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A pair
of questions as we begin.
Let me
introduce Fred ... a man whose character was as drab as his
life. Fred shuffled paper in a low level government job, retiring
after 40 years on the payroll. He lived alone in a one-bedroom
rental apartment, yet showed little signs of regretting his
solitary existence. He argued for no great causes, capitulated
readily in an argument, and was deemed by most who knew him
to be an agreeable fellow. In fact, that was the word that
came quickest to anyone's mind in describing Fred ... "agreeable."
As far
as anyone remembered, Fred never said a bad word about anybody.
But, then, nobody ever said a bad word about him. Or a good
word, for that matter. Or any word. He paid his bills on time,
drove a modest car and bought a government bond whenever he
accumulated a little extra.
If people
loved him ... or even enjoyed his company ... they did not
declare themselves by showing up at his funeral. His casket
was carried by two men who dropped by from his office and
four men recruited by the funeral director. In the eulogy,
nobody recalled a mongrel mutt or a Persian cat that he stroked
by night, or even a canary whose songs brought sunshine to
a cold winter's morning. In cleaning out his apartment, no
one found $20,000 wrapped in brown paper and stuffed beneath
his mattress. Neither was there a bundle of letters from someone
once loved and lost in an earlier era.
If Fred
was a member of the Silent Majority, the Moral Majority, or
even the Great Society, he carried no membership card in his
wallet. He never, once, sat with Bob Uecker in the front row
... nor did he ever exclaim that he ought to. A few old lottery
tickets and a couple of football betting cards testified to
the fact that he took an occasional ride on the wheel of fortune.
But never a wild ride. And seldom a winning one. Had he lived
long enough, he would likely have taken up residence in a
boarding house in Central Florida ... preferably one near
the public shuffleboard courts and within walking distance
of an Old Country Buffet.
Death,
when it came, tiptoed quietly into his life, meaning that
he suffered neither long nor heroically. One night he simply
closed his eyes and, the next morning, neglected to open them.
When the
great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that "every
human soul contains more meaning and value than the whole
of history with its empires, wars and revolutions," I
wonder what Berdyaev would have made of Fred. When one thinks
of the millions of years of biological and social development
that went into his making, Fred did little to justify the
effort, and gave no signs of recognizing it. The forward progress
of humankind lost ground with Fred ... or, at best, stood
still.
Which
did not keep Fred from becoming an ecological problem. I mean,
there is only so much space on this planet for people to inhabit
... only so much air for people to breathe ... only so much
water for people to drink ... only so much food for people
to eat ... and only so much fuel to propel people from here
to there while keeping them warm in the winter. And Fred used
his share. Which means that Fred's share couldn't be allocated
to anyone else. And which is why the Freds of the world need
to depart the world in order that other Freds (and Fredericas)
can be born ... whether the replacements turn out to be galley
slaves or brain surgeons.
Martin
Luther King once said (perhaps with Fred in mind): "If
there is no cause for which a man is prepared to put his life
on the line ... no truth that he struggles a lifetime to understand
... no love that makes him reach beyond his selfish inclination
to give ... then the mere stopping of his heart is but a belated
announcement of a death that has long since taken place."
Which pretty much describes Fred's tragedy ... not that he
died, but that he so little lived.
So what,
if anything, does Easter do for Fred? Stated another way:
"If resurrection from the tomb is nothing more than an
endless extension of that which already is, who is to say
that Fred would want it, or that any of us would want it for
him?" On the way to an answer, let's look at a few classic
misunderstandings of the Easter message and consider how they
might pertain to old Fred.
Let's
begin with the misguided notion that Easter means we are immortal.
Which is dead wrong. Easter does not mean we are immortal.
Easter does not mean that Jesus was immortal. And it certainly
does not mean that Fred was immortal. The problem is in the
terminology. The word "immortal" means "not
subject to mortality" ... not subject to death. The Greek
gods were alleged to be immortal (living for hundreds of years,
with death having no power over them).
Death
had power over him. Sad to say, it had power over him long
before two men from the office and four guys from the funeral
home said prayers over him. And if someone had said (prior
to the signing of Fred's death certificate), "Fred, you
are not going to die. You are going to live forever,"
I am not sure Fred would have received that as good news.
