The Resurrection of Christ: Belief of the Weak-Minded?

Easter Sunday        April 8, 2012     

Isaiah 25:6-9   Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-8

Lectionary Link

  Are you and I gathered here today to bear the scorn as those who are the weak-minded; those to be pitied for maintaining this ancient myth of the resurrection of Christ?  Well, we appear to be in good company and a rather large company of billions of people who have shared this “weak-minded” habit for 2000 years.  But does a large herd of people following a tradition for so many years make it necessarily true?

  Recent atheists have written their attacks upon our beliefs.  Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionist has attacked our weak-minded silly thinking.  The late Christopher Hitchens, also wrote that “God is not Great” and essentially based his criticism upon the fact that people of faith sometimes act very badly, in their narrow biases and prejudices, crusades, holy wars and inquisitions.  Why would anyone believe in a God based upon the horrible actions of those who say that they do? 

  Part of the blame for the criticism of the atheists does rest upon the way in which people of faith have presented and lived their beliefs.  People of faith have gotten tricked by trying to give their right answers to the wrong questions in the wrong way and there has been incredible symbolic confusion.  And you and I may be lost in some of that confusion as we gather here today to ponder the resurrection of Christ and its meaning for our lives today.  We live in the age where the supreme criterion of truth is empirical verification; something is only really meaningful, if and only if it can be empirically verified.  How many resurrections have you experienced?  And can resurrections be replicated by further experience?  And when we retreat to the answer of the unique occasion of the resurrection of Christ, then we fail to satisfy the criteria for real truth, scientific truth.

  How did we as a faith tradition cede or give up the ground of exclusive truth to the scientific method?  What is called Fundamentalism essentially admits that scientific truth is correct and also the resurrection of Christ is scientific truth.  And then Fundamentalism does something that science does not do; they state that their propositions of truth are final and absolute and inscrutable and not open to any questioning.  At least scientists have the humility to say that their theories and laws are tentative until a better explanation can be offered.

  The truth of our faith and of the resurrection needs a different presentation than the one into which it is often forced by the modern skepticism that attends the scientific method.  I ask you to consider some other modes of truth.  What is the truth of the experience of the sublime in being moved by a piece of art or music?  What is the truth of the sublime in being moved by the ocean, mountains or the sheer delightful form of a beautiful unique tree?  What is the truth of a recovering alcoholic who has an event of grace with a Higher Power and states that this event is so real that it resulted in a life of sobriety?  How does science account for or replicate such intermittent and serendipitous events of grace and aesthetic events of the sublime in the works of art and music?  And why would a scientist want to deny the truth value of such events?  Certainly one might want to give endless psychological explanations for such events, but what good does it do to deny the explanation of the one who has had the experience?

  If you and I can understand the reality of such aesthetic events and events of grace that result in transformation, perhaps you and I can begin to embrace the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

  Once the church moved from the reality of the transformation of personal lives, it moved into the world to offer its truth in a wrong forum.  The result was that it accepted a different truth criterion in a different forum.

  So I would submit to you that the accounts of the death and of resurrection of Jesus Christ were essentially the accompanying liturgy of people whose lives were dramatically transformed by what they could not but confess to be an encounter with the risen Christ.

  Once the growing and successful church begins to reduce its liturgy of personal transformation to creeds, doctrines, scriptures and schools of interpretation, churches and denominations, then it unwittingly moved to the grounds of truth criteria established by Plato and Aristotle and by modern science.  And it is no wonder that Christian truth suffered when it became like a fish out of water.

  So how can we correct our confusion?  I suggest that we return to the death and resurrection of Christ as ancient rites of personal transformation, otherwise known as Christian baptism.  Christian baptism is the path of personal transformation whereby we are being made Christian, and we assume this process continues even in our afterlives.

  In the blessing of the waters at Holy Baptism we say, “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  The Gospel Narratives of the death and resurrection of Christ were essentially the liturgy that accompanied people who confessed that their lives had been changed by an encounter with Christ in his life or in his resurrection.  This is not essentially scientific, philosophical truth; it is a truth of the heart, an inward participatory truth.  If we remove the death and resurrection of Christ from the truth of the participatory encounter of the heart in a life that knows the grace of a transformational event, then the truth of the death and resurrection will suffer in the skepticism of a thousand qualifications.

