Living the Resurrection: Reflections After Easter - Brossura

Brookhart, C. Franklin

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0819227951 ISBN 13: 9780819227959

Casa editrice: Morehouse Pub Co, 2012

Riassunto

How do we live as "resurrection people"? How do we take those stories into our hearts and lives, living as though we believe resurrection to be a reality?

Frank Brookhart takes stories of the resurrection and illuminates a way for Christians and seekers to explore life in the new creation. Tying the Gospel narrative to our lives as followers of Jesus, he proposes a means for transforming people and churches through living into the resurrection with the Risen Lord.

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Living the Resurrection

REFLECTIONS AFTER EASTERBy C. FRANKLIN BROOKHART

Morehouse Publishing

Copyright © 2012 C. Franklin Brookhart
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2795-9

Contents

Chapter One

It Begins in the Garden

In the gospel according to John, we are told that Jesus was buried in a tomb, which was located in a garden near the place of his crucifixion. On Easter morning Mary Magdalene goes to the garden, is shocked to find that the massive stone covering the entry to the tomb had been rolled away, and that the body of Jesus is no longer there. Her initial interpretation of the situation is that someone had stolen the body—sensible and logical reasoning, it seems to me. While there, the Risen Lord encounters Mary, but she does not recognize him and assumes that he is the gardener. This is where we begin, in a garden, and as you see, that garden is an ambiguous place, a place with associations of both death and life.

We, however, need to begin at the beginning.

John's horticultural setting harkens back to another garden found in the second chapter of the first book of scripture, Genesis, and it, too, is a place of ambiguity. This scriptural passage narrates the story of God creating a garden, which God then populates with plants, trees, animals, and eventually two human beings who are called simply the man and the woman. I think we will largely miss the point of this episode if we try to deal with it as if it were a report of an event from the front page of the paper. As we will see, there are elements in the story that tip us off that, rather than an account of a specific event in time and space, we are instead dealing with a timeless story about the relationship between God and humanity. It is a story filled with truth, and, if we read it carefully, we will find a place for ourselves in it.

To begin, we find God playing in the dirt. He shapes a human form out of soil, then leans over and breathes into the nostrils, and the man ("adam" in the original language) becomes a living being. Up until then the world was a barren place with no fauna or flora; there was no rainfall, and it was watered by a single spring. Next, God creates a garden paradise filled with plants and trees, rivers and minerals. These things evoke in the man a sense of wonder at their beauty, and they provide food for him. The man is placed in the midst of the garden, which is located somewhere to the east of a place called Eden.

At this point we come to a significant detail in the story. In the middle of the garden, God has planted the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These are plants found in no field guide, and this is an orchard like none we have ever seen. Our intuition tells us that trouble is ahead, if for no other reason than that issues of right and wrong and of life have always challenged the best minds and most well-intentioned hearts in history.

God gives the man a job: he is to tend the garden. But there is a cautionary comment to the man: you may eat as much as you want of the fruit of any of the trees, but do not—I repeat—do not eat of the tree of life or of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are off-limits to the man—too morally and intellectually hot to handle.

The story then takes a turn. God announces that it is not a good thing for the man to be alone in this amazing place. So, God creates the animals and trots them before the man, who gives them names, a sign that God values the role and place of the man. In the ancient near east, the privilege of bestowing names was a great honor and responsibility, because a name hinted at the essence of that being. But neither God nor the man seem satisfied with developments thus far, so God puts the man to sleep and performs a rib-ectomy. God then uses the rib to make a woman. God awakens the man and shows him the latest bit of creation. In reaction to the sight of the woman, the man says, "Wow! You got it right this time, God!"

Who could imagine a more moving and beautiful story? Everything is, shall we say, perfect. The man and woman have the significant job of tending to the garden, which in turn gives the pair food. Every day in the afternoon—and apparently every day is a warm summer day—the man and woman take a stroll with their Creator. The world, humanity, and God all live in perfect concord.

But the story seems like a dream to us, does it not? We can imagine it, dream about it, long for it, and even see some of the continuities with our own situation, but this is not our world. Concord and harmony are not words we would use as adjectives for our situation. Our world is no paradise.

Soon a kind of darkness descends over the story and the paradise garden. The man and woman find themselves under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A crafty creature, the serpent, appears and tells the couple to enjoy the fruit of that special tree. "Oh, no," the woman says. "God has told us we will die if we do." The serpent says, "That's baloney. If you do eat, you will understand the difference between good and evil, and then you will be like God." This is simply too much for the two to handle, and they help themselves to the fruit of the tree. Until now, they had known only God and the good, but now....

The story underscores the new situation of the woman and the man in simple and striking detail. The two eat the fruit and suddenly realize that things are not right, that they are naked. Now shame, guilt, and fear have entered the picture, and the garden does not seem like paradise anymore.