No, I am not sure he would have looked favorably upon that
at all.
Or consider
a second group, approaching center stage with a different
philosophy to share. "Yes," they say, "Fred
will die. And he will live on in the collective memory of
those who knew and loved him." They will point to the
great figures of history ... Washington ... Lincoln ... Churchill
... Arnold Runkel. Then they will note that each of the above
is "gone, but not forgotten." The splash that each
made in history's pool is still sending ripples to the shore.
But what
of Fred? Fred made no splash. Fred sent no ripples. He wrote
no book, built no building, sired no child or bequeathed no
fortune. So how long do you think it will take his co-workers,
his landlord and the bookie who handled his football bets
to forget his name and his face? Six years? Six months? Six
weeks? Find that bookie and I'll put my money on "six
weeks."
Now, through
door number three enters the moralist, suggesting that Jesus
shall gather the sheep and reject the goats ... the "good"
to heaven, the "bad" to oblivion. Maybe so. But
what of Fred? Was he sheep or goat? Nobody remembered much
he did that was good. But nobody remembered anything he did
that was bad. His goodness consisted in avoiding badness.
His chief virtue rested in that which he did not do.
And he
certainly never prayed to idols ... although whether he prayed
at all is anybody's guess. As to whether he had a pure heart,
who can say? Although it would appear that he kept his nose
clean. Assuming that qualifies.
But I
don't want to go further with any of these lines of thinking.
Because the post-Easter question that puzzles me tonight is
not "Is death survivable," but "Are the Freds
of the world transformable?" Can God make something out
of Fred on either side of the grave?
To which
I say: "If God can bring Jesus from the tomb, I believe
that God can bring anybody from the tomb ... even Fred."
By now, you are probably getting the idea that when I say
"out of the tomb," I mean something more than the
grave that holds us on the last day. I also mean the graves
that hold us on all the other days as well.
The resurrection
of Jesus is not offered as a one-time, one-shot, magical and
miraculous display of God's power. The resurrection of Jesus
is meant to show us that life need not be defeated, destroyed,
demeaned or deadened in any one of us ... even when we jump
into self-dug holes feet first, or seal ourselves in self-hewn
tombs (taking the keys with us). Why would God stop with rolling
one stone away when he could roll every stone away ... including
stones that we, ourselves, have rolled into place, the better
that we might hide from our future and our Maker.
Easter
is about the eternal nature of God's concern. And God's concern
is this ... not simply that we survive, but that we become
what we have it within us to become (or what God has placed
within us to become). Which will not be easy. And which is
why it will take God to bring it off. I am no expert on processes
of birth and rebirth. Some have suggested that advances in
obstetrics may eventually render childbirth painless. But
rebirth will always be fraught with great pain. Bringing life
into the world is one thing, over which mothers are more than
capable. But changing moral and spiritual blobs into whole
and loving human beings (living with the overflowing abundance
that we call "life in Christ"), that's a God job.
But God will bring it off, even if it takes longer than it
looks and longer than we have. That's because God is playing
on a bigger court without the constraints of a shot clock.
Yes, God
will pull it off ... here or there ... which is what Damian
Zikakis said to me in a wonderful little note, sketched in
response to my last Sunday's sermon.
How do
I know? Because I have seen God do it right in front of my
eyes. That's how I know. I have seen God confound the determinists
who study our social environments and predict our futures
accordingly. We have psychologists and sociologists (very
necessary, mind you, and very helpful, too) who study and
measure us ... who probe our psyches and poke around in our
family trees ... who assess wounds inflicted upon us, prior
to the age of memory, by our mothers and our fathers, our
sisters and our brothers, our preachers and our teachers.
Then, pointing to our wretched housing, poor nutrition, alcoholic
parents and ghetto surroundings (not to overlook the "big
three' sources of victimization ... poverty, race and gender
... along with mistakes that may have been made in how we
were trained to go to the toilet), they say: "No way.
No hope. No how."
Yet transformation
happens. Here and there, people who have no business making
it, do. They survive. More than that, some of them even thrive.
I am thinking
of the minister who everyone agreed was unsuited to his calling.
