| "Are you ready? Christ is risen! [Christ is risen indeed!] Alleluia! [Alleluia!] Amen! [Amen!] Good! We're still full of the Easter spirit. For this is the Third Sunday of Easter, the season called Eastertide. One of the important reasons why Jesus was raised from the dead was to form a people who live the resurrection. And we are here today in the hope of becoming just such a people. William Sloane Coffin put it this way: "Christ is risen…for us-to put love in our hearts, decent thoughts in our heads, and a little more iron up our spines. Christ is risen to convert us … from something less than life to the possibility of…being fully alive." We are called by God to live the resurrection, to become a community of people fully alive in love! Still, it is a Good-Friday kind of world out there, as the if-it-bleeds-it-leads news reminds us each and every day. This world of ours is filled with suffering and pain and violent death, with SARS and terrorism and militarism. It is a place with no great abundance of love for God or neighbor! But to us who live in a Good-Friday kind of world there comes from God this Easter imperative: "Live the resurrection! Draw on the energy and love of the risen Christ, and be transformed so that you can take part in changing the world!" We regularly pray to God saying, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Well, through the resurrection, God is saying back to us, "O.K. I've done my part. Now, help Me to establish My reign on earth, here and now. Help Me to create on earth communities of resurrection life, in which there is love and justice, in which the hungry are fed, in which the oppressed are raised to an equality of status and the tears of all are turned to laughter." It was to create communities of just this kind that Jesus labored, and died, and was raised-to create harmonious, reconciled communities of people, like the community of which the psalmist sings in our First Lesson: "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!" Yes, it was to create communities of newness of life, of love and justice, that Jesus was raised from the dead, communities like the one described in this morning's Second Lesson. Listen again to that passage: "Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.… With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need." Wow! What impressive testimony to the risen Christ those early Christians were able to give! What incredible generosity, what bold and loving living the resurrection of Christ had made possible! In both word and deed, through lives touched and transformed, those early Christians bore living witness to the power for renewal that is born of the risen Christ. And that first Christian community in Jerusalem was not the only one visibly transformed by the power of the risen Christ. Some 120 years later, in the mid-second century, this description of the Christian community in the city of Rome was written by Justin Martyr (First Apology 14): " … we who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with [persons] of different tribes because of (their different) customs, now after the manifestation of Christ live together and pray for our enemies." And what occurred by the power of the resurrection among the Christian communities of the first and second centuries can occur among us in this twenty-first century as well! The same power that broke the bonds of death then can also bring communities to fullness of life now. You see, the most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is not an empty tomb or even the grandeur and beauty of an Easter Sunday service. No, the most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is a community of people fully alive, a community of Christians whose life together has become so dramatically different, so radically changed for the better, that there can be no other explanation for it than the presence of the risen Christ. So why does it seem so hard today to find communities of "resurrection" Christians? Well, one of the reasons is, I think, that modern America has come to disvalue the whole concept of "community." Yes, the concept itself is becoming increasingly foreign to those of us reared in this industrialized, "corporatized" Western world, a world that stresses rugged individualism, and self-advancement, and acquisition, far, far more than it encourages the development of loving, sharing communities. It was the Industrial Revolution that first shifted us away from the old-time social order that stretched far back to years B.C. In that social order-the one that underlies Psalms, and Acts, and Justin-in that social order the basic units for providing persons' security and economic well-being were the household and the community. But in our present social order, the basic units for providing persons' security and economic well-being are the company and the corporation. Now, in the old order, the household sought to maximize its members' quality of life and well-being, but in the new order, the corporation is seeking to maximize something quite different from that-not the well-being of its employees, but rather its profits and market share. And today, maximizing profits has brought about downsizing and the increase in unemployment to the 6% figure announced this week. And whereas in the old days the households' interests closely paralleled the collective interests of the communities they constituted, corporations' interests today are becoming more and more globalized and are showing less and less affinity to the interests of the communities in which they are located. In fact the globalization of production and the easy shifting of capital and labor markets works against any attributing of value to rootedness within a particular community. In the modern market, we are asked to adapt to constant flux, change, and transition. And in the modern market we are also asked to substitute consumption for self-sacrifice and hedonism for the restraint of ego. I spoke during Lent about that good old list of the seven deadly sins-greed, envy, gluttony, lust, pride, anger, sloth. And I told you about how the Unilever corporation is making a bundle of money by marketing delicious ice-cream bars named after those sins, all the while helping to trivialize "sin" in people's minds. Well, those bars that were then being marketed in South Africa and Australia, have now become available in England and Europe, and this fall they will be coming to the United States. