Christ Among Us!

Easter Sunday

This day is the climax and capstone of the church year. Today we say, “Christ is Risen!” And we echo in reply, “Christ is Risen Indeed!” Hebrew-speaking Christians in Jerusalem say, “Ha Mashiyach qam!” Greek-speaking Christians say, “Christos Anesti (Χριστός ἀνέστη)!” Our grandparents in Russia-Ukraine might have said, “Christus ist auferstanden!” Our French-speaking neighbours when we moved to Canada said, “Le Christ est ressuscité.” I can still hear my Zimbabwean brothers and sisters sing out, “Namhla uvukile! Alleluia!”

All around the world we celebrate in every language the reality that Jesus overcame death and hell and has set us free. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

The Idea of Resurrection

What is “resurrection” anyway. Our words are too small to capture the enormity of this event. Lazarus was raised from the dead a few weeks before (John 11), but that just meant that he was alive again – as if he had never died. The resurrection of Jesus means much more than simply “brought back to the life we have on this earth.”

In the reading from John 20, Jesus refers to being glorified, taken into the heart of God and then returned to us in his risen state. When he meets others later in John’s gospel, he does not avoid physical contact. He has now been “glorified”, whatever that means, and stands before them in his risen glory. Resurrection means more than simply “made alive again”. What is that more?

Many think of earth and heaven as two spheres or realms, in which heaven is “up there” and earth is “down here”. Down here is earthly and real; up there is spiritual and only may be real. You can see this viewpoint in the way that we think about the coming of Jesus at the end of times. “Lo he comes with clouds descending …” Jesus will come down from heaven to earth: At least, that’s the way we think of it. He is “up there” now, and then he will be down here with us. You can see this viewpoint also in the way that we talk about what happens to us then, as well as what happens when we do. We will go “up to heaven” to live with Jesus “up there”. 

Of course, the NT uses this language. “You Galileans, why do you stand here looking into the sky. Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go.” (Acts 1:11) But the New Testament also uses other language that suggests something other than this two-level kind of thinking with heaven and spiritual and God “up there somewhere” and earth and physical and real down here around us. The NT also speaks of a new heavens and new earth, something that is already present. It speaks of Jesus appearing, not simply coming back.

Consider the way Luke 17:30 puts it: “It will be just like this on the day that the Son of Man will be revealed …” You hear that note: When [Jesus] will be revealed. Jesus is here now, already, even though we cannot see him. In his second coming, he will be revealed and we will see the one who has always been here with us. Or as Hebrews 9:28 puts it, “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Again, John says in 1 John 2:28: “Now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” Or John the Revelator’s picture of the judgment at the end of all things: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence …” (Rev. 20:11).

The most common metaphor for all of this is that Jesus is “coming” again, but I have emphasised these particular texts to help us see that this does not mean Jesus is somewhere off in the sky and will come down to earth at the end. Rather, Jesus is here, and we will see him. He will step out from behind the curtain, and we will see him. He will take the veil from our eyes, and we will see him.

Paul does use the image of going up in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16 and 17: “The Lord himself will come down from Heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” But taken together with all the other passages, I suggest that Paul is trying to picture something beyond our comprehension and uses images to help us grasp its wonder and glory. I want to offer another image alongside Paul’s – not in place of it, but something to help us get inside of it.

 

As N.T. Wright has noted, we think of the End of all things as being the moment when the earth is destroyed and we go up to Heaven. Earth, we think, will be taken up into Heaven, but the book of Revelations suggests as different picture. I read from Revelations 20 earlier: “The earth and the heavens fled from [God’s] presence.” The next chapter elaborates on that picture in language borrowed from Isaiah 65 and 66: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And there was no longer any sea.” This is the new creation. This is the creation as it was meant to be, and we live in it. Earth is not taken up into Heaven, but the New Heaven and the New Earth come down and swallow up the old creation with all of its faults. This old creation, full of sin and despair, flees from God’s presence, and we live in the New Creation, inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus.

So What?

Where is this new creation? Out there somewhere at the end of time? Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21) Listen to the verses where Jesus said this: “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say – Here it is, or There it is – because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’”

Do you get it? The resurrection is the inauguration of God’s Reign in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We don’t have to wait until the end of time for this new creation, because it is already here in us, in our congregation, in the gathered people of God, stuttering and stammering about, struggling to make it through, and already God’s Reign is here in us!

Wright suggests an image to describe this reality. Think of us as the characters in a play, with an audience that we can’t see because of the floodlights and action that goes on all around us beyond our senses. Then the curtain is raised, floodlights go off and the general lights come on, and we can see what is really happening. We have been on our own little corner of a much larger stage than we knew existed, and when the curtain goes up and the lights all come on, we see what has really been going on all along – the full reign of God in the new heavens and earth.

