Profound Hope Crammed into Such Small Vessels

Easter Sunday        March 31, 2013     

Isaiah 65:17-25  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 John 20:1-18

Lectionary Link

FAME

I'm gonna live forever

I'm gonna learn how to fly--high!

I feel it comin' together

People will see me and cry. Fame!

I'm gonna make it to heaven

Light up the sky like a flame. Fame!

I'm gonna live forever

  Fame might be one of the ultimate addictions of life and it may be because of our supreme fear of insignificance in life.  The deep voiced singer and poet Leonard Cohen wrote and sang in his unique basso profundo voice, “And everybody knows that you live forever, Ah when you've done a line or two.”

  The aspiration for fame and glory perhaps is natural even if one doesn’t aspire to embarrass oneself on American Idol.  Fame is that quest for an excessive witness to one’s life as proof that one was actually here.

  If we are not witnessed by someone, do we exist?  This is like the philosophical question, “did a tree fall in the forest if no one was there to see it fall?”

   Fame is a quest for immortality; maybe what is called an objective immortality.  If I make an impression upon people, perhaps I will be remember beyond my death.  But why would that be important to me in my life now?  What would be the importance of me living on by having people think or speak of me after I have died?    

  Probably the most concrete objective immortality happens when one has a child.  One’s child is the most concrete proof of objectivity immortality.  In fact in certain phases of the Hebrew religion and Judaism, the objective immortality of having children was the prominent immortality since many Jews could not find evidence for the afterlife in the Torah.

  Immortality and the afterlife have a long history in humanity.  We probably cannot know for sure but we like to claim what makes us humans different from the other animals is how we reflect upon death.  If one has lived well and loves life, death seems like such a loss of the experience that one has gained from living.  Is there no way that such experience could be passed on? 

  The ancient Greeks wrote about the transmogrification of the soul.  Plato wrote about the simultaneity of the passing of soul at death and its birth into another person.  This was expressed in the Joseph Cooley lyrics, made most popular by “Blood Sweat and Tears, “ And when I die and when I’m dead, dead and gone, There’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.”

  Fame, immortality and afterlife are universal human issues for the human psyche in the quest for meaning.  The topic of the afterlife appeared in the sections after the Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures to deal with the issue of theodicy.  Theodicy, how do we make sense of God who is worshipful when there is injustice and innocent suffering in the world?  The people in covenant with God, the people of Israel wondered often if they wouldn’t be better off if they weren’t God’s so-called chosen ones with a Promise Land.  Lots of bad things happened to them in their Promised Land and when bad things happen how do people still maintain a sense of justice?  The logical solution was that everyone needs more time, time beyond the grave so that scores can be evened and justice can fulfilled.  If there is enough time, fortunes can be reverse so the persecuted can walk in the persecutor’s shoes and vice versa.  The problem with this type of eternal and everlasting life is that we “petty minded” people often hold on to heaven and hell as two grand categories for our own prejudices and biases.   Everyone who is certain about the details of heaven and hell usually is equally certain about who will inhabit both places and conveniently one’s friends and those in agreement with me are in the good place and those other people are obviously in the bad place.  Recently a Baptist preacher got excommunicated in the minds of some Baptist faithful by writing a book, “Love Wins.”  Rob Bell writes his belief that the entire afterlife is just further training to become ultimately convinced by God’s love.  If one is reliant upon eternal hellfire to scare people into getting saved then you can understand why Pastor Bell offended those who need to frighten people into salvation.

  Another way in which we hope to attain secret information about the afterlife is through the so-called “near-death” experiences.  People who have died and then are resuscitated often recount events in the language that one associates with dream imagery.  Walking to the light and meeting friends and loved ones who are already there.  Even as much as we don’t understand this kind of near death testimony, we cannot help but be intrigued by this kind of information and how it comes to us.  None of us could ever want or try to make this sort of serendipitous experience happen to us and so the sheer serendipity of this experience fascinates us.

  One of the things that makes us vulnerable about death and dying is the fact that our lives and this world seem so unfinished and incomplete.  Our relationships are perpetually unfinished and incomplete.  We did not, could not say everything we wanted to say to someone before they left this world.  The popular necromancer John Edward functions for people who have this need to know that their faithful departed loved ones are “okay.”  He purports to communicate with the departed spirits on behalf of the living to bring assurance of their well-being.  It is not uncommon for people to have dreams or experiences of audible contact with departed loved ones. 

  Another intimation of the afterlife occurs because you and I have hopes and dreams that will not be realized.  Hope is such a profound desire; it is too big for the limitations of one body located in space and time.  One wonders why we are made to have such profound eternity crammed into such small containers, except for always showing us that we have plenty of growing room and not much reason to judge other people.  Profound eternity crammed into such small vessels is a continuous invitation to creativity as this endless realm of Possibilities continuously flirts with us to find new actual combinations of application for our lives.

  My purpose is not to cast value judgments upon the various ways in which people deal with the afterlife; their own and that of others.  My purpose is simply to note that as humans we do it in various ways and so it must be a universal condition to think about not being in life the way in which we are.  The notion of the afterlife functions in some way for us whether theist or atheist or agnostic.  One’s adamant denial of the afterlife is even more proof of it actually functioning in a person’s life.

  So get to Easter, preacher, surely you digress.  The Easter event:  I imagine a situation of some people who were so in love with a charismatic friend, guru, healer, shaman, wisdom teacher, counselor and young man Jesus, they could not conceive of his actual life ending nor could they conceive that their accessible relationship with him would ever end.  They could not conceive of this rich friendship ever coming to an end.

  The resurrection of Jesus is when the power of God worked with the power of friendship in the hearts of his friends who experienced such grief. The power of God working with the power of human grief  brought Christ to appear to them again in ways that were recognizable by them such that the stories were written.  The profundity of this reappearance has created a ripple effect in the history of humanity and the waves of these resurrection appearances arrive to us today bringing us hope.  If we know that one person has made it, then everyone makes it.  If we know that Christ lives on, we know that the eternal hope in us that makes us always feel unfinished is not a cruel hoax.  Rather that eternal hope is the endless deliciousness of affirmation, saying continuously, “you go girl, you go boy…and do it on and on and on.”  Not ever being finished is the gift of eternal life because it means always having a future.

  There is an insightful rebuke by Jesus of Mary Magdalene in the sepulcher garden, “Mary don’t hold onto me.”  Life with Jesus or anyone cannot be put in a freeze frame suspension.   Yes, it is so nice and wonderful, but let it go for some future forms of nice and wonderful.

  Mary, do not hold on to the physical Jesus, but let the risen Christ be the new interior guide of your life that lives in and through you.  

  If we understand this, we understand the spiritual methodology of the early Christians.  Do not   hold on to the physical Jesus; let him go and receive his Spirit as one’s very interior life of peace and comfort and divine comfort.  Let not eternal life be just an unknown future but be the qualitative presence of God’s Spirit in our lives now..

  Yes, we can have many different kinds of intimations, imaginations and entertainments about the afterlife; they all have a function for our psyches now.  But know this:  these imaginations are born from creative word and spirit who is eternal resurrection life in us now, not delayed until our physical bodies die, but present even now.  This reality of profound Hope crammed into our little bodily vessels now is the reality of our Easter shout:  Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen indeed.  Alleluia.  Amen.