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, just a symptom of how corporations are working to transform that old list of sins into a new roster of things that "make for the good life." They're making sin seem somehow "good." You all know CBS's current "Survivor" series, set in the Amazon. Like all of its predecessors over the past three years this series makes a tidy profit for the network by airing for all to see people's envy, lust, gluttony (yes, those special prizes of food and drink that they gorge down and then throw up), pride, anger, and even sloth (we were shown how one group of four were so confident they were "in control" of voting others off that they no longer needed to participate in doing the chores). And of course, all the while, the whole gaggle of them are being motivated by greed, by their willingness to do almost anything to win that $1,000,000! Oh yes, the game is about a group, a group of 16 people, but they are not a community. If anything, they are an anti-community. And in it, one needs to form and use strategic alliances, but none of that is ever for the good of all. It is always about the ultimate victory of one. And, oh yes, there is sharing and so-called "giving"! But it is never altruistic; it is always self-interested. "Survivor" celebrates rugged individualism, and self-advancement, and acquisition, and it disvalues forming a loving and sharing community. "Survivor," like much of American society, places positive value on things to which Christianity assigns negative value-the 7 deadly sins, and reducing a group of persons to a single survivor-instead of building a community, pitting them against each other and calling that a triumph! Yet "Survivor" is a powerful symbolization of the values and dynamics that are at work in our society, values and dynamics that are dead wrong and that work against the development of just and loving communities. But this show helps us to see clearly many of the reasons why we American Christians have trouble living the resurrection. Quite simply put, many of our society's most basic values and dynamics are antithetical to the building of communities that are devoted to creating fullness of life for all persons, rather than for just some. No wonder we today have trouble understanding the kind of commitment to communal solidarity and well-being spoken of by Psalm 133, and Acts 4, and Justin Martyr. No wonder we have trouble understanding the kind of commitment to communal solidarity and well-being that can even still be found far closer to home. Let me share with you a story I've told before. But it's a good one! It has been recounted to us by Craig Anderson, a now-retired Episcopal Bishop of South Dakota, and it's about a community of Native American Christians and a Lakota woman named Zona Fills-the-Pipe. A group of earnest, good-hearted white American Christians were visiting the Lakota reservation. They were introduced to Zona, and in due course they asked her to share with them her life story. She began by speaking lovingly of her family and relatives, and then she described members of her church community. After she had gone on for about ten minutes, one of the listeners interrupted her impatiently, and said, "But Zona, when are you going to tell us about yourself?"With eyes cast down to the ground, Zona quietly responded, "I've been telling you about myself." You see, Zona possessed the gift of seeing herself as part of a vital community, a community of faith that encompassed her family and friends, those to whose well-being she was devoting her life. So to describe herself she needed to describe them, her community. Now, Zona's way of seeing herself is much closer to that of the earliest Christians than is our own. For Zona's culture has prepared her much better than ours to grasp what it means to be a community, to be a people living the resurrection. Today, on this Third Sunday of Easter, we are reminded that God has already done God's part. Easter has happened. The resurrection has occurred, and all of life has been cast into new perspective. And now the task is ours, the task of allowing the resurrection of Christ to transform us into a community that is knit together into one heart and soul, into a community that cares and shares, into a community that comes fully alive in love. As we leave worship this morning, God asks us to choose whether we will continue to support by inaction a Good-Friday kind of world or whether we will draw on the energy and love of the risen Christ to help create an Easter world that is fully alive in love. Listen again to Justin Martyr's description of a people living the resurrection: " … we who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with [persons] of different tribes because of (their different) customs, now after the manifestation of Christ live together and pray for our enemies." Yes, Justin's community lived the resurrection! Christ is risen! [Christ is risen indeed!] Now, let's learn today's refrain. Repeat after me, adding on the word "indeed." Ready? We shall live the resurrection! [We shall live the resurrection indeed!] O.K., now. Let's do the whole thing-both parts, old and new: Christ is risen! [Christ is risen indeed!] We shall live the resurrection! [We shall live the resurrection indeed!] Alleluia! [Alleluia!] Amen! {Amen!] Let us pray: Amen |
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