Our Turn

The scriptures referred to Revelation 1:4-8 and John 20:19-31.

I know I started my Easter sermon with a reference to superheroes but bear with me for a minute or two. I was talking to someone about how superheroes today are like the cowboys of my youth, something I heard echoed later in the week on NPR! When I was a child, the most popular genre in TV and films was the Western. I grew up watching Bat Masterson, Maverick, Have Gun, Will Travel, Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger. The adults watched Bonanza, The Virginian, Wagon Train and Gunsmoke. The biggest star in the movies was John Wayne, who was slowly being edged out by a newcomer named Clint Eastwood. The answer to all the problems that arose in these dramas tended to be the same: who was the fastest draw? We even had a series that was named after the weapon the good guy was proficient with: The Rifleman. Today it's all about superheroes but the appeal is the same: it depicts a mythical world where the problem of evil is solved by might in the right hands.

But as much as I love the genre, superheroes would be much less effective in the real world. Could Superman solve the problem of poverty? Could Spiderman stop the escalating rate of suicides in our country? Could Batman end the political polarization that is paralyzing just about every country? Of course not. Because our problems are not super strong bad guys, or mad scientists with death rays, or mutated monsters, or magical items you wear. They are the results of human nature. As Jesus said, evil is not external; it comes from our hearts. (Mark 7:20-23) Mere might cannot solve problems created by masses of people interacting in numerous short-sighted and selfish ways.

Ever so often, the comics and movies acknowledge this. Occasionally we hear of the Wayne Foundation which funds philanthropic, medical, and educational programs, though one wonders if Gotham City wouldn't have less of a crime problem if Bruce Wayne spent more time focusing on solving social problems than on personally punching every thug who lurked in an alley. In fact, given how often the Joker states that Batman is the whole reason he does what he does, Bruce Wayne's war on crime seems to be making things worse. In the second Avengers film, Tony Stark's high tech attempt to make the world better actually creates the robotic villain of the story. As one Doctor Who episode set in the old West makes clear, violence just begets more violence. A Cracked.com video pretty much proves that super powered people would actually make the world worse. [Here]

One thing I like about the revived Doctor Who series is that it does address the problem of relying on some hero to solve everything magically. One episode actually dealt with the inevitable way all wars end. When a splinter group of Zygons, aliens living on earth disguised as humans, is tired of sharing the planet with us, they decide to reveal their existence and start a war. Eventually the Doctor manages to get their leader and the person in charge of earth's defenses in a room and presents each with a box. Each box has two buttons. One button will give the human or alien who pushes it what they desire—either revelation of all the Zygons or their death by a specially formulated gas. The other button will give them what they don't want—the Zygons made permanently human or the detonation of nuclear warheads under London. But neither the alien nor the human know which button will trigger which consequence. By pushing them, they could win...or they could lose. When they object that the Doctor has reduced this deadly situation to a game, the Doctor says he hasn't. “This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought right in front of you. Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill before everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning—sit down and talk!” The Doctor can't solve all the problems leading to war. Only the parties involved can do that.

The alien figures out that the buttons don't do anything. Right, the Doctor says. They were just a way to make the two sides stop and think. “Do you know what thinking is?” the Doctor says. “It's just a fancy word for changing your mind.”

Last Sunday we looked at how the resurrection of Jesus got the disciples to change their minds about his mission. Like most Jews in Galilee and Judea, they were unhappy with the brutal military empire that occupied their homeland. They wanted what everyone wants when things are bad: a Messiah, a superhero who will solve all our problems. They were hoping Jesus would be a King David 2.0, who would use his power to defeat and expel the Romans. They wanted a holy war. That's why they simply could not wrap their minds around the idea that Jesus would die. And when he did, they went into despair. Then when he rose again, they didn't know what to think.

Jesus takes advantage of this state of mind to retrain them. In Acts 1:3 it says that Jesus “appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” What did he say? Considering that the gospels are written from a post-resurrection perspective, what they say he taught before his crucifixion is probably what he was reinforcing afterward. So let's look at that.

