The Corporate Resurrection
Kendall's
Notebook Page 24
By Kendall Brown
Text: I Cor.15: 19-26
April 11, 2004
++++++++++++++
There are at least three resurrections celebrations which can be found
in the Easter story. The first one, of course, is the one without which
no other story would be told. That celebration is the resurrection
of Christ as we remember the story of the empty tomb and the garden discoveries
or a Risen Savior this morning. The second resurrection to be celebrated
today is the promise of our own resurrections as we look to Jesus, the pioneer
of our faith who goes before us in all things, even into death and the resurrection
that makes all things new and defeats the power of death. These first
two celebrations of resurrection are the ones which usually command our attention
and elicit our praise and thanksgiving on this glorious day.
The third story of a resurrection celebration, the most often overlooked,
is the story to which I give my attention this morning. Easter is also
a celebration of the resurrection of the church. When Jesus died on
the cross, the community that had gathered around him also died. Those
who had been with him throughout the Galilean ministry, were scattered to
the four winds by the crucifixion. For three years,
Jesus and his followers, his church if you will, had been holding church
suppers and feeding people, had been going on retreats together to the mountain
sides and hill tops, had prayed together, had held meetings of church council,
had worshipped together and studied Scriptures. They even had had a
few arguments and disagreements. They called on the sick and assisted
the poor. They had marched in a Palm Sunday parade of protest.
About the only thing that we do today in church that they didn’t do was hold
a rummage sale on the first weekend of May.
In all of that doing, the first disciples and other followers of Jesus
had grown very close and the ties of fellowship were strong among them.
When Jesus died on the cross, the community that had gathered around him
also died. Some of Jesus’ followers literally headed for the hills.
Some collected in Jerusalem home’s and crouched behind barred windows and
doors. We have that beautiful story in Luke about two of the dispersed
traveling to Emmaus. Eventually, some of the disciples drifted back to their
homes on the Galilean shores, where the risen Christ found them adrift
in their boats. One thing is certain. The new community of covenant
that Jesus had called and gathered around his mission and ministry was as
dead as the other of Christ that
was removed from the cross by Joseph of Arimethea and taken to a tomb.
I pulled my hair out for most of my senior year of seminary writing my
thesis. My subject was the historicity of the resurrection. That
was a real hair puller because I finally had to conclude that I was trying
to prove the impossible. The resurrection is not an historical event
in the same sense as the Battle of Hastings, The Gettysburg Address, World
War I, the Holocaust, or the day Mark McGuire hit his seventieth home run.
It is a real event. But being and being historical are two different
things. The resurrection is real in the life of the church and in
the hearts of people who have known Jesus as the Risen Christ ever since
that first Easter morning when the women discovered an empty tomb.
The one thing that comes closest to proving that the resurrection actually
happened and is not simply an idle tale is the simple fact that the
church, the other body of Christ, also arose from the dead. The church
is an Easter community. The church is a resurrection community and
not just because we remember the resurrection of Jesus, proclaim it on Easter
and remember the story. The church is an Easter community because
the church also came back to life
on Easter. The Apostle’s Creed declares that Jesus died and descended
into hell. I can’t help but think sometimes that the Apostle’s got that idea
because they themselves descended into their own living hells for those dark
days beginning with Good Friday. The church is an Easter community.
Once it was dead and now it is alive!
This simple premise should be a source of the greatest comfort and inspiration
to us. Being an Easter people is at the heart of who we are and needs
to be at the heart of our theology and our understanding of who we are.
Once we were dead and now we are alive. When we are dead, God calls
us from the grave and makes us alive. God doesn’t seem to have much
use for dead churches.
The predominant emotion on the first Easter as told by the Gospel writers
was fear. The first Easter was a morning of great fear for the dead
church. The hearts of the disciples and of Jesus’ closest friends and
relatives were filled with fear. Fear of death. Fear about what
had happened. Fear about what would happen. Out and out unadulterated
fear drove the fear-filled fretters.
