Reflections on Resurrection
(Based on Ezekiel 37:1-14 & Luke 24:1-12)
Offered to the People of FPC of Boyne City, Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011
As the Apostle Paul said, “when I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” I did. That was me, particularly where the resurrection was concerned. I heard the Easter story as a child, was drawn to its power and hope like a child, and I believed it like a child. I guess you could say that growing up in a Christian home where church was a given every Sunday, I subscribed to that bumper sticker variety of faith that says, “God said it…I believe it…that settles it.”
But, alas, I’m not a child anymore. And as Paul also said in that same chapter of Corinthians, “When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways.” As an adult, it hasn’t been so easy to “just believe” the whole resurrection thing anymore. Not that I suddenly lost my faith or my ability to believe, but it became a lot more challenging to simply accept that the entire course of nature could be reversed in the way that the raising of Lazarus or the resurrection of Jesus suggests.
So over the course of my adult life, I’ve had to do some re-tooling and retrofitting of certain aspects of my faith, particularly where the resurrection is concerned. And so, what I’d like to share with all of you in 3 parts on this Easter Sunday, 2011 is what I consider to be my new and improved understanding of the resurrection and its implications.
Part I – It’s Written All Over the Natural World!
Close your eyes for a few moments…I want you to imagine something with me…I want you to imagine that you are Adam -- or Eve if you prefer. You are literally the very first person on this brand new planet. It is your very first day in your new body – although you don’t even know yet what “day” is – as you explore this amazing garden paradise. You’ve been walking all around the garden just checking out everything, sampling the fruits and vegetables, admiring the river and the stunning views. You can’t help noticing this huge, fiery ball in the skies above that seems to make everything else glisten with light. It’s so bright that you can’t really look right at it, but you see and feel its rays and recognize that it is the source of light and heat. You also can’t help but notice that this ball seems to be moving very slowly across the sky. In fact, lately, you’ve noticed it lowering a bit, as if it is falling toward the horizon. Not only that, but gradually everything in the garden around you seems less light. There is less warmth. Now that fiery ball is beginning to disappear into the ground far, far away. It’s getting dark and cold. You’ve never experienced this darkness before. There’s almost no light, just a tiny glow where the fiery ball seemed to burrow into the earth. And suddenly, all is dark. You can no longer see anything. There is no light at all, not even to see the hand in front of your face. Suddenly, this beautiful garden you were reveling in only hours ago is eerie and haunted. You feel something that will later be known as fear. You wonder why you were even put here on this earth in this garden. You lay down on the ground in a ball, hoping and praying that you would just stop breathing. Nothing could be so awful, so terrifying. Time stands still in this complete and utter darkness. You are so alone…so forsaken…so totally afraid. But wait, you see something on the other side of the sky. It’s a patch of light…then a distant glow. The sky seems to brighten incrementally….until…there it is! That same fiery ball that sunk into the earth on the other side of the sky…How did it get over there? It is coming back. It will give light and warmth to the garden once again. What a welcome and wonderful sight after that long and terrible darkness…And with each passing cycle of light followed darkness, you are a little less afraid, for you begin to understand that after darkness there is always light… You can open your eyes now.
Every sunrise is a death, a time of complete and total darkness. But that deep darkness gives way to returning light…sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset.
And it isn’t only the sun in our natural world that speaks of resurrection. Think of your flowers and plants. Last summer’s brilliant garden withered up and died last fall. Nothing could have been any deader than that garden. The snow came to finish the job, freezing to death anything that made it through the fall. And now, walk out in that same garden, and what do you see?…Little shoots and buds poking through the ground…tree branches begin to bud out as well. Nature’s nod to resurrection, it’s everywhere. You see, one of the reasons I still believe in the resurrection is because all of the natural cycles of our planet have resurrection within them.
When we Christians talk about Jesus’ resurrection, we tend to talk about it as if it were some inversion of the natural order of things. We tend to think of Jesus as somehow going against the natural process of things when he died and then rose again. But I don’t think of it that way anymore. It seems to me that rising from the dead is exactly what the natural order of things requires. Maybe what Jesus did that first Easter morn was simply a participation in the natural order of things, sunrise sunset, sunrise sunset…the buds and flowers in your perennial beds…the trees and leaves…So the natural world and its many cycles is part of what has influenced my re-tooled resurrection faith.
Part II – Resurrection is Written in Our Human Stories:
We Love a Good Comeback!
By the time I was born in 1961, South Africa had been ruled only by whites since 1910, when an official act of parliament limited its membership to whites. Blacks weren’t even allowed to own land going all the way back to 1913. And in1962, the year after I was born, a young, South African anti-apartheid activist by the name of Nelson Mandela was arrested, for protesting this apartheid system. Mandela was convicted on bogus charges of sabotage and treasonous acts against his government and sentenced to life in prison. In that hot, dry S. African jail cell, Nelson Mandela was left to rot, to become a pile of dry and lifeless bones. 27 years later in 1989, Mandela was released from prison and led his party to power. In 1994, Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. He served as president for 5 years, establishing a new multi-racial democracy that still endures today. I believe in resurrection because of Nelson Mandela.
