Alleluia! Christ is risen!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OK. Now what? This is the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But what does \u201cresurrection\u201d mean? If I were to ask you to define it, how would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humorist David Sedaris ran into this dilemma while living in France and attending a language class with other immigrants. In his book \u201cMe Talk Pretty One Day,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was Easter season and a Moroccan student, a Muslim, raised her hand and asked in French, \u2018Excuse me, but what is an Easter?\u2019 The teacher called upon the rest of the class to help explain. The Polish students led the charge to the best of their ability. \u2018It is,\u2019 said one, \u2018a party for the little boy of God who called his self Jesus \u2026\u2019 she faltered and swore, and one of her countrymen came to her aid, \u2018He call his self Jesus, and then he die one day on two \u2026 morsels of \u2026 lumber.\u2019 The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. \u2018He died one day and then he go above my head to live with your father.\u2019 \u2018He weared of himself the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back to say hello to all the people.\u2019 \u2018He nice, the Jesus.\u2019 \u2018He make the good things and on Easter we be sad because somebody make him dead today.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of the problem was a lack of vocabulary, Sedaris noted. Words like \u201ccross\u201d and \u201cresurrection\u201d were not available to them, and the nuances of theology in the face of limited vocabulary were frustrating. And so Sedaris writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFaced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead. \u201c\u2018Easter is a party to eat of the lamb,\u2019 one Italian explained. \u2018One may too eat of the chocolate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of what makes resurrection so hard to talk about is that it is an experience that transcends all logic, rationality and common sense. Dead people don\u2019t come out of tombs. Do they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gospel accounts of Jesus\u2019 resurrection do not document the actual moment when it happened. We don\u2019t have an eyewitness account of Jesus sitting up, removing the burial shroud, stretching, taking a look around, pushing the stone away and walking out. Even in Matthew\u2019s account, where the angel rolls the stone away, Jesus\u2019 body is already gone! All the gospels tell us is that the women come and find an empty tomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We cannot really know exactly what happened. Resurrection is not the revivification of a corpse \u2013 it is not the zombie apocalypse. It is an experience of the death of one way of life and the birth of something completely new \u2013 a complete game changer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we can<\/em> say is that the early Christians who experienced the risen Christ were so transformed by it that their lives completely changed. Paul, who went from persecuting the Christians around him to being a champion for Christ, is just one example. Those who experience resurrected life are swept up by this profound and loving experience so much so that their whole world turns upside down in a way that brings life rather than death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy do you look for the living among the dead?\u201d ask the men at the tomb, \u201cHe is not here.\u201d The same question is true for us: \u201cWhy do we seek the living among the dead?\u201d We, by our nature, have a hole in our soul. This hole is a longing and desire for the transcendent God who lifts us out of our finite mortal bodily existence \u2013 this tomb, if you will, that we live in \u2013 and brings us into a greater life of love and light. We ache for this with every fiber of our being. But as humans, we try desperately to fill the hole in our soul by seeking holy transcendence in many ways that are nothing more than lies and dead ends. It is false transcendence that seeks the living among the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We seek the living among the dead in our frantic rush to wealth and material comfort \u2013 the lure of consumerism. \u201cHow much money is enough?\u201d someone once asked billionaire John D. Rockefeller. \u201cJust a little bit more,\u201d he replied, with a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That \u201cjust a little bit more\u201d is the bane of our lives. We keep imagining \u2013 if our income is rising \u2013 that the next plateau of income will be the place where we\u2019re truly happy, but no sooner do we achieve it than we\u2019re looking upward to the next rung on the ladder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversely, if our income is going down, we\u2019re often driven to despair, imagining all sorts of dire consequences \u2013 when the reality is, most of us have as much as we truly need to live, and then some. We falsely believe our possessions or our economic security will transcend and lift us out of our mortality, but it is a lie, a dead end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another place where we seek false transcendence is in the addictive pursuit of pleasure. Alcohol, gambling, tobacco, drugs, obsessive sexuality \u2013 even the more socially acceptable addictions of overeating or obsessive dieting \u2013 all of these ultimately lead away from communion with God and condemn us to death. Psychologist Gerald May has written extensively on addictive behaviors from the standpoint of religious faith and spirituality. In his book \u201cAddiction and Grace,\u201d he writes: \u201cAddiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity\u2019s desire for God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeking transcendence through the addictive pursuit of pleasure robs us of our humanity and our spiritual freedom. It is the vain attempt to substitute pleasure for joy. It is a parasite attaching itself to our native desire for inner, spiritual fulfillment \u2013 for experience of the real transcendent communion with God \u2013 and if there\u2019s no intervention, in the end it will destroy us. Why do we seek the living among the dead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is another way: \u201cHe is not here, he is risen.\u201d Christ\u2019s experience of resurrection is not just his own; it is ours too, for resurrection is an invitation to new life. But the difficult and painful thing is, resurrection begins with death. To know it, you must die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To know resurrection before your physical death, something in you has to die and likely what needs to die is how you have been seeking the living among the dead. Maybe it\u2019s the death of the false security of your career that crashes down around you in a downsizing. Maybe it\u2019s the loss of your physical health that you had hoped would go on forever. Maybe it\u2019s the realization that your addiction has destroyed your humanity and robbed you of life. Maybe it\u2019s the death of a dream or someone you hold dear. To know resurrection, you have to experience this death and deal with the loneliness of failure and grief, the humiliation of defeat, the soul-shattering reality of all you cannot control. You have to let go of any illusion that life as you once knew it is possible. And this isn\u2019t something we want or wish for anyone, because the initial cost is so high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But on the other side of death, Christ is there with an invitation and a promise: There is a path to a new and different life. On this side of death, the promise of a different life is no consolation. It\u2019s too frightening and certainly not worth the crossing over of suffering to attain. But once you\u2019re there facing death and there is no turning back, resurrection makes living possible again by forging a path of life given by God who is the author of Life itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few things you need to remember about resurrection. First, it is an invitation. Resurrection cannot be forced upon you. Christ bids you come, but you must make the choice to say \u201cYes!\u201d to his invitation. Resurrection will require you to do something. What that is, no one else can tell you, as it will be as unique as you are. But listen for that invitation, and dare to say \u201cyes,\u201d and you will begin the journey to a new life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, resurrection begins tentatively and with great ambiguity. We experience it as disorienting and confusing \u2013 just as the women at the tomb experienced it. We don\u2019t really know what to make of it because life has changed so dramatically that we aren\u2019t sure about anything. We may not even want the resurrected life initially because we don\u2019t know how to live it yet and this new life can feel a little intimidating. That\u2019s OK; trust it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, resurrection is incremental \u2013 it is a process, not an event. It takes time! Life returns one breath at a time, and it does not erase the wounds of our past \u2013 it lives alongside them. The resurrected Christ still bore the nail marks, and so will you, whatever your particular nail marks are. Resurrection invites you to release death instead of holding onto it. We may never feel ready for resurrection, but the living Christ is not content to be locked in the tombs of our misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christ is alive, and he is inviting you to a resurrected life. Language will always fail to capture what this means; the experience of resurrection is so much more than mere words. But the experience is what makes joy, life, serenity and peace possible in an anxious and uncertain world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The risen Christ is with us \u2013 always. And if you are experiencing death and feel you are in the darkness of the tomb right now, Jesus promises that there will be life on the other side for you and for all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sermon was written by the Rev. Anjel Scarborough<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! OK. Now what? This is the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But what does \u201cresurrection\u201d mean? 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