The Park Road Pulpit

Today is Resurrection Sunday. Our day to celebrate after weeks of spiraling into the mire of broken covenants. And, after nearly abandoning all hope last week, we return today, seeking some Good Word.

As honestly as I can offer it to you, then, here it is, the Good News of Easter: Suffering. Real suffering. Your suffering. The suffering of all of this world’s broken covenants is not now, nor will it ever be redeemed by being explained. Suffering is redeemed as it is transformed, as it transforms those scarred by it.[2]

There is no Easter Sunday surprise without Good Friday pain. This is the paradoxical truth of all true resurrection.

We will never solve the so-called “Problem of Evil.” Covenants will be broken. On the other hand, we will never understand resurrection. Such is the nature of the Promise. To do either would trivialize our existence, creating a false world where “just the facts” obscured the beauty and complexity of human freedom. And this freedom is our life. Empty intellectualizing leads us nowhere.

If we desire to live this life, as did Jesus Christ, fully engaged in all of life’s beautiful complexity and to discover therein some ultimate meaning, some lasting hope, to experience our own resurrection, we will do so only if we can learn to bear the suffering that has come (or the suffering that will come), and to stand watchful for the surprising ways that God can transform even our own deaths into new life.[3] Make no mistake, the journey from Good Friday to Easter Sunday is a long and winding road. Sometimes those three days last a lifetime. But life lived in the shadow of Christ’s resurrection insists that joy will come.[4]

Today’s text is one of the most soaring affirmations in all of scripture. It is one of the few places in our New Testament, where the language of a new faith approaches a poetic beauty so characteristic of its Jewish heritage. To a persecuted minority, Paul’s words come as encouragement. Though he does not speak of “resurrection,” we can know that it is implied, there in the minds of all who read, for resurrection alone had given Christian thought and practice its reason for being.

I must take a moment to say a word about this language, “God who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us.” These words might offend, by the implications of bloody atonement theories which this pulpit has denounced for so long. We should be offended by such theology. On the other hand, though, we can choose to delve into the mind of a converted first-century Jewish Pharisee, one schooled in a male-dominated world of privilege and hierarchy, and to read his text as a metaphor without equal as he seeks to describe the extent of God’s great love. Who among us would give up a child? (Do not look my direction.) Who in the Jewish word would give a first son? The heir to a father’s name and estate? What will separate us from the love of a God who would go to such unimaginable sacrifice?

We must learn to read with critical discernment, yet also with narrative innocence, to appropriate the language of our faith in lives, as we also live sacrificially. We can do so without abandoning this language to poor interpretations. We must dig deeper into our own faith in our search for Truth.[5]

God has known us from the first and set us on the path of destiny surrounded by [God’s] love. [So] we can face the future with hope and confidence, knowing that … [God] is for us, not against, us. There, laid bare, is the basis of our Christian confidence: the surety of grace.[6]

Resurrection proclaims the surety of God’s grace. But even Easter hope cannot prevent the skeptic from inquiring about this “surety.” My own questioning has led me to two affirmations for this Easter.

First, God’s grace is sure, but in what way is it made sure? In order to know resurrection, I believe we are called to enable resurrection for one another. We cannot be so content in our own comfort, or hide in the security of our own theological claims, to simply wait on God to miraculously raise only those whom and when “God chooses.” Most of the testimonies of resurrection I hear involve the gifts and giving of another human life. Grace, made sure? Yes. But often, very often, by human hands.

And, if God’s grace is sure, then “how” and “when” and “for whom”? This second Easter affirmation has to do with the preaching of “heavenly hope.” “Going to heaven,” as I have told you before, must never be the aim of Christian faith. Christ’s life was too practical, too social, too earthly to lead us to such an other-worldly focus. (The plain truth is, if Christ had as pre-occupied with heaven as is the contemporary church, he would never have been crucified to begin with. Talk of heaven threatens no authority!)

The abundance of life which Christ promised was life in the here-and-now, and yet millions die without ever experiencing that abundance. So, whether God fails these millions or we, what has Christian faith to give them? Without offering some glib pie-in-the-sky triumphalism, resurrection hope suggests that just as God can transform this life in unforeseeable ways, the “transformation of reality” from this world to the next is legitimate hope.[7]

Let us never tire of the practice of bringing God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.[8] But let us also not deny an ultimate hope. Because, sadly, for far too many, it is the only ultimate hope which offers true abundance. What can separate us from the love of God? Let us affirm, “Nothing – in either this world, or the next.”

Susan Sonnenday Vogel is the Associate Dean at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. Eleven years ago she died. At least that is what she says. It happened when an automobile accident killed her 23-year-old son.

At death we die – our whole self dies. And our whole self awaits resurrection. It was always so clear (she says). And then Mark died.[9]

Finding their place in church, the Sunday after his death, the Vogels recited the closing words of their tradition’s Apostle’s Creed, and Dean Vogel was thunderstruck by that glorious, but too-often-meaningless claim, “I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life, everlasting.”

