Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Empty Tomb, Box of Bones...

Leave them Behind

John 20: 1-18, 1Corinthians 15:19-26
Easter Sunday

Last Sunday, Martha and Kelly led a wonderful exercise with our Sunday School children, taking them through the events that we commemorate during Holy Week. As a parent of two of the kids who benefited from this exercise, I can report that it was instructive and evocative. On Monday I was aware of just how evocative. It led to one of those moments in parenthood that one hopes falls upon the other parent (for those of us who share the job). You know those moments; they begin with a child asking something like, 'Daddy, where do babies come from?' or 'Mommy, where did Ginger the cat go when she died?'. Well, Sam, our five-year-old, put a question to me, one that I couldn't put off until Fiona got home, not even with the offer of a table-hockey game or a wrestling match. He asked, 'Daddy, how did Jesus come back to life after they put nails in him, and put him on a cross and he died? … How did God fix him and make his body work again?' It was a question that forced me to deal directly with a subject that mainline churches (and their clergy) have slipped into dealing with more and more indirectly, when we deal with it at all. I am, of course, talking about the resurrection.

Today, the churches and their preachers are being painted into the same corner into which Sam painted me. James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici the makers of the film The Lost Tomb of Jesus, Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, and others of their kind are painting us into a corner from which we will have to speak more courageously about the meaning of the resurrection. (For those of you who are not familiar with the film called The Lost Tomb of Jesus, its makers assert that they have discovered the family tomb of Jesus' family and in it ossuaries containing the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, his 'wife' Mary Magdalene, his child Judah, and a number of others. This 'discovery' challenges the traditional story that Jesus physically resurrected and ascended into heaven).

As a way into this discussion, let me speak from my corner; let me tell you how I answered Sam. I said, 'People believe two different things about Jesus' coming back to life. Some believe that God did close Jesus' wounds and bring him back to life in the very body that had died on the cross. Others believe instead that Jesus came alive in his friends, that his love and strength came alive in his followers when they began doing the same things he had been doing: healing the sick and broken, preaching the good news of a day of justice, and trying to make the powerful more compassionate.

As I look around at you, our Easter Sunday congregation, I know that you represent both of those groups of people. In fact, one could nuance it more than that and make a continuum out of you. At one end of the continuum would be those who believe in a God who acts directly in the detailed events of our lives, who intervenes in them, and who intervened in the events taking place in Jerusalem two thousand years ago to bodily raise Jesus from the dead. At the other end of the continuum would be those of you who do not believe in any God who acts in history, who do not believe literally in resurrection or any other form of life beyond death, but are drawn to the example and teachings of Jesus for the wisdom they offer in navigating this earthly life. As well, there would be many others who fit somewhere between the two poles of this continuum, not ready to accept the first option I presented to Sam, perhaps, but believing that something mysterious yet very real happened on that morning in Jerusalem.

For Paul - who transformed a reform movement within Judaism into a new religion and therefore was the real founder of Christianity - the question of whether Jesus was raised from the dead was crucial. Listen to what he wrote to the Corinthians: 'If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.' To put it another way: if we have no hope in a resurrection that breaks the bounds of death, then we are pitiful. But why? Why is it not enough to have Jesus' teachings? Why is it not enough to have the example set by Jesus before his death? Why is it not enough to have a metaphorical resurrection? Why is not enough to have the second option I gave to Sam? Why is it not enough to believe that Jesus came alive in his followers? Why do we need an event that breaks the laws of nature? Or, more to the point, why do we need a God who breaks the laws of nature?

If Paul were here, he would scoff at me and say, 'only someone from the comfortable, western middle class would ask these questions! Only someone who has never faced war or pandemic or the crushing oppression of empire would ask these questions.' And he would be right. Metaphorical resurrection was not a strong enough story for Jesus' disciples, who saw their leader murdered and were facing murder themselves when they picked up his mantle. Metaphorical resurrection was not strong enough food for the Jews and gentiles who were ready to look into the dark heart of the Roman Empire and to confront it with love.

And it is not strong enough food today. It may be strong enough food for the life middle-class Canadians have enjoyed in our recent decades of relative peace, prosperity, and health. (By those measures, we have been the most fortunate generations in the history of humankind.) But is it strong enough food for Christians suffering persecution in Pakistan? Is it strong enough food for Africans living in nations decimated by AIDS? Is it strong enough food for the billion people who still live on less than a dollar a day? Will it be strong enough for the generations coming behind us when our secure bubble - this historical anomaly - is burst by global warming or war or pandemic or some combination thereof?

I know only one way to respond to these questions, and that is to speak from my own corner. From where I stand, I do not need a resurrection that breaks the laws of nature. I need a resurrection that breaks the laws of history.

Listen again to Paul. 'But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. …all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.'

This is the kind of food I need. The resurrection was not the resuscitation of one man, one Galilean in Jerusalem. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the overturning of the systems of authority and power that crucified Jesus and thousands of his fellows, that launched the crusades, that raided Africa for slaves, that murdered millions in Stalinist and Maoist purges, that circumcise women and make them property, that abandon the AIDS sufferers, and that sustain our fossil fuel-mad economy. The resurrection was not metaphorical, it was metaphysical!

I do not need a resurrection that cheated the death of the body; I need a resurrection that defies the death-dealing powers that we allow to run our world. I do not need a resurrection that refutes science; I need a resurrection that refutes political science. The death that needs defeating is not the biological death of the human body but the living, expanding death that ushers from the machinery of war, from the economy of exploitation, and from the political art of neglect. And the defeat of this death has to be more than metaphorical; it has to be real. Paul tells us that it is. Paul tells us that that defeat began with Christ and that it will grow through us if we will only make ourselves Christ's by picking up the mantle that he set down when nailed to the cross.

What happened to Jesus the man when he drew his last breath? What will happen to us after we draw ours? My friend the American preacher William Sloane Coffin, whom we lost one year ago this week, said to me days before his passing: 'One world at a time, Russ; one world at a time.' I think this is the right attitude. He was ready to meet the mystery of death but was fully engaged in this life. In fact, he was living resurrection. I never met anyone so fully alive in the resurrection as he was just before his death. His final stores of energy were used enjoying the company of family and friends, building a new anti-nuclear weapons network, and rallying the church to press for a sane Iraq policy.

I invite you into resurrection. I invite you to pick up Jesus' mantle. I invite you to pick up Bill Coffin's mantle. I invite you to pick up Ransom Myers' mantle. I invite you to pick up Mother Theresa's mantle. I invite you to pick up the mantles dropped by Tommy Douglas and Oscar Romero and Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther King Jr. and millions of the faithful whose names we have not yet learned. When you do, you will join a turning toward love that started two thousand years ago. When you do, the power of fear and death will fall from you. When you do, you will share in a truth that can only be known in commitment and service, a truth beyond fact and metaphor. I invite you to pick up the mantle and come to truth.