Easter Sunday B April 5, 2015
Act 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-8
Lectionary Link
Perhaps you remember the movie several years ago about two middle aged men who had terminal illnesses. They made what they called their "Bucket List." In one way or another whether we've actually made a list or not, we all have bucket lists? We have some specific expectations about what we want to achieve in our lives before we die. What is the status of your bucket list today on Easter Sunday? Did you set your hopes too high? Are you on your way to achieving all of your bucket list goals? Climb Mount Everest? Not going to happen? Machu Picchu? Maybe? Hole in one?
But really should I be bringing up "bucket lists" on Easter Sunday. Aren't bucket lists inspired by the thoughts of our death instead of being inspired by our afterlife achievements?
Can quick and easy resort to the afterlife result in us losing intensity and purpose in our lives? O well, there's always the afterlife of the eternal to get done those things that have eluded me in this life. Like being the President of the United States. Or keeping my office clean. The thought of an endless after life gives us the ability to tolerate the fact that we will never be the utopian people that we so desire to be or become.
It might also be wrong to think of death and resurrection in terms of just the individual person; we should also think about death and resurrection in terms of society.
Societies have bucket lists and these bucket lists are are so utopian in their ideals that we realize that full achievement will not be attained in this life as we now know it.
Our Declaration of Independence is such a social "bucket list." Imagine the situation where all are regarded to be created equal and have the equal opportunity to justice, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Sometimes we have laws, practice and events of justice when it seems that the ideals of justice get approximated but sometimes it seems as though the actual widespread practice of justice is but a future utopia to achieve. Utopian life, no such actual life is still meaningful life because it the beckoning future life of the possible. And I would submit that we cannot live our actual lives without narratives of the possible life.
Good Friday and Easter give us pause to consider both the motivating power of death but also the motivating power of the afterlife.
The bucket list philosophy provides for us the urgency to achieve as much as we can in our bodily existence towards the excellence of a virtuous life consisting of love, justice, faith, wisdom, knowledge, life expanding experiences and compassion. A bucket list philosophy says, "Get as much done in one's life as one possibly can."
There is something about our scientific and empirical minds which require proof about our life attainments. The bucket list appeals to our scientific matter of fact minds. The bucket list scientific mind might hold death as such a brick wall that a scientific mind does not want to let the mind wander beyond life as we know it. A scientific mind might be happy to remain a complete agnostic about the afterlife. A scientific mind might be content to have the serenity to accept death as something one cannot change, the courage to do as many things before death, and the wisdom to let the afterlife remain a mystery.
But does anyone ever actuality live consistent with letting the afterlife remain but a mystery? Just as one thinks about how situations would be if one moves to another location, so one thinks about the afterlife of others when one is gone. We have an entire insurance industry built upon practical monetary expressions of our afterlife to the people who live after our deaths.
On this day, I would build a natural theology of resurrection afterlife upon the reality of the human experience of hope.
Hope is the unavoidable experience of human beings always having a future either individually or collectivity. The imaginations of the afterlife, the life of resurrection are born from the reality of the human experience of hope.
We have some important questions to address because of the unavoidable experience of hope.
Hope is like the power of desire on steroids because with hope and the visions of hope we contemplate much more than we can ever actually achieve in our bodily lives. Hope drives our dreams, wishes and fantasies. Hope ultimately must co-exist with what we actually achieve with the words and deeds of our lives. The experience of hope means that we always want and expect more than we will ever achieve.
And so here is the question: Are you and I embarrassed by hope? Are you and I tortured by a hope that places before us an unreachable carrot in front of our noses to motivate us without ever attaining the full actuality of hope's vision?
Is it wrong to have hope? Are we mistakenly made and constituted as human beings to have as much hope as we have?
Are we hopelessly naive people? Imagine wanting justice, equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people. Where did we get such hope to have such impossible utopian ideals?
Did our maker bring us to the experience of a cruel hoax by simply making us hope and want for much more than we can ever achieve?
The human experience of hope, I believe compels us to the experience of narratives of hope. And if one does not admit to them in one's conscious life, one's fantasies and dream lives will compensate with hope for even the most brute factual person.
