Resurrection Spaces

THE WHOLE CHRISTIAN YEAR stretches toward this moment when we reach back to acclaim the power of God over death manifest in the resurrected life of Jesus. The passion and pageantry of the days from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday enable believers to mystically live in the ancient moments we commemorate. At the same time, we are very much present in a world that is anything but resurrected; it is, as I often preach, “crucified and crucifying.” It is easy to find the broken places in our world and those that deal death. Where are the resurrection spaces? Where do we look to see that death does not, in fact, have the last word? What is our work in bridging the gap between death and life?

This month’s lessons brim with passionate faith on Jesus and his triumph over the grave. These accounts stem from nearly a century and more past the events that inspire their faith. The authors and editors of these texts also lived in a world in which the triumph of the resurrection was not apparent in many aspects of their lives; many went to gruesome deaths confident in the resurrection despite the power the empire wielded over their mortal lives. To strengthen our faith, they left us the accounts in the scriptures we read in this season. But we are not dependent on their words. We have unmediated access to the love and power of the resurrected Jesus.

[ April 1 ]

The Death of Death

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; Mark 16:1-8

THE PROMISE OF Easter is life—life that transcends death. Faith in resurrection is central to most traditions of Christianity and Islam and to some movements of Judaism. References to life after death are rare before the Newer Testament; Daniel 12:2-3 is the clearest example of eternal life after death and resurrection. In the story of the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons (2 Maccabees 7:7-14), the sons affirm their belief in being raised to everlasting life. There is also a Hebrew biblical tradition of an underworld, Sheol, the abode of the dead, particularly the wicked (Psalm 9:17), from which the dead are said not to rise again (Job 7:9), though other texts differ (for example, Psalm 30:3). What is constant in the scriptures is the power of God over death.

Isaiah 25:6-9 is the first reading for Easter because of its explicit claim that God “will destroy (or “swallow”) death forever” (25:8). The promise is specific: “on this mountain,” it says in verses 6, 7, and 10. That “mountain” is Jerusalem, figuratively Mount Zion. It is the scene for a banquet the likes of which the world has never seen, the richest and most fat-filled—a good thing here—accompanied by the finest wines. The banquet symbolizes joy, delight, and deep satisfaction. The feast is open to all peoples (verse 6), just as death has touched all peoples and all nations (verse 7). In Isaiah, God’s promise of a joyful life beyond the grasp of death is for all peoples, all nations, without precondition.

[ April 8 ]

How Shall We Live?

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1 - 2:2; John 20:19-31

BECOMING CHURCH in Acts 4 looks quite different than it does in chapters 1 and 2. People in the street under the power of the Holy Spirit living into their gifts have been replaced by the early Christian commune. The result was that everyone “among them,” that is in the nascent Christian community, had all their needs met (4:34-35). That is a very difficult form of church to sell in this world. It was hard then. The next few verses tell of a couple who defrauded the church. We also know of cults in which members are pressured to give all they have to enrich an unscrupulous few claiming divine authority.

The holy example in Acts 4 need not be consigned to the dustbins of the outdated and impractical ministry ideas. There is a metaphorical “country mile” between giving everything one owns and leaving the poor and needy to their own fates. Acts 4 is a reminder that we, the church, are responsible for each other, that we have it within our power to make a significant difference in their lives. Yet Acts 4 only addresses need in the understandably insular first church. Today we must also see the need around us. The needs of our fellow human kin are ours to meet, whether they are Christian or not.

[ April 15 ]

Denouncing Anti-Judaism

Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48

ANTI-JUDAISM IS a long-held failing of the church and its interpretation of the scriptures. Christian anti-Judaism takes many forms: blaming the Jews for killing Jesus; denigrating Judaism as a legalistic works-based religion; claiming that Christians have replaced Jews in God’s favor; diminishing or erasing Jesus’ Jewish identity; characterizing Jesus’ ministry and message as independent from and oppositional to (first-century) Judaism, etc. Some of these notions have roots in Christian scriptures; all have been amplified though interpretation in preaching, teaching, and theological discourse. The result of the church’s propagation of anti-Judaism has resulted in lethal persecution of Jews, vandalism, theft, and disenfranchisement “perpetrated in Christian lands by Christian hands,” as scripture scholar Johanna van Wijk-Bos puts it. The most notorious of this persecution was enacted by the Nazis—including self-identified Christians and notable pastors and scholars of religion. (I recommend The Aryan Jesus, by Susannah Heschel.)

The claim in Acts 3:13-14 that the Israelites rejected and handed over Jesus and killed him (verse 15) is part of a collection of biblical passages that place blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews. Those texts include Matthew 27:25, where the crowd says, “his blood be on us and on our children”; John 8:39-44, where Jesus tells some Jews that they are not children of Abraham but children of the devil; and 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, where the author says plainly that the Jews killed Jesus. Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine (see The Misunderstood Jew) calls for Christian interpreters of these verses to do more than contextualize and historicize, but to theologize: “Christians must denounce anti-Jewish readings (however defined) because they are counter to the “good news” of Jesus,” writes Levine. [See below for additional readings addressing Christian anti-Judaism.]

[ April 22 ]

The Other Sheep

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

JESUS SURRENDERED his life, according to 1 John 3:16 and John 10:1. This is in sharp contrast to Acts 4:10 this week and Acts 3:13-15 last week (both of which indict the Jews, but not the Romans, for Jesus’ execution). First John 3 is an extended treatise on the love of God for us and the love we ought to have one another. It is directed to the Christian community. Verses 23 and 24 describe the parameters of this community, belief in Jesus, and love for one another. Notably missing are all the doctrinal, cultural, theological, and interpretive issues that Christians use to divide ourselves into camps.

In John 10, Jesus claims the mantle of the good shepherd. To those who think they and only people who think, theologize, and interpret like them are in the fold, Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd” (verse 16). There has been great speculation on the identity of these others. Such speculation misses the point. God’s love is broader than we can imagine and includes those we can’t imagine.

[ April 29 ]

Queerly Diverse

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

IN EASTERTIDE, the church grows as the gospel spreads. The burgeoning ancient church described in Acts 8 is culturally and sexually diverse. Philip, possibly the disciple of Jesus with a Greek name who served as a cultural and linguistic bridge between Aramaic-speaking Jesus and the Greeks, extended the gospel to a Nubian official from what is now Sudan. The inclusion of each person in the Jesus movement is significant. Philip with his Greek name represents a significant departure from the rabid anti-Hellenism of the Maccabees. Even if he was Jewish, he would not have been Jewish enough for some. The African official is the treasurer of his sovereign, the Kandake (origin of the name Candace). He is also embodied in a way that defies binaries. As a eunuch, he was neither fully male nor female—a third way of being. The Torah prohibited him from the temple (Leviticus 21:20; Deuteronomy 23:1), but Isaiah called for the full inclusion of eunuchs (Isaiah 56:3-5).

Two thousand years later, some are arguing about whether people who don’t fit gender binaries are welcome in the church. Too many churches fail to reflect the rich diversity found in the church in Acts with “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” together (Acts 2:9-11).

Suggested additional reading for April 15 lectionary:

Quit Picking on the Pharisees! by Amy-Jill Levine (Sojourners, March 2015)

How Christian is Zionism? by Leslie C. Allen and Glen H. Stassen (Sojourners, July-August 2003)

The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel (Princeton University Press, 2008)

The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine. (HarperOne, 2006), “The New Testament and Anti-Judaism”

Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice by Johanna W. H. van Wijk-Bos (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005)