City of Resurrection

Transformation by Jake Weidman

City of Resurrection

A Sermon on John 20:1-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
by Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On Resurrection Sunday

April 1 2018

Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

He is Risen! (He is Risen indeed).

It’s the greatest truth I can offer you this morning and it’s the only truth I can offer you. It’s the reason you came to this service because somewhere deep in your bones you knew the message you want and need to hear, these words that bring about a new reality, this message that changes everything. 

And I can add to that: you came this morning to hear a truth you already know, a truth you might struggle to believe in, but it’s not news to you. You knew the words you were going to hear in this place on this day, you came because you want to hear that truth spoken aloud again… these words that form not just the heart of the Gospel, the center of Scripture but the words that are foundational to all of what we do here and all we are as a church and hopefully, you are as a human being.

The words that chronologically come first from Paul in 1 Corinthians, our very first testimony of the resurrection and the power of the resurrection to change the course of one’s life, which is worth considering that the first good news is not the narrative of the resurrection but a testimony of what the resurrection has done to my life…. And then the words just read, the story of which we read in John which proclaims the great truth…. Christ the Lord is Risen! (He is Risen indeed).

Because for most of us here this day, we are here because there is something about being here that matters to us, we know there is some truth that matters here…. There was an editorial in the Times early this week, titled “This Easter I’ll Be Back at Church.” It was written by a woman who does not really love church (for all the obvious reasons of an editorial that would be published in the New York Times) and she struggles with a lot of this, but also deeply believes in our faith. In her words: “[For me] the reason to believe came down to only one: I couldn’t not believe. I seem to have been born with a constant ache for the sacred, a deep-rooted need to offer thanks, to ask for help, to sing out in fathomless praise to something. In time, I have found my way back to God, the most familiar and fundamental something I know, even if by now my conception of the divine has enlarged beyond any church’s ability to define or contain it.”

For most of us there is at the very least a kernel of truth in her words, you see even if we are just here because being here this day makes our parents proud and secures our invitation to lunch this afternoon, even if we have not darkened the doors of this place since Christmas Eve or if we are the opposite end of the spectrum if we have been here every Sunday and Wednesday and committee meeting night since we were born… for all of us here there is something about this place and this day and we are here to hear the words that change everything for us: 

He is Risen! (He is Risen indeed!)

That is the Gospel this morning but there is more Gospel that we need to hear, we might not want to hear it but we need to hear it.

As Easter people, as children of the Resurrection, as followers of Christ, we have done a really good job receiving the good news of the Resurrection and we have done a really terrible job of living it. Unlike Paul’s incredible testimony, most of us can tell you the Gospel narrative but we can’t tell you what this has changed about our lives, actually, Paul uses present tense verbs so it should be what the resurrection is changing about our lives. However for most of us, we have heard it, but we have not followed it, it’s not changing our lives and making us live differently.  And reading through the Gospels I don’t think there is any sort of auditory hearing test when it comes to Christ following, Christ-following is a doing it and living it practice. 

It’s literally the words of Wendell Berry: “practice Resurrection.”

And looking around our world I don’t think it takes to long to realize we might not have done such a good job with this because in the Resurrection everything is made new and comes to the light of God’s kingdom and is transformed and looking around our world it does not look that new and it does not look that much like God’s kingdom and it does not look that transformed.

A few weeks ago I had one of those parental experiences that makes parenting worth it because let’s be honest there are times this is so hard. We have a rule in our house that if you want to see a movie that is based on a book, you have to read the book first. So a few weeks ago Blake proudly announced that she had finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and wanted to watch the movie, so we planned a big Friday evening movie night. 

Watching her watch the movie was better than the actual movie… her eyes lit up when she saw Hagrid and she could not contain her excitement about Professor McGonagall….. she announced that Ollivander’s looked exactly like she pictured it… she gasped when she finally saw Hogwarts and the Start of Term Feast in the Great Hall… she squealed when she saw the first Quidditch game. 

She could not contain herself when she saw what had just been words become life in front of her. 

I think that if the feeling and the call of the first Easter. The words that the women and disciples had heard for so long finally became life right in front of them… and then they go racing off to tell the others, there is screaming and shouting, there is fear and joy and confusion and certainty all in one moment, what had merely been words was now a truth they were experiencing. 

These words, this truth is changing everything as it comes to life in front of them. And Paul expresses the same truth. 

And so maybe the obvious question we should ask this morning if why are we standing here so still? And why have we been standing here so still for so long? We often come closer to resembling the remains of Pompeii then we do the Easter story as if this truth settled over us like volcanic ash and frozen us in place. Which answers our questions about why the church is not growing, people visit Pompeii to see it but no one wants to move in and make that home.

When the truth is the resurrection news is news that should get us moving, make us do something new and different. It does not freeze us in place but moves us to a frenzy.