The phrase “kingdom of God” and the equivalent in Matthew, “kingdom of heaven,” a euphemism to avoid using God's name, do not mean a physical, political region. It means “royal rule.” It might be better translated as “God's reign as king.” It is about life lived by God's people in obedience to God's rule. Nor is it an exclusively end-times event. It will culminate at some future point in a world ruled by God but the kingdom begins now as people enter the kingdom and willingly become citizens of it. The church is meant to be the kingdom in embryonic form, a community where people have pledged their allegiance to Jesus as God's anointed prophet, priest and king and live according to the commands he gave us. And the two primary commands are to love God with all we have and all we are and to love our neighbors as we do ourselves. All other commands are derived from these two.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom as being near when he started his ministry (Mark 1:15), as being present in his ministry (Luke 11:20), and as yet to come (Matthew 25:34). This has caused all kinds of theological debates on whether the kingdom is present or future. Yet Jesus frequently depicted the kingdom as something that starts small and grows, rather like a seed (Matthew 13:1-43). It takes time to see the results. (Mark 4:26-29) My feeling is that is similar to the end of the Second World War in Europe. The D-Day landings at Normandy broke the Nazis' absolute control over occupied Europe. Then the Allies pushed the Nazis back and as they did, they reclaimed territory. Those places were now under Allied control. But the Allies did not totally liberate western Europe till the fall of Berlin. God's entrance into history in his son Jesus established a beachhead in this world. He broke the absolute reign of sin over humanity. But there is a lot more work to be done before the task is complete. God's reign exists now where people have accepted his rule over their lives. But God's royal reign will not be total until, as it says in Revelation 11:15, “the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.”

Entrance to the kingdom of God requires repentance or a turning from sin and to God (Mark 1:15) and a childlike faith or trust in the gospel, or good news about God's royal reign (Matthew 18:3). That trust must be sincere and not just lip service. As Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21-23) Doing God's will, that is, obeying the commands to love God and other people, are evidence that one is part of God's kingdom. In his parable about the last judgment Jesus says, “Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a foreigner and you took me in. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me....Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of these, the least of my siblings, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:34-36, 40) In other words, treating other people the way you would like to be treated (Matthew 7:12)—with love—is obeying God's commandments to love both him and our neighbor, since God created them in his image and Jesus died to redeem them.

Central to the idea of a kingdom is the king itself and so Jesus is central to the kingdom of God. Jesus called himself the Son of Man, a messianic title from Daniel 7:13-14, where it says, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” The Son of Man is the supernatural person who is God's agent in bringing about his kingdom. Consequently the people of Jesus' day were expecting to see some big Hollywood-style miraculous signs. They saw the Son of Man as a superhero. But as Jesus said, “...the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Indeed Jesus' healing, his mastery over demons, disease and death, is the principle sign of his being the Son of Man, which is why he gets exasperated when people demand more flashy, magical signs (Luke 11:14-16). Even his cousin, the Baptist, had questions about whether Jesus, who was a lot less fiery than John, was the Messiah. Jesus said to John's followers, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matthew 11:4-5) The signs of God's reign being present are the Messiah's works of restoring order and health and life to the world. Where Jesus is, the kingdom is.

In superhero stories, ordinary humans are just there to be attacked by bad guys or rescued by good guys. Even in classic Doctor Who, his companions were just there to ask questions, trip while running from monsters and be used as hostages to stop the Doctor. In the rebooted series, this changed. The companions were given more personality and more to do. They even became heroes. This was underlined by a villain steering at the title the time traveler had given himself: the Doctor, the one “who makes people better.” And indeed a consistent theme is that the ordinary people the Doctor encounters are inspired by his example to be braver, wiser, more compassionate. In some stories it has become quite obvious that the Doctor has become a Christ figure, creating disciples.

But aren't we as Christians just supposed to believe and wait for Jesus to return? Not according to the Bible. We are to be actively applying the principles of the royal reign of God in our everyday lives. When Jesus talks about the delay in his coming, he says, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.” (Matthew 24:45-46) We are to be taking care of one another, nourishing one another. When confronted with 5000 hungry people, Jesus says to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” (Mark 6:37) But they just talk about how impossible it would be and so Jesus steps in to show them how. But at the last supper Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) How is that possible? Well, for one thing, we are not asked to do this under our own power. In fact we can't without Jesus. He says, “you are in me and I am in you.” (John 14:20) Specifically, he gives us God's Holy Spirit, who lives with and in us. (John 14:17)

In the recent Shazam! movie, a wizard gives Billy Batson tremendous power when he says the wizard's name. When faced with enemies too numerous for him to defeat, Billy has his foster family say the name and thereby shares his power with them, enabling them to do what he does. I don't know if the writers realized they were mirroring what happens in today's gospel passage but it makes a very good cinematic parable. Here we see Jesus giving his Spirit and authority over sins to his disciples. Jesus wants us to be like him. That's the whole point of following him.

