“Participation
in the Resurrection”
(A
Meditation on John 20:23)
First Presbyterian
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I have made it clear over the
years that I believe that resurrection is for the living.
Focusing on what happens to us when we die distracts us from the far more
important question we need continually to ask ourselves, a question put by the
poet like this: “What are you
going to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Frankly, I do not understand the preoccupation so many people have with
what comes after this life. Whatever
it is belongs to the realm of “the mysteries of God.”
Anything we might say about it is conjecture and speculation.
It makes for fascinating conversation, but that is all.
Any expression of religion that
makes this life a proving ground or a tryout for some subsequent life is, to say
it as kindly as possible, misguided on at least two counts.
First, it encourages a “me first” approach to life.
I cannot reconcile in any way the radical concern for one’s own
salvation that so many churches preach with the self-giving nature of the
gospel. Was it not Jesus himself who
said that “those who seek to save their lives will lose them while those
who are willing to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will find life”?
The point of this life, at least in terms of the gospel, is not to hold
on to our lives but to give them away in the service of love.
That’s it. That’s all.
I can only surmise that those whose religion is preoccupied with personal
salvation as a passport to some celestial future do not trust God.
It is the opposite of faith. Do
they not know that God is free and cannot be constrained by any of our
theological formulas, plans for salvation, or rituals, no matter how loudly we
assert them? We can do no better and
no other than to trust our lives, our deaths, and our loved ones to God.
Then, too, any expression of
religion that focuses on a life to come does so at the expense of a deep
engagement with this life and plays into the hands of those for whom this life
already is favorable. It has a
devastating effect on the practice of the gospel.
When I was in
Even then, when my theological
conscience was just being formed, I was outraged at the conspiracy of the
hierarchy of that and other wealthy churches to discourage community organizing
and community development by the people. I
was infuriated by the church’s attempt to dissuade the campesinos from doing
anything that would change the present arrangement of things in their society
from which those with the power and money were profiting.
As long as the clerics could keep peoples’ religion busy with a
church-directed quest for personal salvation, the less likely that its adherents
would engage in social salvage with the
I
became more convinced than ever that resurrection is for the living.
It is for this life.
It is this life that Jesus most cared about.
It is the one the Ten Commandments addresses.
It is the one to which the Beatitudes directs us.
It is the one with which the Lord’s Prayer is concerned.
Resurrection calls us out of and beyond all of the little deaths we
suffer in this life and away from small-minded and dead-ended ways of thinking
and doing things. The Resurrection
of Jesus Christ that Easter celebrates is the call to participate in the new way
of life and living that the gospel of Jesus Christ heralds.
We are living now within the reality of the Resurrection that suffuses
the world with divine power and sensibility.
It hails a new creation inspired, literally “inspirited,” by the
Spirit of God and invites our participation.
We are invited to participate in the resurrection life.
“So
Jesus said to his disciples again, ‘Peace be with you; as
the
Father has sent me, so also I send you.’
And when he
had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive
the Holy Spirit.’”
The first mark of the
resurrection life according to John’s Jesus is forgiveness.
“If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you
retain
the sins of any, they are retained.”
That forgiveness is the
centerpiece of resurrection life should not surprise us.
It was a common theme throughout the ministry of Jesus.
When a woman caught in adultery was brought by the scribes and Pharisees
to Jesus by way of testing him to see if he would uphold the long-revered Mosaic
law, Jesus responded by saying to them, “Let anyone among you who is
without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
No one could meet that standard and, while they all were slinking
away, Jesus forgave the woman and, in so doing, set her free to amend her life,
saying, “Woman, where are they? Has
no one condemned you? Neither do I;
go on your way and sin no more.”
In the parable of the prodigal
son that we have gotten to know pretty well around here, it is the father’s a
priori disposition toward forgiveness that created the space and possibility
for his wayward son to return home and to do better in his life, his son not
able even to get his apology out of his mouth before ordering up a party of
unprecedented merriment, because “…this my son was lost and is found, was
dead and is alive again.”
In the prayer that Jesus taught
his disciples to pray, we say, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who
sin against us,” or, as we say it in this church, “Forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors.”
I am, surprise, going to forego
a Mary Oliver recitation this week in favor of someone a little more unusual.