  Easter is a baptismal occasion and we are going to renew our baptismal vows today as a remembrance that the crucifixion and resurrection story is primarily an accompanying and empowering narrative of the path of personal transformation to which we have committed to walk.  The truth of the resurrection is the truth of the transformation of my life and yours and we will never be able to prove either empirically.  What we can hope for is that the progressive transformation of our lives will be a testimony to the resurrection of Christ.

  It has been my job and occupation to study and present the death and resurrection of Christ for many years now and it is still for me all about personal transformation.  I am ready each day to die to the inadequacy of my current knowledge of God and Jesus and look for a resurrection into new knowledge and experience of Jesus and God each day.  And in my process of dying and rebirth, I cannot judge anyone else’s path of transformation; I only want to encourage each of us to be committed to being on this path of dying and rising, this life process of transformation.

  The event of the resurrection also calls the church and St. John the Divine to be on this path of transformation.  How many times has the church been called to die to her inadequate practices of the knowledge of the love of Christ?  We had to die to inadequate love in our failure to include fully in our midst people of color, women, children and gay and lesbian persons.  The event of the resurrection is an event that calls us as individuals and as a community to continuous renewal.

  We are not yet there.  We are not yet made fully Christian.  We are not yet perfect in love, but are you like I am today; do you want to be more fully Christ-like and more perfect in love?  If you do, just whisper with me, “I do.”

  It is okay for us to be tentative in our not yet perfect lives and not yet perfect church because we need to have the humility to admit that there is more imperfection to die to and to put away and there is more resurrection excellence for us yet to attain.  And it is the optimism of the resurrection that invites us to keep on progressing in this personal liturgy of transformation that is anchored in the death and resurrection of Christ.  And it is with this optimism we make the Easter shout: “Alleluia! Christ is Risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!  Amen.

Easter Puppet Show

Gospel Puppet Show

April 8, 2012

Easter Sunday

Scene: The Tomb

Characters:

Soldier guarding the tomb: Ed

Jesus: Eric

Young man (angel): Alex

Mary Magdalene: Michelle

Salome: Rylie

Peter: Ed

Miss Debbie (in front of the puppet theatre)

There is a tomb with a round stone on it hanging from the curtain at the back of the theatre

Miss Debbie:  Boys and girls let us visit the tomb of Jesus.  His friend Nicodemus gave this tomb so that Jesus could be buried there.  It was so sad for the friends of Jesus when he died.  They loved him.  He was a special friend and teacher.  Look there’s someone at the tomb now.

Soldier: (pacing back and forth) Stop young lady.  You cannot go near the tomb.  The chief priests told me to guard the tomb.

Miss Debbie: Well, why are you guarding the tomb?

Soldier: Well, I’m just doing my job.  Those chief priests were jealous of this man Jesus and they think that someone might come and steal his body.  That’s strange thinking, but I’m just doing my job.  Just run along.  You can’t be hanging around here.

(Miss Debbie moves to the side)

(Multiple Flashing camera lights in the puppet theatre)

Soldier: Oh my!  I’m blinded!  I can’t see what has happened.  I think that I’m going to faint. Oooooooooooooh!

(Soldier falls off scene)

The stone has been taken off the tomb a grave cloth hangs on the opening of the tomb

Miss Debbie: Children did you see some flashing lights?  I wonder what is happening at the tomb.  Maybe I should go back and check it out.  Do you think the soldier is still there?  Maybe I can sneak back and take a peek.  Will you take a peek with me?

(Mary Magdalene and Salome are now coming to the tomb before they look at the tomb Mary Magdalene says)

Mary Magdalene:  Salome, we’ve got to get to the tomb of Jesus.  We collected so many more spices from our friends to help prepare his body.  He had to be buried so quickly, but now we have more spices.  But I’m worried Salome.

Salome: Mary, why are you worried?

Mary Magdalene:  There is a big stone that is on the entrance of the tomb.  It is too heavy for you and I to roll open.  Maybe there will be some one there to help us open the tomb.

Salome:  Mary, you don’t have to worry.  The stone is already rolled away.

Mary Magdalene:  Oh, no!  Something has happened?  Where’s the body of Jesus?  All I can see is his empty grave cloth.  Who stole his body?   This is terrible.  Why would someone steal the body of Jesus?