Having failed in four successive appointments, he was sent
for one last try by a district superintendent who told him:
"This is the last bus out." Whereupon he pulled
it together, amazing everybody by serving gloriously.
And there's
the girl who was raised in an alcoholic home ... both parents.
She had four older brothers and sisters who provided models
for failure (which were interesting only in the fact that
each of them managed to fail differently). When her life intersected
with mine, she was selling Good Humor bars for seven consecutive
summers on the southwest side of Detroit, earning the money
to pay for a bachelor's and a master's degree from MSU. And
just a few months ago, she received a "Humanitarian of
the Year" award from one of our large mid-Michigan communities,
citing her wonderful work with high school and middle school
kids (especially kids living close to, or right on, life's
margins).
Here and
there it happens ... defying all logic. Human beings who have
no business climbing off the scrap heap of life, do. We often
hear people say: "If only I could light a fire under
that girl ... if only someone would administer a swift kick
in the pants to that boy ... if only someone would detonate
some dynamite in that church." Well, sometimes it happens
and nobody knows why. We can trace it to no cause. We can
give it no name. We can attribute it to no syndrome.
But perhaps
we do know. Could it be that God is at work? The God whose
peculiar way of haunting history is bursting forth from tombs
... hammering and chiseling at rock ... is doing it again.
One of the ancient resurrection images is that of graves spitting
out their dead ... the earth rumbling and bodies flying everywhere.
Which is primitive, I'll grant. And which can lead to a very
crude theology. But perhaps it will serve us here.
God will
continue to hammer away at rock until every last stone be
rolled away. Not just his stone. But ours, too. So keep your
ear close to the ground, listening for subterranean thunder.
What is it? It's the jackhammer of God, at work even now.
Which is why the sleep of the dead is never peaceful ... or
final. My father used to say (when overcome by weariness):
"Bill, there's no rest for the wicked." Well guess
what, Dad? There may not be any rest for anybody ... until
God's great work is done.
*
* * * *
Note:
Several of the ideas undergirding this sermon, including the
image of "the jackhammer of God," are drawn from
British author Colin Morris and his book The Hammer of
the Lord.
Additional
Note: Imagine my surprise when, two days after preaching this
sermon, I received a sermon preached by William Willimon in
Duke University Chapel (April 9, 2000) that contained the
same message. After eloquently detailing how difficult human
beings find it to break old habits, forego old sins and reverse
predictable patterns of self-destruction, he adds the following:
When
Jesus came forth from the tomb on Easter, Jesus not only
arose to new life, but so do we. New life really is possible,
even for people like us who find it terribly difficult to
change, to start over, to begin again, to be new.
We believe
that even as Jesus is raised from the dead, so are we. God
writes a new relationship, not on tablets of stone, but
within our hearts. We are therefore not permitted to give
up on ourselves, despair of our ability to be the sort of
people we would like to be, because God has refused to despair
of us, to give up on us. God keeps creating, recreating
us. Thus Easter is God's great defeat of defeat.
In just
a little while we shall gather in great joy to celebrate
the Resurrection of Jesus, God's great miracle in raising
Jesus from the dead. I'll tell you a miracle, different,
but I think equally wonderful. I know a man who for eighteen
years was enslaved to the bottle. His wife begged him, his
children begged him, but he couldn't stop. He eventually
lost his marriage, his family, his job, his self-respect,
just about everything. As his pastor, I tried to help him,
but I finally gave up. I think I even said to myself, "He
will never lick this, he is beyond help."
That
was an unfaithful, terrible thing for me to say in light
of the cross of Jesus and of Easter. Nevertheless, I lost
track of him over the years. A couple of weeks ago I ran
into him at a meeting. We recalled the days when I was his
pastor. Then he told me something wonderful.
"Pastor,
you might be interested to know that I have been free, sober,
for the last eight years."
Interested!
I'll say. Free. Free for eight years.
I'll
tell you what I think happened. I think Easter happened.
I think he was raised from the dead. I think the same miracle
that God worked on Easter, God worked in his very heart.
God started from the inside out, wrote something in the
depths of his heart, which previously could only be inscribed
in a list of rules in the futility of should, ought, and
must.
Don't
tell me you have trouble believing in resurrection. I've
seen it.
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