As Christians we are are those who have come under the influence of the art of the resurrection. The art of the resurrection is known to us in the literary art of the Bible which relates to us an immediate afterlife of Jesus in the appearances which he made to his disciples after he died. The death of Jesus did not end his life. His life went on after he died in such a profound way because he became accessible to his disciples in new and expanded ways.
Since the life of Jesus continued to be accessible to his disciples after he died, the disciples came to believe that their own lives would still include relationship accessibility to Christ and others even after they died.
The logic of resurrection hope is different from the logic of the bucket list. The logic of the bucket list states: I will achieve what I will achieve and do in this bodily life, and that's that. The logic of resurrection hope is more of an art than it is a logic. It is the art of learning to live our lives as yet incomplete but knowing that there is always a surpassing target for which we are aiming.
The art of resurrection means that secretly we have had many things that we didn't dare put on our conscious bucket list because they were too far fetched. Hope inspires the utopian and the utopian is always beyond us and yet that which is beyond can inspire narratives which can function to motivate us even while we work at the details of our current bucket lists.
Probably the actual bucket list of all of the friends and disciples of Jesus included this: To develop a life lasting friendship with this wonderful person Jesus as a teacher and friend. To serve his vision for the world, a vision of hope, faith and justice. They wanted Jesus to live for the duration of their bodily lives and some of them envisioned being in his earthly administration with Jesus, himself, sitting on a throne in Jerusalem. But the details of that bucket list did not happen. The disciples of Jesus had to come to know the risen Christ. But as the the risen Christ, the narrative of hope, the art of the resurrection could be more widespread. Jesus left the physical world and returned to his eternal Wordship; and as eternal Word the risen Christ became the motivating carrot of each human person in the quest to surpass oneself in this life and in the life to come.
The art of resurrection and the brute facts of bucket list living mutually reinforce each other. We know that we should never give up in achieving what we need to achieve in our bodily live; at the same time we know that we will leave this world "unfinished." I will leave this world "unfinished" in not having said a proper thank you to all of the mentors who helped me even when I did not know or was able to acknowledge them. I will leave this world unfinished in all of my friendships and relationships. The human heart is too vast and complex to think we can ever be finished with each other in final ways. And in the experience of being unfinished, I look to the narrative of eternal life to be a compensatory state to inspire me even now as I continue take on the items on my daily bucket list.
Does anyone of us think that the even practice of justice has ever been achieved in this world? Does the failure of realized justice make us quit believing in justice? If we believe in endless narratives of what justice might be, how can we deny the many narratives of what the continuing future rearrangement of what our lives will continue to be in the eternal memory of God?
Even though we cannot empirically verify the afterlife now, the narratives of the afterlife of love, justice and hope are incredibly meaningful. Truth is not just about what can be verified with our seeing eyes; truth is also about the great motivational meanings of our life. And one of the greatest motivational meanings in our life is the resurrection because it means we never give up on believing in the triumph of justice. It is most meaningful in life never to cease to believe in the possibility of justice.
Today, I invite us to continue to work on our bucket lists. Let the thought of our death inspire us to live with intensity and urgency. But also let the narrative of resurrection eternal life be the inspiration of the life of what is possible. We know that in the providence of actual living, human experience will be very uneven in what we actually will achieve.
On this Easter day, the death and resurrection of Christ invite to live the meaning of what is actual and what is possible. With our bucket list mentality we convert the possible to the actual with a check list mentality. But with the hopeful narrative of resurrection, we live artistically towards what is possible. And to deny the artistic narrative of the hope of the resurrection is to restrict, limit and censor meaning in one's life.
The life of Jesus continued to have a profound relevance after he died and reappeared. With this knowledge we can live our actual lives believing that we will have continued relevance because of our faith in a God who has the memory capacity to preserve and maintain us forever. And most of us want God's memory of us to air brush those memories with the many touches of forgiveness.
Today, let us accept the motivational excellence of this Easter feast. Let us not feel inferior in always feeling "unfinished." Let this unfinished feeling be but the evidence of more future perfection which beckons us more clearly because of the witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So once again today, we state the most famous narrative of hope of all time, "Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!