(Young Man sticks his head out of the tomb)

Mary Magdalene(seeing the young): Oh, you frightened me!  Did you do this?  Did you take the body of my friend Jesus?  Where did you take him?  Why did you do this?

Young Man: Calm down and don’t be afraid!  Your friend Jesus is not here.  He has been raised from the dead.  You can see his empty grave clothes.  Now I want you to go and tell the disciples and tell Peter that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Mary Magdalene:  Wow!  What does this mean?  When will I see Jesus again?  Let us go quickly and tell Peter.

(Peter shows himself in the left panel)

Peter: Mary Magdalene and Salome…slow down, why are you running?  What has happened?

Mary Magdalene:  We went to the tomb to put more spices on the grave clothes…but the tomb was already open and the grave clothes were empty.  And a young man or angel told us that Jesus had risen from the dead.  He told us to come and tell you.

Peter: Wow!  You know what this means don’t you?

Salome:  What does it mean?

Peter: It means that everything that Jesus told us is true.  He said that he would come back to life after three days.  This is so wonderful.  God did the most special thing ever on this day.  I can’t wait until we see Jesus.

(They disappeared in the left panel and reappear in the middle panel and Jesus pokes out from behind the curtain)

Jesus: Greetings my friends!  Peace be with you!

Peter:  Thank you Jesus for coming back to us.

Mary Magdalene:  We were so worried.

Jesus: Remember this day.  All you will be witnesses to tell everyone what happened.

Salome:  Now I know why Alleluia returns on Easter Day.

Miss Debbie: Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!  Can you say that?

Everyone: Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

Miss Debbie: The Lord is Risen indeed.  Alleluia!  And now all of us are witnesses too of the resurrection of Christ.  Because Christ lives in us too.

Belief Even When God Is Silent

Palm Sunday B   April 1, 2012

Is.45:21-25     Ps. 22:1-11

Phil. 2:5-11   St. Mark’s Passion Gospel

Lectionary Link

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not. 

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not.

I believe in God even when God is silent.  I believe in the silence.

  This text in the anthem we have just sung was found on a basement wall in Cologne, Germany.  It had been written by someone hiding from the Gestapo.

  The experience of God being perceived as silent occurs when we experience no apparent activity of God on our behalf to save us from events that stretch from being merely inconvenient to unpleasant to downright horrifying.

  Passion Sunday is a day when we stop to acknowledge a moment of brokenness within the Holy Trinity: The human aspect of God as it was known in Jesus experienced the deafening silence of God the Father and God the Spirit in the cry of Jesus: My God why have you forsaken me?   My God why are you silent?  My God, why are you not acting on my behalf for my well being?

  The irony of the double observances of this day is that God’s voice seems very loud in the Hosannas of the Palm parade, a Jerusalem ticker tape parade for the populist King of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth.  Yet how quickly the loud voice of the Hosannas turn into the loud shouts, “Crucify Him!”  And then the voice of God apparently is totally silent in the death of Jesus on the cross.

   What is the silence that we can believe in when it appears that God’s voice is not heard and when it seems apparent that God’s active resistance to injustice is not evident?

  The events of terrifying loss seem to have the power to stop time.  They seem to have the power to end “life as we know it.”  The stoppage of time is only apparent, but not actual.  The silence of God is only apparent, but not actual.

  The one tree that was killed to make the cross on which Jesus was crucified did not negate all of the other trees in the world that lived on to beautify life.  God’s sustaining activity is forgotten in the moment of loss.  When I experience loss, the rest of the world does not stop and take notice; life goes on in many other lives of people completely oblivious to my event of loss.  Even though God might seem to be silent, the deafening loudness of God’s sustaining of all of life continues to go on.   The continuous sustaining of the Plentitude of life is the silence of God that we can continue to believe in even when our own experience is characterized by significant events of loss and sorrow.

  What we observe on Passion Sunday and on Good Friday, is the solidarity of God in Christ with the human experience of loss and death when the silence of God seems deafening.  As Christians we believe that such profound solidarity of God with human experience is what truly makes God worshipful.  It helps us to believe that God does have empathy with us and so our prayers arise to understanding ears.

