Resurrection of our Lord A - Colossians 3.1-4 Resurrection Troubles
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Eggs. Bunnies. Chocolate. Ham. Sweet potatoes. More eggs.
We hope to begin with words noncontroversial to Easter - except maybe the quantity and fairness of their distribution to the family.
From here on words that have potential to various levels of trouble.
Let's jump right in.
"What am I going to preach on Easter this year?" said the long-toothed pastor to his friends.
After decades of Easter preaching, how many different ways can I present "Christ is risen from the dead. The stone is rolled away. The disciples were filled with awe and fear." What can I say that is new?"
Resurrection troubles.
"Christ is risen. So what? What's the good news in that?"
One of my doctrinal theology professors in 1973 in the middle of a church splitting controversy, didn't calm anyone down. Even if his sermon did proclaim that a risen Christ brings for us the only news that is truly good, his accusers were not amused.
Resurrection troubles.
One of the other troubles - from the perspective of we instant gratification, must understand 21st century Western religious people - is what does the resurrection mean for Jesus, what's his body like now? On scriptural evidence I suppose, we can eliminate describing Jesus as a restarted superman from a couple of directions. First, He remains wounded as we'll hear next Sunday. He is identified by the cross He endured that completed His work. He appeared to His disciples until His Ascension, but always as an appearance that took them off guard,
Once of the hints that we may have from Jesus' written down story might be the Transfiguration on the mountain with Moses and Elijah representors of the Old Testament. .In one of the accounts, as Jesus came down the mountain telling the disciples not to say anything about the mountaintop vision until after His resurrection, there is an astonishing text in the Gospel of Mark (9.10) where the disciples wondered, "What does (Jesus) mean, what is this "rising from the dead"?
Christ is Risen we proclaim, His life before God isn't like anything we know. We are not raised from the dead from the perspective of knowing a deathless existence. Our joy is knowing through faith in the promise of God, "believing the witness of his resurrection" heard in proclamation that "where He is there we will be also." Resurrection means death destroyed, eliminated. Disasters, pandemics, out and out bad luck are stark reminders that death is still very much alive.
And the trouble with resurrection is that its' claim on us doesn't begin on the "last day", or even some formula of piety or "religious mumbo-jumbo" if you will that links us to a positive result on the day when all is said and done. The trouble is that "Christ is risen" on this day, the day we live in the promise that as we were buried with Christ in Baptism, just so we now live a new life, the only continuing new life that there is. It's always new, the being raised from the dead stuff, every day we live, every day that faith allows us to grasp it and grasp Jesus.
"On the third day He rose again" we confess in the creeds. Trouble is that we don't yet know how.
Perhaps some of you recall the sensation of the Shroud of Turin in the late 20th century, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus. If that somehow proved Jesus is risen, then resurrection would become part of a scientific process in a world of death. Discovering how Jesus stepped forth from the grave would be a disaster as this preacher would see it. It would destroy faith. It would beg more questions than answers, for sure.
To preach the resurrection, to live in a reality alien and redemptive from the realm of death in which we live, is to appeal to faith. To believe today that Christ has forgiven our sin, that for Christ's sake we are for ever and ever never separated from God because of Jesus Christ's death and burial, His dying and rising again
Resurrection trouble might be if the empty tomb was turned into a proving ground, which places resurrection on an endless cycle of endless gainsaying of the resurrection. "We believe in resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" says the creed, and what we confess is our faith, which requires no pilgrimage to holy sites but asks us to believe and trust each day that Christ is present as He has promised in Word and Sacrament, that His Holy Spirit accompanies us in our death dealing world, daily and richly.
In our time of disaster and destruction, faith in Christ's death destroying rising from the grave gives us the confidence and trust that now. . . now, and in the hour of our death, that our life is in the hands of Christ our Lord. That might mean troubles in our encounter with the world around us. But everyday it brings through faith a hope beyond anything we can ask or imagine.
When I get to heaven, I imagine asking God what was up with having COVID-19 come calling during Holy Week and the Three Days. But, then, I think again. I begin thinking that we are jarred a little bit out of our complacency about faith and now what a truly wonderful thing that God has done in sending Jesus Christ to live our life, die our death, and bring us into the presence of Father, Son, and Spirit now and for ever.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Eggs. Bunnies. Chocolate. Ham. Sweet potatoes. More eggs.
