He Is Risen, and He Is Fabulous!
Isaiah 25:6-9;
Easter Sunday, 2011
I have a sister who’s several years older than I am. As it turns out, we were born on opposite sides of the great divide between the tail end of the Baby Boomers and the dawn of Generation X, although that line is quite fuzzy and most of us born in that cohort have cultural touchstones that lie on both sides of the line. Personally, I love the Beatles and REM.
This is not unusual, and the only reason I bring it up at all is that the divide lived out in our lives at the church we grew up in. She was part of the last large high school youth group that congregation ever had. I was part of the much smaller faithful remnant after the great church exodus of the late 60s and early 70s saw that congregation, just like this one and thousands of other Mainline Protestant congregations across the United States, lose about half of its members in what must have seemed like the blink of an eye.
Why bring this up on Easter Sunday? On a day when churches fill up for one morning like they used to every time they opened their doors?
It is not nostalgia. Trust me on that. I do not ever long for the “good old days,” because I know that they were, in fact, not so good. After all, back in those old days of the 1960s and early 70s, the evangelical wing of the church was starting up all kinds of so-called “Christian” schools that, upon closer examination, seemed to educate only the children of Christians who happened to be white. Back in those old days the Presbyterian Church had held about 180 General Assemblies and never elected a woman moderator. In point of fact, in 1970 the church had only been ordaining women ministers for 14 years. We were still three years shy of the first Assembly at which the Rev. David Sindt, founder of the predecessor organization to More Light Presbyterians, stood on the floor of the General Assembly and held up a sign that read, simply, “Is anyone else out there gay?”
So, no, those were not “good old days,” and it’s not nostalgia that has me looking back this morning.
Actually, I’m looking back this morning in recollection of a Youth Sunday that my sister’s high school group led way back when. They asked the congregation a whole bunch of provocative questions, including “what would Christianity be without the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus?”
There are tons of sociological reasons for the decline of the Mainline Protestant church in America during and since the late 1960s, but I am convinced that the singular theological reason for the decline is that the church could not give good and honest answers to the questions of its youth.
So here we are almost a half century further on: the faithful remnant, gathered on Easter Sunday. Can we yet imagine good and honest answers to the questions of our youth about resurrection, about salvation, about redemption, about any of those dismal and catechismal questions of orthodoxy?
Perhaps we need to begin by understanding the questions. Deep questions about faith so often come down to this: how can I find meaning for my life when there is so much brokenness all around me? Or, how can there be such suffering in the world if God is good? The Good Friday variation is simply, how could a good and loving God have allowed the cross to happen to Jesus? The personal version is runs like this: How could God allow the people of Japan to suffer so much? Or the people of Libya? Or the people of North Carolina? Or my neighbor? Or my parents? Or my child?
In other words, our most profound questions of faith bring us to the edge of the abyss of life.
The invitation of Easter is simply this: step into that abyss, give yourself over to life, lived fully, authentically in this one sweet, small moment that you have been given. Step into the abyss, and trust that God will be with you all the way down, all the way through, and all the way to your own rising up.
Of course, as Anne LaMott suggested recently in an NPR interview, that’s pretty un-American.
“The American way,” LaMott said, “is to trick out the abyss so it's a little bit nicer. Maybe go to Ikea and get a more festive throw rug.”
Make it fabulous! It is certainly a brighter, shinier path to fulfillment than picking up one’s cross and following Jesus.
We’d like to follow a bright, shiny path to salvation: a trip to a big box shop where we can purchase happiness right off the shelf. After all, that is our fundamental right as Americans – to pursue happiness, primarily in the form of what can be packaged and sold.
Of course, it doesn’t work that way, and not so far deep down we all know that. Knowing it doesn’t mean that we don’t keep trying it. Lord knows a bright, shiny iPad would probably make me completely happy!
When it doesn’t work out that way, when we stumble into the abyss instead of the Best Buy, it’s a huge letdown.
For many folks of my generation – and those who have followed us – a deep cynicism and snarkiness is our principle generational inheritance, as we live into the realization that we will be the first generation of Americans who are not materially more well off than our parents, and that the institutions we were taught to trust as children are in such utter disrepair that it seems irresponsible to depend upon them at all.
When that is your primary orientation toward the world, it is difficult to give voice to resurrection hope.
I think often these days of the words of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, who said, “I try not to depend on hope, because unfulfilled hope leads to despair, and we have no need of despairing people.”
The deep cynicism of our age is grounded in the despair of unfulfilled hopes.
