And if telling the story is a challenge for them, we probably have an even
harder time of it. It's hard to come at this with an open mind. We are
removed in time and space from this event. Plus, we are sophisticated people.
We have lived into a world view that demands proof, that looks to the language
of science or reason to explain things. We don't find that language in
the gospels. We don't find any language of explanation. The defining event
of our faith is -- well -- not defined. So how are we to understand it?
It seems to me that the three gospel writers who tell post-resurrection
stories struggle with same question. There are eight of these stories in
Matthew, Luke, and John (Matthew 28:9-10 and 18-20; Luke 24:13-35 and 36-53;
John 20:14-18, 19-25, 26-29, and 21:1-14). They don't define the resurrection
but they do try to say what this new life of the risen Lord is like.
What Jesus does is very consistent across these accounts. He seeks to ease
the fears of those who encounter him, granting them a command and blessing
of peace (Matthew 28:10; Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 21, 26). He often eats
with them, breaking bread, sharing a meal, even cooking their breakfast
(Luke 24:30, 42-43; John 21:9-13). He opens the scriptures to them (Luke
24:27, 44-45). And he gives them a message to share with others (Matthew
28:19; Luke 24:47; John 20:21-23).
These stories don't tell us how the resurrection happened, but I believe
they do tell us what it is, what it means. Consider this story from Luke.
In this story, and really in all of them, Jesus is compassionate and caring.
When he appears to his disciples, he greets them by saying "Peace
be with you". They are startled and terrified; he offers them reassurance
and comfort. He allows them to see who he is by touching him. He invites
their contact. No arms-length Lord in these stories. He comes close; he
draws them near. In that kind of intimacy, they will know him and find
the peace he wants them to have.
Next, here is a strong element of fellowship in Jesus' post-resurrection
behavior. Almost every time he appears, somebody ends up setting the table
and having a bite to eat. When he comes to the disciples in Jerusalem on
Easter evening, it is late and they have already had their supper. So when
the risen Lord asks if they have anything to eat, they give him some fish
that was cooked earlier, probably leftovers. What they had thought was
the last supper with him before the crucifixion didn't turn out to be the
last one after all. He accepts the scraps that are all they have left to
offer him and eats in their presence.
Then, he tells them who he is by showing them the scriptures. He links
his present reality to the ancient words they have heard all their lives,
to the law, the prophets, the psalms. But it is a kind of teaching they
have never experienced before. He opens their minds. The Word comes in
and comes alive. They see, they understand, they know.
And, finally, in the presence of these open-minded disciples, Jesus speaks
of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Yes, that's right: repentance
and the forgiveness of sins. More than a little surprising perhaps, but
in fact, in a couple of these stories, including this one from Luke, it
seems that the forgiveness of sins is a central part of the meaning of
the resurrection.
Everything Jesus does when he is among them points to the power of relationship:
the offering of peace and the invitation to intimacy; fellowship around
the table; the link through the Word to all who have gone before; even
his message of the forgiveness of sins points to the power of relationship,
because sin is that which separates us from the love of God. The risen
Lord proclaims that the separation need no longer exist. The barriers erected
between human kind and the Lord are broken down. The resurrection restores
the disciples to those they were meant to be: the children of God. It is
an act of love, offered to them through the power of the resurrection.
And it is an act of love offered to us, too, offered in the same way as
it was to those first followers of Jesus, through a relationship with the
risen Lord. And in just the way the gospels tell it, that relationship
is formed by the actions of the risen Christ. It is not our initiative,
but the Lord's. That initiative consists of the Lord's blessing of peace
that is borne of intimacy with the Lord. We know it through fellowship
with each other and with Jesus Christ. It grows out of an encounter with
the scripture, from an open-minded view of the Word made flesh. And it
is a relationship formed and characterized by repentance -- turning toward
God -- and the forgiveness of sins.
This relationship is possible because of the resurrection. It is a relationship
of love, a formative, creative, sustaining love. It is, I believe, a key
to understanding the meaning of the resurrection. But there is one more
thing to say about this relationship of love made known to us in resurrection:
it is not a historical artifact. It is not a bunch of eight antique stories
about how the risen Jesus once moved among his followers. It is, instead,
countless stories that go on and on, even here and now, about how the risen
Jesus still moves among his followers.