Every ambassador is a representative of the government which sends him or her and is empowered to act on its behalf. And Paul says, “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20) Similarly, every embassy, wherever it is geographically, is still considered part of the country it represents. Just so, the kingdom of God is not limited to one place or time. In Luke 17:20-21, we are told “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, 'The coming of the kingdom is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst.'” You could say, “it is within your grasp.” The kingdom of God exists wherever the people of God are doing the will of God.

What is his will? That we love God above all and love our neighbors as ourselves. That we even love our enemies and act as peacemakers. That we put our trust in Jesus and proclaim the good news. That we go into all the world, make disciples, baptize them and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded of us. That we be the light of the world so that people may see our good works and praise God.

After shooting up the town and killing the bad guys, the cowboy rides off into the sunset, leaving the townfolk to bury the bodies and repair all the broken windows. Jesus didn't kill anyone; he let himself be killed in place of all us bad guys. Most superheroes fly away when they are done, leaving the ordinary people behind to clean up the destruction they wrought. But Jesus took upon himself the brunt of the evil we wrought and then gives us his power to spread the healing he brought. And though we no longer see him in the flesh, he hasn't left us. (John 14:18) Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23) We are to embody the love of God, the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father in the unity of the Spirit throughout all eternity. Having God's Spirit in us makes us all parts of the body of Christ. He anoints us in his name to continue his mission to a sick and broken world. During his earthly ministry Jesus paired up the Twelve, and later the seventy, and gave them the power and authority they needed to overcome the forces of evil they would encounter. As Luke puts it, “ And he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (Luke 9:2) Go and do likewise.

Our Only Hope

The scriptures referred to 1 Corinthians 15:19-26.

I don't know if this entered into their calculations but just a few days after this Easter, Disney and Marvel Studios will be releasing the second part of their Infinity War saga. In the last film, the villain Thanos got ahold of the magical Infinity stones that control space, time, power, mind, soul and reality. This enabled him to carry out his mission to save the limited resources of the universe by eliminating half of the people in existence. He snapped his fingers and we watched heroes like the Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and even Spiderman turn to dust. And there the movie ended! So we geeks can't wait to see how the remaining heroes like Iron Man, the Hulk, and Captain America reverse this. And we know it gets reversed because that's what happened in the original comic nearly 30 years ago. Plus if they don't, it would be the saddest superhero movie ever.

Why am I bringing up fictional heroes on the day we celebrated Jesus' triumph? Three reasons.

First, the gods of the old pantheons were more like superheroes than what we think of as divine. They were very powerful but they were very human in their faults. They could be petty, deceitful, lustful, recklessly angry, foolish, envious, and even arrogant. And they could die. In fact, in the Norse mythology, they would all die at Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. Neither Odin, nor Loki, nor Thor survive, unlike the Marvel movie version.

Second, contrary to the popular theory that pagan gods died and rose again, they didn't. In Norse mythology, Balder the beautiful dies due to Loki's trickery but he does not come back to life. Quetzalcoatl dies and turns to ashes. Hawaiian and Japanese gods die, never to return. Ishtar and Persephone's deaths are associated with winter but in spring they come back as crops, not as themselves. Osiris stays dead, though his wife cobbles together enough pieces of him just long enough to impregnate herself. He promptly returns to being dead and the god of the underworld. The pagans did not see the gods, these overpowered beings whose fantastic stories they retold, as being immune to death. Death trumps everything and everyone.

In fact, it looks like the only actual dying and rising pagan gods come after Jesus, so if there was any borrowing of ideas, the pagans borrowed resurrection from Christianity, not vice versa. And of course our modern gods, or superheroes, also borrow the same idea and they die and return to life so often it is not a question whether they will come back but when. Their franchises are too valuable for Superman or Iron Man or Captain America to stay dead.

Third, from the perspective of storytelling, for a hero to die at the end is a bummer. The most famous version of the Arthuriad is Sir Thomas Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur, which gives away the ending right in the title: The Death of Arthur. It is essentially a tragedy, as are Beowulf and Ragnarok and Hamlet. And, for now, the first Infinity War movie.

In Jesus we see something new. Jesus is the only God who defeats death. But more than that, he is the only God who exists in history.

