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: 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).

Jesus and His Bible, Part 12

The God Who Is 

This chapter 12 of Mark describes Jesus in one confrontation after another. After the one about the unfaithful vine-growers, the Pharisees and Herodians (unlikely allies) tried to trap Jesus about paying taxes to Rome, and then the Sadducees came up with a long story about a woman who married one brother after another until she finally followed the seventh in death.  I speculate that this was one of those perennial points of debate between the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the Pharisees, who did. Their participation together in trying to trap Jesus reveals that in their time as well as ours, politics made strange bedfellows. (Also, to me, it resembles the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.)

Jesus answered first by saying to the Sadducees, “You don’t know the scriptures nor do you know the power of God.” Once again, hardly conciliatory. This was a confrontation with the priestly establishment who were in positions of political as well as religious power, and Jesus described them as ignorant of their scriptures and of what God can do. (He went on to say that resurrected people are no longer involved in marriage, and are like angels, a fascinating statement, but beyond what we’re working on here.)

And then he said this: “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” (Mark 12:26). Again, “Have you not read”—Jesus asked those in charge of religious observance if they were even reading their scriptures.  

Jesus asked them a good question which goes right back to the rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The question exposed their superficial reading of the scriptures that were basic to their national identity, their claim of being chosen by God. 

The context for the quotation is the story of Moses and the slavery in Egypt of the Hebrew people.  Moses was born at a time in Egypt when the Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew boy babies were to be killed at birth. The heroic midwives Shiprah and Puah refused to obey the edict and instead reported to Pharaoh that Hebrew women delivered too quickly to need their services. Then Pharaoh required his own people to throw Hebrew sons into the river. When Moses was born, his mother hid him for three months, then placed him into a small woven and waterproofed boat and floated him on the river. 

Pharaoh’s daughter took him out of the water and had compassion on him, even knowing him to be a little Hebrew boy.  His birth mother became his wet-nurse for pay, and the princess adopted him and named him Moses. Moses grew up in safety, even privilege, though he knew of his Hebrew origin, and when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he killed the Egyptian and hid the body.  The Hebrews denied his authority and Pharaoh wanted to kill him, so he fled the country to Midian, where he found water, a wife, and a job as a shepherd.  

Some time later, he saw a bush burning without being burnt to ashes, and he went to investigate. God called him by name from within the burning bush.

It is worth wondering what Moses’s exact religious upbringing had been. It seems likely that  his mother taught him about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and the God they worshiped. It seems likely also that the princess taught him about Ra and Isis and Osiris, and the rest of the Egyptian pantheon. But this is the flashpoint of his understanding who his God is and will be going forward.

“I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). This reminds Moses of his immediate father in Egypt as well as of his ancestors. So much history is embedded in those three names, so much of their personal relationships with this God. I think of Abraham leaving his homeland to wander at the word of God; of Abraham taking his son Isaac to be a sacrifice at God’s command; at Isaac being rescued from that sacrifice by the messenger of God; at Jacob running from the consequences of his duplicity only to be met by God in a dream, and then years later on the way back home wrestling with God’s messenger into permanent lameness. So much that could be explored, too much for this post. All of their stories are implicit in Jesus’s quotation, and he requires his opponents to look at the history of personal relationship and responsibility to God embodied in those patriarchs.

The emphasis on “I am”  in the list is an insistence on the present tense of God.  It also looks forward to the point in Moses’s story when he asks, “Who shall I say has sent me?” The reply, I AM WHO I AM, doubly emphasizes God’s irreducibility and presence, God’s creative and sustaining power.  

Further, Jesus went on to say that “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.” He linked this to an affirmation that the dead are alive with God, which his Sadducee questioners denied. But it is more profound even than that. 

What else could this have meant to Jesus’s hearers?  I think it meant that his questioners needed to look at their own personal relationships with the God of their patriarchs: each of them had had personal encounters with the “I AM WHO I AM” who spoke to Moses.  They needed to acknowledge God being immediately present in the moment in which they were questioning Jesus. They needed to admit God’s claims on their obedience and loyalty. But what they did was take refuge in tradition and traditional understandings that allowed them to maintain their status quo. This is a lesson for all of us.

Romans 5 and 6: Wrath and Grace

A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians

Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay Press, a Friends publishing house

Lesson 4

Romans 5:1-8, 12-14, 18-19

Jesus identified with us by joining us in the death our sins earned, and God identifies us with Jesus in putting all of us right through the resurrection. This is a mystery of our faith, which we trust in without entirely understanding. Because we know now that we are at peace with God, one with God, we move into all we should be. No more fear. So we no longer see hard times as punishments but as chances to endure and be faithful to God, opportunities for God’s love to pour into our hearts.

Charles Williams noticed that Job complains to God about his undeserved hard times, and God shows up and says, “Have you considered the hippopotamus?” Though God does not explain, the beautiful thing is that God shows up. Several times as I have honestly expressed my own negative feelings to God, God has shown up. God doesn’t explain why I am going through trials, nor does God say how much better a person I will be for them. God’s presence does not answer my questions, but it satisfies my hunger for justice and mercy. It’s so clear God is someone we can trust.

Paul reminds us that we don’t earn this kind of relationship with God. Jesus has made it possible for us to be at peace with God. Jesus showed confidence in God and put his life on the line for us. Hidden in the word reconciliation is a metaphor of exchanging currency. Jesus set us free by exchanging himself to death for us, and now his resurrected life keeps us safe and sound from wrath, from agitation of soul.

NRSV adds “of God” to wrath, though the Greek doesn’t have it. Julian of Norwich said that she acknowledged that Holy Church teaches the wrath of God, but that she never saw it in any of her openings. Certainly God loves us so much. But when we stubbornly refuse to enter the Kingdom through the door provided by Jesus, God looks to us like wrath.

Lesson 5

Romans 6:1-14

Paul always walks the fine line between celebrating grace as our doorway to relationship with God and warning that grace does not mean license. This relates so well to the early preaching of Friends. George Fox spoke constantly against “crying up sin” as if Jesus could not really set people free. Fox insisted that dying with Jesus and rising with Jesus actually makes us innocent and able to choose obediently, rather than to make the same habitual selfish, harmful choices.

Jesus said we cannot serve two masters, particularly God and “mammon.“ The issue hidden in the word “mammon” is trust: where do we place our trust?  This returns us to the universal sin of Romans 1, which is to place the created thing in the place of the creator. Such a disposition means we covet, envy, murder, fight, deceive, gossip, slander, defy authority, boast, fool around, hurt, and betray other people.

George Fox refused to take his hat off to social superiors, and their angry and often violent response was evidence to him that their Christianity was hardly even skin deep. This contributed to his understanding that true baptism was spiritual rather than physical, since almost everyone he met had been baptized. Today’s Quakers need to ask whether they have indeed undergone spiritual baptism and understand that we are joined with Jesus in death and resurrection. And we need to ask what in our own lives shows others that our Christianity has not gone deep, that we think we can serve two masters?

Clearly, living under grace is not effortless. We exercise our wills to do what we know is right, what God is telling us each day to do. God washes us, clothes us with new garments, gives us a job to do, and we choose, as slaves of God, to do that job faithfully.