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Sermon preached at
The American College Chapel
On May 28, 2006
THE RISEN CHRIST WITH HIS CHURCH
The theme for this evening’s meditation is “The Risen Christ with His Church”. Two significant concepts are in this theme. ‘The Resurrection of Christ’ which falls outside time and space’ and ‘the Church’ within time and space.
Let us begin our meditation with the concept of RESURRECTION. To me the event of Jesus rising from the dead has been an enigma, a puzzling thing. ‘What is resurrection?’ is a major question for me. One thing is certain and that is the resurrection of Jesus is very different from the resurrection of Lazarus and a few others mentioned in the Bible. The term resurrection can be applied only to Jesus’ rising from the dead.
Popular Christian piety holds that Jesus’ existence on earth extended beyond his death on Good Friday and spilled over into a miraculous six week period that stretched from his physical emergence from the tomb on Easter Sunday morning to his bodily ascension into heaven 40 days later on a certain Thursday. But we read in the scriptures that the existence of Jesus during those 40 days was only in the form of appearances. There were only ‘resurrection appearances’ which were experienced by Jesus’ disciples and by those who were believers in Jesus. The resurrected Jesus was not seen by Caiaphas or Pilate.
Again, it is worth noting that the scriptures say, it was God who raised Jesus from the dead. Let us not confuse the resurrection of Jesus with a dead body being brought back to life, for the Bible does not say so. To experience the risen Lord is not something that the disciples chose to do so or have. It just happened to them. Moreover after the 40th day the appearances ceased. In the whole history of mankind Jesus was the only person who got resurrected. The days of the appearances of the resurrected Jesus ended with yet another miraculous event, the Ascension.
What does the resurrection and ascension of Jesus mean to us? If they only mean temporal happenings it only shows the shallowness of our faith. Such an understanding of resurrection and ascension can only keep our faith pinned down waiting for the second coming. And I think this is the case with the Church today.
Easter faith preceded the New Testament by two decades and helped to form it.
The first recorded claim of the resurrection appearances (I Corinthians 15: 5-8) was not written down until some 25 years after the crucifixion
I believe the New Testament is a theologization of history – that is, it understands itself as a faith-interpretation of the historical events surrounding YESHUA of Nazareth. (Aramaic for Joshua)
The New Testament is concerned chiefly with faith and salvation, and it interprets historical events not for their own sake but for the sake of salvation.
The terms “Resurrection”, “appearances” and “ascension” may not therefore indicate temporal happenings at all but certainly express faith-interpretations - a reading of history through theology, whether that theology takes the form of hymns, prayers, proclamations, ethical exhortations, pastoral guidance or scriptural statements.
Most Christians in fact do blur later first-century theology and earlier first-century history.
New Testament statements on resurrection appearances and ascension express the Christian belief that the crucified Yeshua is of God and is with God.
Faith is from revelation, not sight or reason. The New Testament is clear: The disciples could not have understood the Easter factum by their own lights. Without God’s apocalyptic revelation they could not have known or accepted the crucified Yeshua as the living Christ. Or to reverse the point, if they had seen the crucified Yeshua as the Messiah with their own eyes and by their natural lights – i.e., if they had accepted the Easter factum on the basis of empirical evidence – that would have been a work of reason rather than an act of faith, and therefore not SALVIFIC. But the New Testament never claims such empirical evidence, no matter how rich and elaborate the later Gospel narratives get. Those stories always show the disciples as doubting, struggling, not getting the point – until God enlightens them through his Christ.
The New Testament teaches that faith is faith, not sight, and that seeing is not believing. What Christians usually called the “Easter appearances” are better understood as God’s revelations of Yeshua – within history and to specific people – as the living Christ to come. These revelations occurred within the disciples’ experience and are inseparable from it. Cephas, James, Paul, and the others understood God to be revealing Yeshua as the one in whom God’s fullness dwells (Colossians 1:19). Their response to those revelations was faith.
Today, at the dawn of her third millennium, the Christian Church is undergoing a theological crisis in what she thinks and believes about Jesus of Nazareth and more so about his resurrection. Both Catholic and Protestant Biblical scholars, many of them, now agree that the Gospels are not accurate “histories” of Jesus but religious testimonies produced by the second and third generations of Christians, whose faith that Jesus was their savior colored their memory of his days on earth.
A large chunk of present day doctrines of the historical and institutional Christianity begins not with Jesus but with Simon Peter, Paul and the faith of the first and second generations of believers.
Our belief in the resurrection of Jesus also goes back to Simon Peter. The fear of many theologians is that we are too prone to create an image of Jesus that fits our likes and dislikes, an image that even Jesus himself would probably not recognize. The living truth is that Jesus refuses to be defined in one particular way, even if it is a “Christian” way.
I believe that truth is always contemporary and demands fresh articulation in each and every generation.
Truth can be so free that no religious tradition, including Christianity, can domesticate it. Jesus the living truth is an open truth.