It used to be ‘a doctrine of the church’ (she says). I wrote papers about it… I had to define what I understood it to mean. Somehow I do not remember much of what I thought was important… through all of that explaining. Now it has to do with the everlasting life of my son, the resurrection of this body to which I first gave birth. It is not now an esoteric exercise in creedal affirmation. It is my fervent mother-hope that my baby, my firstborn child, is not lost forever, is not lost to me forever, is not lost.[10]

God’s love is a fervent mother-hope. It is a love that will not (ever) let us go.[11] Our friend Emil Mialik likes to say, “nothing will ever be lost to God.” And so it is, for resurrection is God’s fervent mother-hope.

I spoke with a father recently. His child is still living. She is, in fact, thriving. But she is alive -- without him.

This father’s separation is not marked by the finality of a literal death, but by its own, unique grief. For it is not that she cannot answer. It is that she will not.

“Is it time to give up?” he struggled. “I don’t know what more to do.”

I asked, “Are you ready to give up, to make this separation final? Is this what you want?”

The hesitation in his reply indicated only the seriousness with which a father can hear such a question. His answer is clear: “She is my child.”

So a father waits. A father dreams. A father hopes. It may be hope against hope, even as it is for God – an eternal hope that children, all children, will return. A father’s love is the longing in the heart of God. It is a yearning for resurrection. God’s love is a longing father-hope. It is a love that will not (ever) let us go.

Our friend, the late, Gene Owens, liked to say that resurrection was as simple as this – “Nothing can ever separate us from the Love of God.”[12]

For the last few weeks, I have been asking about the meaning of resurrection.[13] This questioning has led me to a startling conclusion: I do not believe in resurrection. Well, not fully. At least, not yet.

True believing requires experience. Belief is never just an exercise of mind.[14]

No one is ever ready to encounter Easter until he or she has spent time in the dark place where hope cannot be seen. Easter is the last thing we are expecting. And that is why it terrifies us. This day is not about springtime and girls in cute new dresses. It’s about more hope than we can handle.[15]

So, if you have your own trouble “believing,” join me in giving thanks to God for a life that has not yet known the death of a promise. And if you have experienced resurrection, and many of you have, walk with us who have not.

It is my hope that I will awake one day, “in glory,” knowing, only then, the ultimate, surprising Grace of a Love that will never let us go. For because of the resurrection of Jesus, and because of the experiences of many fellow pilgrims in faith, I have no doubt that resurrection is real. I have no doubt that when we most need it, resurrection will come. This is my fervent hope. My Easter prayer. The unwavering conviction of my a sometimes wavering faith.

[1] This sermon is the final in our Lenten series, “Covenant and Promise: A Conversation in Contrasts.” For a description of the series, giving insight in how the sermon resolves the tensions set up in the series, a description of the series can be found on the website.

[2] The original quote comes to me by way of a friend, from Dr. William E. Hull in Birmingham: “Tragedy is not redeemed by being explained. Tragedy is redeemed by being changed.”

[3] In this sermon, as others, I affirm resurrection as more than just a belief. No matter how important such a belief, all statements of faith come to life only when they are truly experienced. So, I argue here that resurrection is more important than simply believing in something that happened to Jesus 2000 years ago, or, believing in something that will happen to us in the next life. See also, my sermon, “Can You Live With The Resurrection?”

[4] I use the ironic phrase “shadow of the resurrection” intentionally, foreshadowing my later statement that resurrection has not yet come to me. Thus, my believing in the “promise of resurrection” may live in tension with a life that has not yet experienced resurrection, personally.

[5] The phrase “narrative innocence” is attributed to the theologian, Paul Riceur.

[6] Paul Achtemeier, “Romans” in the Interpretation commentary series, p.150.

[7] Achtemeier uses this phrase, “the transformation of reality” in the commentary cited above.

[8] From “The Lord’s Prayer,” Matthew 6.10.

[9] This story and the quotations used come from “Context,” by Martin Marty, May 15, 2001.

[10] Vogel’s comments are a wonderful example of making resurrection a reality. In all of her “explaining” of “resurrection,” she could not know what resurrection hope really means; only as she experienced the despair and hopelessness of death, did “resurrection” become real. See the quotation, below, from Craig Barnes.

[11] In Sunday’s “Hymn of Pardon,” we sang the third verse of the wonderful hymn, “O Love That Will Not Let Me God,” by George Matheson: “O Joy that seeks me through my pain, to you I cannot close my heart; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and know the promise is not vain that you will ne’er depart.”

[12] The references to Emil Mialik and Gene Owens are due to many, lengthy conversations at our weekly “Humility Club” lunches. The subject of our conversations is always some matter of faith, and the ultimate aim of faith has been a frequent topic of our intense “dialogues” together!

[13] I should have given more time to this thought, for it was in my pondering, and in asking a few trusted friends that I realized, as central as the concept of resurrection is for Christians, even for dedicated believers, it is a question that gives pause. “What does resurrection mean to you?” It was a question that was not easily answered by anyone that I asked.

[14] This is a biblical affirmation. See, for example, James 2.17, “Faith (belief) without works (active experience) is dead.” In Roomans 2.14, Paul says “When Gentiles… do instinctively what the law requires, these… are a law unto themselves.” (Righteousness is faith, rightly acted, not “the law,” correctly “believed.”) Note also Jesus’ many criticism of the hypocrisy of the most devout “believers” of his day.

[15] Craig Barnes, “Savior at Large,” The Christian Century, March 13-20, 2002, p. 16.

[16] E.E. Cummings