May 4 ~ What Does Resurrection Really Mean?

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Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:1-6 [7-20]

Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19

Sermon by Pastor Nelson

Jesus said “How much do you love me?”

I mentioned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. last Sunday. Sixty-two years ago, two years before I came to Canada, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from Birmingham jail.”  Responding to criticism by local clergy, he explained that he had led a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, because theirs was the most segregated city in the nation.  He told them that,

“we will have to repent…not merely for the hateful words and actions… but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Yes we will need much metanoia.  King added, ”human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co-workers with God.”  Could those words ever be more meaningful than they are now after our election?  Well King was not a fortune teller for our election but he could have been echoing Peter and others who told the powers to be,

“we must obey God rather than human beings.”  In the New York times edition of April 20, 2025, there was quite an article about people trying but failing to replace religion with something else.  In spite of how bad we humans want to replace God we have found that we cannot.

In the tragedy in Vancouver this last week, we hear so many people saying, “my thoughts and prayers are with you.”  In spite of such a common saying, what else can we say? Way back in 1963, King explained that he intended to “create a crisis,” dramatizing the evils of segregation so that they could no longer be ignored. By risking their lives for others, the disciples of Jesus and others, through the years, have dramatized their lives so that people could/can see concrete evidence of the freedom and new life available in that freedom.  We might use Christ as our example but others only know that they have to do it for humankind.  Bonhoeffer, Bishop Romero, and King are just a few of many examples we have in history; who laid down their lives for a cause, and who found that religion gave them a cause. 

We hear today of many who say they will lay down their lives for this place we call Canada.  Will we?  Our Easter Gospels explain what happens when we encounter love and a mission in our lives.  We have the message again in our lessons today. John’s Gospel describes each detail of the story to reflect events of Jesus’ life and/or the current situation of his Christian community.  Please remember the Gospel of John was written in about 90-100 ad, 60-70 years after the Jesus’ story.  In other words, this story today tries to sum up Jesus’ life once again. This story begins with Peter and six others deciding that the hour had come to return to their fishing trade.  Their religious venture with Jesus was over.  Their miraculous catch suggests that the fishing was good, but they were missing something.  Jesus had offered them much more.  The story of Peter jumping into the water gives us a reminder of baptism.  The fire on the shore evokes the memory of the fire in the garden at night when Peter denied knowing Jesus.  The fish that Jesus was preparing reminds us of the miraculous sharing of the bread and fish a couple of times during Jesus’ life.  And then Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me?”  This becomes both a question and a command.  The writer of John has Jesus asking and saying, “I want you to really love me for who I am, not just your idea of me or what I can do for you.”

So many today, who practice the “White House” kind of Christianity, are saying pious words so that the fringe group of our own MAGA conservatives will bow down to us and swoon over our pious pretentions.  But they forget what Jesus said, “if you really love me, you will live in me and I in you and you will care for my people with the same love and courage that I have cared for you.”  Tell me how that squares with what Trump and his gang of thugs are doing to immigrants, gays, poor and the like?  You see the miracle of Easter is not the empty grave.  It is that God comes back from death and does not condemn the unrighteous ones but loves them, loves us.  Resurrection is about justice owed to the suffering.  If you are suffering, resurrection is good news. Every time Peter repeated his denials by proclaiming his love, Jesus would again explain that loving him implied doing what he, Jesus had done; “feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”

Jesus knew the disciples had denied him, but the good news was/is not just that the tomb was/is empty but that Hell was/is empty also.  You see the kind of love Jesus was talking about was not friendship, not admiration, but such a profound union in love that even a Peter would share his passion for doing God’s will by giving of himself for others.

Think about this, if it was not for Good Friday, on Easter we would just make some coloured eggs and hide.  That then brings us into the Last Supper discussion when Jesus told his disciples that loving him implied living his command of universal love and his prayer that they would be one in him as he was with God.  We see this is already being argued by those cardinals who think Pope Francis went too far in loving others.  How can you be a Christian and go too far in loving others?  So today we get to contemplate our own gospel vocation.  How do we express our faith in action?  How do we express what our baptism and partaking of communion mean to us?   The bottom line is, the reign of God versus the reign of the empire will depend on our efforts to accept that we are coworkers with God.  Looking at life this way we will always be drawn into the mystery of the resurrection.  The writer of revelation cannot help himself, he sees us with myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands loving God and that God through us will be recognized by all.  Incidentally, I think a myriad was 10000 in Greek?  I did not get into the Book of Revelation this week as I thought I would but I want to say this.  Revelation unveils for us a foundational contradiction of our faith.

Once we get to the centre of God’s world, to the centre of the idea of a throne, we realize that there is no Emperor or King on the throne, there is a lamb.  We may see some trappings of royalty and adoration, but the adoration is not directed at a strong man.  Perfection and prosperity are not God’s fundamental qualities. We find vulnerability in the place of power, creativity in the place of conformity, and love in the place of loyalty.

Here in 2025, Pope Francis called us to recover the essential gospel of mercy as our message to this troubled world.  Doctrinal consolidation, warrior Popes, great cathedrals and liturgies, fortress mentality and legalism, are not what is needed by this global community on the brink of enormous challenges to its survival and future direction.  What we need more than anything else is hope and reconciliation.  Will our newly elected leaders give us that?  What we need more than anything is, metanoia.  What martin Luther King Jr was saying sixty-two years ago was we need repentance, a spiritual conversion.  Not Poilievre’s change, change, change but a change of heart.

We know that some will listen and in listening we will be transformed, and some will not.  I will quote Diana Butler Bass from a book entitled “a beautiful year,” which will be published later this year.  The older I, Ron, get, the less I am sure what the resurrection means.  But I think Diana says it as clear as anyone.  Resurrection is not resuscitation.  Resurrection is not regeneration.  And it is different from reincarnation.  It is not just renewal. Resurrection is what happens after death.  Indeed, death is necessary for resurrection to occur.  Some Christians are absolutely convinced that it is about literal bodies rising from the dead.  Others claim resurrection will entail some sort of new spiritual body or is primarily an alternative spiritual state of personhood. Still others insist that resurrection is political or social liberation.  Christians argue about whether the event was scientific fact, evidenced by history, a kind of communal visionary or mystical experience, or something else entirely.  The New Testament employs a variety of metaphors to explain it. Even Paul and the writer of Luke seemed not to agree.  But all agree on two things at the centre of the Christian story.  First, death is not the last word.  And second, whatever the resurrection was, is, or will be, it serves as the gateway to a new existence – a life of mercy, service, and love.  Like Christmas, Easter is more than a single day.  It is a season of fifty days.

As spring lengthens, as the earth awakens, this year invites us to explore the many meanings of resurrection.  It raises questions, even as it inspires hope.”  Yes, resurrection is the power of love and hope in the face of destruction and violence.  Jesus called Peter back and then sent him out again, in spite of Peter’s denial and betrayal.  For each of us life in the faith will not be without struggle, but we are called and sent to follow God in our own dying and living.  There are no conditions on our life but there is a commission.    There are sheep to feed and care for.  There is work to do now, not to earn forgiveness and acceptance that has been given, but as a way of expressing gratitude for the gift of grace, and as a way of living the new, resurrected life that we have received. 

Yes, we will hear again and again;

“Will you come and follow me

If I but call your name?

Will you go where you do not know

And never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown

In you and you in me?”

[ELW 798 v. 1]

 Amen.