At the time of the daily afternoon stroll, God cannot find the two, because they are hiding. God asks a question filled with implications: where are you? They step out, and admit that they had hidden themselves in fear, knowing they were naked and vulnerable before God. The Creator knows something is terribly wrong, and asks, "Who told you that you were naked?"

In the tense conversation that follows, the woman and man try to blame each other for listening to the serpent and eating the fruit. At that point, God does not point a finger of judgment at them, but rather describes what they will experience now that they can discern good from evil. The man will have to work hard all his life to grow food, but the soil will now produce weeds and thistles, and then in the end the man will die and return to the dust from whence he came. The woman's situation will be no better. She will have pain in childbearing and yet she will still be inextricably drawn to her husband, who will seek to dominate her. And the story ends on a very poignant note: God sends the couple out of the garden to which they will never return.

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this second part of the story is strangely familiar. Like the man and the woman, we are able to recognize beauty, justice, truth, and love, and we have a sense that we have been made by a loving Creator. And, like the man and woman, we seem to be always walking away from these things. We create some beauty, but also lots of ugliness. We desire justice, but never seem to get it entirely right. We are motivated to receive love, but find it hard to give love. And then there's God. Would it be fair to say that our relationship with the Creator is tense? Do we not, in one way or another, try to hide from the Divine?

Thus, our lives are filled with regret, fear, shame, and unfulfilled longings. We live with the nearly unbearable tension between good and evil. We try to set up our little world so that we can be a tiny god in control of that world, but we never succeed with this plan. We seek escape in buying and selling, traveling and looking, playing and frolicking. But then, like the conclusion of a cruel joke, we die. From dust we come, and to dust we return.

We live our lives outside the garden in a world of pain and perplexity. We try to find a way back to paradise, but our search is always futile. We don't know the way back and cannot find the entrance. We seek the way in success, power, influence, learning, recreation, wealth, and dozens of other things, but we forever find ourselves lost somewhere outside the garden.

It begins in a life-giving garden. We live outside that garden. We understand that it has become a place of death. But, note well, that is not the end of the story. God has made plans.

Questions to Help You Understand this Chapter's Full Intent

1. What does this creation story say about God?

2. In this story God does not intervene to prevent the man and woman from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What might this say about the pattern of God's actions toward humanity?

3. In what ways do you see yourself, your family, your church in this story?

4. In what ways does the story both comfort and challenge you?

Chapter Two

It's a Scary World Out There

Imagine this scene. On a spring morning you are chatting with a friend about the Easter celebration at her church on the previous Sunday. She tells a strange story. "When the gospel story about the resurrection of Jesus was read, I became weak and felt faint. It filled me with such fear that I had to leave." You would likely ask yourself, "What kind of church is that anyway? Did she confuse church with a scary movie?"

We find it difficult to imagine such a scene. But, in fact, Easter forces us to face the issue of our fear head-on. Easter addresses that scary world out there, the world we inhabit.

Here is the Easter story as it is recorded in the gospel according to Mark:

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:1–8)

Most scholars today are convinced that this is the genuine ending of Mark's gospel as the evangelist intended it. If that is so (and the case is convincing), then the story contains no account of an encounter with the Risen Christ, and the last phrase in the narrative is "they were afraid." The emotional state of the three women at the tomb is described in these four terms: alarm, terror, amazement, and fear.

This is clearly not the Easter we are accustomed to in our churches. We expect the perfume of lilies; joyous alleluias; the music of choirs, organs, and trumpets; and the best vestments and communion vessels. For most of us, there is no more upbeat, exhilarating Sunday than Easter.

What are we to make, then, of Mark's narrative? I think that this account asks us to wrestle with another side of the resurrection. This is a story with no joy and apparently no meeting with the Risen One. The New Jerusalem Bible captures the emotional tone with this translation: "They were frightened out of their wits ... they were afraid." This gospel account asks us to wrestle with the issue of fear. With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel, this narrative asks us to sing, "Hello fear, my old friend."

I admit that this Marcan account of the resurrection has always left me personally unsettled. And I find it a nightmare to try to base a sermon on this particular passage. I hardly know how to react to it and what to make of it. But it is the very strangeness of the thing that forces me to pursue the meaning of the story. My own spiritual experience has led me to see that often the most difficult biblical stories are likely to be the ones that God most wants me to struggle with.

So, let's set aside our own emotional reactions and puzzlement and dive into this unsettling account. Let's look at those four terms used to describe the women's response. First is alarm. Since the New Testament was written in Greek, we can turn to a Greek lexicon to try to capture the nuances of this word. Looking at the various possible meanings and citations, the lexicon suggests that alarm here means utter astonishment so intense that one is forced to rethink ordinary assumptions.