White Eagle was a Native American spirit guide and teacher from beyond
this life who was channeled during the middle part of the last century by a
British Spiritualist medium named Grace Cooke.
(Where do I unearth these people, you ask?
Ah, the benefits of a generous book allowance by which you feed my
voracious reading appetite.)*
Grace Cooke believed that the
spiritual and philosophical aspects of Spiritualism are more important than the
evidence of survival after death that is the focus of many Spiritualist mediums.
So she dedicated her life to spiritual healing and to channeling
teachings from White Eagle whose emphasis was on mystical or inner, sometimes
called esoteric, Christianity. (By
the way, at the beginning of the year when the middle school youth group was in
the process of choosing its name, one of the members of the fellowship, Drew
Blasius, suggested that the group be called The Esoterinators.
When I asked Drew the origin of that name, he said, “You know, from the
esoteric Christianity you sometimes talk about.
Inner Christianity. You
know.” See, even our middle-schoolers
get this stuff!) Anyway, I want to
share with you a little of what White Eagle had to say about John 20:23, about
the admonition of Jesus in which he told his disciples that if they forgive the
sins of any, they are forgiven, and if they retain the sins of any, they are
retained:
Jesus breathed on them.
In other words, he instilled into the disciples spiritual life, light,
truth. He caused them to
absorb from him the magic of divine love. Divine
love in any
soul can give that soul power to remit (that is, to forgive) sins or
karmic debts…The law
of karma governs human life, and should you retain vengeance against
someone who has
injured you (in some way), you are chained to that brother’s (or
sister’s) sins; it will remain
a karmic debt through the ages because the debt travels backwards and
forwards between
you. If another person
injures you (in some way) and you are angry, unconsciously you
retain a desire for vengeance in your soul…it binds you together (in
that way). When
you reincarnate you will meet again.
Possibly you will pay back your debt by injuring
that soul because in a past incarnation it once injured you.
This is how karmic law
works – backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.
I hit you, you hit me –
so it goes on perhaps through many lives; and while that continues two
souls are chained
together.
The only way by which such a sin can be remitted or (forgiven) is for one
of the parties
concerned to forgive (the one who has sinned against him or her).
Throughout this
gospel of John, we find that the Master Jesus had the power to look into
a (person’s)
karma, and see the debts he owed to others and those debts that were
owing to him. To
one person after another he did offer an opportunity to erase such
karma…and the last
words uttered by Jesus on the cross were, “Father, forgive them, for
they know not what
they do.”
White Eagle concludes by saying,
This is the secret of the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus breathed on them. The
Christ spirit
instilled divine love into the heart, a love that caused the recipient to
forgive his enemies.
Thus does the Christ spirit cleanse the soul of sin.
Be thankful and live to serve your brothers and sisters and to breathe
upon (them) the
divine love of the Christ within your heart.
One does not have to speak of
karma exactly or to believe in reincarnation to get White Eagle’s point that
someone succinctly summed up for me one time in this way:
If you have your foot on someone else’s neck, neither of you can go
to the dance. To forgive someone
for his or her sin against us can be the hardest thing by far we are called on
to do in this life, and sometimes it is a process, and sometimes it takes more
than a little time, but a failure or inability to forgive someone binds you
inextricably to that person in an unhealthy way.
Forgiving someone his or her sin against you does not mean that you
condone it or take it lightly. Forgiving
someone is a way of practicing grace in one’s life and to win the freedom for
both of you to move on in your lives. Whether
the person you forgive avails himself or herself of that grace is beyond your
pale. But it releases you and gives
you the opportunity to be healed of your hurt, to make a fresh start, to set out
in a new direction or on a new adventure in life.
Easter declares that the Spirit
of God that was alive in Jesus the Christ is not dead to us, but living.
That same Spirit of God that was alive in Jesus is alive today breathing
on us, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
By doing so you open yourself to receive the power of God’s light,
life, and love and, in that way, you participate in Resurrection life…for your
own sake but, even more, for the sake of the world.
“If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you
retain
the sins of any, they are retained.”
It is your choice. But,
the words of
Amen.
*The Living Word of
© Copyright 2008 First Presbyterian Church