The Risen Bread

Do you believe in the Resurrection? 

Resurrection means coming back. It means being restored from whatever had happened to un-store it in the first place. Resurrection is the principle of the Christian religion. Without it, we would not be sitting in this cathedral on this Sunday celebrating Jesus Christ with the Holy Eucharist. Without resurrection, the train would have never left the station back in Jerusalem at 33 A.D. 

2000 years ago, no one really believed Jesus was the Messiah. Only his closest companions, all Jews, suspected it while He was really on earth. The Jews were anxious to finally receive the Messiah promised them by their history. Times were tough, and they were tired of being dominated by the Romans.  Jesus wasn’t the first possibility. There had been many prophets and messiahs that came and went in this day and time. Even John the Baptist was suspect.  Routinely, these died violently at the hands of the Gentiles. John was decapitated. Then their movements died with them, or a new movement formed around a new charismatic person. 

Jesus’ movement, however, did neither of those. Within a few days of his crucifixion, his execution on a cross, it was announced that he had been the Messiah. Peter declared this in his sermon. Other apostles preached the same. Within a year or two, the word had gone further than just the Jewish audience, in fact forward into the Gentile or pagan population - and Jesus was proclaimed as being their rightful Lord, too. Within a few centuries, the Jesus movement had become a formal institution driven by men who inherited his charge to spread His Word throughout all the world. Martyrs began to call attention because of their willingness to give their lives for this man’s sake. Saints were being acknowledged for their undying loyalty and initiative. And the men of Constantinople in the fourth century made rules and regulations about who was a true Christian, and how they were obligated to live their lives under the thumb of the church and created a power group that hasn’t died even today. 

A Christian believes this: after a shameful death, God raised Jesus from the dead.  He was resurrected. It was not a shocking idea, that of life after death in first century Judaism. We know the Sadducees denied future life after death. That separated them from other groups who believed in it.  Mostly Jews believed in a continuing life after death but in a disembodied state that would not be re-embodied. Jews speculated that there was a continuing existence as a spirit, a soul, or an angel. “The souls of the righteous are in God’s hand,” declares the Wisdom of Solomon. “They are safe from their torturers at last, enjoying peaceful rest until the time of visitation and resurrection.” 

Daniel said death was like waking from sleep and that it would be a life of more splendor than before.  Ezekiel’s story of a pile of bones coming back to life was used as a metaphor for Israel’s restoration after exile.  The Maccabean martyrs, before Christ, taunted their torturers with the assurance that they, the martyrs, would receive their bodies back again whole and entire, while their enemies would not. 
But the Christians believed we will be ourselves in the afterlife. We will be resurrected, and our bodies restored in a new and miraculous way. Still, no one can imagine how God will accomplish this remarkable re-embodiment of a dead person when we know scientifically what happens to a buried corpse. Yet Jesus showed us. Jesus came back. Jesus came back in his original body, transformed in some way, but still him.      
The resurrection of Jesus certainly did start a new concept of life. It was as important, maybe more important in the development of the human as the discovery of fire and the wheel. It changed how we looked at things.  Of course, to believe Jesus is risen we must believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah. And that the world must build for God’s future glory, for the coming again in the day of judgment. How do we build? What matters forever is truth, deeds of love, creation of communities of kindness and forgiveness, and justice. These matter and matter forever, in this world and the next. Take away resurrection, and maybe they are still important for the people in the present, but irrelevant for the future and hence not so urgent in the now. With resurrection, they are musts.  Our use of those values, love, justice, kindness, forgiveness, truth will be what confront us before the throne of judgment that decides where we will end up in eternity. 

Easter is startling. It is about life and death and returning to life. It is the central cause of Christianity. Easter means two things: Jesus lives, and Jesus is Lord. Jesus lives because he continued to be experienced after his death. People saw him, touched him, talked with him. Jesus is Lord because God raised him to his right hand. The right hand of God is the position of honor, authority and means participation in the power and being of God.  Easter means that Jesus was experienced on earth after his death, and that He ascended through the sky to the right hand of God.  Easter means Jesus is both Lord and Christ. 

What theologians disagree on is about the idea of the empty tomb. Did something remarkable happen to the corpse of Jesus so that the tomb was empty? The gospel stories work hard to explain this to us. St. Paul does not mention the empty tomb. But we are assured by the gospel authors that Christ appeared to many of his followers, many women, and we have the names of some. Did He appear as an apparition or vision? or more? We believe it was more. And this is because He did normal everyday human things. He ate a barbecue on the beach with his disciples. Apparitions could not have done that. He allowed Doubting Thomas to touch the wound in his side. A vision wouldn’t have a physical wound that could be touched. Thomas was able to exclaim: “My Lord and my God!” which meant Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord.  When Thomas declared this, he meant Jesus is Lord, it rules out all other pretenders. Rome was not Lord. Conventional wisdom and logic were not lord. The system of domination and rule was not. Only the man Jesus resurrected is Lord. 

Many of us read with great care the stories at the tomb. We too want proof. We too want to believe in the resurrection. We go to the Holy Land and light a candle and place it at the empty tomb and wonder, as did Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James what happened to the body? Who rolled away the stone, and why did it have to be rolled away if Jesus, resurrected, could move through doors and walls without a flinch? 

However, we must trust the stone was rolled away so we would know He had risen.  It’s not as if the women and Jesus’ disciples had NOT been forewarned. How many times had He told them about the three days of his death experience? Yet, it didn’t take much more than the angels’ words to convince the women, who joyfully went and spread the news to the apostles. The men, of course, wouldn’t believe anything the women told them, so they ran to see for themselves. 

So much disbelief becomes belief.  It is a story we have heard so many times. Jesus appeared to hundreds. One wonders if those who did not believe in him were able to see him. I get the feeling, from Scripture, that they did not. You had to believe to have the privilege, because Jesus had no time to waste to charge his followers, who finally knew He was Truth, to get to work caring for and loving the lost, the poor, sick, hungry, prisoner, and spreading His Word and Name throughout the earth. 

Many of us claim we believe in Easter and the Resurrection, but then we are afraid to think it out, we are afraid that if we think too much, we may begin to doubt or see some oddities in the gospel stories. We are afraid that in the world of modern science and computer graphics, we cannot hold on to pure faith and trust that is required to believe in something that happened 2000 years ago. Many of us believe that a man named Jesus walked the earth and did miraculous things and was the Son of God. But we get shaky when we must defend the Virgin birth and the Resurrection. How can we explain these things, we say, in our contemporary world? They seem like something created in Hollywood. Frankly, I don’t think any of us have the foggiest notion of what things were like, and we are so jaded and confused by modern parallels and interpretations, that our own minds begin stumbling around if we sit and think too much. 

But I say hogwash to all the challenges. All we need to know is that Jesus lives, and Jesus is Lord. I believe this is enough to have our name checked as in the book of Heaven. I believe this is enough for our salvation. I believe if we start with the realization that Jesus is Lord, everything else will come, in time, so that we understand. It doesn’t happen overnight, and this is when some seeds sown flower too quickly, just as quickly they droop and die. It takes constant prayer and reading of the Scripture, and quiet times with God to be able to know the truth.   

I believe there is no end, and only a beginning at our death, do you?  I believe in the resurrection from the dead and life everlasting, do you? If we do, we can live today with Jesus in our hearts and never doubt or worry about our own Easter. 

 ~ Rev

---------------------------------

audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com