Scripture, 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that God raised Christ from the dead. But God did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all people.
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Sermon
I first memorized the Apostles’ Creed in Confirmation class when I was in 7th grade. However, it can be easy to forget things when you are standing in front of people, so I always look down at my hymnal to read it, trying not to forget any part of it when we say it all together. At that time I just memorized it though, didn’t think much about any of it. I enjoyed being able to say it when everyone else was saying it, but didn’t’ really internalize any of it. That was a time when some things just made since. I didn’t’ have any reason to question what I was saying. The church said to say it so I said it. The resurrection, sure it happened, my teacher has already said so. There was no need to take it any farther than that.
And really, life in Marietta didn’t stir up too many debates in me with God. Things seemed to happen for a reason. If something bad happened, well, there has to be an explanation. If someone goes to jail, they must deserve it, if someone goes to detention, well, they must have acted up in class. And if my teacher says that Jesus had to be raised from the dead to forgive my sins, well, it must be true. If my teacher said that now new life has come, now death has been conquered, well, I could believe it because it made since. And part of Paul’s congregation at Corinth seemed to be thinking along the same lines that I was in 7th grade. We are living in a world that has been made different by Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are living in a new world, the new has come and the old has gone away, in baptism we become citizens of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom where the weak are made strong, the sick are made well, and death and dying are a thing of the past. People lived a different way before Jesus died and was raised; it was nothing like life is today. Jesus came and conquered sin, now the world is a different place.
That is what I believed in 7th grade.
For some people, there are certain parts of the creed that are harder to say at certain times in your life. For some people, at one time or another, the hardest part of the Apostles Creed is the part about the “holy Catholic Church.” A couple weeks ago Maynard answered a question referring to this part of the Creed, and we now know it is the universal church that we confess to believe in.
But when I finally really started thinking about what the creed meant the hard part became the part that says: “on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven.” I have heard of some good church going people who skip this part. The birth and crucifixion of Jesus, people can say with no problem, but the resurrection. That goes beyond the comfort level of some rational thinkers. That part really takes some faith, or at least a willingness to say it rather than question it.
There have been archeological digs searching for an empty tomb, but even an empty tomb might not explain away people’s doubts.
There were two groups that Paul wanted to correct as he wrote to the Corinthian Christian community. There were those who believed the resurrection of Jesus Christ had put the world in order, that the new age had come right that instant, that now things were lined up the way they were supposed to be, now we are living in the Kingdom of God, a place where things work out as they should.
But there was another group too, a group of cynics to oppose these serial optimists. This cynical group decided not to believe in the resurrection as nothing had really changed, they looked out on the world and nothing seemed different, nothing seemed new, yes, Christ had died but the Kingdom had not come.
They were still Christians, I guess. It was easy for them to say that this Jesus was a great teacher. They could say, I respect him as I respect all great philosophers and scholars. I admire his teachings, and trust that by living them I will find happiness. I even look to the cross and see that here, an innocent man was crucified, what better illustration for our societies sin than an innocent man being tortured and killed for no good reason. Yes, in the life of Jesus I have found truth, and in the death of Jesus I see our sin, but the resurrection, that sounds like just another pretty story.
And I don’t need another pretty story.
I don’t need another pretty story when my daughter became sick and was diagnosed with cancer and we prayed and we prayed but she still died. I don’t need another pretty story because I lost my job, and I did the best I could. I don’t need another pretty story because bad things do happen to good people, still.
I speak for myself in saying that I don’t need another pretty story either.
A few summers ago I was a chaplain intern at Metro State Women’s Prison. It’s a maximum-security prison. I didn’t think of it as a maximum-security prison until the woman on death row walked down the sidewalk. Everyone had to step 10 feet away from her as she walked, escorted by two officers with her hands cuffed behind her back.
Walking into that place was like walking into another world. The women there would want me to pray, but sometimes I was too afraid to close my eyes, and prayed with my eyes opened.
I had to listen to some hard stories.
One woman told me about a lifetime of abuse at the hand of her father and various boyfriends through a slit in an iron door. I had to hunch over to hear her ask me if I thought she was going to hell. I said, no mam, I don’t think God is going to send you to hell. I think you have already been there, and I don’t understand why.