Perhaps you remember the movie several years ago about two middle aged men who had terminal illnesses. They made what they called their "Bucket List." In one way or another whether we've actually made a list or not, we all have bucket lists? We have some specific expectations about what we want to achieve in our lives before we die. What is the status of your bucket list today on Easter Sunday? Did you set your hopes too high? Are you on your way to achieving all of your bucket list goals? Climb Mount Everest? Not going to happen? Machu Picchu? Maybe? Hole in one?
But really should I be bringing up "bucket lists" on Easter Sunday. Aren't bucket lists inspired by the thoughts of our death instead of being inspired by our afterlife achievements?
Can quick and easy resort to the afterlife result in us losing intensity and purpose in our lives? O well, there's always the afterlife of the eternal to get done those things that have eluded me in this life. Like being the President of the United States. Or keeping my office clean. The thought of an endless after life gives us the ability to tolerate the fact that we will never be the utopian people that we so desire to be or become.
It might also be wrong to think of death and resurrection in terms of just the individual person; we should also think about death and resurrection in terms of society.
Societies have bucket lists and these bucket lists are are so utopian in their ideals that we realize that full achievement will not be attained in this life as we now know it.
Our Declaration of Independence is such a social "bucket list." Imagine the situation where all are regarded to be created equal and have the equal opportunity to justice, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Sometimes we have laws, practice and events of justice when it seems that the ideals of justice get approximated but sometimes it seems as though the actual widespread practice of justice is but a future utopia to achieve. Utopian life, no such actual life is still meaningful life because it the beckoning future life of the possible. And I would submit that we cannot live our actual lives without narratives of the possible life.
Good Friday and Easter give us pause to consider both the motivating power of death but also the motivating power of the afterlife.
The bucket list philosophy provides for us the urgency to achieve as much as we can in our bodily existence towards the excellence of a virtuous life consisting of love, justice, faith, wisdom, knowledge, life expanding experiences and compassion. A bucket list philosophy says, "Get as much done in one's life as one possibly can."
There is something about our scientific and empirical minds which require proof about our life attainments. The bucket list appeals to our scientific matter of fact minds. The bucket list scientific mind might hold death as such a brick wall that a scientific mind does not want to let the mind wander beyond life as we know it. A scientific mind might be happy to remain a complete agnostic about the afterlife. A scientific mind might be content to have the serenity to accept death as something one cannot change, the courage to do as many things before death, and the wisdom to let the afterlife remain a mystery.
But does anyone ever actuality live consistent with letting the afterlife remain but a mystery? Just as one thinks about how situations would be if one moves to another location, so one thinks about the afterlife of others when one is gone. We have an entire insurance industry built upon practical monetary expressions of our afterlife to the people who live after our deaths.
On this day, I would build a natural theology of resurrection afterlife upon the reality of the human experience of hope.
Hope is the unavoidable experience of human beings always having a future either individually or collectivity. The imaginations of the afterlife, the life of resurrection are born from the reality of the human experience of hope.
We have some important questions to address because of the unavoidable experience of hope.
Hope is like the power of desire on steroids because with hope and the visions of hope we contemplate much more than we can ever actually achieve in our bodily lives. Hope drives our dreams, wishes and fantasies. Hope ultimately must co-exist with what we actually achieve with the words and deeds of our lives. The experience of hope means that we always want and expect more than we will ever achieve.
And so here is the question: Are you and I embarrassed by hope? Are you and I tortured by a hope that places before us an unreachable carrot in front of our noses to motivate us without ever attaining the full actuality of hope's vision?
Is it wrong to have hope? Are we mistakenly made and constituted as human beings to have as much hope as we have?
Are we hopelessly naive people? Imagine wanting justice, equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people. Where did we get such hope to have such impossible utopian ideals?
Did our maker bring us to the experience of a cruel hoax by simply making us hope and want for much more than we can ever achieve?
The human experience of hope, I believe compels us to the experience of narratives of hope. And if one does not admit to them in one's conscious life, one's fantasies and dream lives will compensate with hope for even the most brute factual person.
