March 27, 2005
Acts 10:34-43
    NRSV
John 20:1-18
    NRSV


Resurrection: A Story Beyond Belief
First Congregational Church Ð Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Easter Ð March 27, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Acts 10:34-43/John 20:1-18]

            Christ is Risen!

            ThereÕs the story beyond belief: Christ IS risen!

            Now, letÕs see if we can amplify it a bit. Let me begin by telling you a story that I heard from Elie Wiesel. It is one of my favorite stories about four of the great Hasidic rabbis and it goes like this:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezeritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: ÒMaster of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.Ó And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sassov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: ÒI do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.Ó It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhin to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: ÒI cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.Ó And it was sufficient.

God made man because he loves stories. [The Gates of the Forest]

ItÕs true. God does love stories, and God loves us, which is what the story is all about. What is more, we love stories, too.

            We tell stories all the time. Holidays, like Easter, give us the opportunities to tell them. Sometimes the stories help us understand customs that we have as a part of our family life. I heard one that made that point come home to me. It was about the family that always began preparations for the Easter feast by cutting the ends off the ham. They had done this as long as anyone could remember; it was simply part of the Easter ritual. Finally, as children are wont to do, one of the little ones piped up and asked, ÒWhy do we cut the ends off the ham?Ó Her mother didnÕt know, she just had seen her mother do it. So she suggested that they ask grandma, which they did. Her answer? ÒI donÕt know. Mama always did it. LetÕs ask her.Ó So when great-grandma came they asked her . . . and she began to laugh. ÒWell. I know why I did it, but you know IÕve never understood why you girls have done it all these years.Ó Pressed for the answer, through her laughter, she told them, ÒDarlings, I cut the ends off the ham because the pan I had was too small to hold it when grandpa and I were first married and I liked the pan.Ó Ask some questions this Easter Ð find out about those customs. Listen to the stories.

            The power of stories was made fresh to me just a few days ago. In the space of twenty-four hours I heard from two old and dear friends with whom IÕd lost contact for more than ten years. One was in the area and came for a visit. Another had ÒGoogledÓ me and contacted me by telephone. In both cases, within minutes of finishing the obligatory catch-up stuff, we were telling stories. And as we told those stories the years melted away and it was as though we had never lost touch with one another. Stories draw us together as people. Stories help identify us and define the world in which we live.

            The essence of our Christian faith revolves around the story of one personÕs life. At Christmas time we tell the story of JesusÕ birth and during Holy Week and Easter we tell the story of his death and resurrection. Christian doctrine may seem pretty abstract or esoteric and, sometimes, Christian worship can be formalistic, but neither need be the case, because at root they are stories. In fact, the best definition of Christian worship I have ever heard goes like this: Gather the folk. Tell the story. Break the bread. Go out to love and serve. So, today we gather the folk Ð some weÕve not seen for awhile and some who are with us for the first time Ð and weÕre telling the story. We are telling it by words and music and actions. WeÕre telling it because it makes us who we are Ð to be ÔChristianÕ is to be identified as a Òfollower of Jesus Christ,Ó a teller of the story.

            So, what is the story? You heard it a bit ago in the words of the early churchÕs core-proclamation of the faith, the kerygma. You heard it, too, from a master storyteller named John; letÕs focus on the second telling of the story for a moment. The disciples had taken Jesus from the cross and laid him in a borrowed tomb. After the Sabbath rest one of JesusÕ disciples, Mary Magdalene, came to the tomb and found it empty. She ran to tell the other disciples who in turn ran to the tomb and confirmed her discovery. What is more, Mary had a further experience. A man she thought to be the gardener turned out to be Jesus himself. While she didnÕt recognize him immediately she knew it was Jesus when he spoke her name. Eventually, all those who ran to that empty tomb will hear their names called and like Mary will announce, ÒI have seen the Lord.Ó

            ItÕs a powerful story. ItÕs a simple story. ItÕs beyond belief. I mean, it is a story about a dead man walking. This is the stuff of ghost stories, science fiction, or a great plot idea for a Stephen King thriller, isnÕt it? It even made the comics this morning. The ÔFox TrotÕ cartoonÕs boy genius, Jason, terrorizes his Sunday School teacher comparing Jesus with Obi Wan Kenobi of ÔStar Wars.Õ When she reminds him that the Bible came first, Jason asks if God is going to sue George Lucas for stealing his idea. The final panel of his mother questioning him about why his Sunday School teacher is looking at her in that manner is quite telling. Could it be that there more to this story than we realize?

            Marcus Borg, a Bible scholar and spiritual writer, has been wrestling with how we understand our faith without giving up the world in which we live now. I appreciate the point he makes in his excellent book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith. He writes:

. . . I do not speak of metaphorical fictions, but of metaphorical truths. Because of the importance of this point, I make it in several ways:

I have been told that the German novelist Thomas Mann defined a myth (a particular kind of metaphorical narrative) as  Òa story about the way things never were, but always are.Ó So, is a myth true? Literally true, no. Really true, yes.