The Church today is at the crossroads standing still in the intersection of the traffic bedazzled, confused, and defensive.
In a world like ours not to move is to be left behind, not to stir is to grow immobile, and not to venture is to become de-spirited. A de-spirited church, however, is not church; at least it is not the church of the Risen Christ in the power of the Spirit. All that the church now does is to cling to the tradition once alive and relevant but now exhaustive and worn-out.
Where is the experience of the risen Christ in the church? Is the churches experience only that of stories and myths and metaphors? We are more prone to a shallow gospel that lulls one’s spirit into a false sense of security in the make believe world of all peace, love and happiness. All that the church and Christians need today is the Spirit that enables us to strive for a new age.
The church crippled by the traditions that have lost credibility in the eyes of the world and misrepresenting God to people has to be reformed by the spirit of the risen Christ. The church has to regain its place in the saving activity of God in this world.
NICODEMUS was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish Council (the Sanhedrin), steeped in the tradition of his own religion, just as we are. He was a Rabbi, a teacher, and theologian, charged with the burden to interpret the Torah (the Law). He was “a representative of the old order which is being superseded” by Jesus, the representative of the new order. Nicodemus’ confidence in the interpretation of the law met an unprecedented challenge from that man from Nazareth. Jesus was calling for repentance from the religious leaders like Him.
Nicodemus has to face the most uncomfortable fact that Jesus took people like Him to task – Pharisees and Lawyers – and exposed the irony and contradiction of their religion.
Jesus was relentless in his castigation of Pharisaism. “Alas! For you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” He roared like a prophet in ancient Israel. “You shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in peoples faces; you do not enter yourselves, and when others try to enter you stop them” (Matthew 23:13) Most Pharisees were outraged. Jesus called them all sorts of names. He called them hypocrites. He called them blind guides (Matt 23:16). He called them blind fools (Matt 23:17). Without stopping he went farther and did not hesitate to call them snakes and broods of vipers.
Nicodemus represents the Church that is stagnant and is standing still at the cross roads as already mentioned.
The Church must be reborn if it is to enter the Kingdom of God. The reign of God is the heart of the message of Jesus. It is the focus of his ministry. It is the very thing out of which the controversy between him and the religious leaders developed.
God’s reign is not to be just a religious institution that caters to the needs of the privileged but as the manifestation of God’s love and justice for the downtrodden; God’s reign is not to be found as an exclusive domain of a select group of people; God’s reign is not a hierarchical structure that guards the sanctity of tradition and protects the privileges of the few. God’s reign is a fellowship and a community open to the poor, the outcasts and the Gentiles.
The Kingdom of God is not merely the experience of spirituality of an individual but the collective saving experience of a community of people called the Church.
Much of what is going on in religious circles in East and West today, including Christian Churches, under the name of spirituality is nothing more than a cult of worshipping the self or a favorite deity.
That favorite deity can even be the figure of Jesus.
The heart and core of Jesus’ mission and ministry of God’s reign is love. Is this not why the risen Jesus turned Peter’s pledge to love him into the commission to love Jesus’ flock, the people with whom Jesus associated and whom Jesus declared to belong to the reign of God. It is this great commandment that has to determine and shape what the Christian Church and its members have to do.
The love of which the risen Jesus speaks here is love with responsibility. It is the responsibility for the community to which the people are to minister. The love that shapes the community of the followers of the risen Jesus has to be the power of renewal. Here, love is the power to break out of the past, to create the present and to envision the future. It must be love such as this that the risen Jesus imparted to Peter and the other disciples on that morning by the Sea of Tiberias. Is it not such love with which he also wishes today to fortify us, his followers and the Churches established in his name. Experiencing the risen Christ gave birth to a new faith – faith in the living Christ for whom the cross was not the last word and the tomb was not the last resting place.
Resurrection turns us back to the world in which we live and invites us to see how the saving grace of God lifts the poor from the gutters of shameful slavery, turns the cry of a mother into joy, how peace sweeps through the land after the cry of war falls silent and how the prisoner shakes off his shackles and regains freedom.
God’s saving grace cannot be institutionalized. It cannot be tailored according to the desire, interest, and convenience of a privileged few even if it be inside the Christian Church.
I close this meditation with the conversation that took place between Jesus and Simon Peter when Jesus, after His resurrection, gave to Simon Peter the great commission. Peter represents the Church. Reminding ourselves of our holy Priesthood in the Church of Christ let us take heed to the words of the Risen Christ to Peter: “Feed my lambs”. He said this three times. “Feed my lambs”. If you love me feed my lambs.
The Risen Christ is present in a community only where every member cares about the needs of the other members. ‘The Risen Christ with His Church’.
*****
First Lesson – Isaiah 65: 17 – 25
Second Lesson – St. John 3: 1 – 10
Hymn 1 – 260 - The Church's one Foundation
Hymn 2 – 300 - Rise up, O men of God
Hymn 3 – 301 - Jesus, with Thy Church Abide
Hymn 4 – 416 - Christian rise and act thy Creed