As Christians we are are those who have come under the influence of the art of the resurrection. The art of the resurrection is known to us in the literary art of the Bible which relates to us an immediate afterlife of Jesus in the appearances which he made to his disciples after he died. The death of Jesus did not end his life. His life went on after he died in such a profound way because he became accessible to his disciples in new and expanded ways.
Since the life of Jesus continued to be accessible to his disciples after he died, the disciples came to believe that their own lives would still include relationship accessibility to Christ and others even after they died.
The logic of resurrection hope is different from the logic of the bucket list. The logic of the bucket list states: I will achieve what I will achieve and do in this bodily life, and that's that. The logic of resurrection hope is more of an art than it is a logic. It is the art of learning to live our lives as yet incomplete but knowing that there is always a surpassing target for which we are aiming.
The art of resurrection means that secretly we have had many things that we didn't dare put on our conscious bucket list because they were too far fetched. Hope inspires the utopian and the utopian is always beyond us and yet that which is beyond can inspire narratives which can function to motivate us even while we work at the details of our current bucket lists.
Probably the actual bucket list of all of the friends and disciples of Jesus included this: To develop a life lasting friendship with this wonderful person Jesus as a teacher and friend. To serve his vision for the world, a vision of hope, faith and justice. They wanted Jesus to live for the duration of their bodily lives and some of them envisioned being in his earthly administration with Jesus, himself, sitting on a throne in Jerusalem. But the details of that bucket list did not happen. The disciples of Jesus had to come to know the risen Christ. But as the the risen Christ, the narrative of hope, the art of the resurrection could be more widespread. Jesus left the physical world and returned to his eternal Wordship; and as eternal Word the risen Christ became the motivating carrot of each human person in the quest to surpass oneself in this life and in the life to come.
The art of resurrection and the brute facts of bucket list living mutually reinforce each other. We know that we should never give up in achieving what we need to achieve in our bodily live; at the same time we know that we will leave this world "unfinished." I will leave this world "unfinished" in not having said a proper thank you to all of the mentors who helped me even when I did not know or was able to acknowledge them. I will leave this world unfinished in all of my friendships and relationships. The human heart is too vast and complex to think we can ever be finished with each other in final ways. And in the experience of being unfinished, I look to the narrative of eternal life to be a compensatory state to inspire me even now as I continue take on the items on my daily bucket list.
Does anyone of us think that the even practice of justice has ever been achieved in this world? Does the failure of realized justice make us quit believing in justice? If we believe in endless narratives of what justice might be, how can we deny the many narratives of what the continuing future rearrangement of what our lives will continue to be in the eternal memory of God?
Even though we cannot empirically verify the afterlife now, the narratives of the afterlife of love, justice and hope are incredibly meaningful. Truth is not just about what can be verified with our seeing eyes; truth is also about the great motivational meanings of our life. And one of the greatest motivational meanings in our life is the resurrection because it means we never give up on believing in the triumph of justice. It is most meaningful in life never to cease to believe in the possibility of justice.
Today, I invite us to continue to work on our bucket lists. Let the thought of our death inspire us to live with intensity and urgency. But also let the narrative of resurrection eternal life be the inspiration of the life of what is possible. We know that in the providence of actual living, human experience will be very uneven in what we actually will achieve.
On this Easter day, the death and resurrection of Christ invite to live the meaning of what is actual and what is possible. With our bucket list mentality we convert the possible to the actual with a check list mentality. But with the hopeful narrative of resurrection, we live artistically towards what is possible. And to deny the artistic narrative of the hope of the resurrection is to restrict, limit and censor meaning in one's life.
The life of Jesus continued to have a profound relevance after he died and reappeared. With this knowledge we can live our actual lives believing that we will have continued relevance because of our faith in a God who has the memory capacity to preserve and maintain us forever. And most of us want God's memory of us to air brush those memories with the many touches of forgiveness.
Today, let us accept the motivational excellence of this Easter feast. Let us not feel inferior in always feeling "unfinished." Let this unfinished feeling be but the evidence of more future perfection which beckons us more clearly because of the witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So once again today, we state the most famous narrative of hope of all time, "Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!
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