“The
Resurrection of the Living”
Luke
15:11-24
First Presbyterian
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
May 20, 2007
You
know me well enough to know, I hope, that I am not being flippant when I say
that I think that resurrection is wasted on the dead.
I can say that because I have my own dead daughter to consider.
I believe with every sinew of my soul that Katy still is Katy and that,
though she has died, yet does she live within the gracious and adventurous heart
of God. I cannot explain it, but I
trust it, as I trust it, too, for all of those whom you have loved and have
died.
I
say that resurrection is wasted on the dead because of the way life seems to
work. There is nothing in the
universe to suggest anything other than that life always trumps and triumphs
over death. The Law of the
Conservation of Energy says that energy may change forms, but it is never lost.
Jesus told the people that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies
to its present form, it cannot bear fruit. Just
so, I do deeply believe that no one who belongs to God is ever lost.
Close to the heart of the gospel is that great affirmation of
Leo
Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, once wrote that “God is life.”
That is the claim of the gospel, too, and what better to make that point
than with resurrection stories? So
I
had no appreciation for Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger when he was the head of the
Catholic Church’s “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
That department was in charge of “promoting and safeguarding the
doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world.”
In other words, Ratzinger and his fellows were the theological police and
it seemed to me that he believed that his mission was to turn back the clock on
Vatican II and the sweeping winds of change that blew for the better through the
Catholic Church in the late sixties and seventies.
He regularly stifled dissent by Catholic theologians and writers and
officially silenced some of the most creative thinkers of our generation.
Thus, I thought it a sign of an impending apocalypse when he was elected
to the papacy as the current Pope Benedict XVI.
So
I am more than a little chagrined that he recently has published a book (Jesus
of Nazareth), his life’s work he says, that I have to admit
touches my heart in many ways. He
asks us to read the gospels “critically and with love.” Do
not throw out the scholarship, he in essence says, but neither let the
scholarship sunder your relationship with Jesus and with God.
He says, for example, that interpreters argue over whether Jesus’
turning water into wine at the wedding feast in
Similarly,
we get bogged down if we try to figure out the physics and mechanics of the
resurrection of Jesus and even if it really physically happened.
The important question is what does the resurrection mean?
Paul and each of the gospel writers wrote of it in differing ways with
differing descriptions and even differing theologies.
But they agreed on this: what resurrection means is that the culture of
death that permeates the world needs hold no sway over us, that the Spirit of
God who is Life offers in every situation of our lives a way out and a way
through that which otherwise would deflate our spirits and diminish our
humanity. The resurrection of the
living.
The
anthem the choir will sing in a few moments as the last act of our 2007 Easter
season worship is, fittingly, entitled “A Song of Resurrection.”
The anthem was born around a kitchen table in the home of the poet
who wrote its words as a result of a conversation between he and his wife, both
of them singers, and a friend, also a musician.
And the wife asked the question, “What is the meaning of Hallellujah?”
Hallelujah, and its Greek equivalent, alleluia, are Easter words
that, by tradition, are forbidden in the church’s liturgy during Lent and Holy
Week. The poet’s wife was not
asking for a definition of hallelujah. Etymologically,
that is easy: it is the Hebrew word for “praise ye the Lord.”
She was asking what hallelujah means in the world, in life, in
her life. So her poet husband gave
us this response:
When
the faint new presence of light
Nudges the night into leaving,
When the green shoot breaks through the crust
And turns, as it must, into blooming,
When the raindrop quenches the thirst
And raises the cursed and the grieving,
When the old somber ways are destroyed
And what stays is the joy that is human,
This is the meaning of hallelujah, hallelujah!
When the infant takes breath to sustain
The requisite pain of his glory,
When the mother can smile in relief
Expressing belief in this blooming,
And the ancient rolls away age
To turn a new page in the story
And the old somber ways are destroyed
What remains is the joy that is human,
That is the meaning of hallelujah, hallelujah!
Rise, come forth, and sing hallelujah! (1)
Do
you see? Resurrection is for the
living. It is about the Spirit of
God, the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Hope filtering into every big or little
place in our lives that we have shut up or closed down against that which would
seek to hurt or destroy. It is about
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Hope reaching out to us in
the tombs of each of the little deaths we inevitably suffer and crying to us as
Jesus to Lazarus, “Come out. Come
out of your tomb into the land of the living.”
Fear not. Do not be
afraid. Do not fear.
Resurrection is for the living.
David
Whyte has written a hallelujah poem called “The Journey” in which he
says
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed
across
the
heavens
so
you can find
the
one line
already
written
inside
you.
Sometimes
it take
a
great sky
to
find that
first,
bright
and
indescribable
wedge
of freedom
in
your own heart.
Sometimes
with
the
bones of the black
sticks
left when the fire
has
gone out
someone
has written
something
new
in
the ashes
of
your life.
You
are not leaving
you
are arriving.
(2)
The
resurrection of the living.
Do
you remember the lyrics of the song from the musical “Hello, Dolly” that
say, “I want to feel my heart coming
alive again before the parade passes by”? Is that not the cry and
desire of each of us? Jesus said the
same thing in different words: “I
came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”
We cannot live abundantly
with closed in, closed off, or closed down hearts.
So when the gift of the resurrection of the living comes to us, as it
will, we need to receive it gratefully and to take whatever measures we need to
take to walk into a greater fullness of life.
The prodigal about whom we read today had come to a
dead end in his life but resurrection is for the living and so, in coming to
himself by the power of the Spirit of life, he took the measure he needed to
take in order to walk in to a greater fullness of life.
Fear not. Do not be afraid.
Do not fear. The resurrection
of the living.
Are you willing to come more fully alive?
Will you embrace Easter not as something that happens at the end of your
life but all through it? Will you
determine to live a “hallelujah life”? Poet
Mary Oliver, late in her life and after the death of her longtime partner,
determines not to shut down or to wallow in grief or to close off the parts of
her life that hurt, but rather to be called more fully into her life, and life.
She resolves to allow the resurrection of the living to come at her with
full force and to be open to the surprising twists and turns that arrive in the
lives of those who live expectantly, yet without specific expectations.
In her poem, Thirst, she says:
Another morning and I wake with thirst for the
goodness I do not have. I
walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful
lessons.
Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books
past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time.
Love
for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my
heart.
Who knows what finally will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I
have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack
nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
(3)
My dear Easter family: What I want to know is if you
will dare to truly live while you are alive?
That is the audacious call of the gospel of Jesus Christ on our lives.
To put away, with the help of God’s Spirit, the fear that stalks us,
the hurt that cripples us, the pride that poisons us, the pain that paralyzes
us. Resurrection is for the living.
It is for you, for me, for us. Embrace
it and trust it and “rise, come forth, and sing hallelujah!”
Amen.
(1)
“A
Song of Resurrection” by
Buffalonians Peter Siedlecki and Roland E. Martin, sung by our Chancel Choir
today with their kind permission.
(2)
“The
Journey,” a poem by David Whyte’s from his collection called The House of
Belonging, page 37.
(3) “Thirst,”
a poem by Mary Oliver from her collection called Thirst, page 69.
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