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Easter Day 2008
EPISTLE: Acts 9:1-9
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the
disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest
2and
asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who
belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
3Now
as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven
flashed around him.
4He
fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you
persecute me?’
5He
asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’
The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
6But
get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’
7The
men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice
but saw no one.
8Saul
got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so
they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.
9For three days he was
without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Epistle 1 John 4:7-12
9God’s
love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so
that we might live through him.
10In
this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be
the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11Beloved,
since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
12No
one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is
perfected in us.
Gospel
Matthew 28:1-10
But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that
you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the
place where he
lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from
the dead,
and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is
my message for you.’
So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to
tell his disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to
him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him.
Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my
brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’ Full Sermon Text: At Easter we affirm that Jesus died and was raised again. That’s the short story. Very, very short, if you think about
it, because people have been thinking and writing about it for two thousand
years… not to mention basing their whole life and how they approach
it, around this story, and no one has it all worked out yet! The problem with Good Friday, and Easter Day, is that we don’t
really know what happened. Jesus was killed. Marcus Borg says in the
Heart of Christianity pp 91-96 that
this is a fact everyone knows,
“but whose significance is often overlooked. He didn't simply die; he was
executed. …. Christians participate in the only major religious tradition whose
founder was executed by established authority. And if we ask the historical
question, "Why was he killed?" the historical answer is because he was a social
prophet and movement initiator, a passionate advocate of God's justice, and
radical critic of the domination system who had attracted a following. If Jesus
had been only a mystic, healer, and wisdom teacher, he almost certainly would
not have been executed. Rather, he was killed because of his politics—because of
his passion for God's justice." [Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity] The early Christians tried to work out what this dying meant.
The most common answer we now hear to
the question, “Why did Jesus die?” is that he died for our sins. (This is what
we call atonement theology and in lots of churches, it’s the only correct answer
to the question about Jesus death.) Actually, atonement theology is
only one of five major ways to
understand why Jesus died! Many
mainline scholars would even say atonement theology was not something that Jesus
ever thought about! In fact, the version of atonement theology we sort of
imbibed with out mother’s milk in church, dates to St Anselm, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, in a book published in 1097 AD! Let me outline the five main understandings of what Jesus
death means. I’m not going to test
you on these at the end of the sermon. However, if the “we are all lost sinners
and so Jesus had to die for our sins” idea has never quite rung true for you,
you will see it is not the only way to understand things. I’m following an
outline of the five provided by Marcus Borg here, but it is a generally accepted
understanding.
Interpretation 1.
It is a simple rejection-and-vindication understanding of Good Friday and
Easter. The authorities rejected Jesus and killed him; but God has vindicated
Jesus by raising him to God's right hand.
"God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." The authorities said "no" to Jesus, but God has said yes. [Marcus
J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity] The line "God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus
whom you crucified." is from Acts 2:36
Interpretation 2.
Interpretation 3.
Interpretation 4.
Interpretation 5. Let me quote from Marcus Borg at length. This is important. If taken literally, [the sacrificial view] is very strange. It
implies a limitation on God's power to
forgive; namely, God can forgive only
if adequate sacrifice is made. It implies that Jesus' death on the cross was
necessary—not just the consequence of what he was doing, but that it had to
happen, that it was part of God's plan of salvation. It also introduces a
requirement into the very center of our life with God: knowing about and
believing in Jesus and his sacrificial death. [Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of
Christianity] In other words, if no one ever tells you about Jesus, then you
are sunk!... which doesn’t seem very fair. I’m making a fuss of this interpretation, because it is one of
the most offensive things outsiders understand about our faith. And, frankly, I
don’t blame them! It is offensive! A
God who damns an innocent child, or a person who never heard of Jesus, is a
monster. We should be ashamed if we
really think that what God is like! Borg goes on to say something quite
different about sacrifice. Different and exciting:
: … in its first-century setting, the statement "Jesus is the
sacrifice for sin" had a quite different meaning [to the way we see it now.] ..
According to [the theology of the Jewish leadership and temple], certain kinds
of sins and impurities could be dealt with only through sacrifice in the temple.
Temple theology thus claimed an institutional monopoly on the forgiveness of
sins; and because the forgiveness of sins was a prerequisite for entry into the
presence of God, temple theology also claimed an institutional monopoly on
access to God.
In this setting, to affirm "Jesus is the sacrifice for sin" was to deny the
temple's claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God. It was an
anti-temple statement. Using the metaphor
of sacrifice, it subverted the sacrificial system.
[My italics]
(This is the good news of Easter Day.) It meant: God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and
has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God; you have
access to God apart from the temple and its system of sacrifice. It is a
metaphor of radical grace, of amazing grace Thus "Jesus died for our sins" was originally a subversive
metaphor, not a literal description of either God's purpose or Jesus' vocation.
It was a metaphorical proclamation of radical grace; and properly understood, it
still is. It is therefore ironic to realize that the religion that formed around
Jesus would within four hundred years begin to claim for itself an institutional
monopoly on grace and access to God.", [Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of
Christianity] So let’s be careful what we say about Jesus’ death. What do we
really believe? __________________ Now if all that complexity about what the death of Jesus means
is not enough, we get to Easter Sunday, and the Resurrection.
Nobody knows what happened
then. If we look at the New Testament carefully, what do we see? Paul doesn’t
really address the issue of what or
how. He talks about
meaning. The four gospels have four different endings, and four
different stories of Easter morning! The earliest of these gospels was written 40 years after Jesus
death, and the latest 70 to 100 hundred years after... You could wonder if it
looked like people didn’t know what happened… they couldn’t get their stories
straight evendecades later! And yet, in another sense, they
did know what happened!
We read the story of Paul’s experience on the Damascus road earlier
today. Just as it was for Paul, something in the first Christians’ lives was
changed. There was a new experience of God, because of Jesus. There was a
resurrection, a being raised
to a new understanding. Each gospel has its own understanding and emphasis about this
mystery of Jesus resurrection. Matthew, which we heard today, shows the Roman
power being shaken to its core and defeated… the word for
earthquake and for the guards being
shaken is the same. The power of Rome
is like a dead man. Rome cannot even see resurrection. The angel of the Lord, the messenger of God descended from
heaven, came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. God has the power over
Rome, and over the huge stone of
death, that closes off our lives. God is more powerful than death. And this is
for everyone; Jesus appears first to
the least privileged, the women at the tomb
What happened was a mystery, but it is a mystery with an answer.
We understand the word mystery today as something without an answer.
In the gospels’ time mystery meant a happening that
could be understood, if you had the
correct insight. And Matthew
gives the key to the mystery. He
says it twice. In Matthew’s story of Easter the angel tells the women the
answer. Then the risen Jesus himself says to the women, Do not be afraid; go and
tell my brothers to go to Galilee;
there they will see me. How will we see Jesus? How will we understand Good Friday and
Easter Day? After all the insights of study and prayer, the answer to the
mystery is simply in the saying: “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to
go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
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