Lloyd Geering’s book Resurrection-a Symbol of Hope was first published in 1971. His ideas were not new but they surprised a number of New Zealand Presbyterians and the controversy captured the imagination of the media. Lloyd went on to establish Religious Studies at Victoria University, was given our highest award and subsequently knighted. Furthermore, he preached at St Andrews on the Terrace to celebrate his 95th birthday.
In many ways Sir Lloyd became ‘a symbol of hope’ for all those Christians who want to connect their scientific world view with the basic principles of the Christian Faith. But his books framed that hope, which is a function of books, I struggled to grasp as a teenager until I wrote a quotation from John Milton in the introductory page of my sixth form English exercise book.
‘A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to life beyond life’.
I wrote that to try and impress my English teacher because my School Cert English was not impressive.
I had an inferiority complex about that until I was given Tom Scott’s autobiography as a retirement gift. Scott didn’t get 50% for English either.
Our English teacher was pretty scary and I can still remember him haranguing the class about our essays about famous authors. ‘We are all born, all will die and most of us can reproduce our own kind’. He said ‘Your essays must tell what makes this person unique?’
We should ask similar questions of Easter Morning. Not what was the sunrise like but how do the events of Easter change our lives.
On Easter day we need to move away from the mundane engineering and medical problems we imagine with Easter morning and ask, what was the ‘Symbol of Hope’ that the Gospel writers were trying to send down the centuries to us. To look for the precious lifeblood of their master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to life beyond life’. What imagery and symbolism did they frame with their words. What traditions and myths did they hold up to the light, not to reproduce a cctv tape from a green hill far away. The Gospel Writers dared us to dream. Dared us to see resurrection-as a symbol of hope not just for them as it clearly was. But for us, for our children and our children’s children.
First of all, the gospel writers go to a lot of trouble to point out that Jesus’ crucifixion achieved its objective, and Jesus was well and truly dead as a result.
Furthermore, if the church is going to have a future we, their readers, have to move on from discussion about what might or might not have happened, what could or could not have happened.
We need to focus on what resurrection means for the church and for Christians now and in the future.
In fact, the title of Geering’s 1971 book Resurrection-a Symbol of Hope helps us take hold of that first century excitement that was grasped by those first apostles. Resurrection was a hope first experienced by the women at the empty tomb, later passed on to the male disciples then enshrined in the gospels to be passed on to us.
The empty tomb was itself a symbol of hope and a metaphor for a totally new relationship with God. The new relationship with God is not enshrined in the tomb of a long dead Jesus. The new relationship with God is experienced through the presence of Christ within each and every Christian.
As Bill Wallace wrote in his hymn ‘Christ is risen, Christ is risen, risen in our lives’.[1]
Judaism was centred on the Temple up until its destruction and Jews were expected to regularly attend temple festivals. The apocryphal book of Tobit tells the story of Tobit, a Jew in exile in Babylon, and his family. Part of Tobit’s difficulties arise because he continually brags about his faithfulness, claiming that before he was taken into exile, he always attended every festival at the Temple in Jerusalem. His bragging is so over the top and offensive that God sends a sparrow to defecate in Tobit’s eyes and that is the start of the journey to new beginnings.
Like ancient Judaism, Islam expects loyal Moslems to make pilgrimages to Mecca, but in recognition of its status as a world religion, the requirement has been reduced to at least one pilgrimage in a lifetime.
However, the solid gospel message from this morning’s reading is that Jesus is not entombed and therefore not to be worshiped in some sacred shrine in some special place. The empty tomb is significant in making that point.
The women in Luke’s account of the empty tomb were terrified but the two heavenly messengers addressed them and said:
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.’ (Luke 24:5)
Because our history informs our present it is very easy to find ourselves looking for the living among the dead. In chapter 43 of Isaiah the poet invites the reader to avoid being bogged down in the past and to be open to the ‘new thing’ that God is doing. That in essence is what the heavenly messengers were saying to the women at the tomb. For the women, and the other disciples, the Jesus adventure was over and their future, and the future of the Jesus movement, was not buried in a cave in the ground. The future was within their lives and the lives of the other disciples.
The messengers go on to expound the scripture for the women, reminding them of what Jesus taught. Fired up by that renewed understanding the women go and tell the other disciples, who Luke now calls apostles.
This recognition, through the interpretation of scripture, is consistent with the following episode which is Luke’s first resurrection appearance on the Emmaus Road. It is also about finding ‘the new thing that God is doing’ in the tradition of the past.
It is significant that the women are not believed. Much has been made of the male dominated culture of the time and verse 11 can certainly be read that way. ‘But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.’ (Luke 24: 11) That is very much the sort of statement that men have been using to avoid being influenced by feminine wisdom since the beginning of time.
On another level however it reinforces the reality that an empty tomb is not testimony to the Resurrection. Reasons for the tomb being empty range from the fact that the body was never placed there in the first place to the one mentioned in the gospels that the body had been removed so people could claim that Jesus had been raised.
The real and only proof of the resurrection is the transformation in the disciples and the presence of the risen Christ in those first apostles. There is also proof in the amazing growth of the church and the transformation it has brought in human history along with the work of committed Christians in our time and place.
Even in the land of Luke’s Gospel the disciples struggle to understand Jesus and what his mission is about. Yet those same people are empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and launch the church into history in Luke’s second book Acts. Something miraculous happened that involved Jesus’ execution and the time immediately following Jesus’ death. It involved both women and men, secret disciples and those who pretended not to have known Jesus. It involved visits to Jesus’ tomb and discussion of their sacred texts as well as shared meals to remember Jesus. Those are all very mundane and perfectly reasonable activities that were part of the miracle that gave the church its birth. Part of the mystery we call resurrection, the mystery that confirms Jesus as the Messiah or Christ, the Christ in whom the followers of Jesus live and breathe and have their being.
We now live in Isaiah’s new heaven and a new earth, but heaven and earth have not changed since the time of Isaiah. But we live in a time were probes head into darkest space and perhaps the sooner Elon Musk goes to Mars the better.
At the time I put Milton’s quote in my English book I could have gone to Whanganui to watch Peter Snell break the world mile record and have regretted not going ever since. But as I wrote this sermon, I watched 15year Sam Ruthe break sub 4 on my computer.
In a world of science where the internet brings the wonders of the universe into our homes it is time to leave the empty tomb and look inside ourselves and realise the spiritual potential for transformation in the Risen Christ, within and around us.
The meaning of the Resurrection for those first Apostles, was and is, the same as it is for us. Christ is risen, risen in our lives.
[1] Rev Bill Wallace ‘We are an Easter people’ in Alleluia Aotearoa (Palmerston North:1994, New Zealand Hymnbook trust) No146