If, as scripture tells us, faith is hope in things unseen, then the one thing we refuse is hope because our hope in the things we can see has been so often disappointed. If our hopes in the things – the people and the institutions – that we can see has been dashed then we are not about to place hope in things we cannot see and touch and make demands upon.
Of course, Romero did not say merely that he tried not to depend on hope. He completed the thought saying, “I try, instead, to depend on faith.”
What’s the difference?
Hope is an abstraction; faith is a relationship – one marked by trust.
I hope that nothing bad will happen to my children when I kiss them good-bye. I trust them to make good decisions no matter what happens.
I’m pretty sure that the disciples hoped Jesus would somehow escape the clutches of the empire. They trusted that he would be with them always, no matter what the abyss, that nothing – not even death – could separate them from the love of God that they experienced in his presence because they had experienced so much that was, well, frankly fabulous beyond words.
It’s a bit like the difference between the traditional dictionary definition of “fabulous” and its contemporary usage. We hope that things will turn out fabulously – that is, they way they do in happy fables. We trust in the One who is “wonderful, loving, awesome, inspiring, passionate, hope-filled, transformative,” as the Urban Dictionary defines fabulous, at least in the part of its definition that sounds almost like it could have come from Isaiah.
As a resurrection people we are called to nothing more, but nothing less, than faithful living, trusting in that same love the disciples experienced in Jesus’ wonderful, loving, awesome, inspiring, passionate, hope-filled, transformative presence.
After all, if resurrection simply means “rise up” – and it does mean just that – it is something we do every single day, day after day, in faith that in our living and in our dying we belong to the God made know to us through the fabulous life of Jesus. That faithful rising up is the ground of all authentic hope.
Thus, in following the way of Jesus – the way of resurrection, of rising up day after day – we walk upon the ground of authentic hope.
The way of Jesus is the way of salvation – it’s a more difficult way than the route down I-95 to the Ikea, for it does go by way of the cross. It does not seek to avoid the abyss or to trick it out nicely. It goes straight on through. For Jesus went that way: the way of poverty, the way of the outcast and marginalized, the way of the sick and the imprisoned, the way of suffering, and ultimately the way of death.
As Fr. Richard Rohr wrote years ago,
It is indeed difficult to lead people to believe in the "bad news" of the crucifixion. It is hard to trust death; ironically, it is even more difficult to trust the good news of resurrection. We are afraid to call upon the new power of risen life and expect it to be there. Or to put it another way, many Christians would sooner put up with death than confront it.
The resurrection of Jesus is an active assault upon the death and hopelessness of the world. Jesus stands in the midst of the fear of the upper room and turns it into Pentecost. To be Jesus Resurrected is to be a new power standing over and against the sick world. To be Jesus Resurrected is to be glorified body, new order, new world, new person; it is to be church.
You and me and all of us together are to be Jesus Resurrected, living faithfully in the world as it is, witnessing everyday to the world as it should and could be.
Jesus went the way of the suffering servant with joy, because he trusted completely in the faithfulness of God, in the abundance of God’s good creation, in the love of God that is from everlasting to everlasting. Jesus trusted completely that in him and through him God was at work doing a new thing in the world that would, ultimately, confront and defeat the powers of despair.
Jesus went with joy – I am convinced that there was great good humor and laughter, with abundant food and drink at most stops along the way, all kinds of fabulousness – and, at every step along the way Jesus trusted the love of God that would be with him for his rising up every single day.
It will be a great day for the whole body of Christ when we embrace all kinds of fabulous, and when we find the fabulous most deeply in living the same life that Jesus did: a life of joyous service, of healing and hope, of liberation and love, of faith in the loving Father and Mother of us all.
So on this Easter Sunday, 2011, I am thinking way back: way back to the church that David Sindt confronted 40 years ago; way back to the church of my youth, and to the questions of its young people.
But I’m also thinking about the future: about the church that soon, and very soon, will finally respond to the challenge that David Sindt and so many others have faithfully embodied; about the church that our young people will inherit and the questions they are asking of us.
Do you believe in the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus?
I don’t think that’s the right question, and it doesn’t bother me at all however you choose to answer it for yourself. If answering, “yes,” helps you to rise up each day and faithfully follow the way of Jesus, then great. If you answer that question more figuratively, focusing on the continuing reality of Christ’s presence in the world, that’s great, too.
As for me, even if I don’t think it’s quite the right question, if pressed, I’ll say simply this: he is risen; and he is fabulous!
