Overcoming Religion for Easter

Peter preached a sermon (Acts 10:34-43) in the months immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  For close to 2,000 Easters, and I say this from some personal experience of having tried to preach on 1% of those Easters, preachers have struggled to find something new to explain it.  It is impossible really.  Perhaps Peter put it best in his sermon.  He just announced it—no elaborations, no reflections, no explanations—just announced it.  “God raised him on the third day.”  That was it.  

The truth is that the New Testament really doesn’t say much more than that about the resurrection.  None of the gospels describe the actual event—how, exactly the stone was rolled away, or what happened at the dramatic moment when the body of Jesus arose.  That is a little curious, I think, given how central the resurrection is to Christian faith.  Still, neither the gospels nor the apostle Paul say any more than Peter did—just an announcement.  God raised him on the third day.  He is risen.  That’s about it. 

And could the reason that the Bible says so little about the details of Easter be that the details are not remotely important?  The point of the story of the New Testament, it seems to me, is not nearly so much what you think about the resurrection.  It is what you do about it.  Indeed, repeatedly in the gospels, the disciples are not at all sure what to think.  In John, the disciples who got to the tomb first weren’t sure what to think.  In Luke, even in the presence of the risen Jesus, some of the disciples doubted.  In Matthew, those who were with him on the mountain after the resurrection doubted.  What matters is what they did.  They lived the resurrection.  They lived as if death no longer had power over them.  What matters is that they lived as if all that divides one human being from another no longer existed.

And that brings me back to that early sermon Peter preached about Easter, and to the part of Acts leading up to it.  Because the point is not what Peter said about the resurrection and more about what he did about it, about how Peter was changed by it, changed from old ways to new ways, changed from death to life, changed from being governed by what divides to being an instrument of reconciliation. 

The words of Peter’s sermon are addressed to a man named Cornelius, his family, his friends, and his household.  There were many people there according to Acts, which is not surprising as Cornelius was a man of some importance and means.  He was a Roman centurion, and not one of the mercenary soldiers from other parts of the Empire common in Judea, but an actual Roman.  He was a good man.  A generous man.  A supporter of the synagogue.  But he was not a Jew.  No matter how you cut it, Cornelius was a Gentile, a foreigner, unclean. 

In fact, Peter’s first words to Cornelius were, “You . . . know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile.”  And then Peter went on.  “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”  And then Peter begins his sermon with these words:  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” 

For Peter, that is a matter of the resurrection. That is change inspired by the resurrection.  That is faith in the resurrection showing forth in living a life of witness to the resurrection, a life in the service of reconciliation. 

That gets to the heart of the resurrection for all of us.  To have faith in the resurrection is to give up partiality, things of our own creation that divide us, all things that prevent our reconciliation, that prevent the love of God for our neighbors from being made real, for God knows no partiality at all.  What the resurrection does is destroy all that divides in the name of God’s overpowering reconciliation that will be held back by nothing, not even death itself.

Now things that divide us are not that easy to give up.  After all, they are deeply cherished.  After all, they are all we have ever known.  After all, they are often matters of principle, of conviction.  After all, they are very often full of religious meaning for us, as they were for Peter. 

It is hard for us to associate what is religious with something God is working beyond all imagination to defeat.  But when anything, including religion itself, divides us, that is exactly what we can expect from Easter, that God will defeat it.  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” 

Forty-five years ago this Thursday, which was a Thursday that year also, the Thursday before Palm Sunday, a man who had incredible faith in the resurrection entered into it fully.  That man’s name was Martin Luther King, Jr. Forty-five years ago this Thursday, he left Atlanta on an airplane to take part in the sanitation workers strike in Memphis for the reason that God knows no partiality.  And on that evening, 45 years ago last night, King preached these final words:

[God has] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The next day he was dead.  And that very costly stand against what divides, as religiously essential as many of us thought that division was at the time, was a product, I am sure, of the resurrection and an encounter with the risen Jesus.  “Mine eye have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”  The question is, of course, have ours? 

That is what the resurrection is all about.  It is about living in the light of the glory of the coming of the Lord, that in the coming of the Lord there is no partiality.  None.  It is living in the light of the resurrection.  It is in living in light of the fact that God knows no partiality.  None.

Not that that’s an easy thing to do.  Partiality is a hard thing to give up.  Fear is a hard thing to give up.  Somehow, partiality is a comfort, a defense, an illusion that we are somehow worthy, deserving, entitled to God’s special care.  We would rather that be the case.  It is not.  The reason that is good news to us is that we are the people that, before the resurrection, Peter would have characterized as foreign, unclean, Gentiles.  It is only by the power of what the resurrection meant, and what a group of followers of Jesus decided to do about it, that we are included beyond the very religious barrier that Peter had to overcome. 

Is the resurrection enough for us to overcome the things that divide us in our own day—national origin, language spoken, gender, opinion, political party, class, tax bracket, orientation?  Is it?  Religion notwithstanding?  Might the resurrection even have the power for us to overcome our religion?

So, here’s the basic proclamation.  God raised him on the third day.  He is risen.  That’s it.  What we think about it matters not a bit.  What we believe about it does, but only in the sense of what we do about it, what we overcome because of it, how we live because of it—without division, without partiality, all religion to the contrary notwithstanding.

Peace,
+Stacy