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Easter Sunday 2007Right about now on this morning two thousand years ago, our ancestors in the faith would have been exhausted and blissful, sweetly sleeping with a smile on their faces. They had been baptized into Christ on Easter morning.
Before this, they had spent years of study and spiritual preparation. On Easter eve, they had been up all night around a fire, hearing the stories of how God’s renewing Spirit had moved through history. Then they were stripped naked, covered with fragrant oil, plunged into water, and clothed in white robes. They were welcomed with acclamations by the community of faith and given a symbolic drink of milk and honey. For the first time, they received the precious Body and Blood of Jesus. They had been born anew, resurrected with Christ on Easter morning.
Their lives would never be the same. They had joined The Way, as Christianity was first called. It was an intimate community of other seekers who supported one another spiritually and practically. As a movement, they were beginning to change the world. But the baptized would also now be subject to possible exclusion from their family, arrest, torture, and martyrdom. Life would become difficult, even dangerous. So why would they commit themselves to the Way?
Because they had been transformed by the Spirit of the risen Christ. They experienced Jesus as alive, within them, among them. By his presence in their lives, they now lived in the wondrous place of spiritual vitality that Jesus had called the Kingdom of God.
They were healed and set free, unafraid of others, unafraid of life’s uncertainties, unafraid of death. They had given up worrying about worldly ambition and gain, and found the treasure of life in God. They knew now that God was closer to them than they were to themselves, that God loved them completely as they were, without any condition that first, they improve. They learned to forgive others, to live in peace with all. They devoted themselves to serving the poor and the marginalized. They were part of a movement that showed the world mercy over cruelty, service over power, and humility over status.
Their old life was dead; they were resurrected with Christ, born again. As the authors of the new Christian writings said, It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me. We are made in the likeness of Christ. We have the mind of Christ. We are a new creation.
To put it mildly, this was a vibrant form of Christianity. Soon enough, however, the transformative Way would be co-opted. Men of power would demand dogmatic certainty, they would find ways of excluding some, and like everyone else, they would lust for money and property. In a sense, the Way was dead, at least in its original, vibrant form.
But it rose again. For imbedded in the hearts of the faithful, the risen Christ can never be caged up in death. His life-transforming Way would find a means of living again through his Body, through the faithful. Again and again, every time the church has allowed itself to be co-opted by the ways of the world, it has died. And every time it has died, the transformative Way has risen again, through medieval monks, 16th-century reformers, pacifist Quakers, and civil rights martyrs. The Way has transformed ordinary folk into holy people. It has brought light to a sometimes very dark world. Its vibrancy is always resurrected in the lives of the faithful. The risen Christ will not be bound by the grave.
Today many consider Christianity to be dead. In some ways it is. Much of it has been co-opted, once again, reflecting the values, taboos, and politics of our day more than those of Jesus. However, the risen Christ will not be bound by the grave of this present day. His life-transforming and world-changing Way is just as accessible to us as it was to our ancestors in the faith. But how? How can we take on the mind of Christ and be made a new creation?
No doubt many of you have been to the Grand Canyon. Prior to your first visit there, you saw photographs of it. Gee, that’s really pretty. Then you get there. I don’t know about you, but standing on the rim at sunset, looking down into the bowels of the earth, gazing into our prehistoric past, I felt as if I started to float. My brain just couldn’t make sense out of the enormity and beauty of what I was seeing. My young son said This…this can’t be! This is impossible! We just sat down and stared quietly for at least a half hour. The experience only intensified as I hiked down into the canyon, dropping deep down into the earth, surrounded by mountains of sheer cliffs.
Now I can tell you about this, and you can look at photographs, but you have to be there to know what it is like. The same is true for the Way. You have to be there. I can tell you about it and you can read about it in the Bible, but you have to go there to know what it is like. Remember that as Jesus went around Galilee, he didn’t say to people “believe in the Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement.” He said “follow me.” Follow me.
To know the Way, we have to go into the territory of the Way, following Jesus into its mysteries. Christianity is a practice. It isn’t primarily a set of beliefs or moral rules. It is a practice. It is something we live. It is something we learn to do by doing it. And because it brings us new life, because it makes us a new creation, we can say that the work of being a Christian is practicing resurrection.
We practice resurrection when we include the risen Christ in our devotions, in our prayer life, in this sacrament. Calling upon him, he is just as present to us as he was to our baptized ancestors in the faith. For we, too, were told when we came out of the waters You are marked as Christ’s own forever. He said to us as much as to any of his followers I will be with you always, even to the end of the ages. He guides us along his pathways. He helps us to live as he lived, to take on his mind, to be made over into his likeness, because we cannot do it on our own.
We also practice resurrection when we have the courage to drop our both our pride and our shame and stand naked, like the early baptismal candidates, before One who loves us completely, just as we are. No fear, no excuses necessary. Only honesty, and the relief of admitting to the One who already knows everything that we are human, after all. As we accept God’s merciful love, we are raised up to new life, no longer concerned about being perfect.
We practice resurrection when we face into our tragedies and disappointments with as much faith as we can, saying with Jesus on the cross Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit, placing our trust in a power that we may even feel has forsaken us. And we discover, as we practice this act of the will, that we are not disappointed, that God can be counted on to bring good out of every circumstance for those who place their trust in him, just as he raised Jesus from the dead.
We practice resurrection when we empty ourselves for others, for the world around us, no longer living for ourselves alone, but for the good of all. We drop our insistence that life’s circumstances and other people always be the way we want them to be. In every situation, we simply seek to be of some service, that the world may be made a little more whole. By Jesus’ example, we participate in building what he called the kingdom of God here on earth, a kingdom of peace, compassion, and justice, with health, food, dignity, and shelter for all. We practice resurrection by helping to resurrect this world.
Jesus’ vibrant Way is always fresh, always available. It is stretched out before you this morning. The risen Christ says to you Follow me. By your faith and by the help of the Spirit, you can be born again, and again, and again. You can die to the old self and be re-made into the likeness of Christ. You can take on the mind of Christ.
And so may you and I, may the church of God - may the whole creation - be made new this day.
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
End Document — St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church