Translating Easter
Dr. Jim Wilson, March 30, 2008 Today is the day the Church refers to as “Low Sunday.” And that is definitely how it feels. The great celebration of Easter has quieted. The pews are not as crowded as they were just a week ago. But “Low Sunday” is not about sounds or attendance. It has to do with liturgy. Easter is the great feast of the Church, the formative event for our faith, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now just a few days later, we seem to find ourselves at some distance from that great Easter joy. And we wonder: Is it all a dream? Is it our annual celebration, now tucked away for another year? Did God really defeat death? Is God’s love really stronger that the forces of evil and oppression? The questions are Easter questions, and upon their answer stands life or death for us. For if Easter is but an annual celebration, death has the final word, and the forces of despair, injustice, violence and evil are all there is. If this is true we might as well hunker down, get by the best we can, and make do with what we have. Several years ago, Mary Beth who was about six, helped me pack up my robe, Bible, hymnal and sermon after the last Easter service of the morning. We were at Rose School. She said, “Daddy, is next week Easter too?” I gave a completely wrong theological answer. I said, “No honey, today is Easter.” She looked rather sad and said, “Then what are we going to do next Sunday?” That was a profound theological corrective to my ill considered statement. That is always the task each Sunday, if not each day. We must decide now what we shall do with the news of Easter. We must come to grips with what the resurrection of Jesus means for our lives---not someday in the distant future, but today, right now! In other words, the task now is to translate the meaning of Easter for our living. Maybe we should rename this Sunday, change it from “Low Sunday” to “Translation Sunday,” and hear it as a call for us to get on with the translation of the resurrection of Jesus for how we can now live. In what arguably is the first Christian sermon, Peter is about this very task. He is translating Easter. The scene is the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem in the upper room where the disciples are waiting. Jews from every nation have gathered to celebrate the Holy Day. Some had known of Jesus. Others had heard reports of his doing signs and wonders. Some had heard of his crucifixion. Others had witnessed it. Some had heard claims that he had been raised the dead. Others remained skeptical. But now all had experience “the rush of a mighty wind,” had seen the “tongues as of fire,” and listened to the disciples begin to speaks in foreign languages, telling of God’s mighty acts in Jesus. Yet, some accused the disciples of breaking into the Mogen David and getting drunk. Others simply wondered out loud, “What does all this mean?” Such is the context as Peter rises to preach. In good sermonic form, he begins with common knowledge, data no one in the crowd could deny; namely, that Jesus of Nazareth had walked among them, teaching and performing sings and wonders. This was documented, objective fact. Less objective, but at least plausible, is Peter’s contention that Jesus’ power to do these signs and wonders is from God. But even the skeptics would have to consider the possibility. Translating, Peter maintains that Jesus acts like the Messiah. Moving to his second point, Peter turns to the crucifixion. He lays responsibility for Jesus’ death on both the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman authorities. Both conspired to put Jesus to death. But then he translates. The crucifixion was no accident, no mistake. It was part of God’s plan of salvation. This is a critical point. The Jews believed anyone who was crucified was accursed by God. Peter maintains the cross was a part of God’s strategy for defeating the powers of sin and death. It is how God chose to confront and defeat the principalities and powers---not by brute power, but by the power of sacrificial love. The cross, then, stands not a sign of God’s curse, but of God’s great love, the way in which salvation has entered the world. All this is confirmed, Peter concludes, by God’s raising Jesus from the dead. Death cannot hold Jesus. The resurrection stands as the indisputable evidence that he is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God; that the victory over sin and death had been won. This is the main point, the culminating conclusion of the translation---God has raised Jesus from the dead and now all of life has been forever changed. To confirm his conclusion, Peter turns to a time-honored preaching tool, the proof text. He reads from Psalm 16 which speaks of the hope of the resurrection, a hope now fulfilled. The truth of the cross has been revealed and has been witnessed by the apostles. The Crucified One lives and through him life is triumphant. Redemption has come. So, Peter tells the story, the story that translates Easter. This is the story from which we, as Christians, live. It is a translation of the Easter event, moving from belief held to a life lived. Such is the task of every sermon---to tell the story, to translate Easter, to connect the power of God’s liberating and transforming resurrection love in Christ Jesus to the lives of those who listen. It is about the intersecting of the Christian/Easter story with our stories. When that intersection happens, Easter is translated. This exactly what I hear Peter doing in his sermon. It is what, I believe, every preacher is called to do when they step into he pulpit. “I am cancer free” she proclaimed. “Betty, that is wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” I replied. Having been with Betty as her pastor through the months of difficult treatments, it was truly wonderful to be able to celebrate good news with her. “Yes, it is,” she said and then added, “but it is also rather disconcerting.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “I took the doctors at their word. They told me I was terminal, that there was little chance for healing. So, I planned to live about a year and then die. That’s what they told me to expect. Now they tell me I have years to live, that I have a future. It’s just a bit disconcerting. I’ve got to go ahead and live.” “Yes,” I said, “your story now has a different ending!” A couple of days later, Betty called back. “I just want to say,” she told me, “ Easter came early this year. It is great to have a new ending!” That is the Easter faith translated: The liberating resurrection love of God that raised Jesus from the dead, now reaching into our lives, yours and mine, to free us from death and furnish a new ending for our stories. This is our story. Resurrection shapes who we are and whose we are. What is God doing in our world? What are we supposed to be doing? What does the future hold? All these questions are answered now from the perspective of resurrection. This is what David Buttrick calls “in-church” preaching, those sermons meant to connect your life and mine with the power of resurrection that we may live as Easter people. That would suggest that there are “out-church” sermons as well. Indeed, there are. Resurrection is a call to witness, a summons to mission, an empowering to tell the story to the whole world. That is what the Risen Lord tells his followers to do---to go and tell the whole world the Good News. This is not about arrogance or whether we have “the truth.” It is about what we are called to do. As the church we have this truth to proclaim, that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God is reconciling the world to himself, even as God brings salvation for the whole human family. The Gospel is the power to reconcile, not divide, to heal, not wound, to liberate, not oppress. It is a message of hope in an oft hopeless world. In the mid-nineties, John Erwin served as the pastor of the Franklin Grove UMC on the DeKalb District. He also taught at a local college. As part of his research on the transforming power of dreams, he went to India in an attempt to meet with Mother Teresa. He was very persistent and it paid off. Mother Teresa invited him to come for tea one afternoon. They talked for about two hours. John told me that knowing Mother Teresa was quite open about her spiritual struggles---usually about not being able to do enough---he asked her if she ever became so discouraged about the endless task of caring for the poor, the forgotten, the dying of Calcutta that she thought of quitting. He told me she said, “On occasion, but then I remember how the story ends. It ends with resurrection and new life and that gives me hope.” So it is for us. Without resurrection we have no hope. With resurrection, we have hope, hope that frees us to go on, even when the difficulties are great and we can see little good happening. Still we have the story. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Christian faith, every aspect of it, stands or falls on the resurrection, the truth of the story’s claim that God raised Jesus from the dead It is simple as that. As a pastor/preacher, my task is to preach and teach the story, to do the translating, each time I step into the pulpit or stand before a class. As Christians, those who follow Jesus, our task together is to live the truth that others may see. We are to translate the Easter story with our lives. Peter reminds us that because we know the story ends in the hands of God, the One who raised Jesus from the dead, promises to raise us to new life, we are born anew to a living hope. That is the story we have to tell and to live. So, what has been told to us, I tell to you, that you may tell to others: “He is risen! He is risen indeed!” Thanks be to God! Amen! |