Along with the popular misconception that there were dying and rising gods before Jesus, there is an idea popular among less well-read atheists that Jesus was totally made up. In fact this idea that Jesus is fictional is so insidious that New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, who is himself not a believer, nevertheless felt it necessary to write a book asserting that, whatever else he was, Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person. For one thing, he is mentioned by non-Christian historians of the time, such as Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus.

I would go even further. In view of how early the documents we have about him arose, it is hard to dismiss the theological claims about him being divine and rising from the dead as being late inventions.

Because of the expectation that Jesus' return would be very soon, the gospels were not the first parts of the New Testament that were written. The apostles were alive to tell Jesus' story. The earliest Christian writings are the letters of Paul. And the earliest of them were his letters to the Thessalonians. His first letter to that church was probably written around 51 AD. We can date this accurately because in Acts 18:12-17, Paul, on his second missionary journey, is brought before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia. We know that Gallio was an historical person and that he had that position in 51 to 52 AD because of an inscription found in Delphi. And according to 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2, Timothy was sent to check on the fledgling church in Thessalonica about that time. Seeing as Jesus was crucified around 30 AD, this means this letter was written only about 20 years afterwards.

How developed were the beliefs about Jesus in just two decades, when plenty of people who knew Jesus were still around? In the first chapter of this letter, Paul mentions “how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10) Already, Jesus of Nazareth, an historical person, is considered the Son of God, who was raised from the dead and who saves his followers. That is what Paul means when a few verses earlier he talks of the “hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 1:3)

And that is the crux of the matter. As we said when a hero's story ends in death, it is a tragedy. And indeed all of our lives end in death. If that is the real end, if there is no sequel, if there is no life after death, then we are left with grief and sadness. But if Jesus of Nazareth, an historical person, turned over to the Romans by Caiaphas, another historical person, and crucified by Pilate, yet another historical person, rose from the dead, then there is hope. Indeed Jesus is our only hope.

Everything hinges on the resurrection. There were other would-be Messiahs. Simon bar Kokhba led a revolt against Rome in 132 AD and was proclaimed the Messiah by the esteemed Rabbi Akiva. While he did establish a Jewish state for about 3 years, the Romans crushed it, killing 580,000 Jews and razing to the ground 50 fortified towns and 985 villages. Bar Kokhba is said to have died during the final siege or, according to another story, he was killed by the Sanhedrin for being a false messiah. In the 400s, Moses of Crete persuaded the Jews on that island to march to Israel through the sea, expecting it to part. It did not. Menachem Mendel Schneerson was hailed to be the Messiah by some of his followers. When he died in 1994, some still thought he would rise again. He has not.

Wikipedia lists 65 Messiah claimants from Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other backgrounds. Most of them you have never heard of. Jesus would be just another one of them had he not risen from the dead on a Sunday nearly 2000 years ago. The disciples, who in the immediate aftermath were hiding in an upstairs room for fear of suffering the same fate as Jesus, would have just returned to their former lives, disappointed. Some, perhaps those who were initially disciples of John the Baptist, might have moved on to the next messiah-wanna-be. But nobody would still be touting Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah, much less as God Incarnate.

It was the resurrection that validated what Jesus said. How could his claims—“I am the Bread of life,” “I am the Light of the world,” “I am the the Resurrection and the Life,” I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—be taken seriously if he had stayed dead? For that matter his ethics—“turn the other cheek,” “love your enemy,” “forgive people who sin against you,” “it is more blessed to give than to receive”—make no sense if there is no afterlife and no final judgment. Why not just lie, cheat, and bully your way to the top if this is the only life you get? Why pay the poor, the sick, the elderly and the unfortunate any mind? As Scrooge says, let them die and decrease the surplus population. That is the ruthless, Darwinian logic of Thanos. There are only so many resources for the living. Kill half and there's more for everyone else. Compassion and social justice be hanged.

When Jesus died, the hopes of the disciples died with him. As the two disciples heading to Emmaus said about Jesus. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:19-21) “We had hoped”: past tense. The dream was over. The reality was that Jesus was dead and so was his movement. They were getting out of town, dejected and despairing. Their hope only revived when they saw Jesus alive.