And for the disciples, the experience did not stop there… pay attention to the end of the Gospel, to the beginning of Acts, over and over for 40 days Jesus keeps showing up and re-establishing relationships, things have changed the terms are a bit different because he is no longer Rabbi or Teacher, he is Lord, and for 40 days Jesus chases down the disciples and followers to tell them to now go and live it. 

So this Easter receive the truth He is Risen, but also receive this truth that means you need to do something differently. Your life looks different because of this.

Mary and the women have told and lived this story now. Paul has told and lived this story now. And now it’s our turn to tell and to live this story.

One of my favorite books is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Two of the main characters in this book are an older married couple who have a most unique relationship. He can’t speak and she can’t see. She decides that one of the gifts she wants to give her husband is her life story with all the details. She goes into his office and begins typing her story on their old typewriter, a machine that had not been used for over a decade. She wants to give him this gift of the words of her life, her story on paper. She spends months typing out this story. 

One afternoon she comes into the room holding thousands of pages and sets them down before them. The old man shrugs as if to communicate what is this? 

His wife says the following: “My life. I just made it up to the present moment. Just now, I’m all caught up with myself. The last thing I wrote was I’m going to show him what I’ve written, I hope he loves it.”

The husband picks up the first page to begin reading her life and all he finds is a blank page. He begins to turn page after page and only finds blank pages. It is then he realizes that over a decade ago in a fit of anger, he pulled the ribbon out of the old typewriter and never replaced it. 

She has spent months writing her life story and all she has are blank pages. 

The husband narrating the scene says: “I wanted to cry but I didn’t cry, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room, ended our suffering, they would have found us floating face-down in two thousand white pages, or buried under the salt of my evaporated tears.”

Church, I think this is us.

We are all sitting at our private typewriters and we are working so hard on the story that we have labeled, My Life. We are trying to write stories that have meaning, stories that matter. And what we don’t realize is that doing so we are typing out stories on blank pages.

And our God, our Resurrected Christ, did not invite us to sit at our own typewriters and write our own life stories, instead God invited us to be part of the story that God has already written and continues to write, a story that God really wants to see become reality in our world.

And it’s a story that will bring us to life today, it’s the only story I know with that power.

A story where the last become the first, where all people are treated as beloved children of God, a story where the foundation is love, justice and mercy, a story of hope, a story of equality, a story where we all live a bit more like Jesus, a story where love conquers power, a story of hope and not finality, a story of faith….The story that culminates today with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God incarnate. 

And our invitation today is to live that story into being, to make it come true again today, to make these words on the pages of our Gospel come to life in front of our children’s eyes. 

I am still processing a transformative experience I had almost 2 decades ago now… I was away at college and my mom called me to see if I could come home the weekend before Easter, I thought it was strange because we don’t have any family tradition related to Palm Sunday just Easter, so I inquired why and she told me that my Dad would be playing Jesus in the church Easter Pageant.

I think she knew all of my thoughts before I had them or could express them… “No Griff he does not have to sing and he does not have any lines.” Quickly followed by “Yes he will be in a loincloth..” Followed by “So I understand why you might not bring any friends home.” 

There were going to be 2 performances so I drove in for the afternoon one and to my surprise stayed to see the second one as well…. It was not the best art I have ever seen, it was not the best music I have ever heard, and sorry Dad it was not the best acting I have ever seen, but it touched me in a way I still can’t quite put into words, seeing one who I loved so dearly playing this role.

It made the Gospel come alive in a new way for me.

As if this story is one you can only understand if it’s told by one whom you know, one whom you trust, one who has your best interest at heart… which is to say one who loves you. And if it’s told in the present tense.

Which is actually exactly what the infamous Austrian British professor of logic Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote about the resurrection in a journal entry in 1937: “Only love can believe the resurrection. Or it is love that believes even in the resurrection; holds fast even to the resurrection….”

Only love can believe the resurrection…. And only that love gives us the power to live our way into a new way of being, living as those bound to a new and different, greater reality…

Start with this question: what in your life and in your immediate world should look different because the Resurrection is true? What should change? What should be mended? What should be added or deleted? Because that is your resurrection story, that is your resurrection calling, that is your resurrection practice.

Practice Resurrection what you may be….

A resurrection people marked by repentance, forgiveness, service, fruits of the Holy Spirit, 

a call to justice and equality, 

an ethic of love, 

a mandate of Kingdom building, 

taking care of one another, 

loving one another, 

reconciling all things,

speaking truth to one another and to power, 

making things new for one another, 

a call to all people all people all people, 

the hope that nothing can destroy us and the courage to speak from that hope,

practicing the resurrection for one another. 

Church today Jesus Christ is risen. Today all things are made new. Today we have a chance to go and live this story out.

Because He is Risen! (He is Risen Indeed!)

But Church we now have to go make the world see that truth… and note my choice of verb there, not hear, they need to see it in the present tense and in your life. So go and live it. Go live it with love.

Amen and Amen.