Christ Church Uniting Disciples and Presbyterians 1300 Kailua Rd

Christians don’t all celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on the same date. [The Orthodox Easter celebration this year falls on May 5^th.] Just about the entire Christian movement, however, shares the ancient Easter call and response “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

This was brought home to me last spring at St. Michael’s Skete, a monastery in the mountains of northern New Mexico. On a dirt floor, I stood for more than two hours with about thirty-five men, women and children in a tiny Greek Orthodox chapel.

Beeswax candles dripped into sand trays. Dozens of Icons adorned the walls. The smell of smoldering cedar and pinion incense hung in the air. Most of the liturgy was chanted in a strange tongue. As a protestant clergyperson, I had not expected to be invited to share in Holy Communion. Even so, I was offered “blessed bread” to eat while the Orthodox received Communion. Again and again throughout the service we united in responding to Fr. John’s call---He is risen/He is risen indeed! It was a powerful experience of the Body of Christ. “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

These Easter words of call and response have a biblical basis. By that I mean, they are found in the New Testament. The fanfare of the bells was followed this morning with Matthew’s Easter witness in three voices.

On the first day of the week at daybreak, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see Jesus’ tomb. Roman soldiers stood guard. A shining angel appeared suddenly and rolled back the stone from the entrance to the tomb. It was too much for the guards. They fainted dead away. The angel turned to the women and said, “Do not be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised.” And the church shouts, “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

Matthew’s is not the only biblical version of testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. There are several different resurrection appearance stories in the Gospels. The entire New Testament is founded upon the conviction, indeed, the experience, that Jesus, who was crucified, dead and buried is alive and present in the community. In multiple voices, members of the movement saluted each other and each day saying, “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

Much that interests modern scientific minds is simply omitted from New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. In several stories, disciples don’t recognize him at first. In one story, Jesus forbids Mary to touch him. In another story, Thomas is instructed to touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. In one story, Jesus suddenly appears inside a locked room. In another, Jesus eats some fish. What’s going on here?

If you’re not familiar with the various biblical accounts of Jesus’ appearances to his disciples after his resurrection, what I was just doing was to note some of the differences among the several post resurrection appearance stories.

An attorney right out of law school would have a field day cross-examining these witnesses. The biblical testimony about Jesus’ resurrection is diverse, potentially contradictory, sometimes fantastic, sometimes Unbelievable. And still, Christians gather across time and space and proclaim, “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

To the best of my ability, I will try to answer some of these questions. I will say what “He is Risen” means to me. In due course this morning, I will invite each of you, in your own way and to the best of your ability, to unite with one another in-and-as Christ’s Resurrected Body.

Before I go on, however, I want to offer some reassurance. Also, I want to explain why I am taking the approach I have chosen this morning. There are many in the Christian movement, some in this room, for whom the difficulties and apparent contradictions of the biblical resurrection stories pose no concern. To you I say,

“Friends: I honor your trust in God. I believe that you and I are united in Christ even though my interpretation of the resurrection may seem vastly different from you own. Inasmuch as you are confident in your faith, I invite your patience and prayer as, together this morning, we reach out to others whom God also loves.”

There are persons in the world, including some in this room, for whom the Bible stories strain credulity beyond the breaking point, for whom a personal and literal affirmation that Jesus was raised from the dead simply lacks integrity.

For them the choice appears to be: pretend to believe and feel like a poser, an imposter, in the community or remain a wistful outsider. It is to you who cannot believe that I speak this morning. I’m not going to ask you to believe the Unbelievable. I’m not going to suggest you even try. I intend to extend to you the olive branch of peace and healing through new understanding. May God bless us on this journey. May we come home together. Friends are waiting.

I begin with a analogy drawn from my childhood. It was a game we played. It probably has many names. I’ll call it the “flea circus game.”

Your friend holds out cupped hands. Reflexively, you reach out. Your friend says, “Would you please hold my flea circus? Be careful. Thanks.”

While you play along, holding out your hands, your friend describes several of the incredible flea acrobatics and antics going on in your cupped hands. Then, your friend looks you in the eye and asks inquiringly, “Do you believe in my flea circus?”

If you say, “No, not really” your friend lifts an eyebrow and says, “If you don’t believe, why are you holding out your hands?”

Kind of an unfair question, don’t you think? Belief is not the point of the game, is it? The game is about friendship and trust. Here’s how I would describe it:

One friend trusts another and goes along even at the risk of being teased. The fact that some children (and a few adults perhaps) have used the flea circus game in a rough and unloving way doesn’t change the basic fact that it’s about friendship and trust, at least the hope of friendship and a willingness to be vulnerable one more time.

There is an analogy here with respect to the Resurrection Story. [Some of you will want be praying really hard about now.] What we are doing this morning is not about believing the Unbelievable even though some, with the best of intentions and without the slightest sense of difficulty, want to make it so. In my sense of the Good News, we are here to honor a God given yearning for relationships of friendship and trust.

Not everyone came this morning because they believed something Unbelievable. Nor do I think many here came hoping to hear some convincing proof either. I think you may have come because, at some level, you are responding to God’s invitation: come, let us sit down together, friends are waiting.

After worship at St. Michael’s in New Mexico, my two Presbyterian minister pals and I were invited to join Father John and about a dozen others for a simple meal in a century old adobe farmhouse out behind the chapel. There were seminarians, new converts, and friends of St. Michael’s from Santa Fe.

We spread into the living room and settled onto overstuffed couches. There was a small fire in the stove. Father John and I began to talk. He’s a bit younger than I am, lively and intelligent. We talked of many things. Seminarians chimed in. New converts had questions. My clergy colleagues got into the conversation.

Then I asked Father John about a phrase in the Apostle’s Creed. It had been recited in English in the liturgy. It had felt good to recite it from memory.

First, an aside---Disciples reject the use of creeds for themselves altogether. Too confining. They say, “We have no creed but Christ.” They have a point. Presbyterians, on the other hand, consider their acceptance and use of the Apostle’s Creed as a sign of Christian unity that transcends denominational differences. They, too, have a point.

In particular, I asked “What do the Greek Orthodox understand by the phrase, “I believe in the holy catholic church.” I had blithely assumed he would say that it referred to the whole universal body of believers across all time and traditions. That’s how Presbyterians understand it when we say it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Patiently, respectfully, but clearly, he explained that in the Orthodox tradition it referred to the true church---the Greek Orthodox Church. It was hoped that one day the Roman Catholics and the protestants would return home to the Orthodox, the true, church. I can’t emphasize how painful this was to me to hear, nor I think, how difficult it was for him to express this doctrine. We both felt a hurt in our bodies. We lowered our voices. We explored further our understandings of scripture and of life.

An hour passed. Another hour. Only embers remained in the stove. It was time to go. After bidding farewell to each of my other my new friends, I turned to Father John. He offered a warm embrace. Then he said to everyone (the seminarians, the new converts, their friends, to me and my colleagues) “This afternoon, here in the farmhouse, we shared the true Communion, didn’t we?”

Indeed, we had. In a space of a few hours we had come home together. Doctrine and church traditions matter enormously. They inform our spiritual lives and shape our expectations. But they can, and do often, divide us from one another. When that happens, and the Living Lord is present, doctrines and traditions will be set aside. Something reforming and transforming happens. There in the farmhouse, as the otherwise Orthodox Father John ventured to testify, true Communion happened.

Two miles south of Canones, in the adobe farmhouse out behind the Chapel, I experienced the Body of Christ. I experienced the Presence of Jesus in friendship, in vulnerability. It was an Easter experience. I believe it was the early church’s experience and the meaning of “He is risen/He is risen indeed!”

I’m thinking of a new poster. It both reflects and subverts the best of Disciple and Presbyterian traditions. Like every theological statement, it both expresses and conceals truth. It says, “Love one another. Believe whatever you can.”

You who came in hope of being loved, of finding God’s love: Take heart. God is present and hopes to answer your yearning. May your hope of friendship with God and Others not be disappointed. May your willingness to be vulnerable one more time be repaid in an experience of homecoming here among friends. May your willingness to be vulnerable one more time be repaid in a process of reconciliation and in a divine invitation to enter a holy partnership restoring broken worlds, communities and lives. Friends are waiting.

And now you have waited and been patient long enough beloved friends. Thank you for your attention. I hope God’ Spirit has encouraged you. He is risen/He is risen indeed!

Fabian M. “Buddy” Summers, Pastor, Christ Church Uniting Disciples and Presbyterians, Kailua, HI, Easter 2002

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