited as we are. God is, as St. Paul wrote, the one in whom we live and move and have our being.  Without God, we simply are not.

In a mystery that retains our fascination, God not only created but intervenes in creation, and not in a particularly predictable way. But the point I want to make today is that, because God exists outside of time, and all times are present to God, the crucifixion was visible to God from the beginning of our time.  Furthermore, it was implicit, not because of what we call the “Fall” but because of the words, “Let us make human beings in our image.” The entry of God into our time, which we call the Incarnation, was inevitable.

It is possible to see  that from God’s point of view, human beings in time have been moving through stages, like the stages of an infant, innocent and testing boundaries, to childish lawlessness, to the adolescent understanding of Law, to disobedience, to consequences, culminating in the personal God in Jesus making a way forward that is different in substance from what was in place prior to his birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection.

*****

In recent weeks, I’ve been drawn to consider the crucifixion of Jesus and what the Bible says that means to us and for us.  Today, I’m focusing on what it means for us with regard to the Old Testament Law and to law as a general concept. To people like me who were raised in the church, it can be a challenge to understand and live into what the apostles James and Paul call the law of liberty and the law of love. We may also have wasted significant time trying to figure out what parts of the Law apply to us today. I remember a number of these discussions from my time as NWYM superintendent. We may even have turned parts of the message of grace and love into a new law for Christians. 

Some of you know that I’m a missionary kid. My parents went to Burundi, in central Africa, right at the end of WW II. I was born in Kansas, but went back with them at 6 months old. Eventually, they put me in the School for Missionary Children, a boarding school. I was seven. 

At boarding school, I had to make my bed, tidy my drawers and surface spaces, dust and sweep my room every morning. While I was in classes, my dorm mother inspected the rooms, and if they were not up to her standards, we came back to find our names in the doghouse. We had to clean it to passing standards right away. 

If we got put in the doghouse three successive days, we were confined to our rooms for the time between school and supper. I can’t remember what happened if our tidiness still didn’t meet standards, but I’m guessing it involved more of the same.

It was embarrassing to be put in the doghouse and have the fact posted in public. But even worse was the consequence for wetting the bed. My roommate was a chronic bed-wetter, and every morning she had to drag her soiled sheets up to the laundry room and wash them out by hand. Again a public event. One night I had a bloody nose and had the same consequence. I told everyone who would listen that it was a bloody nose, not wetting the bed. This public humiliation was hard to bear.

And that same year, I deliberately broke a rule by reading a Nancy Drew mystery under my covers with the flashlight after lights out. My roommate told on me, and my dorm mother confiscated the book and I got into significant trouble. 

This is vivid to me because at seven, I left the somewhat lawless existence of childhood. I doubt if I knew how to make my bed, and I certainly didn’t know that I should make it. I was unaware of obligation, to a large extent. And since at home we had to turn off all our electricity at 9 p.m. or so, I may have been reading by flashlight without penalty before I went off to boarding school. I entered a system of law.

Now the apostle Paul has some interesting things to say about sin and law in Romans 5:12-21:

I need to make some things clear, says Paul.

Before a command was given, sin was in the world, but it wasn’t counted against anyone. 

(To connect this to my story, my not making my bed was not a disgrace before I went to a school with rules.)

Paul says: Sin is not part of the reckoning without law. However, until God gave the Law to Moses, death had the upper hand even over those who did not directly disobey God’s command as Adam did. 

(For me as a little girl, even though I wasn’t punished for messiness before I went to school, I did in fact cause messiness, and someone had to clean it up. Messiness does rule if no one cleans. And when there is a rule against messiness, shame arises. And shame is a kind of death.)

In fact, the Law came in so that we humans could see how sinful we are, how prone to error; but where sin increased, grace hyper-increased, grace filled and overflowed the deficit caused by sin.

(For me, the rules made clear to me just how messy I naturally was and am.)

The Hebrew and Greek words we often translate as “sin” have in them a number of pictures that help us understand this theological concept. 

Sin is To Miss the Way, to Stumble, to Wander, to Misstep, to Slip.

Sin is To Miss the Mark, to Miss the Goal

Sin is To Fail at the Assignment, To Avoid, to Neglect, to Overstep

Sin is To Run the Wrong Way when Terrified, To Lose Oneself

Sin is To Bend, to Make Crooked, to Distort God’s truth

Sin is To Overturn God’s truth, To Trespass, to Rebel, to Break Away From, to Defect

You can see that “sin”—or trespass, or iniquity, or transgression, or other synonym—is a living word that works on several levels of intentionality. We can try to do right and end up messing things up even if we have given ourselves to God, and we can decide to do wrong, and we can deliberately assert that we belong to ourselves, not to God. All are kinds of sin.

The fact that we can’t keep the Law, in other words, creates in us the awareness of ourselves as sinners, and this is a hopeless position to be in.  So it is very good news that the Law died with Jesus on the cross.

John 1:17 The Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ

Colossians 2:8-14

Jesus blotted out the handwriting of ordinances [ the Law] that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

Gal 2:16-21 We are justified by the faith 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 faith 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.

Romans 3:20-24, 28 Keeping the Law does not justify, but we are justified freely by grace through the redemption accomplished by Jesus; justified by faith in Jesus, not by works of the Law

As John says in the first letter, if anyone says they are without sin, they lie. But if we confess or own up to how we have messed things up and gone the wrong way and avoided what we know God wants from us, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sin and clean us up and set us straight. This verse is about how those who want to belong to God can keep themselves moving with rather than against God. 

There is a path God wants us to travel through our lives; there is a purpose toward which God wants us to aim; there are things God wants us to do; there are things God wants to make plain to us; there are principles God wants us to live by. What are these?  Jesus said the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. How do we do this? We live out of love as much as we can, we ask God how to live out of love and we do what God puts before us to do, and we try not to harm our neighbor or ourselves. And when we fail, we confess it to God and let God work to help us do better the next time we have an opportunity to show love. We live under the law of liberty and we count on our gracious God to help us use our freedom lovingly.

James 2:12 speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of liberty, 

Gal 5:5-9, 13-25 For in Jesus Christ all that counts is faith working through love.

James 1:18-25 God chose to birth us through the word of truth; we need to humbly accept that word which is planted in us and which can save us, and obey it, the perfect law of liberty; be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry

1 John 1:7-9 But if we really are living and walking in the Light, as He is the Light, we have true fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ the Son cleanses us from all sin and guilt. If we say we have no sin, we delude and lead ourselves astray, and the Truth is not in us. If we admit we have sinned and confess our sins, He is true to his own nature and promises and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The Law helps us realize we have missed the mark and are sinners in need of grace. However, when the Law brings us to the point of trusting Jesus, it has done its work and has no more to say to us. It is an eternal truth that the Law is dead because of Jesus’s death.  “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and the life I now live in this body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

We know that Jesus is the answer to our frailty, our imperfect attempts to do the right thing, our mistakes, and even our deliberate wrong-doing. We know that when we come to Jesus, he does not condemn, even when he does instruct. Sadly, we can also turn our backs on God and insist on owning ourselves, of earning our own way, and when we do this, we cannot grow in grace and we rely on keeping rules rather than obeying the Holy Spirit of God.  This kind of active rebellion can occur in church-goers and in atheists, and it prevents the rebels from knowing that God is Love.

Let us give ourselves to God, accept the grace Jesus gives, and live guided by the Holy Spirit. Let us embrace our freedom from the Law in order to live out love for God and neighbor.