The church as we know it today has it’s own fears. Every time I
pick up a modern living section of some
magazine and read an article with accompanying pictures about a former
beautiful church building that has been converted to sumptuous living space
or
a hip hop home for fine dining, my fears are triggered. The news
about the national decline of our denominations has been around for way too
long, as far as a heart that loves the church is concerned. Terry Whit,
our own local fire and smoke prophet, was running around a couple years
ago quoting your interim pastor for having said that in a decade 20-30% of
all our churches would no longer be open.
Death in the body of Christ is around us and in many tangible ways.
The presence of a death in the body of Christ does bring fear into our hearts.
Just as the women brought their fears to the garden on that first Easter
sunrise, we have some fears to bring to our Easter worship today. In
the garden they found that angels had rolled away the tomb’s stone door.
In the garden they found that their fears were meant by God’s activity in
ways that they could never have imagined.
For one of the women, the curtain of fear began to lift when she heard
the risen Lord call her by name.
As an Easter community, as a church praying to overcome death and dying
by resurrection, we need to listen for how God is calling us. How
does God
call us uniquely as Jesus called Mary by name? Resurrection moved
as an event in the tomb to becoming an event in Mary’s heart as she heard
her name called. Resurrection moves from being an
event to be read about in the Bible and sung about on Easter to becoming
an event that defines us, shapes us and is us as we hear God’s call.
The office of minister in your church graces me with some opportunities
to hear the stirrings of God’s life-giving call that I wouldn’t have in
any other position. I share one of those murmuring calls with you.
On at least three occasions in the last few months, I have visitors in my
office on a weekday morning, all coming with the same question. Through
broken English and through the barriers of my own insufficient Spanish, they
have gotten the question across to me, “Does Christ Church have a worship
service in Spanish?”
I think that God is calling in that question and that God is calling in
the demographics of the very neighborhood where this building lies.
Christ Church is located right smack on the middle of the 47714 zip code
area. The 47714 zip code area has one of the highest concentrations
of Hispanic/Americans in southern Indiana. Furthermore, according to
all the
census figures and projections, in another ten years this zipcode will
have an even greater concentration of minorities with the day arriving sometime
when Caucasian Americans will no longer be the majority.
American cities are littered with the carcasses of dead churches.
They are all churches that did not change with their neighborhoods.
I saw so many of them in St. Louis. For a while some hold out as little
islands of ministry to memories of a by-gone day. Some of the carcasses
become the homes of successful new congregations, and the successes are
the ones that hear the call for ministering to the needs of the local neighborhood.
Some of our UCC churches in Evansville are trying to expand their ministries
by adding a second service to their programs. Bethlehem, Bethel, St.
Lucas, St Peters, St Paul’s and maybe a couple others are all toying in different
ways with a second contemporary service. I don’t really see
a second contemporary service as an answer for Christ Church. All
we would be doing is competing with a bunch of churches that already have
the resources to do a second contemporary service better than we could.
But we have some opportunities that no other UCC church in Evansville
has by virture of our location.
We are geographically located smack in the middle of the greatest concentration
and growing concentration of non-English speaking persons in Evansville and
for many miles around. There is some homey wisdom in the saying “Grow
where God plants you.” The opportunity for growth in ministry and
mission is immense for Christ Church and it is right at our doorstep.
I haven’t got a plan of action but I do hear the call for Christ Church.
I hear the call to be an Easter Church. I hear the call to be a resurrected
church where a new body rises up and takes place of the old in ministry and
mission to the world around. I hear a call, even as Mary heard the
Teacher in the garden, encouraging us to overcome our fears and those fears
are many.
There are three resurrections to be celebrated on Easter. The Resurrection
of Jesus himself. Our own anticipated individual resurrections.
And most importantly the corporate resurrection of the body of Christ, the
church. Easter is a glorious day. And Easter is filled with the
promise of many glorious days ahead, if we heed the call to be an Easter
Church.