In June of 1966, a horrible murder occurred at the Lafayette Grill in New Jersey, and professional boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter was falsely accused and arrested, charged with the murder he never committed. In May of 1967 an all-white jury found Carter guilty of this crime, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison. In a New Jersey penitentiary, Ruben Hurricane Carter was left to rot, to shrivel and shrink into a pile of dry and lifeless bones. Almost 22 years later in February of 1988 after three previous and unsuccessful appeals, “new” information came to light and all charges against Carter were suddenly dropped. He was free at last, 22 years after his arrest. In the 24 years since he was freed, Carter has dedicated every moment of his life to his non-profit organization, which seeks to free prisoners who have been falsely accused and unfairly tried. I believe in resurrection because of Ruben Hurricane Carter.
On January 7, 2001 at 12:20 am, I received a phone call from my oldest brother Jeff, telling me that my mother had been killed in a car accident coming home from Charlevoix from her 70th birthday dinner. My dad was driving and was in critical condition. In that accident the other driver was a 16-year old boy and his 11-year-old little brother was also killed in the tragedy. My mother, by the way, died with 6 grandsons. She never had a granddaughter. Fast forward to 2008. It’s January 6, at 10:15 pm, my wife Molly’s water broke and we rushed to Northern Michigan Regional Hospital in preparation for the birth of my one and only child. Her labor was rapid and intense and in the less than 2 hours, the midwives helped deliver a healthy baby girl, Eloise. When the midwife handed me my one and only child - a girl, the bright digital clock behind her shoulder read 12:20 am January 7. My jaw dropped, my heart skipped a beat, and I beheld my mom’s first and long awaited granddaughter. It was almost as if God took those dry bones of my mother’s death and breathed life into them in the form of my darling daughter Eloise. I believe in resurrection because of my mom and my daughter.
I also believe in resurrection because of the many recovering addicts in my life. From my own father to two of my closest friends, I have seen up close the horrific damage that drugs and alcohol can do – not just to the user, but to their loved ones and families as well. My dad drank hard and heavy through all 18 years of my childhood and for the next 30 years after that. Due to his alcohol addiction, dad had become a lifeless bag of bones, dry bones, dry and lifeless. But would you believe that next week on May 1st, my father will celebrate 12 months of total sobriety? One year without alcohol. Now if any of you would have tried to tell me that my dad would ever, in my lifetime, go an entire year without drinking, I would have had you drug tested to see what you’ve been smoking. But he’s done it. He’s been raised to a newness of life. I believe in resurrection because of my dad and my many other recovering friends.
Sometimes death and resurrection occur in the here and now – in this life. I think that Jesus rose so that we wouldn’t miss the many deaths and resurrections that occur in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones and heroes. We do God and the resurrection a great disservice if we only look for it in the life after death. Followers of Jesus ought to see God’s resurrection power in lives like Nelson Mandela’s and Ruben Hurricane Carter’s, and in the countless millions of friends of Bill W’s, who like my dad and my dearest two friends, seemed to be dying from the complications of addiction but somehow, through the recovery process, have risen again to new life.
Part III – Conclusions and Easter Wishes…
Yes, I believe in the resurrection, but not in the exact same way I did as a child. I believe in resurrection in a broader, deeper, and more profound way. And I hope that I’ve helped you broaden your understanding and belief in resurrection, so that it might come to be as much about this life as it is about the next one. I consider it a real shame that when most Christians hear the word “resurrection, they think only about the next life, life AFTER death. I think that for our faith in Jesus to be worth anything, it has to lead us to seek and tune into resurrection right here and now in THIS life. I believe that for our faith in Jesus and his resurrection to make a positive difference in our world, we have got to be seeking as many resurrections in THIS life as we possibly can, and not only for ourselves but for others --– resurrections from failure…resurrections from loss and from brokenness…resurrections from divorce and from lost love…resurrections from addiction and poor decisions…resurrection from illness and from financial hardship. In fact, shouldn’t our belief in resurrection make us a people who are all about giving ourselves and each other second and third and fourteenth chances? Shouldn’t the people who claim to believe in the resurrection also be the people who forgive the most and hope the most and believe in one another the most?
May Easter 2011 be a day of resurrection for you and for your loved ones in the here and now. May our celebration this day be one that inspires you to be an agent of Christ’s resurrection power in the here and now, particularly for those who are down and out. Don’t belittle the resurrection or the God who authored it by pushing it off into the next life or relegating it to what happens only after we die. God resurrection power is about so much more than that. God wants to breathe that same breath into you that he breathed into those dry bones in that Babylonian valley. God wants to breathe that same breath that he breathed into Lazarus and into Jesus into YOU and into ALL the people LIVING on this earth, here and now. God wants to breath that resurrection breath into people who feel like giving up…people who feel like there is no hope…people who feel as if they are nothing more than dry, lifeless bones…
“The Spirit of the Lord set me in the middle of a valley…It was full of bones. And God led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of that valley, bones that were very dry and lifeless. And God asked me”…just like He’s asking you this very day…”Can these bones live?”… Well….can they…? Open your eyes…Look around…Resurrection is everywhere…Amen.