Really?

Life in the congregation of God’s People is not always easy. It is not always nice. We are not always kind to each other. The old creation lives on in our memories, and we act out of those memories all too often. But we really are a new creation, the promise of the resurrection. Paul says it, “If any one is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Our life together may be filled with failure and regret: In that respect, it’s a lot like the disciples’ experience with Jesus. That’s why Jesus died for them and for us. Jesus rose for them and for us. Jesus creates heaven and earth anew in them and in us.

The Texts

Look back at the texts that we read. Isaiah 25 draws the picture that I have been trying to describe:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the LORD God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

This is an image of the new creation, brought to us by the resurrection of Jesus! This is a picture of the fuller reality of God’s Reign, already here and yet still coming.

In John 20, we have the story that we have heard many times – Mary Magdalene (and some other women named in the other gospels) come to Jesus’ grave early in the morning; they find it empty, so Mary runs and tells Peter and John that the grave is empty. They run to the grave and find it empty, with the evidence left behind of Jesus’ graveclothes. Then Mary returns. She sees two angels who ask her why she’s crying; she replies that the grave is empty and she doesn’t know where Jesus’ body is. Then she sees Jesus, but doesn’t recognise him until he says her name, “Mary.” She falls at his feet, and he tells her not to touch him because he is on his way to the fullness of the Godhead. Mary then returned to the disciples and told them what she had seen.

The note about Jesus going to his Father – what I called “the fullness of the Godhead” – is a clue to the inauguration of the new creation: When Jesus is glorified, he makes all things new. But I note just one small point about this interaction between Jesus and Mary, decisive in helping us understand the new creation. Mary did not recognize the risen Lord until he said her name. She knew him because he knew her. At the very centre of the new creation, we see the reality of relationships.

I said that the new heavens and earth have already come, and that we find them in our midst. How do we find the beginnings of the new creation? Where is it? It is in our relationships – with God and with each other. The way that God cares for us and the way that we care for God. The way that you care for your brother or sister and the way that they care for you.

You remember the old TV show, “Cheers”? It was set in the bar where “everyone knows your name.” You sometimes find this kind of caring enveloping friendship outside of the church – quite often, in fact. It’s something that God has placed within us and wants to nurture in all of our lives, but we take it a step further in the church.

Remember Philippians 2: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.” This is the mark of God’s Reign. This is the beginning of the new creation, brought in by Jesus’ death and resurrection. We take care of each other at the deepest most fundamental levels.

An old preacher’s story makes the point. A man dreamed that he had died and found himself standing before two doors. One door was marked as the way to Hell. It opened, and he saw a great banquet table filled with the best food and drink imaginable – just like the vision in Isaiah 25. But everyone seated at the table had only a spoon chained to their wrist, which was far too long to turn around and put into their mouths. They suffered forever straining to reach the bounty before them, forever going hungry.

He turned towards the other door, marked as the way to Heaven. It opened, and he saw a similar great feast, all the best food and drink available for the guests sitting at the table. He saw that they also had the same long spoons chained to their wrists, but they were all feeding each other. They enjoyed the banquet to the full as each one looked out for the interests of the other.

It’s a simple picture, but it is also true. Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates the new reality of God’s Reign in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We can step into that new creation as we embrace the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, a reality we see most clearly as we enfold each other in the love of Christ. The New Creation really is the place where everyone knows your name. God knows it, and God calls you and me by name, just as he spoke to Mary.

It’s true. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Easter Sunday 2024

Scriptures

Isaiah 25:6–9

⁶ On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. ⁷ And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; ⁸ he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

⁹ It will be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

 John 20:1–18

The Resurrection of Jesus

20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ² So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴ The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷ and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸ Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, ⁹ for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples returned to their homes.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹² and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

 

Focus Statement

In the garden, when Jesus called Mary’s name, all things were made new. In a time when women were considered insignificant, the resurrected Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, trusted her to be a reliable witness to his resurrection, and commissioned her to be the first to preach the good news of his resurrection. Since that day, social constructs and barriers are broken down, the shroud is lifted, and sins are forgiven. We are a new creation. Death is swallowed up, and life is everlasting! Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is among us!

Fixing What’s Broken (The New Creation)

Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. Today is Trinity Sunday. It makes sense to move from the day when we remember the giving of the Holy Spirit to a day when we remember the nature of God – three persons; one essence. God is one in essence, a perfect unity, but experience God as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I don’t plan to explain the trinity today – that kind of exploration is useful, but it is best done in another setting, with people who can see more deeply into such mysteries than I can. Instead, I want to reflect on the Scriptures that the lectionary gives us to think of Trinity.

