April 1, 2018
Easter Sunday
Isaiah 25:6-9
Mark 16:1-6
On Monday the Confirmation group attended the East End Baptist Tabernacle Church in Bridgeport as part of our journey to experience the richness and diversity of Christian expression. This was an African American, Pentecostal, Baptist experience, and apart from one of the ministers who had a role in the service we were the only white people in the place. I was feeling a bit self-conscious about coming to this church as something of a tourist when one of their greeters, a woman in her Sunday best, complete with hat and gloves opened the door for us, welcomed us, and said, “Enjoy yourselves.” We made our way in a bit further and another woman handed us bulletins and said it again, “Enjoy yourselves.” I thought, “Enjoy ourselves? We’re coming to church!”
It was clear from the outset that church was a celebration. The worship leader told us right at the start that, “Holy Week or not, we’re here to praise God. We’re not going to grieve the way others do. This is a celebration.”
And, you could see it. It was there in the music. It was there in the singing – the people really owned those songs and their bodies showed it. It was there in the smiles on the faces of the clergy as they clapped and danced. And, it was there in the preaching as well.
The sermon was like nothing they taught us at Yale Divinity School. No script. No exegetical interpretation of scripture. No apparent flow of logic to a concluding message. It was all concluding message. It was bursts of inspiration echoed by an organist and encouraged by a church that called back to the preacher, who was all about thankfulness for what God has done.
God made us from dirt, but that wasn’t good enough so God breathed life into our bodies. “God gave us life!” he proclaimed as if the impact of that gift were fresh and profound. “And the God who gave us life knows you. Knows you so well. Knows the hairs on your head.” There were a couple of remarks from the bald clergy who were impressed that God somehow knew the hair that had long vanished.
And, the worship leader talked about blood. The blood of Jesus. “Put on that blood. Cover yourselves; anoint yourselves in the blood of Jesus. Prepare yourselves by that blood to be in his presence.” I think we tend to come to church and say, “Okay, what’s the preacher got for me this week? Or, what’s God’s message for me? Or, how will I find my comfort this week?” Here the message was a bit different. In a way it was like, “Your comfort has already been given. It’s here. It’s Jesus. And, you’ll feel it when you put on his blood.”
Now, I’ve never been a big fan of all the blood talk that seems to go hand in hand with much of Christian faith. I remember flipping through the hymnal and landing for the first time on a hymn entitled, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” (Picture that!) “Gross!” I thought. “How disgusting! Why are Christians so obsessed with blood?” Part of my distaste for the blood talk has to do with its connection to an atonement theory that makes no sense to me and is often paraphrased as “Christ died to pay for my sins.” You have to ask, “To pay whom?” God? And, why does God need payment to forgive sins? And, how would somebody else’s death make an impact on my ledger of fallenness? Would God be appeased because somebody suffered and died? What kind of a God is that?
But, the blood talk at church on Monday had a different feel to it, and that’s because it was also resurrection talk. You see, blood can mean pain, and sacrifice, and death. Or, blood can mean life. It can be lifeblood. It can be the river of oxygen flowing through your body giving you life.
Here the blood was resurrection blood. It was blood that knew pain, and sacrifice, and death. It was blood that knew the human condition and suffered it completely, but rose again to live and flow because as much as it was human blood it was divine blood too. That fountain filled with blood is a fountain filled with life. Anointing yourself with that blood is anointing yourself with life of Christ – risen life, new life, God’s life. It’s God sharing God with you, in you, for you because that is God’s will. Not death, but life. Not the constraints and confounds of our brokenness, but boundless resurrection. Not the same old self defined by the usual standards of our own greatness or lack thereof, but a new self, seen and known, forgiven and embraced by a God whose way of life wins the day. The blood that was shed is the power of death transformed by God’s power for life.
But, my friends, it doesn’t just win the day. The gospel message is that it wins the whole world. As Isaiah says, “He will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth.”
It was a disgrace what was done to Christ. His rejection, his betrayal, his condemnation, his torture, his murder: It was all a disgrace, but not just a disgrace indicting the players involved. Christ’s suffering was a disgrace that indicts the world. His trial was a mirror for the world. His condemnation was really the condemnation of a world that would live and operate by the world’s power, by the power to judge, subjugate, dominate and kill. His death was a mirror to religion that would rather control God and God’s people than love them both. It was a mirror to followers who ultimately had more fear than faith. It was a mirror to an empire whose deepest strength was its power to threaten and destroy. His death shows the world what it is.
Without the resurrection the world’s ways would be true. Without the resurrection might would be right, mercy foolish, and hope for a self better than your sins as nothing more than a dream, because the world’s ruthless ways would have put an end to the God whom Christ shows us.
But, what we profess on Easter is a truth that left the women at Christ’s tomb both amazed and terrified. What we profess is that the world as it had always been known is given instead an operating principle that is almost too good to be true. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Those are the words of Christ from the cross. In his resurrection from death that forgiveness becomes reality. In his resurrection from death Christ shows that the world’s power to kill is a lie. He shows that true power, God’s power, is expressed in forgiveness and love. Brian Zhand writes, “It saves the world from the pernicious lie that power and violence have to be the foundation of human social order.”[1] It’s not that the world can’t kill; the world is quite good at it. It’s that in its domination, in its violence, in its killing, the world cannot save. The resurrection shows us that God saves, and God does it through forgiveness and love. And that’s Good News for everybody, because, my friends, nobody is without need of those two things.
I love that the women leave the tomb in Mark’s gospel both amazed and terrified. They are amazed that he lives. They are amazed that he suffered so much to show the world a better way. They are amazed that the man they knew really was the embodiment of God’s way. But, they are also terrified, because now in the light of an alternative truth they are left with the very fearful decision to trust in God’s power over the power of the world, God’s way over the world’s way.
Forgiveness and love, that is what will make for peace. Forgiveness and love, that is how our God is revealed. Forgiveness and love, that’s how we’ll discover our true selves. Forgiveness and love, that’s how God is saving the world.
My friends, these aren’t sentimental or simple things. Make no mistake, we humans don’t easily organize around these principles. They are of God and from the very life of God, but they are what we put on when we put on Christ.
[1] Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World, page 77.