An Eternal Presence

4/20/03 Easter Sunday

Rev. Joy R. Haertig

This past week I found myself recalling a silly childhood story that I have shared with you before about an experiment in resuscitation.  I would like to share it with you again.

It was a warm spring day in Wichita, Kansas and a friend and I were looking for something interesting to do.  We decided it would be fun to do an experiment, so we headed for the local pond to fish.  After landing a small fish a-piece, we went home to dissect them on the garage floor.  My plan was to take the fish apart, put it back together again and return it to the pond where we found it. (Was this naiveté or the beginning of a Messiah complex of sorts?)

I sliced the fish open, studied its various parts, placed each piece back carefully and then stood back to watch what might occur.

The fish did not move.  It did not flip its tail; it did not move its little fin. My experiment in resuscitation did not work.  The best thing for that fish was to be given a child's memorial service and buried in a little hole in the ground.

I remember feeling badly for the fish afterwards and had wished I had left it alone.

Theologians and skeptics, sometimes do a similar thing to the story of Jesus' resurrection.  They dissect it, take it apart and study the pieces. When we dissect such a mysterious and miraculous story it can sound like an argument over whether Jesus was resuscitated or resurrected.  We can end up with the notion that Jesus was supernaturally raised as a corpse from the tomb - resuscitated back into the person he was when he died such a gruesome death on the cross. 

We forget that in most of the post-resurrection stories in the New Testament, that his friends and followers did not recognize him by sight.  There was something different about Jesus; he was not the same.  Resurrection is not resuscitation. 

(I have come to believe that) Resurrection means that Jesus became a spiritual and divine reality. This spiritual and divine reality of the Risen Christ is what we celebrate on Easter.

We do not celebrate something that ONLY happened in the first century, we celebrate an eternal spiritual and divine reality. On Easter we celebrate that:

(1) The dark tomb of fear and hatred does not have the final word.

(2) When we lament the world around us, we hear God's Easter promise - “Creation's future is in the province of the God who is never silenced, not even by a cross.” (John Thomas, President of the UCC)

(3) Easter means that the Risen Christ can empower us today, to create a world that embraces God's shalom for all people.

(4) On Easter we celebrate that the resurrection is the good news of God's transforming love.

(5) We celebrate it every Sunday we gather for worship.

(6) We live it every time we seek to mend that which is broken in our lives and in the world around us.

In the midst of the war with Iraq, I do not believe that the Risen Christ takes sides; nor do I believe that this war is an opportunity for us to convert Muslims to Christianity.  At times such as this, we have the opportunity to  be the hands and feet of Christ.  I see signs of the Risen Christ in those that bandage the wounded and have the courage to set aside their personal safety to rescue the imprisoned and in those who aid in the rebuilding of a country torn apart by a dictator and by war.

I see the Risen Christ in those individuals and families who use their abundance to make a difference in the world around them.  We hear so many horror stories about corporations that misuse their funds and whose ethics are lost in the muck of their greed.  It is important for us to know that there are people of means that use their abundance in the spirit of love and caring.

I see the Risen Christ in people like Robert Young, a Bellevue entrepreneur that was voted national Hometown Hero by the Volvo Company.  Young is the founder of a charity that builds homes for poor Native Americans.  He was a successful businessman when he happened to pick up a paper while on a business trip to New Mexico and read about how elderly Indians were freezing to death on reservations across the northern Plains.  He ended up “trading in a life aimed toward personal gain for one of giving.”  

Or the Mariner's former catcher, Dave Valle, who has helped create a small business loan system in the Dominican Republic which enables Dominicans who want to start up or expand a business.  His business targets the poor in a country where roughly one quarter live below the nation's poverty level, approximately $100 per month for a family of five. 

I see the eternal presence of the Risen Christ working right here in our own congregation.  Over the past few years I have seen the ministry of prayer and caring grow in our own congregation. I was moved as I listened to one of our members in recovery from a serious bout with depression, as she spoke about the presence of friends that came and sat at her home while her husband was at work.  “For the first time”, she said, “I felt like I was actually seeing the face of Christ in these wonderful people that sat with me.” 

I had no doubt that the Risen Christ was present the Sunday I finished greeting people at the door and turned to see a group of 45 or so people circling the young couple that had shared during joys and concerns that they had just recently had a miscarriage.  Hands were stretched out on the shoulders of others; heads bowed and hearts joined in prayers of strength, love and understanding that would aid that couple in the rebuilding of hope.

To participate in the eternal reality of Christ's resurrection is to choose more than just waking each morning to resuscitate yet another day of breathing, working and consuming.  It may mean sacrificing personal time in order to embody God's love for someone in need, using our skills and resources to change the world, one house at a time or allowing God's healing love to enter our own broken hearts. 

Where do you see or feel the eternal presence of the Risen Christ?  I pray that each one of you could tell at least one story.

A prayer I found this week gave thanks to God for the ongoing gift of Easter as that “amazing [experience] when the evil in us lies down dead, and the good in us is born again.  [Easter] is the birth day of life and love and goodness.”

On Easter we do not celebrate the resuscitation of Jesus' body - we celebrate the eternal gift of Christ's divine, spiritual and EMPOWERING resurrected presence. 

“Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!”

Let us pray: Powerful and loving God, you have raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  God, raise us too.  May fresh life burst among us like buds awakening to the spring.  May shells of distrust and self-hatred which keep us from loving be broken away so that new life can emerge.  May new community spring up where fear has kept us from the stranger.  Keep us patient in making peace and building justice.  Teach us to trust the slow process from seed to stem, from stem to flower, from flower to fruit.  Breathe on us and fill us with your Risen Spirit.  Amen.