Let me share one of those stories with you from a southern writer named
Reynolds Price, a gifted and prolific author of novels and essays, plays
and poetry. In 1984, he was diagnosed with a large cancer that had encased
his spinal cord. The treatment was drastic and damaging, leaving him in
great pain and eventually unable to walk.
Mr. Price describes himself as a person of faith, someone who prays and
studies the scriptures. He believes in the Creator and believes that his
life is intended by the Creator. Against this explanation, he describes
what he calls the single strangest experience of his life. These are his
words:
I'd slept the previous night alone in my house and had waked at daylight.
I was propped on pillows against the head of my old brass bed. No lights
were on but I was surely conscious -- I'm an easy riser, clearheaded from
the moment my eyes click open. I was thinking naturally of the past ordeal,
the massive violence done to my body, and of all the unknowns that I'd
only just learned might lie ahead. . . .
In the midst of such circular thinking, an actual happening intervened
with no trace of warning. I was suddenly not propped in my brass bed or
even contained in my familiar house. By the dim new, thoroughly credible
light that rose around me, it was barely dawn; and I was lying fully dressed
in modern street clothes on a slope by a lake I knew at once. It was .
. . the Sea of Galilee, in the north of Israel -- green Galilee, the scene
of Jesus' first teaching and healing. I'd paid the lake a second visit
the previous October. . . .
Still sleeping around me on the misty ground were a number of men in the
tunics and cloaks of first-century Palestine. I soon understood with no
sense of surprise that the men were Jesus' twelve disciples and that he
was nearby asleep among them. So I lay on a while in the early chill, looking
west across the lake to Tiberias. . . .
Then one of the sleeping men woke and stood.
I saw it was Jesus, bound toward me. He looked much like the lean Jesus
of Flemish paintings -- tall with dark hair, unblemished skin and a self-possession
both natural and imposing.
Again I felt no shock or fear. All this was normal human event; it was
utterly clear to my normal eyes and was happening as surely as any event
of my previous life. I lay and watched him walk on nearer.
Jesus bent and silently beckoned me to follow.
I knew to shuck off my trousers and jacket, then my shirt and shorts. Bare,
I followed him. . . .
We waded out into the cool lake water twenty feet from shore till we stood
waist-deep. . . .
Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and
back till water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke once -- "Your
sins are forgiven" -- and turned to shore again, done with me.
I came on behind him, thinking in standard greedy fashion, It's not
my sins I'm worried about. So to Jesus' receding back, I had the gall
to say "Am I also cured?"
He turned to face me, no sign of a smile, and finally said two words --
"That too." Then he climbed from the water, not looking round,
really done with me.
I followed him out and then, with no palpable seam in the texture of time
or place, I was home again in my wide bed. (Reynolds Price, A Whole
New Life: An Illness and a Healing. New York: Atheneum, 1994, pp 40,
42-43)
Reynolds Price is an educated man, a professor at Duke University, not
a person given to bizarre thinking. He understands the improbable claims
he is making. But even though he cannot say how it happened, he knows that
this was real, an interaction with Jesus, growing from and confirming his
relationship with the Lord.
And he is not the only one to have such an experience. There are post-resurrection
stories here and now, among us. The risen Lord still comes, sometimes in
visions of forgiveness or healing, sometimes speaking silent words of comfort
or perhaps of challenge. Sometimes he comes in dramatic and unmistakable
fasion and sometimes he comes in ordinary, everyday ways -- in our ordinary,
everyday life. We know him in the peace we receive from accepting his invitation
to intimacy. We know him in the fellowship of breaking bread, here at this
table, around our own supper tables with the ones we love, even chatting
over a cup of coffee in the Fireside Circle and finding the grace of a
sacramental moment. We see who he is by an open-minded view of the scriptures,
by the assurance that we are forgiven people.
This is what the resurrection is, what it means. It is the story of a relationship
of love: the Father's love for us, who are called the children of God.
And that is what we are.
Sermon preached