To quote a Swedish proverb and then to modify it: ÒTheology is poetry plus, not science minus.Ó The proverb affirms that theological language is more like poetic language than factual language, even as it is more than poetry in that it makes a truth claim. As such, it is not Òscience minus,Ó not inferior to the language of factuality. Thus biblical metaphor is poetry plus, not inferior to factual language.

A Catholic priest once said in a sermon, ÒThe Bible is true, and some of it happened.Ó To make his point obvious: the truth of the Bible is not dependent on its historical factuality.

The same point is made by a Native American storyteller as he begins telling his tribeÕs story of creation: ÒHow I donÕt know it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.Ó [p. 50-51]

What we hear there is the point that truth is more than what we call Ôfacts.Õ Still, for Christians the resurrection is also a Ôfact,Õ because at some point in our journey of faith we have heard our name called and we have been drawn into that story that is beyond belief.

            When the early church proclaimed its faith in the Risen Christ, the word kerygma means Òto heraldÓ or Òproclaim,Ó it did so because the people had had a life-changing encounter with the one they thought dead whom they discovered alive. As they thought about this reality it was more to them than just an intellectual proposition to which they gave their assent. As they understood the resurrection, this story touched the deepest point of the human experience and offered a new sense of self and a new sense of belonging, both to God and to the whole of humanity. We so often get wrapped up in trying to ÔproveÕ the intellectual proposition that we miss the point. The resurrection is the climax, the fulfillment of GodÕs identification with humanity. The resurrection is the triumph of ÔEmmanuelÕ Ð God-with-us.

            Thomas Oden, a tremendous contemporary theologian, has written, ÒAncient exegetes taught that God became human that humanity might become God and that through union with Christ our humanity is deified. That did not imply that we cease being creatures or lose our humanity in God, but that we in faith become partakers of, participants in, or members of ChristÕs own resurrected body. His resurrection points to what we are to become and makes possible the intended and fitting consummation of our humanity.Ó [The Word of Life, p. 453] One of those ancient exegetes, scholars, was Irenaeus who in the second century said, ÒGod became man so that man might become god.Ó This is the point of the story Ð God shares all of life with us, even to the point that death is swallowed up in the Author of Life. God IS with us and with us at every point of our lifeÕs journey and we become Òpartakers in Divine nature.Ó

I guess itÕs a story beyond belief because it is beyond words, though it comes right into the center of our life. This story is not Òonce upon a timeÓ because it is about a present reality. When we greet one another Ð as I greeted you at the beginning of the sermon Ð we say, ÒChrist IS risen!Ó We are not talking about the past, but the present. The Lord IS risen Ð now, today, this very moment. Let me tell you another story, one I may have told before, but thatÕs one of the beauties of stories isnÕt it, they just get better with re-telling!

 Robert William Dale was a Congregational minister and scholar in Britain back in the nineteenth century. He had been the founding principal of the Congregational college, Mansfield, at Oxford University and was now minister at the CarrÕs Lane Church in Birmingham. He was preparing his Easter sermon, well; let me read you his sonÕs account of it:

. . . the thought of the risen Lord broke in upon him as it had never done before. ÒChrist is alive,Ó I said to myself; Òalive!Ó and then I paused: -- Òalive!Ó and then I paused again; Òalive!Ó Can that really be true? Living as really as I myself am? I got up and walked about repeating ÒChrist is living!Ó ÒChrist is living!Ó . . . It was to me a new discovery. I thought that all along I had believed it; but not until that moment did I feel sure about it. I then said ÒMy people shall know it; I shall preach about it again and again until they believe as I do now.Ó [A. W. W. Dale Life of R. W. Dale, p. 642]

Robert William Dale heard his name called that day and he recognized, in a whole new way, that the story was true.

            The Lord IS risen and the story continues to be told as each of us hears his name, her name, turns, and sees who it is speaking to us. And, for each of us, there is the joy, the wonder, and the possibility of life renewed and transformed as we rise ourselves to a life centered in God and in others. The resurrection is present-tense. It happens when we hear our names, see the Lord, and approach life here and now in a new way.

            The resurrection, the Easter story, is a story beyond belief because it is a story that never gets over told. You know stories like that; where we ask Uncle Stanley to tell the story about grandma and grandpa when they were young again. We want to hear the story again and again, because it is part of us, part of who we are, part of what makes us family. The resurrection, the Easter story, is a story like that. The story we tell today affirms life and all of its possibilities. The story we tell today says that God loves us very much and that we, in turn, should love like that, too. ItÕs a story that we can tell because it is our story, too. Today tell the story yourself and, as you do, hear your name spoken for Christ IS risen, in you, today!

Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!