Easter Sunday, 2011
I have a sister who’s several years older than I am. As it turns out, we were born on opposite sides of the great divide between the tail end of the Baby Boomers and the dawn of Generation X, although that line is quite fuzzy and most of us born in that cohort have cultural touchstones that lie on both sides of the line. Personally, I love the Beatles and REM.
This is not unusual, and the only reason I bring it up at all is that the divide lived out in our lives at the church we grew up in. She was part of the last large high school youth group that congregation ever had. I was part of the much smaller faithful remnant after the great church exodus of the late 60s and early 70s saw that congregation, just like this one and thousands of other Mainline Protestant congregations across the United States, lose about half of its members in what must have seemed like the blink of an eye.
Why bring this up on Easter Sunday? On a day when churches fill up for one morning like they used to every time they opened their doors?
It is not nostalgia. Trust me on that. I do not ever long for the “good old days,” because I know that they were, in fact, not so good. After all, back in those old days of the 1960s and early 70s, the evangelical wing of the church was starting up all kinds of so-called “Christian” schools that, upon closer examination, seemed to educate only the children of Christians who happened to be white. Back in those old days the Presbyterian Church had held about 180 General Assemblies and never elected a woman moderator. In point of fact, in 1970 the church had only been ordaining women ministers for 14 years. We were still three years shy of the first Assembly at which the Rev. David Sindt, founder of the predecessor organization to More Light Presbyterians, stood on the floor of the General Assembly and held up a sign that read, simply, “Is anyone else out there gay?”
So, no, those were not “good old days,” and it’s not nostalgia that has me looking back this morning.
Actually, I’m looking back this morning in recollection of a Youth Sunday that my sister’s high school group led way back when. They asked the congregation a whole bunch of provocative questions, including “what would Christianity be without the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus?”
There are tons of sociological reasons for the decline of the Mainline Protestant church in America during and since the late 1960s, but I am convinced that the singular theological reason for the decline is that the church could not give good and honest answers to the questions of its youth.
So here we are almost a half century further on: the faithful remnant, gathered on Easter Sunday. Can we yet imagine good and honest answers to the questions of our youth about resurrection, about salvation, about redemption, about any of those dismal and catechismal questions of orthodoxy?
Perhaps we need to begin by understanding the questions. Deep questions about faith so often come down to this: how can I find meaning for my life when there is so much brokenness all around me? Or, how can there be such suffering in the world if God is good? The Good Friday variation is simply, how could a good and loving God have allowed the cross to happen to Jesus? The personal version is runs like this: How could God allow the people of Japan to suffer so much? Or the people of Libya? Or the people of North Carolina? Or my neighbor? Or my parents? Or my child?
In other words, our most profound questions of faith bring us to the edge of the abyss of life.
The invitation of Easter is simply this: step into that abyss, give yourself over to life, lived fully, authentically in this one sweet, small moment that you have been given. Step into the abyss, and trust that God will be with you all the way down, all the way through, and all the way to your own rising up.
Of course, as Anne LaMott suggested recently in an NPR interview, that’s pretty un-American.
“The American way,” LaMott said, “is to trick out the abyss so it's a little bit nicer. Maybe go to Ikea and get a more festive throw rug.”
Make it fabulous! It is certainly a brighter, shinier path to fulfillment than picking up one’s cross and following Jesus.
We’d like to follow a bright, shiny path to salvation: a trip to a big box shop where we can purchase happiness right off the shelf. After all, that is our fundamental right as Americans – to pursue happiness, primarily in the form of what can be packaged and sold.
Of course, it doesn’t work that way, and not so far deep down we all know that. Knowing it doesn’t mean that we don’t keep trying it. Lord knows a bright, shiny iPad would probably make me completely happy!
When it doesn’t work out that way, when we stumble into the abyss instead of the Best Buy, it’s a huge letdown.
For many folks of my generation – and those who have followed us – a deep cynicism and snarkiness is our principle generational inheritance, as we live into the realization that we will be the first generation of Americans who are not materially more well off than our parents, and that the institutions we were taught to trust as children are in such utter disrepair that it seems irresponsible to depend upon them at all.
When that is your primary orientation toward the world, it is difficult to give voice to resurrection hope.
I think often these days of the words of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, who said, “I try not to depend on hope, because unfulfilled hope leads to despair, and we have no need of despairing people.”
The deep cynicism of our age is grounded in the despair of unfulfilled hopes.