  The profound silence of God’s sustaining of life is also an experience of a profound freedom that is permitted within the Plentitude of God.  A degree of genuine freedom spills to every order of creation and this profound freedom is the condition for both the agonies and ecstasies of life and everything in between.  Fortunate things can happen to people when they are behaving justly or unjustly.  Bad things can happen to people when they are behaving justly or unjustly.  These are but the effects of genuine freedom.

  And this should not make us fatalistic; this should inspire us to use our genuine freedom toward loving care for people and for our world.  It should inspire us to resist in the ways in which we can, injustice wherever we find it.

  I believe in God, even when God is silent.  I believe in the silence.  Let us embrace the conditions of silence, a profound permissive freedom that is abroad in our world, and let us work in freedom to overcome the moments of injustice with resurrection justice, as befitting the excellence to which God is calling us.

  As the Cross of Jesus was later to be recreated by a subsequent event, let us maintain our hope today that injustice will be recreated by future events of profoundly free actions of justice.  If the resurrection of Christ has the last word over the death of Jesus, let the success of justice have the last word over injustice as we freely serve a vision of love and justice.  Amen.

Passion Sunday: Even When God Is Silent

Text put to music in an anthem by Sumner Jenkins

Even When God Is Silent

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not. 

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not.

I believe in God even when God is silent.  I believe in the silence.

  This text in the anthem was found on a basement wall in Cologne, Germany.  It had been written by someone hiding from the Gestapo.

  The experience of God being perceived as silent occurs when we experience no apparent activity of God on our behalf to save us from events that stretch from being merely inconvenient to unpleasant to downright horrifying.

The Risen Christ As a Trans-historical Protean Reality

5 Lent   B          March 25, 2012     

Jer. 31:31-34      Ps. 51:11-16        

Heb. 5:1-10        John 12:20-33     

 Lectionary Link

  The writer of the Gospel of John records an agriculture metaphor from the mouth of Jesus is our Gospel reading today.  “Unless a seed of wheat dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

  If I were to expand that metaphor to understand the various Christian social realities that have come into social expression during the last 2000 years, I might say that the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a seed has become an entire forest of trees.  The one acorn of the life of Jesus that developed within the community of Judaism has now become a great forest of community trees.

  We now live in an Anglican/Episcopal tree of Christianity with many branches that exists in a forest of other trees all claiming one acorn or seed person as the origin and inspiration of our corporate life together.  That there are different kinds of Christian trees in this great forest is seen as a scandal of division to some, but to others the diversity of trees has to do with the different kinds of success of the message of the Gospel in different times, different places with different people.  Should we be surprised that from one acorn an entire forest of trees can arise?  Should we be surprised that from one genius in human history, the genius of Jesus Christ, that an entire forest of Christian communities has developed?  For people who want a forced unity of a mono-lingual Christianity, a world-wide Christian Empire, the great forest of Christian diversity is scandalous division.  But for those who attribute the success of Christianity to the ability to become diverse expressions in different places, such people see this diversity as a major reason for the success of the Christian Gospel.

  The Gospel of John is written long after the life of Jesus of Nazareth but it uses narrative teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to teach the theological practice of an established Christian community.  The writer of the Gospel is trying to weave together the relationship of what had already happened within the community of beloved disciple with the oral tradition of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  The writer is trying to answer this question.  How did the fame of Jesus of Nazareth extend way beyond Jerusalem, Galilee and the Jewish Community?  The writer of John’s Gospel is also actually writing you and me into the Gospel.  How so?  The Gospel declares Jesus of Nazareth to be identified with the Word of God.  And so Word of God is a Person who speaks the oral words of language.  And yet the spoken words of Jesus had no infallible technology of memory; oral tradition is not very exact when compared with our recording technologies of today.  The writer of John’s Gospel used written words of language as a significant technology of memory. About the authors own words, the writer wrote: “These words are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”  This is where you and I enter into the Gospel of John because we are readers, and in reading the Gospel of John we help fulfill the Jeremian prediction of the laws of God being written or inscribed upon our hearts.

  The writer of John’s Gospel is tracing the fame or glory of Jesus.  How did this singular individual Jesus of Nazareth attain fame or glory beyond his time and place?  Why did this community of John continue to meet together in memory of Jesus even when Jerusalem had been sacked and leveled and when the followers of Jesus had scattered into many cities?  Ephesus is often believed to be the community of location for the writing of the Gospel of John, and it is far from Jerusalem.

