May, 2005 Calendar In This Issue: On the Taking of a Sabbatical… The Summer Schedule The Problem of Pain Easter Sunday Sermon Celebrating Pentecost Practice Makes It Wonderful

by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

To understand the significance of Jesus' life after life, it is helpful to remember something about Jesus' life before death. Who was this man Yeshua of Nazareth, whom we call Jesus? What was his mission in life? Three things might be said:

First, Jesus was a prophet of Israel. When we think of prophesy, we often think of predicting the future. That's too imprecise. Prophets in Hebrew history were called out by God and given a vocation of articulating for the people the mind and heart of God. Their gift was the gift of discernment, to distinguish what behaviors were "of God" and what behaviors were "not of God." Most typically, the prophet's role was to call the Nation - and most especially its leaders - to repentance, which is more than regret but involves a change of heart, a turning. It was as if you're headed down the road the wrong way, come to your senses and turn and go the other way. Prophets were signposts on the road.

Consistently, the prophets warned that unless there was a change in behavior, a turning, that God would act, in history, in judgment. The future disaster could be avoided and blessings abound but only if there were a change. The central issue was the neglect of the poor, the widows and orphans and the aliens - those who came as refugees in the land - the people we occasionally refer to, callously, as "illegal aliens" -because Israel had once been sojourners in an alien land in their flight from Egyptian captivity. If the message was the same, the result was as well: the prophets were ignored and then killed.

Secondly, Jesus' ministry was one of reconciliation. Most often this was expressed in acts of healing and exorcism. In Israel, those who were not whole were presumed to be under God's punishment for sinning. As unclean persons under the law, they were excluded from the worship of the Temple and because they could thus contaminate others, they were often excluded from the human community as well. Jesus' radical example was to, scandalously, share meals with outcasts and sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes and to touch freely those whose bodies were broken and whose minds were in darkness - which they would call possessed. So radical was Jesus' inclusivity that he spoke well in his stories of Samaritans and even included Gentiles in his vision of God's Kingdom. His family once accused him of madness and sought to have him physically restrained. His critics thought him a drunkard and that he was in service to Beelzebub, whom we call Satan. But Jesus was a reconciler - between people and between people and their God.

Thirdly, Jesus was a reformer who founded and led a reformation movement in Israel. The purpose of that movement was to reclaim Israel's religion for Israel's God. The Law of Moses was given to runaway slaves in the Sinai to define them as a people by what they did and did not do. By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had taken the Law of Moses and by drawing out the implications of that Law had articulated some 618 laws, customs, traditions and practices which defined who was and who was not truly Israel. For the peasants - over 90% of the population - these laws had become more burden than blessing, which in turn created more alienation than affection. Jesus' teaching ministry repeatedly challenged this narrow articulation of religion that obscured the Spirit of the Law for the Letter of the Law. To cite but one example: Jesus argued that it is not what goes into our mouths that defile us - failing to eat Kosher - but what comes out - lying. slander, blasphemy and so on.

The conflict with the Temple authorities was over Jesus' challenge to their prerogatives and privileges, which had turned the Temple of Jerusalem from house of prayer into a den of thieves. In overturning the money changers tables - a for profit business run by the Temple - Jesus was seen as an economic terrorist who needed to be stopped.

But Jesus was not killed for being a prophet or a reconciler or a reformer. He was executed by the Roman authorities as a preemptive strike to prevent an insurrection.

And as huddled and frightened men, hidden away in an upper room over against that knock at the door in the night, came to them news from some women that God had raised Jesus up and that Jesus was alive. This was not a resuscitation or a near death experience or a case of being revived, or a case of Hebraic CPR; but rather an experience of one who had entered a new order of life; for Jesus was now a spiritual body which although it was similar to the earthly body of their friend and master, was also entirely different. For these followers, the specifics were a mystery that could not be answered: they could explain it no better in their day than we can in ours - but the why was profoundly clear. It was God's profound "yes" to the life of Jesus and the "so what" was also clear, for they would share this destiny of Jesus as well.

And so, suddenly, fear was replaced by courage and despair by joy. And together, these scattered disciples were unified in rebuilding the Jesus movement and became people who, in doing that work, became people of "the Way."

The prophetic call of Jesus was taken up by the community as a radical commitment to justice in the community through charity.

So pervasive was the social welfare among Christians that the Emperor Julian in the 4th century, in an ill fated attempt to revitalize paganism by imitating Christians, complained: "No Jew is ever seen begging and the impious Galileans support not merely their poor but ours as well."

Secondly, the Church was committed to reconciliation. Not only were slaves welcomed as full members of the Church but women had great freedom to function as leaders and authorities. Paul wrote a letter to the congregation in Galatia which said "All baptized in Christ, you have all clothed yourself in Christ and there is no more distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female; but all of you are one in Christ." This was not a prescription of how life would be in heaven but a description of how they were to be living now.

And thirdly, it was a Church which, to use Peter's language, was to be, like God, no "respecter of persons." (Acts 10:34). Rather than structuring itself around a heretical priesthood of privilege and an elite of the learned, it was presumed that all the members would be given, by the same Spirit, gifts for ministry to build up the community and for service outside the community as well: gifts of prophesy, of teaching, of preaching, of administration, and charity and so on. (See I Corinthians 12) Paul uses the language of a Body in which all parts are of equal value for the health of the whole.

Sadly, when the Church became the state religion of the Empire (perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to Christianity!), its prophetic voice became muted and compromised save for the voice of the occasional valiant saints and sometimes martyrs (Dr. Martin Luther King comes to mind in our generation). Its work of reconciliation is far too often overshadowed by the fracturing of the Church itself and its endless wars over right belief and orthodoxy. If it must split, would that the Church break over a zeal for service and sacrifice and charity and justice. And the greatest threat of all: far too many Christians today treat the Church as a place they come to be ministered to rather than a place to offer themselves in ministry to others. We are, in our day, more consumers of religion than practitioners of the Way of Christ.

We don't need a new reformation - the last one was bad enough! But we do need a fresh sighting of the resurrected Christ. We need - you and I - to go back to the Tomb and to be shocked by the startling good news that Jesus lives and so do we. We need so desperately - you and I - to come forth from our darkened, upper rooms so filled with anxiety and fear and from the stale tombs of death we mistake for security and safety. And most difficult of all maybe: from the cynicism that masks our despair. We, you and I, brothers and sisters, need to enter into the New Life that Christ brings.

And doing so, know that we have work to do: to build lives and communities committed to God's justice, to reconciliation and to spiritual renewal. In this we know that Jesus lives! Amen.

Copyright © 2005 St. Augustine by-the-Sea