If, as scripture tells us, faith is hope in things unseen, then the one thing we refuse is hope because our hope in the things we can see has been so often disappointed. If our hopes in the things – the people and the institutions – that we can see has been dashed then we are not about to place hope in things we cannot see and touch and make demands upon.
Of course, Romero did not say merely that he tried not to depend on hope. He completed the thought saying, “I try, instead, to depend on faith.”
What’s the difference?
Hope is an abstraction; faith is a relationship – one marked by trust.
I hope that nothing bad will happen to my children when I kiss them good-bye. I trust them to make good decisions no matter what happens.
I’m pretty sure that the disciples hoped Jesus would somehow escape the clutches of the empire. They trusted that he would be with them always, no matter what the abyss, that nothing – not even death – could separate them from the love of God that they experienced in his presence because they had experienced so much that was, well, frankly fabulous beyond words.
It’s a bit like the difference between the traditional dictionary definition of “fabulous” and its contemporary usage. We hope that things will turn out fabulously – that is, they way they do in happy fables. We trust in the One who is “wonderful, loving, awesome, inspiring, passionate, hope-filled, transformative,” as the Urban Dictionary defines fabulous, at least in the part of its definition that sounds almost like it could have come from Isaiah.
As a resurrection people we are called to nothing more, but nothing less, than faithful living, trusting in that same love the disciples experienced in Jesus’ wonderful, loving, awesome, inspiring, passionate, hope-filled, transformative presence.
After all, if resurrection simply means “rise up” – and it does mean just that – it is something we do every single day, day after day, in faith that in our living and in our dying we belong to the God made know to us through the fabulous life of Jesus. That faithful rising up is the ground of all authentic hope.
Thus, in following the way of Jesus – the way of resurrection, of rising up day after day – we walk upon the ground of authentic hope.
The way of Jesus is the way of salvation – it’s a more difficult way than the route down I-95 to the Ikea, for it does go by way of the cross. It does not seek to avoid the abyss or to trick it out nicely. It goes straight on through. For Jesus went that way: the way of poverty, the way of the outcast and marginalized, the way of the sick and the imprisoned, the way of suffering, and ultimately the way of death.
As Fr. Richard Rohr wrote years ago,
It is indeed difficult to lead people to believe in the "bad news" of the crucifixion. It is hard to trust death; ironically, it is even more difficult to trust the good news of resurrection. We are afraid to call upon the new power of risen life and expect it to be there. Or to put it another way, many Christians would sooner put up with death than confront it.
The resurrection of Jesus is an active assault upon the death and hopelessness of the world. Jesus stands in the midst of the fear of the upper room and turns it into Pentecost. To be Jesus Resurrected is to be a new power standing over and against the sick world. To be Jesus Resurrected is to be glorified body, new order, new world, new person; it is to be church.
You and me and all of us together are to be Jesus Resurrected, living faithfully in the world as it is, witnessing everyday to the world as it should and could be.
Jesus went the way of the suffering servant with joy, because he trusted completely in the faithfulness of God, in the abundance of God’s good creation, in the love of God that is from everlasting to everlasting. Jesus trusted completely that in him and through him God was at work doing a new thing in the world that would, ultimately, confront and defeat the powers of despair.
Jesus went with joy – I am convinced that there was great good humor and laughter, with abundant food and drink at most stops along the way, all kinds of fabulousness – and, at every step along the way Jesus trusted the love of God that would be with him for his rising up every single day.
It will be a great day for the whole body of Christ when we embrace all kinds of fabulous, and when we find the fabulous most deeply in living the same life that Jesus did: a life of joyous service, of healing and hope, of liberation and love, of faith in the loving Father and Mother of us all.
So on this Easter Sunday, 2011, I am thinking way back: way back to the church that David Sindt confronted 40 years ago; way back to the church of my youth, and to the questions of its young people.
But I’m also thinking about the future: about the church that soon, and very soon, will finally respond to the challenge that David Sindt and so many others have faithfully embodied; about the church that our young people will inherit and the questions they are asking of us.
Do you believe in the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus?
I don’t think that’s the right question, and it doesn’t bother me at all however you choose to answer it for yourself. If answering, “yes,” helps you to rise up each day and faithfully follow the way of Jesus, then great. If you answer that question more figuratively, focusing on the continuing reality of Christ’s presence in the world, that’s great, too.
As for me, even if I don’t think it’s quite the right question, if pressed, I’ll say simply this: he is risen; and he is fabulous!
posted by David Ensign at
8:25 AM
<< Home