  And so the Risen Christ was an always present oracle that spoke within the followers of Jesus, and the Risen Christ inspires a teaching in story form about the origins of his fame and glory.  The Greeks who came to Jerusalem saying, “We wish to see Jesus” are all of us who have come to manifest a curiosity about this person who is not really of our time and place.  We have been those who have said in various ways, “We wish to see Jesus…we wish to wonder about his relevance to our lives….we wish to share the relevance of his life to others.” 

  And so the writer of John’s Gospel is reflecting upon the origin of the fame and glory of Christ that was significant six to nine decades after Jesus was no longer present to see and touch.  How indeed can people have this trans historical experience and presume to know a person who is no longer present to sight and touch and face to face questioning?

  What we can say about Jesus of Nazareth in his appearances in the lives of people after he lived, is that Jesus is perhaps the most protean personality of all history.  Proteus was the Greek god who could morph into any form in order to avoid having to predict the future.  The word protean has come to mean, “becoming all things to all people.”  Jesus as the Risen Christ has truly become protean; he has become available in all of the forms that the words which are written on our hearts can become.

  Jesus as the Risen Christ has died to the limitations of being a historical person located in the body of Jesus of Nazareth so that his message and law of love can now be written upon the hearts of everyone who wants to partake of this protean presence of the Risen Christ.  Can any of us deny the protean reality and fame of Jesus of Nazareth?

  If we deny this protean reality of the glory and fame of Christ, you and I are to be most pitied for being at this altar today to find the Risen Christ in the bread and the wine.  And if we are finding the protean presence of Christ in bread and wine, where else are we finding the loving presence of God so lovingly communicated to us in such individual and personal ways that we are drawn to respond and worship and say, Thank you, O God in Christ?

  You and I may not hear audible angelic voices declare about Jesus, “I have glorified the name of God and will continue to do so for ever” but the proof of history as redounding to the glory and fame of the protean Risen Christ is more significant proof than angelic voices from heaven.

  The writer of the Gospel of John wrote his community’s experience of the protean Risen Christ as originating in the life of  Jesus of Nazareth and in so doing, he wrote your experience of Christ and mine, and everyone’s experience of Jesus into this Gospel too.  Viva la difference!  Viva the protean manifestations of the Risen Christ.  God’s glory has been achieved even as the law of Christ’s love and presence has been written upon our heart.  And to this we can only say, “Thanks be to God!”  Amen.

Puppet Show: Seed Cemetery

Gospel Puppet Show

March 25, 2012

Pam, the gardener, Stuart as Jesus, Catherine as Miriam, Caroline as Gully the sea gull

Pam is in front of the theatre, hoeing her garden.  In her garden there are little tomb stones in a row.  One Tomb stones reads, Beans: RIP.  Another tombstone reads: Peas: RIP.  Another reads Corn: RIP

Miriam: Hi, Miss Pam what are you doing?

Miss Pam:  It is spring time and so it is time to prepare my garden.  And as you see my garden is like a graveyard.  I have done lots of burying in my garden.

Miriam:  Burying?  Does that mean someone has died?

Miss Pam: Well not someone but something is going to die soon.  That is why I put up the tomb stones.  I’ve made one for the peas, the corn and the beans.

Gully:  Hi, Miss Pam, I hope you didn’t bury all of the seeds.  If I see a seed, I will fly down and eat it.  While you are hoeing the ground could you dig up some worms for me to eat.  Yum, yum, I like worms.   Do the children like worms;  I hope not because that will be more for me.

Miss Pam:  Gully, you stay away from my seeds.  I’ll have to put up a scare crow to keep you away.  But I do have some bread crumbs for you to eat.

Gully:  Thanks, Miss Pam.  But I’m like Miriam I don’t understand why you have tomb stones on the rows in your garden.  For me a garden means life, not death.

Miriam:  Yes, I still don’t understand your tomb stones in the garden.  It is kind of sad or silly.  Please explain what you are doing.  This is spring and it is not like Halloween when we do spooky things.  Why are you doing spooky things in your garden?

  

Miss Pam:  Well, I bought packages of little seeds.  And they are very tiny and I bury them in the ground.  And when I put them into the ground, the seeds are going to die.

Miriam: They are not going to die; they are going to become roots, stem and plants and vegetables.  How are they going to die?