There were so many stories, so many accounts of abuse and violence that these women had undergone. It was never their crimes that stuck out to me. I could never understand how using drugs or stealing from convenience stores got them in prison while the husbands and mothers and boyfriends and brothers who had abused them, had violated them, walked free.
Somebody would tell me that everyone gets what they deserve, but it doesn’t always seem that way even at a maximum-security prison they don’t.
Here was a place where things don’t work out in the end. Here was a place where sin and death and pain and sadness are such a reality. Here was a place where, if the resurrection had happened, well, they forgot to tell the prison about it.
The worst was when I was asked to help start a choir for the mentally disabled inmates. I walked up the stairs to their floor to a room with thick glass and 15 chairs for 20 people. They were less cleaned up than most of the other inmates because they didn’t have families on the outside to send them things like shampoo and lotion. They had been abused in many ways on the outside, and sometimes they were abused by other inmates too. Their stories were the saddest, and I hated to hear about their prospects for getting out. There was no one to take them in, and they couldn’t live alone. To leave prison meant for an end to the prescription drugs, and without them they could expect to end up in prison again.
I was supposed to start a choir for them, but I couldn’t imagine what these women had to sing about. For a kid from the suburbs the prison was a sharp taste of what reality is for so many people, it was a look into the worst of what life can be like, it was a real proof text for those who wanted to believe that the resurrection had ended suffering for all people, that now everything is going to work out in the end, because here in this place, nothing seemed to work out in the end, life just got worse.
This was a place where it was easier to believe that Jesus was just a great teacher, this was a place where it was easier to believe that Jesus was just another great hero of the faith, whose crucifixion on the cross shows society for how hurtful it can be, shows us our sin, shows us the brokenness of our society.
And I sat in that room thinking: what do these women have to sing about?
What am I supposed to tell them, who am I, a middle class kid from the suburbs who has never missed a meal in his life, how am I supposed to start a choir for this group of women who know that everything does not always work out in the end?
One of them stood up to sing.
And I sat there, listening to beautiful music coming from the most unlikely source. I sat there as one woman sang, then another would volunteer, and then one stood up and sang a song we just sang together in this service. She stood up and sang, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”
Those words didn’t seem to make any sense in that place.
As a 7th grader in Marietta they had made plenty of sense, but as a young man whose eyes had been opened to the world it seemed as though Jesus had forgotten to watch these women, because the words of the song didn’t make sense in a building surrounded by walls and barbed wire. A place isolated, for people who have been pushed aside, people whom society has deemed in need of reconciliation.
But there it was.
It may seem like nothing, the song ended and the only thing in the whole world that I know changed was my perspective.
Her hope could not lie in getting out of prison, for there was not much hope for her on the out side, but nor could she hope for life inside those walls.
Her hope lay in the only place it could lay.
You know some expected Jesus ride a steed, to charge into Jerusalem, to be a great military leader.
But that wouldn’t have done her any good.
If Jesus came to break down the walls of that prison to set her free, well, where would she go? Even if Jesus came as a great teacher to teach her all the wisdom in the world, how much would she understand?
For the world had given her a name, names like druggy, names like stupid, names like worthless, and the prison had even given her a number to go across her chest.
But Jesus, she knew Jesus knew her name, Jesus knew her name to be glorious daughter, heiress to the highest Kingdom of Heaven, child of God.
And that is why the Resurrection matters.
Because one day, that maximum-security prison will be torn down. One day we will all grow old, there may even come a day when there is no more church, no more world, and then what will there be anymore?
There will only be one thing, and it is the only thing in the whole world that matters.
When everything falls away, we will know that we are the children of God.
Though Jesus’ resurrection has not fully ushered in the Kingdom of God, that day at a maximum-security prison, I could hear it coming.
Even though the Kingdom of God is not here yet, we know that the first fruits of a new day have conquered death, and we may rejoice knowing that because of the victory of Jesus over death we need not be afraid.
For a new day is coming, when there will be no more hate, no more fear, no more sickness, no more death,
And we will look at each other, face to face, as brothers and sisters, no walls will separate our society anymore, and you will hear the most beautiful music from the most unlikely of sources.
Because on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven.
-Amen.
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