I think that was why Thomas didn't believe that Jesus had risen at first. Not only did he not have the advantage the others did of seeing Jesus on that first Sunday, but I think it was too hard for him to even think that way. When Jesus decided to go back to Judea to raise his friend Lazarus, the other disciples are concerned that the last time he went there, the religious leaders tried to stone him. But Jesus was adamant about going. And Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16) So Thomas was committed to following Jesus no matter what. And when his fatalistic view of what would happen to Jesus came true, it wasn't that he would not entertain the hope that Jesus was alive again; it was that he could not. Yet when he saw the risen Christ, displaying his wounded wrists and inviting Thomas to touch him, the previously doubting disciple could only stammer out, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:26-28)

And that was another consequence of the resurrection. How did these monotheistic Jews come to regard Jesus as divine as well? I won't go through all the probable steps here but it began with his resurrection. Jesus raised others from the dead, but so did the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Nobody but Jesus was ever raised without the intervention of a prophet. Without anyone asking, God raised Jesus from the dead, the same God who said to him at his baptism and at the transfiguration, “You are my Son, whom I love...” (Mark 1:11; 9:7) Before the resurrection people may have called Jesus “the son of God,” because it was a title used of King David. But after his resurrection, it did not sound so much like royal hyperbole as it did a factual description of what Jesus was. This was no run-of-the-mill prophet, no ordinary man of God; this man was God to all intents and purposes. Later on people would associate Jesus with the Wisdom of God, personified in Proverbs 8. Later on the church would formulate the working hypothesis of the Trinity, which was not intended to explain how 3 persons could be one God, but to preserve the paradox. I doubt the disciples could explain it to a theologian's satisfaction. They just knew that in addition to experiencing God as creator, and experiencing God's Spirit within them, they saw their time with Jesus as a direct experience of the presence of God. The veil lifted from their eyes the minute he appeared in that locked upstairs room before the cowering lot of them and said, “Peace be with you.”

N.T. Wright points out that all of the quotations of the Old Testament which point out the precedents and prophesies that apply to Jesus drop out of the gospels at the moment we reach his resurrection. It was unprecedented. Aside from the people raised by Elisha and Elijah, the Hebrew Bible only mentions resurrection explicitly twice (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2) and both of those refer to the general resurrection of all people. There are a few other passages from which it can be inferred. But the resurrection of the Messiah is not spelled out in the Old Testament. In Jesus God was doing something new, something disruptive to the usual order of things. In Jesus God is asserting his dominion over death and his identity as the God of the living. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, when the one who never deserved to die let himself be killed in the place of the guilty, death itself began work backwards.

As we said, even non-believing historians concede that Jesus once lived but they are at a loss to explain why his movement continued to thrive after his crucifixion. Nobody follows Simon bar Kokhba or Moses of Crete or Ann Lee of the Shakers anymore. Why did a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors proclaim that a crucified construction worker was the Son of God and had come back from the dead? Why did they no longer fear death, even when renouncing their claims would have saved their lives? How did a small Jewish movement manage to grow, despite periodic persecutions by various emperors, to the point where 300 years later an emperor would feel it politically acceptible to become a Christian? How is it that it is now the largest and most widespread religion in the world?

As we said, when a hero dies at the end of his story, it is a tragedy. When a great man or woman dies, it is a tragedy. And everyone of us will die. Within 4 or 5 generations most of us will not be remembered. The works of our hands will not last forever. Though the Cathedral of Notre Dame will be rebuilt, the tower, the construction of which took up nearly half of the life of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc 200 years ago, has been destroyed. How long will my blog last after I am gone? I hope that in 40 years Lutherans and Episcopalians will continue to worship Jesus on this island. It's unlikely any of us will be among them. Death comes for us all. And if that is the end of our story, then it is a tragedy.

As Paul said, “If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20) How could Paul be so sure? Because the risen Christ appeared to him. Paul had been trying to wipe out the heresy of Christianity and after his encounter with a very much alive Jesus, he rethought everything. And when he started proclaiming Jesus as the resurrected Christ, his life was never safe again. Besides being threatened by his own people, he was imprisoned on numerous occasions, flogged 5 times, beaten with rods 3 times, once he was stoned and left for dead, and he went through 3 shipwrecks. (2 Corinthians 11:23-26) He ended up being beheaded by the emperor Nero. And yet, facing his death, he said, “For me to live is Christ and to die is to gain.” (Philippians 1:21) Either he was crazy or he knew something. The same could be said for all the apostles. The only reason a rational person would devote one's whole life to such a painful and dangerous mission is if one knew it was worth it. Such as if you knew someone who had died and who came back to life and who could pass on eternal life as well. If you knew death was not permanent, there would be nothing that could stop you from letting others in on the good news.