The women also, we are told, experienced terror. That term suggests an event so out of the norm that it induces fear and even physical trembling. The three were so stunned and shaken by the empty tomb and the message of the angelic young man that their hands shook and their knees trembled.

The word amazement suggests a similar reaction. The Greek term points to a state of being so distressed that one is overwhelmed. We might say that the emotional circuits of the three women were burned out.

Finally, there is nothing fancy about the last of this quartet of terms, namely, fear. It is plain old apprehension. It is that state of mind in which a rush of adrenaline sets off one's "flight or fight" response. And, indeed, we are told that they took flight.

Part of the value of this word-study lies in its ability to raise to our awareness just how much fear and apprehension dominate our lives. We have no problem recognizing the responses of the three women. I can confess that I am an expert on anxiety and that I could teach graduate classes in worry. What about you?

I believe that fear is not an entity unto itself, but is really a symptom of other factors at work at a deep and foundational level of our lives. Please allow me to take a stab at dissecting fear into its component parts. As I have thought and read about the workings of fear—and I have done so exactly because I do not like the way fear dominates my life—I have found it helpful to think of fear as a signal, one that we need to address a cluster of four factors that are at work in the deep basement of our lives.

• Out of our past comes guilt. We carry with us a burden of shame, regret, and culpability, and the list of the particulars can be quite long. As the confession in The Book of Common Prayer puts it so eloquently, we are guilty by virtue of "thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone." It is at that point that fear enters. What if these things were exposed and made public? What if people found out who I really am? If people really knew me, would they not step back from a close relationship? How can I put up a good, respectable front? How can I guard my secret self ?

• In the present we are plagued by the question of purpose. We have a life well stocked with gifts, interests, and talents. How do we harness these so that we live well? How can we live in such a way as to make the world a better place? It is just at that point that fear begins its whisperings in our mind. Maybe there is no meaning or purpose to life. Perhaps I am just a tiny, insignificant cog in a huge, impersonal machine. Is it possible that I have missed the important turning points in my life and am now just lost in the woods?

• The future poses the problem of death. For example, one of the most solemn days of the year for Christians is Ash Wednesday. The palms from the previous year's celebration of Palm Sunday have been burned and reduced to ash in preparation for their imposition on the foreheads of those who present themselves. I experience the act as a liturgical ordeal. The priest says, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The sign of Easter victory, the palms, have been turned into the mark of death. Who can leave without being shaken? Put baldly, we fear death.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we have an overarching and lifelong ache at the very center of our lives. We all want to be known and valued. We want to be accepted and told that we are significant. We want to be listened to. And we want all of these on a dependable and trustworthy basis. In short, we want and need to be loved. I believe this may well be the deepest need of every human person. But exactly because this is so important, fear acts in and through that need in its more virulent forms. What if I am unlovable? What if love fails? What if I give myself to a beloved, but the gift of my love is rejected? What if I am loved in a fleeting and undependable way? If any of the above were to happen, would I not be devastated at the core of existence? Because we want and need love so much, it can be, therefore, the source of our greatest fears.

We can say, then, that fear works in complicated ways in human life. But it is also a powerful factor in the lives of congregations. As a bishop in the church, I must meet with priestly and lay leaders of parishes for a variety of reasons, such as episcopal visitations or meetings with congregations searching for a new priest. In nearly every one of those events, someone will ask a question that reveals the fears of that parish. For instance, why do we exist and what is our purpose? Why are we so burdened with tales of woe and pain from the past? Are we as a church in a spiral of decline and on our way to death? How can we stop fighting with each other? Why are outsiders not attracted to us? Your congregation, too, likely has its unique litany of fears.

This has been a bit of a detour into the structures of fear and anxiety. I, however, believe that it is important for us to start to appreciate both the extent and depth of fear at work in our lives and churches. Or to put it another way, we need to recognize how much of our lives are spent like the three women at the tomb.

For many years I spent a week every summer at our diocesan church camp located in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains. During free time I would sometimes wander through the hills surrounding the camp itself. I often found my way to a little cemetery, so hidden away in the woods that most people did not know it was there. During my first visit I noted the odd fact that many of the gravestones said that the interred persons had died in 1918 and that many were children. I then recalled that 1918 was the year of the great influenza pandemic that swept the world and killed thousands. All of those people in that tiny cemetery had died of the flu. It seemed odd that such an ordinary and common disease could cause worldwide death and pain. Fear is flu of the inner life. It touches all, everywhere. It causes death.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Living the Resurrectionby C. FRANKLIN BROOKHART Copyright © 2012 by C. Franklin Brookhart. Excerpted by permission of Morehouse Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Morehouse Pub Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0819227951
• ISBN 13: 9780819227959
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 148
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile