Sermon: The Communal Resurrection of Jesus
2014 Easter Message from Kairos:
2014 Easter Message from Kairos:
Resurrection is indeed a daunting invitation, isn’t it? It is all the more true when we think that the
Resurrection is not confined to the event that happened one time, at a single
point in human history, 2014 years ago, to Jesus himself, alone. Resurrection
is a communal experience made available through Christ that works through the
Holy Spirit. Jesus rises up, not for his glory, to be praised and extolled like
a celebrity, like a superstar (Well, I have to admit that one of my favourite
musicals in my high school years was and still is Jesus Christ SuperStar.). But that has been how Western Christianity has
envisioned resurrection so often throughout history: Jesus arising in splendid
triumph from an open tomb, Jesus emerging in muscular majesty, alone, alone,
alone…
Look at this icon from the Eastern
Christian tradition. It is a banner hanging in the small shrine-chapel in Jerusalem that commemorates
the Resurrection of Jesus.
Can you see Jesus bending forward –
gently, tenderly, graciously - , stretching out his right hand to grasp and
pull on the wrist of Adam, and his left hand likewise to grasp and pull on the
wrist of Eve, which means me and you, and you … Adam meaning ‘earth’ and Eve
meaning ‘life.’ The whole of creation, the whole population - the risen Christ
is reaching out to take us all up with Him.
Personally, following many other
scholars in Christianity, I wondered whether Jesus saw his life’s
purpose as dying for the sins of the world. This interpretation that ‘Jesus
died for our sins’, …. like the others in the New Testament, is “Post-Easter”
and thus retrospective. “Jesus died for our sins” … It is how we embrace
his death, after Easter, so it is our Post-Easter affirmation of faith.
Looking back on the execution of Jesus, the horrendous event, the early
Christian movement sought to see a providential purpose, the depth of God’s
love shown through Jesus. “God so much loved the world that God gave His only
begotten son to us.” However, it makes me wonder when I ponder upon “God gave
His only begotten son to us,” O.K. but … even to let his own son die,
abandoned, on the cross?
I wonder whether the historical
Jesus really thought that the purpose of his life, his vocation, was his
death. His purpose was what he was doing as a healer, teacher, social prophet,
and movement initiator – initiator and innovator to create, on earth and for
the earth, a great grass-roots community of sharing. He called it the “Kingdom
of God.” He asked, wondered, imagined and envisioned “What life would be
like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not.”
Jesus was the “Kingdom of God”
movement initiator who envisioned a remarkably inclusive community that
actively subverted the sharp social boundaries of his day. Jesus’ most visible
public activity was his community’s inclusive meal practice that we, the
post-Easter followers of Jesus, call Communion or Eucharist. However, 2000
years ago, it was a high-risk activity that was often targeted by Jesus’
critics. He ate with the marginalized, outcasts, women, (*children*), the disabled, the sick, the poor, most of the same people we would find marginalized or
judged today. They came to Jesus’ community to ease their hunger and slake
their thirst for inclusion, to find a spiritual path for a new life. In Jesus’s
community they all ate together and it was indeed a simultaneously religious,
spiritual and political act done in the name of the “Kingdom of God.”
Going back to the icon that I was
talking about, the reason why I am so touched by Jesus in this icon is that
this image of Jesus shows us his communal character. One thing we need
to remember is that he didn’t die alone. I don’t mean that there were two other
people being crucified along with him - the two criminals on his right and
left. What I hope to remind us is that Jesus was not the first faithful Jew to
die on a Roman cross at Golgotha – nor would he be the last. In 4 B.C.E. Varus
crucified two thousand Jews there, and in 70 C.E. Titus crucified five hundred
a day. The first followers of Jesus were Christian Jews who believed that Jesus
was their awaited Messiah, their expected Christ. They did not think that Jesus
was just another Roman execution, but neither did they think that he died
alone.
The reason why the Jesus in this
icon touches me deeply is because it depicts the power and the beauty of the
communal resurrection of Jesus, or our communal resurrection with Jesus that comes after the communal
crucifixion of Jesus. He didn’t die alone, neither did he rise up alone;
Jesus bends forward toward the whole of humanity and toward us, as he did in
ages past and will he do in ages to come – stretching his right hand to grasp
and pull on the wrist of Adam, and his left hand likewise to grasp and pull on
the wrist of Eve. In this icon, next to Adam and Eve are the first martyr in
Hebrew Bible, Abel, and the first martyr in the Gospels, John the Baptist. What
this symbolically means is that the Risen Christ carries all of us; he reaches
out his hands to me, and you, as earth, as life,
women and men and children in
Indigenous communities, (the missing and murdered indigenous women), all those
who suffer from human greed, poverty, oppression, violence (both domestic and
in the world), … and even the hundreds of Korean high school students who were
trapped in the sinking ferry, unable to survive the cold, cold sea, … and their
indescribably devastated parents and families to whom grieving meant giving up
so they couldn't grieve, not while there was still even the faintest of hope to cling to, even as the certainty of their
loss was sinking deeper into their bones. And now is the Easter. No, in Korea, the Easter Sunday has one day passed. You know, like in any other place, in my home country, high school grade 2s are jewels, shine like jewels...
Can you believe? Can you imagine
that Risen Jesus is reaching out his hands to grasp, gently grasp .. and yet
also powerfully grasp their wrists – the students’ and the families’ - to pull
them out and to carry their sufferings and to weep with them and us now?
On Easter, we learn that this vision
of the ‘Communal resurrection of Christ’ only comes after the ‘communal
crucifixion of Jesus’, … which means resurrection only comes after
communally experiencing and sharing the sufferings. We look up to Jesus’
cross, yet what we see is not only his but the thousands and millions of
crosses over the universe, over the earth. You see? Can we believe? Our vision
of Jesus who resurrects with all those who suffer invites us to resurrect communally.
Can we believe? Can we go beyond the mind that we have today, to gently
grasp and pull on the wrist of another to raise them up and experience Easter
hope together?. … To sing Hallelujah courageously and unbelievably? Can
we do that?
Resurrection is a daunting invitation - do we have the courage to
accept?
John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Resurrection of Jesus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-resurrection-jesus_b_847507.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1443053b=facebook
John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Crucifixion of Jesus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-crucifixion-jesus_b_847504.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1443053b=facebook
John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Resurrection of Jesus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-resurrection-jesus_b_847507.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1443053b=facebook
John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Crucifixion of Jesus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-crucifixion-jesus_b_847504.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1443053b=facebook
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