Miss Pam: In two weeks if we were to dig into the ground here would we find the seeds?

Gully:  I don’t know what we would find? 

Miss Pam:  Did you know that Jesus talked about seeds dying in the ground and he said that his life would be like a seed that would die in the ground?

Miriam:  That sounds like a riddle to me.  How can we understand this riddle?

Miss Pam:  Maybe we could pray and ask Jesus to help us learn the meaning of his riddle.

Gully: Okay, Dear Jesus, please come and help us to understand your riddle about the seeds.

Miriam: Yes, Dear Jesus, please come.  We want to know the meaning of the dying seeds.

(Jesus appears)

Jesus:  Hello, Miss Pam, Gully and Miriam, I heard your prayers.  Did you call for me?

Miriam:  Yes, Jesus, we want to know the meaning of your riddle about the dying seed and your life?

Jesus:  Okay, I did say that my life was like a dying seed.  And this is what I mean.   Look at the pictures of the seed in the ground.  See in the first one, the little seed breaks and out pops a little tail.  Do you see it?  Do you know what happens to this little tail?

Gully:  No, what happens?

 F

Jesus:  It becomes the root.  And the root drinks in water and food from the ground called minerals.  And then look what happens, the top of the tail breaks out of the ground and it becomes a green shoot.  But the case of the seed is now like a hat on the head of the plant.  And when the head of the plant grows leaves then the seed case falls to the ground.  And the case is dead just like a cocoon is dead after the butterfly has left it.

Miriam:  But Jesus, how was your life like a dying seed?

Jesus:  Well, Miriam, you know that I died upon the cross?  But when I died did the world forget all about me like they would forget about this dead case of the seed?

Gully:  No, Jesus, you weren’t forgotten.  You became more famous after you died.

Jesus: Yes, that is true, Gully.  You see I was like the seed that became the root and the plant and the leaves.  Why?

Miss Pam:  Is that because you came back to life again?

Jesus: Yes!  And now I am alive in the lives of everyone who invites my Spirit to live in them.  I have become like a great tree; I am not like the seed anymore.  My life died but now I live again like a great tree, because I am now with all people who invite me to be in their lives.

Miriam:  Thank you Jesus for explaining the riddle for us.

Gully:  Boys and girls, do you understand the riddle now?  Do you see that a seed that dies becomes much more life in the root and the leaves?

Miss Pam:  That’s right!  Thank you Jesus for explaining the riddle to us.  Okay, I have to get back to burying my seeds!

Collecting Seeds or Growing Plants?

5 Lent   B          March 25, 2012     

Jer. 31:31-34      Ps. 51:11-16        

Heb. 5:1-10        John 12:20-33     

 Lectionary Link

  Several times in the Gospels, it is written that Jesus did not have honor in his own home, in his own time and in his own country.  And that is usually true of great innovators; they encounter great resistance in their own time and place.

  I have tried to use that same argument with my wife and children in the past—brilliant but misunderstood—and they tend to cite my cantankerousness rather than my brilliance.

  Another truth of history is that when we die, we become something other than what we were in our own time.  Why?  Because context changes everything.

  In their own contexts, Jesus and Paul did not get that exorcised over the common practice of slavery.  For many, many years, Americans did not get too exorcised over slavery or women’s rights; there was no context for a message of equal justice to be heard.  So contexts can indeed change drastically the meaning a person’s life and the meaning of their values.

  I believe that the New Testament books are proof of how contexts changed the meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  In short, after Jesus was gone, he became much better known than he ever was when he actually lived.  So, the fame of Jesus after he was gone superseded the fame that he had in his own time.  And the Gospel writings involve the attempt to connect his post-resurrection fame with the oral traditions of his actual life.   And we never really know how much of his actual life we are reading about or how much of the lives of his interpreters.  It is all mixed together and it is very hard or impossible to sort out.

  What we can observe historically is that a major shift in understanding Jesus occurred when Gentile followers of Jesus began to outnumber vastly the Jewish followers of Jesus.

  Since Jesus was a Jew with a message for Jews in his own time, how can the future Gentile context for Christianity be interpreted and seen in the life of Jesus?  If we understand this, we understand a major motivation for all of the New Testament writings.  If this were not the case, then Rabbis in synagogues today might be reading some of the New Testament writings as commentaries upon a particular messianic interpretation of Jesus.