Genesis 1 tells of creation, the action of God at the beginning of everything. “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep.” “And God said, ‘Let there be …, and there was ….’” God: Creator, Spirit, and Word. John 1 picks up on this creation account and makes clear what this creative word is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Genesis 1: God – Creative Power, Word, and Spirit – present in the beginning, an eternal three persons, one essence. Matthew 28 refers then to the same trinity as part of what we call the Great Commission: “Baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Last Sunday, we performed a baptism as part of our service. You may remember that Pastor Lee used these words as they poured the water over Katie’s head: “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

A natural question follows. Why does the lectionary tie the Great Commission to the creation narrative like this? What’s going on? There are various possible answers, I suppose, and I want to consider first Genesis 1 and then Matthew 28 to get at least one of them.

Creation

Genesis 1 one has several important themes. One of them is the way that God brings order into chaos. The first statement about creation is that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. Formless – Empty – Deep: in the Hebrew, tohu va vohu … tehom. These are words that mean chaos and trouble. The deep is where bad things come from. Formless emptiness is dangerous. The first readers of Genesis would have expected trouble.

Then the narrative shifts: “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” So begins an ordering of chaos, so that by the end of the chapter all is well ordered and made ready for the human pair.

A second theme is how good this ordering is. The next sentence after “there was light” is “God saw that the light was good.” Throughout the six creative days, this theme repeats: in verse 10, God calls the sea and dry land good; in verse 13, God calls vegetation in all its forms good; in verse 18, God calls the sun, moon, and stars good; in verse 21, God calls all living creatures good; and finally in verse 31, God calls the whole of creation, ruled over by the man and the woman made in his image, very good. God’s creation is good – when God orders it and blesses it and rules over it.

A third theme is the place that the man and the woman occupy in creation. As we saw, God calls creation ruled over by the human couple “very good”. They are made “in the image and likeness of God.” So, the human pair were made “like God”. Why does the text add “in the image”. We can see what the word “image” means here by listening to the Ten Commandments, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” Why not? Because the man and the woman were the image. The Israelites were not to bow down to any other creature as God’s image, because they were God’s image.

In short, the human couple in creation represent God, ruling over the earth in God’s place. What does that mean? Remember what God did in creating the world. God took a place of chaos and disorder and made it ordered and good. God brought shalom – wholeness and peace and good – into creation and then gave the human couple the task of continuing to bring order and peace.

Fast forward to the present. How have we done? How well have we brought order and peace into chaos and disorder? Not very well! Which sets the stage for Matthew 28.

The Great Commission

As with the Creation account, there are many themes we could consider. The little statement, “but some doubted”, is worth exploring. In the presence of the risen Lord, some were not sure what this meant or how they should respond. We can take courage from their confusion. When we feel doubts and uncertainty, we know we’re in good company, and we know that Jesus does not abandon us, any more than he abandoned his first followers.

We could also explore the precise nature of the commission – going; baptizing; teaching. These three words take us deep into the life of the first church, but they belong in another sermon, not today.

I want instead to note the way that Jesus begins the commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.” Jesus is the Word, the creative word of God present at the creation of the heavens and the earth. He holds the authority of the ruler of the universe because he made all that is. His commission for the disciples, then, is the action of the ruler telling his representatives what they are to do. Just as God left the human pair at the beginning of the world as his images to rule over the earth, Jesus leaves the church as his representatives to bring the good news of the gospel to all people. That is, we are restoring creation – fixing what’s broken.

Why?

Why would Jesus give the church this task? Why do we need a new creation? Simply because the old creation has failed. The human race had the task of ordering creation and bringing about peace and justice throughout the world. We failed. We continue to fail. Therefore, the church has the task of bringing all people into the new creation where God reigns in perfect justice and peace.

This task is not a political task. We are not trying to create a Christian nation, which would mirror the Old Testament people of God. When Jesus went to his death, his disciples were ready to fight to protect him. Jesus stopped them with these words: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, then my servants could fight for me.” (John 18:36) As it is, God’s reign is not a political realm. Again, in Luke 17, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” This is not a personal abstract spirituality, but rather it affirms that God’s reign is made visible in the church.

God’s reign is much bigger than the church; it includes the whole of creation. But we are given the task of making God’s reign visible. We show what a community of people who have been baptized into the death of Christ look like. We show what a community of people who “obey everything that Jesus commands” looks like. We make visible the new creation in which God’s Spirit is present and active. In short, we are the ones who complete the mandate given to the first man and woman in Genesis 1 to work at the task of bringing order and peace and wholeness and goodness into the world. That’s our job. That’s who we are.