Retired Bishop Frade's favorite movie quote was, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it's not all right, it's because it is not yet the end.” Death is not the end. Jesus has flipped the script. In John 11:25-26 the one and only God who has ever risen from the dead says, “I am the resurrection and the life. The person who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Well...?

Peace, Fellowship, Sacrifice, Meal

The scriptures referred to 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

During our Lenten Bible study we examined the sacrifices made in the Tabernacle and Temple. We used this definition: sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or lives to a higher being as an act of worship, or for a higher purpose to gain something more important, worthy or valuable. Most of the offerings had to do with sin and guilt. But in our last session we looked at what is called either a fellowship or peace offering. And we looked at the Passover. In both cases they are meals, the physical preparing and eating of foods, but they have great spiritual significance.

The shalom or peace offering was unique among the 5 types of offerings laid out in Leviticus because it was not wholly given to God, as was the case in the burnt offering, nor parts shared only with the priests, as with the grain, sin and guilt offerings, but everyone, including the person offering it, got to partake of the meal. That's why it is also called a fellowship offering. It was a meal where the worshiper symbolically got to eat with God. In the Middle East to eat with someone is to be at peace with them. In addition, the offering was not a mandatory but voluntary one, usually made in thanksgiving for recovery from illness or escape from danger or safe return from a journey. The person is thankful for God's protection and healing and their resulting wellbeing, which is another meaning of the word shalom. The peace offering was a happy occasion and you invited family and friends to join you in the meal. To ensure that, nothing could be left over. It was a feast.

Tonight we celebrate the institution of the Lord's Supper. The disciples were literally sharing a meal with God made man. And during the meal Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give to you; I do not give it as the world does.” (John 14:27) And I wonder if this is what inspired Paul to write that “...we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...” (Romans 5:1) or “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross...” (Colossians 1:19-20)

Through the sacrifice Jesus made we are reconciled to God. We are no longer in rebellion against God but at peace with him. And Jesus may have been thinking of that when he was speaking at the meal. But he was definitely thinking of another sacred meal.

A Jewish wag once summarized all Hebrew holidays thus: “They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat!” That's especially true of the Passover. It is a festival in which Jews commemorate being liberated from slavery in Egypt. If the death and resurrection of Jesus is at the center of the Christian faith, Passover is the center of the Jewish faith. It is the event that defines them. The Talmud says, “In every generation, each must see himself as if he went forth from Egypt.” Each Sabbath, Jews bless a cup of wine and in their prayer recall the Exodus from Egypt. And that was true in Jesus' day as well.

And you can imagine how fraught this Passover was for Jesus' disciples. They had acknowledged him as Messiah, God's anointed one, who will bring in the kingdom of God. He was given a royal welcome when he entered Jerusalem just 5 days ago. The city was packed with Jews from all over the empire. They are about to celebrate God liberating their people from a foreign pagan government. This could be it! Jesus could start the revolt against Rome!

There was probably no Haggadah or authorized liturgy of the Passover in Jesus' day as there is now but the focus was nevertheless on the retelling of the story of the Exodus. So when Jesus took the unleavened bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, the disciples were expecting him to say something like, “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate when they came from Egypt.” Instead he says, “This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” What was going through their minds as they were passing the bread and eating it? Jesus said and did surprising things. They were used to that now. But what was he doing with the central commemoration of Judaism?

After supper, he took what was either the 3^rd or 4^th cup of wine one drank on Passover, gave the traditional thanks for the food, for God's care of his people and for his protection of Jerusalem. And then Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Again though the disciples are not recorded as saying anything, their minds must have been on fire with questions and speculations. What was Jesus saying here? Why is he saying the elements of the Passover were things a Jew would never eat: human flesh or any kind of blood? Why is he asking us to remember him? Where is he going? Why?

“Why?” was probably the question that echoed in their brains the most. Jesus took a sacred meal that already had a meaning, and whose foods already represented things, like the bitterness and tears of their enslaved ancestors, and gave them new and, let's face it, rather strange meanings. Why did he do that? As with a lot of things Jesus did and said the meaning would become clearer to them after the events of the next 3 days.

From our perspective what Jesus meant is easier to discern. Jesus is taking bread and wine, staples of life back then, and identifying them with himself. The bread is obvious. It is one of the oldest prepared foods, going back perhaps 30,000 years. The oldest evidence of bread making has been found in Jordan, 14,500 years ago. Consequently it stands for the basic necessities of life, which is why in the Lord's Prayer, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That's why we call the family's provider the “breadwinner.” In fact the English word “lord” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “bread keeper.”

