(graphic is the "Empty Tomb" by Dr. He Qi, professor at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. He Qi is a tutor for master candidate students in the Philosophy Department of Nanjing University. He is also a member of the China Art Association and a council member of the Asian Christian Art Association. Graphic used under Creative Commons license)
Lectionary Scripture - I Corinthians 15:19-26
"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."
“Ending Deathliness”
Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, once wrote that through the resurrection of Jesus, God broke all the world’s vicious cycles of deathliness. In doing so, a weary old heaven, jaded old earth, and conflicted old Jerusalem could be broken open to new and healthier possibilities. Brueggeman says that the first breaking of the deathliness tradition occurred when “uncredentialed” women became the first to declare to “credentialed” male apostles that Christ had risen. So Mary Magdalene’s declaration to the male apostles that she had “seen the Lord” caused great bewilderment and astonishment. And even for Mary and her companions, Brueggeman says that what they witnessed in seeing a resurrected Jesus was beyond any means they had for explaining such an exhibition of God’s power over death and life. Brueggeman then comments that this singular event is what the church stakes its life and witness upon. As the Apostle Paul put it, it’s the defeat of “the last enemy” which is death itself. Brueggeman closes his commentary with saying that, “Easter invites us to imagine, embrace, and live in a world that is without fear of death or guilt." It is no wonder then that the religious and secular authorities of Jesus time recognized the Easter proclamation to be dangerously subversive. They recognized it as such because the world of their time organized itself around all the death and guilt it could propagate.
Many of us today would question the idea that the world’s viciousness and deathliness have been broken or have come to an end. It seems that we continue living upon a jaded old earth and certainly a conflicted Jerusalem still stands. My guess is that a good many of us feel increasingly hemmed in by these realities rather than freed of them. And for some, their world may feel increasingly like a choke hold that’s growing tighter and tighter, constricting one’s breath to the point that it’s barely enough on which to survive. And friends let’s be honest because for thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children each day that is their experience, i.e. they simply don’t survive. It’s the case since between 160,000 to 180,000 precious lives leave this earth daily -- many of which succumb to the ravages of poverty, disease, hunger, starvation, non-existent or inadequate healthcare, war, greed, environmental degradation, religious intolerance and the unremitting violence and oppression that accompanies all this deathliness.
One might ask the question that if from your easy chair or whatever comfortable life situation you have, God expected you to witness each episode of deathliness as it happened through the course of a day and you had to do so despite whatever you would witness, how much of that deathliness could you take before you yourself would not want to live any longer? How long would it be before you cried out, “Lord, take me away from all this death, from all this suffering?” Would it take five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, a half day, the whole day? Or would you not be impacted at all? Would you summon some damned inane excuse to shield your psyche from the horror and say, “It’s not my problem. I’ve worked hard to establish the comforts and securities I have. Everyone else can do the same and pull themselves up by their bootstraps just like I did.” If you or someone you know has arrived to such a place in their thinking, then God have mercy.
My guess for most of us is that the world’s deathliness overwhelms us. It’s not that we don’t want it to be different. It’s simply that we feel helpless in the face of it. And due to that helplessness we give up and settle for what we have and live in the mediocrity of it no matter how gilded our cage is. So we settle for a lack the creativity and resourcefulness and ultimately a lack of resolve to force change when and where it’s needed -- whether that has to do with a rather small matter or situation or something of much greater importance. But then there’s also the collusion we do with the world’s deathliness because we like the comforts and securities it provides if we agree in turn to continue propping up the faulty premises or mediocrity upon which it exists.
In case it isn’t obvious already from what you’ve read above, there’s one assertion I have absolutely no affection for in this world and it’s what I call the “bootstrap premise.” But another premise with which I have little patience is when we allow unjust behavior to keep on happening because it fails to rise to someone’s sense of what warrants intervention. Institutional Christianity is so replete with examples past and present that it makes any sane person stop and cringe. The childhood sex abuse scandal rocking so many faith traditions these days is one example.
I can also remember a much different circumstance at my church when serving as a pastor in Vancouver, Canada. This incident followed the decision by a United Nations’ coalition of member countries to invade Iraq in the early 1990s. At a congregational prayer meeting as the invasion was taking place, a lay minister waxed on with pride that not since the Crusades had the Christian nations of the world come together to take down an Islamic foe. Fortunately a new young adult member took the individual on and stridently condemned his thinking as un-Godly and most certainly un-Christian. Thankfully in her faith journey to that point, she had already arrived to the place that Brueggeman mentioned above, i.e. she had already begun “to imagine, embrace, and live in a world without fear of death or guilt.” Looking back on that incident now, she was in the place and space that the authority types in our lives dread. They dread it because it’s subversive and because it speaks out and refuses to be organized around fear, death, or guilt.
There is too much riding these days on humanity’s future. Too much riding on it to let ourselves collude with the world’s deathliness and mediocrity and the way it tries to keep us in our place with fear, death, and guilt. So as God resurrected Christ and as Jesus made that an undeniable reality in the minds of a precious few who society and culture then dismissed as unbelievable, let that same undeniable reality resurrect you. Move on from any vestige of something or someone organized around fear, or death, or guilt, or complacency, or mediocrity. Move on from the work supervisor who’s threatened by your resolve and creativity for a better and healthier world. Move on from the minister who wants you to join him or her in their confining constricting little box of religious or supposedly “spiritual” ways. Move on so that when the end comes you’ll be standing with Christ for having helped to bring down any form of evil that ever organized around fear or death or guilt or complacency or mediocrity. Do so because what you will be a part of is nothing less than handing over the Peaceable Kingdom to the one who is our God, our Father, our Mother.
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