An Objection

Some people think that the world is actually okay and that we don’t really need this gospel of the kingdom. I have news for you. It’s not okay. It’s bad. There are places here and there where God’s Spirit is active, bringing goodness and life, but the truth is we live in a world that is on the brink of destruction. Chaos and disorder threaten us all around. I don’t need to go into details; just listen to the news for a week and you will be sufficiently depressed.

Someone might reply, “The world’s bad, but I’m okay. I don’t need any help. I can handle what faces me and my family.” Maybe you can. I admit that I’m doubtful. Life has a way of throwing a curve ball at us. Just when we think we know what’s happening, it drops out of the strike zone and we miss the ball completely. Life’s like that.

But even if you can handle what happens to you personally, can you take care of the climate crisis? Can you end the war in Ukraine? My daughter-in-law used to work in a school in a deprived neighbourhood; she saw poverty and its effects up close. Can you fix the poverty that destroys families and fuels addictive behaviour?

The only way you can really think you’re okay is by drawing a circle around yourself and keeping all the problems outside. But it doesn’t work. Sooner or later someone you know, someone you care about, gets caught up in chaos and pain. Then you remember that it’s our job in the church to bring order into chaos, to bring peace into conflict, to bring light into darkness.

How Do We Do This?

How do we do this? That’s the question. Some people reduce the answer to handing out tracts or going door to door with a gospel presentation. The first church did it another way. They told about the resurrection over and over again, and they lived out the Great Commission: Teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commands.

That action – living it out – was critical. Stephen Neill was a missionary scholar. Here is his description of Christians in the first three hundred years of the church’s life:

In those days to be a Christian meant something. Doubtless among the pagans there were many who lived upright and even noble lives. Yet all our evidence goes to show that in that decaying world sexual laxity had gone almost to the limits of the possible, and that slavery had brought with it the inevitable accompaniments of cruelty and the cheapening of the value of human life. Christians were taught to regard their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. The Church did not attempt to forbid or abolish slavery; it drew the sting of it by reminding masters and slaves alike that they had a common Master...and that they were brothers in the faith. (Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 1964: 41)

I like that line: “In those days to be a Christian meant something.” Christians were different – in a good way! I’ve used this example before, and it’s worth repeating again. A hundred years ago, my ancestors in Ontario were part of the Brethren in Christ (Tunkers). Morris Sider (I think) tells how they used to have Love Feasts each year, and before they could take part in feetwashing and communion, they had to make sure there was no sin in their lives. Some of them were farmers who had crossed the border and bought farm equipment in the state of New York. Occasionally, a farmer would realize he had not paid duty on what he bought, so he went down to the border to declare the item and pay duty on it. The border guards declared that they never worried about the plain people (as they called us), because they knew that we would always come back and pay.

I think that’s really cool! Integrity was baked into their lives so that the border guards knew they were telling the truth. What would it look like if the way that God wants the world to be were baked into our lives? It would take another sermon to explore what that would look like, but I  can summarize it by using the terms we heard in the Creation account: We would be people who bring order into chaos, peace into conflict, God’s presence into every arena of life.

Drew Strait (NT prof at AMBS) tells a story of defusing conflict and seeking peace, even in the vitriol that passes for virtual conversations online. He had written an article on 9/11 and Christian nationalism, which appeared online. One of the commenters attacked him quite viciously, and Strait describes his peaceable response – leading to the commenter deleting his attack from the conversation. Even in the polarization of contemporary politics, it is possible to build for peace.

Conclusion

Part of the trouble is that we want quick results. We want to know what we can do so that things are better right away. Remember Neill’s description of the first church? They made their mark and conquered the Roman Empire with God’s love, but it took them three hundred years. They were small groups of people scattered throughout the cities of the Roman Empire. They really did not look like representatives of the king of the universe, but they were!

We also may not feel like a place filled with God’s power. Eighty to a hundred or so people, so many of us over 70 years old – and you think that this is where God reveals God’s reign to the people of the earth? You bet it is! It’s a long slow process, working night and day. That’s why Jesus says in the Great Commission, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age!”

We play our part: maybe actively; maybe quietly; living out the resurrection of Jesus every day. We pray and we live Saint Francis’ prayer, bringing about the new creation, the world as God meant it to be:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

4 June 2023

Sermon Texts:

Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a

Matthew 28:16 to 20

Focus Statement:

God gives us the commission to "make disciples" -- that is, to represent God recreating the world the way that God wants it to be. We are God's people inviting everyone around us to join in the new creation.

Thinking Ahead Question: What is broken in our world, and how can we fix it?

Digging Deeper:

1. What is wrong with our world?

2. What can we do about it?

3. How do you feel about the idea that fixing the world may take 300 years?

4. What examples do you know about of God’s kingdom breaking into our lives? How can we participate in bringing in the new creation?