We hope to begin with words noncontroversial to Easter - except maybe the quantity and fairness of their distribution to the family.
From here on words that have potential to various levels of trouble.
Let's jump right in.
"What am I going to preach on Easter this year?" said the long-toothed pastor to his friends.
After decades of Easter preaching, how many different ways can I present "Christ is risen from the dead. The stone is rolled away. The disciples were filled with awe and fear." What can I say that is new?"
Resurrection troubles.
"Christ is risen. So what? What's the good news in that?"
One of my doctrinal theology professors in 1973 in the middle of a church splitting controversy, didn't calm anyone down. Even if his sermon did proclaim that a risen Christ brings for us the only news that is truly good, his accusers were not amused.
Resurrection troubles.
One of the other troubles - from the perspective of we instant gratification, must understand 21st century Western religious people - is what does the resurrection mean for Jesus, what's his body like now? On scriptural evidence I suppose, we can eliminate describing Jesus as a restarted superman from a couple of directions. First, He remains wounded as we'll hear next Sunday. He is identified by the cross He endured that completed His work. He appeared to His disciples until His Ascension, but always as an appearance that took them off guard,
Once of the hints that we may have from Jesus' written down story might be the Transfiguration on the mountain with Moses and Elijah representors of the Old Testament. .In one of the accounts, as Jesus came down the mountain telling the disciples not to say anything about the mountaintop vision until after His resurrection, there is an astonishing text in the Gospel of Mark (9.10) where the disciples wondered, "What does (Jesus) mean, what is this "rising from the dead"?
Christ is Risen we proclaim, His life before God isn't like anything we know. We are not raised from the dead from the perspective of knowing a deathless existence. Our joy is knowing through faith in the promise of God, "believing the witness of his resurrection" heard in proclamation that "where He is there we will be also." Resurrection means death destroyed, eliminated. Disasters, pandemics, out and out bad luck are stark reminders that death is still very much alive.
And the trouble with resurrection is that its' claim on us doesn't begin on the "last day", or even some formula of piety or "religious mumbo-jumbo" if you will that links us to a positive result on the day when all is said and done. The trouble is that "Christ is risen" on this day, the day we live in the promise that as we were buried with Christ in Baptism, just so we now live a new life, the only continuing new life that there is. It's always new, the being raised from the dead stuff, every day we live, every day that faith allows us to grasp it and grasp Jesus.
"On the third day He rose again" we confess in the creeds. Trouble is that we don't yet know how.
Perhaps some of you recall the sensation of the Shroud of Turin in the late 20th century, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus. If that somehow proved Jesus is risen, then resurrection would become part of a scientific process in a world of death. Discovering how Jesus stepped forth from the grave would be a disaster as this preacher would see it. It would destroy faith. It would beg more questions than answers, for sure.
To preach the resurrection, to live in a reality alien and redemptive from the realm of death in which we live, is to appeal to faith. To believe today that Christ has forgiven our sin, that for Christ's sake we are for ever and ever never separated from God because of Jesus Christ's death and burial, His dying and rising again
Resurrection trouble might be if the empty tomb was turned into a proving ground, which places resurrection on an endless cycle of endless gainsaying of the resurrection. "We believe in resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" says the creed, and what we confess is our faith, which requires no pilgrimage to holy sites but asks us to believe and trust each day that Christ is present as He has promised in Word and Sacrament, that His Holy Spirit accompanies us in our death dealing world, daily and richly.
In our time of disaster and destruction, faith in Christ's death destroying rising from the grave gives us the confidence and trust that now. . . now, and in the hour of our death, that our life is in the hands of Christ our Lord. That might mean troubles in our encounter with the world around us. But everyday it brings through faith a hope beyond anything we can ask or imagine.
When I get to heaven, I imagine asking God what was up with having COVID-19 come calling during Holy Week and the Three Days. But, then, I think again. I begin thinking that we are jarred a little bit out of our complacency about faith and now what a truly wonderful thing that God has done in sending Jesus Christ to live our life, die our death, and bring us into the presence of Father, Son, and Spirit now and for ever.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
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