  So the Gentile context changed the understanding of the significance of the life of Jesus Christ.  And we see that the writer of the Gospel of John understands this in writing close to the end of the first century and into the early second century about 6 -9 decades after Jesus.

    In John’s Gospel we have read about Greeks who came and wanted to see Jesus.  This occurs right after the account of the resurrection of Lazarus.  It is not surprising that Gentiles or that anyone would be interested in resurrection.  Resurrection is the El Dorado, the secret to eternal life.  Resurrection was the founding event of Christianity.  When the Greeks came to seek Jesus, the writer of the Gospel of John pens the discourse of Jesus about his glory or his ultimate fame.   And of course the ultimate fame of Jesus happened after he was gone.  The Gospel writer is trying to explain how the potentially famous Jesus became the actually famous risen Christ.

  And when one talks about potentiality one can use the metaphor of the seed.

  When someone invites you to their home to show you their gardening ability, they don’t take you into the garage and show you a massive supply of seeds that they have been keeping on the shelf.  They show you the results of the seeds; they show you the plants, the flowers and the trees.  They show you the plants that can reproduce many more seeds out of the one seed that was planted in the ground and died.    When one seed dies, it provides the next generation of life and many, many future generations of life.

  Why didn’t Jesus get left in the forgotten museum of history?  The purpose of Roman crucifixion was to make a person forgotten forever to the life of people.

  Jesus was lifted up on the Cross.  The Romans thought that by lifting Jesus up on the Cross, they could create a spectacle and so discourage any devotion to him.   On the cross the Romans lifted Jesus up to public ridicule; but when the seed of his body was planted in the ground, his resurrection gave birth to the Christ-life within the hearts of countless millions of people who came after him.

  The Roman and Gentile context that killed him, eventually was totally converted by him.   When we read the Gospel passion story, the writers seem to blame the Jews more for the death of Jesus, when it really was the Roman authorities who had all of the power.  This is an indication that by the time the Gospels were written, the Roman citizenry were the ones who were filling the ranks of the Christian communities.

  We come into an understanding of the phrase: Losing our lives to save them.   If a seed remains a seed forever, it has effectively lost its life.  So conserving is dynamically opposed to the nature of life.  We never make our potential actual, if we try to conserve a static state.  It is only through that continual loss of former states to gain future states that we can activate the dynamic gift and purpose of our lives.

  The message Jesus is very much in opposition to museum religion, where we try to hold things as static artifacts of the past, and we end up making our lives museum pieces that are alienated from the realities of our actual lives.

  So context changes everything.  Jesus, the Christ, became something else in the Gentile world than he was in his original Jewish context.  The New Testament writings, focus their interpretation on a suffering messiah in contrast to other interpreations of the messiah in the Jewish community and so the writings exist as a result of the split between Judaism and Christianity.  The New Testament chronicles the gradual shift of seeing Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew amongst Jews, to seeing the risen Christ as a Son of humanity and Son of God amongst all of the people of the known world.

  In the history of Christianity, we have seen many changes in the last two thousand years.  Historical contexts change the application of Christian meaning and yet still claim the original Jesus as the chief source of inspiration.

  In the history of my own life, the changing context of my life means that I understand Christ differently now than I understood him when I was sixteen, yet I am the same person who encompasses the diversity.

  I have become different in my later states than what I was in my former states.  So I have lost a lot; I have died to former states of how the understanding of my life has been constituted; but I have gained new states of understanding.

  The seed dying in the ground and giving rise to new generations of life is a metaphor for the life of Jesus becoming the life of the risen Christ.

  It is also a metaphor for the process of life itself.  Life is moving; pretending that we can remain static is but a state of denial.  Another word for this process of renewal is called repentance.  We are constantly being challenged to give up former states of how we constituted the understanding of our lives and take on new understandings and new purpose.

  The witness of Jesus Christ invites us to a realistic view about change in life; it invites us to expect the losses caused by change.  But the witness of Christ also offers us the hope of great gain in what we will yet become.  And this hope is anchored on the resurrection of Christ.

  Let us embrace the hope of great gain; the seeds of the past has split their sheathes and become surpassing life.  This kind of self-surpassing life is the life of repentance to which we are invited by the witness of Jesus Christ.  Amen.