You would think that water would be the other element Jesus would use but, while everyone prized fresh water, trustworthy potable water only came from springs and wells. Even a creek or river, especially if it was downstream from a town or city, might not be healthy to drink. Plus in an agrarian society most of your water would go to irrigating your fields and hydrating your animals. Even today 70% of water used by humans goes to agricultural uses. So wine was the standard beverage.

Wine was part of Jewish rituals, especially on the Sabbath and in the Passover. Red wine was also associated with blood in ancient Egypt and by Greek and Roman cults. And in Genesis (49:11) and Deuteronomy (32:14), wine is poetically called “the blood of the grape,” though Jews rarely called it that, probably because they were prohibited from eating blood. (Leviticus 17:10) And in the verse immediately following that prohibition the reason is given: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.” (Leviticus 17:11) The life poured out, the spilled blood of the sacrifice, provided atonement.

Why didn't Jesus just use the blood of the Passover lamb? Wasn't it dabbed on the door frame and wasn't it the sign that the Israelites were to be passed over by death? Yes, but that was only done on the original Passover, not on subsequent reenactments. No Jew does it today, either. So it wasn't available for Jesus to use. Plus, if we go by the crowd's reaction to Jesus' address in John 6, where he tells them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, this may also have been a test which separates those who get what Jesus is saying spiritually and those who can only perceive things in a literal fashion. Jesus lost a lot of followers when he gave that speech. Jesus says to them, “The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (John 6:63) Yet many left him. Jesus then says to the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” And Peter replies, “ Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68) So when this comes up again at the last supper, it's possible the disciples thought, “Well, this is just something Jesus says from time to time. Maybe he'll explain it later, like he does the parables.” If he did explain it, it would be after his resurrection. And, unfortunately, it was not preserved so as to cut off all the debates in Eucharistic theology.

But there are some things about the Lord's Supper practically all Christians agree on. Jesus commanded it. The only two sacraments all churches agree on are baptism and communion. Baptism brings us into the body of Christ and communion nourishes the body of Christ. And whether they believe that the body and blood of Jesus are literally in the bread and wine, or that they are merely symbols used in a memorial, or that Christ is really here in a way we are not knowledgeable enough to define, Christians believe that there is a spiritual significance and benefit to partaking of communion. It is, as St. Augustine put it, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. God communicates with us through physical things all the time. We call Jesus the Word of God made flesh. It is appropriate that he communicate his spiritual nourishment of us and our dependence on him through bread and wine.

The first description we get of the Lord's Supper is not in the gospels but in Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth. At that time, it was the highlight of an actual meal called the Agape or Love Feast. Unfortunately it was getting out of hand: some were getting drunk or overeating, some were bringing their own private suppers and others were left out. The significance of the Eucharist was getting lost. So Paul reminds them what is really going on when we share the body and blood of Christ. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26)

Jesus was obviously thinking of what was going to happen in just few hours: he would be arrested and crucified. He was tying the Passover feast, the celebration of God protecting his people from death and freeing them from slavery in Egypt, to what he was about to do, free all people from slavery to sin and thereby protect them from spiritual death and separation from God. He was also tying in the ideas of sacrifice and covenant. Technically Passover was neither. The lamb was not offered to God but was eaten by the family. The covenant was not made at Passover but later at Mount Sinai. Yet Passover, sacrifices and covenants all involve the shedding of blood. That act showed how serious these matters were.

We do not sacrifice animals anymore. God the Son's sacrifice of himself ended all that. But we share the bread and wine in remembrance of what Jesus did for us. He died that we might live. God's Son became a human being so that humans might become children of God. He took the brunt of the evil we unleashed on God's creation to heal the breach between us and God. He came to free us from our enslavement to sin and the self-destructive things we let take control of our lives. He came to make a new agreement between divinity and humanity in which God shows his love by giving us his Son and his Spirit and we in turn are to reflect that love in all we think, say and do to everyone we meet and to everyone whose life we impact.

Jesus was distilling all of that into what he said and did at this meal. And in a few minutes we are going to commune with God at a simple meal, sharing the body and blood of Christ that we might be the body of Christ in this world, proclaiming God's love as seen in the death of Jesus until the risen Christ comes again to welcome us into the wedding supper of the Lamb.