Easter Sunday Sermon: The Communal Resurrection of Jesus (inspired by John Dominic Crossan's The Communal Resurrection of Jesus and The Communal Crucifixion of Jesus) April 20, 2014

Sermon: The Communal Resurrection of Jesus 

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