Witnesses

Luke 24, 36b-48 Service of  Baptism in Eucharist

During the baptism of S. his parents and godparents will promise that they will encourage him, as he grows up, to learn to know God, to follow Jesus Christ in the life of faith and to serve their neighbour following the example of Jesus. In other words, they will encourage him to witness to his faith.

Our Gospel today describes how the risen Christ told his disciples that they must be witnesses to the whole world of what they saw in his life, his death and his resurrection.  S’s parents and godparents are promising today that he will grow up to be a disciple of Christ; but the task that Jesus gave to his disciples after the resurrection seems a bit of a heavy load to give to such a small child.

It would have seemed an impossible job to the original disciples too – a small group of rather frightened, not very well educated, not at all wealthy men and women in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. But they did it! And today, 2000 years later, there are about  2.1 billion followers of Christ throughout the world.

Sometimes they spoke to large crowds, and lots of people accepted the Christian faith at one time. But, most of the time, it happened one or two people at a time, with someone who was already a Christian telling two more, and each of them witnessing to two more, and each of them converting two more- and the mathematically mined among you will know how quickly very small numbers become very big numbers when that happens.

That’s not a difficult thing for anyone of any age to do.

A more difficult question, especially as we get older, is HOW we are to witness to our faith.

Some people think it’s all about talking to people about Christ and the Bible and Church – that is important, but it’s not the most important thing – and the best witnesses are not always those who talk a lot, but those who silently observe and say just the right thing.

Some people think it’s important to wear something to show you are a Christian. That can be a very important way of quietly witnessing who you follow, whose commands you obey.

But it is actually more important to LIVE the cross than to wear a cross. The baptism commission that will be read to S’s parents and godparents sets out what that means in everyday life: a life of love and service to our family, our neighbours and especially to those who are different from us and even those who hate us and wish us ill. A life in which we struggle against anything that brings pain or division into our communities, against anything that brings conflict into our neighbourhoods, and against anything that perpetuates injustice and inequality in our world. A life which in which we constantly examine what we do, and repent of anything that falls short of the standards which God expects of us. It is a call to embody in our own lives the message and mission of Christ.

The cross  in oil and water which will be made on S’s forehead will soon be invisible. But we pray that he will so live the cross that he will grow  into a shining witness for Christ through his whole life.

Amen

Surprise!

(Acts 10, 34-43; Mark 16,1-8.)

Last month all the ministers of the Watford churches received a bag of goodies from the young people of  ‘Love Watford’ with an offer to pray for them and with them during Holy Week. Among the other delights in the bag was a Kinder Easter egg.

I always used to appreciate it when people gave my children or me one of these eggs. With it, you get the pleasure of a chocolate fix, but it doesn’t stop there.  The experience goes on, because inside the egg there is a ‘surprise’, which you have to extricate from its tomb like capsule. Then you have to think about it, and, more often than not, you have to construct the toy or puzzle for yourself from all the bits inside. Only then can you really recognise what your ‘surprise’ is.

It seems to me that the story of the Resurrection which we find in chapter 16 of Mark’s Gospel (the first 8 verses written by Mark, not all the other bits that people dissatisfied with Mark’s version added later) is very like a Kinder Surprise egg. You get the joy and sweetness of the proclamation that Christ has been raised; but then comes the surprise and the puzzle.

The account contains a number of surprises. The women who witnessed the crucifixion and the burial of Jesus go to the tomb. They are worrying about who will be available to move the heavy stone that seals the tomb entrance for them. But ‘Surprise!’,  the stone has already been rolled back, They go with spices to anoint the body; but ‘Surprise!’ there is no body. The women expect the tomb to contain a dead body; but ‘Surprise!’ it contains a living person, the young man in white. He gives them a message for the disciples; and ‘Surprise!’ they are told Jesus has been raised, and will be seen back in Galilee, where they first got to know him.

Mark’s narrative also contains a number of puzzles. There is the puzzle of the women going to the tomb 36 hours after the burial, to anoint the body with spices, when it has already been wrapped in linen, and would have begun to smell. There is the puzzle of why they did not think to take someone stronger with them to deal with the stone.

Then there is the young man in white they find in the tomb. Who is he?  A young man in white appeared in Mark’s account of the arrest of Jesus. Is this meant to be the same young man? Some commentators think this is the writer of the Gospel himself, who ran away like the other followers during the arrest, but was the first to understand and experience the resurrection. The other gospel writers turn him into an angel, or even two! Or is he symbolic? – of those who are baptised and clothed in white, but run away, deserting their baptismal faith at the first sign of trouble; but later come to experience the forgiveness of the resurrected Christ, and return to belief and discipleship.

There is no detailed explanation of how Jesus has been raised;  Mark just says the tomb is empty. The women are told to inform the disciples, and instruct them to go to Galilee where they will meet him. Why Galilee? The other Gospels have resurrection appearances in Jerusalem for the most part. The early church, as we see from Acts, was based in Jerusalem. So what is the significance of Galilee?

More puzzles: there are no appearances of Jesus to give clues as to what sort of resurrection, physical or spiritual is taking place; and the story tells us the women ran away in terror, and told no-one. So how did the news of the resurrection spread, and how did the disciples find out about it?

Mark’s resurrection story is not one for people who like everything explained, everything cut and dried, all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. It  is a resurrection story for those who want to ponder and puzzle about faith, and to work things out for themselves, and with their faith community, and keep coming back to find deeper meaning in the story.

Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan suggest that it is helpful to treat the resurrection account as a parable. This approach does not require us to pass judgement on whether any of the elements of the story are historical or not. It simply looks at what meaning the story is trying to convey.

So Mark tells us that Jesus was laid in a tomb – but the tomb could not hold him – the stone was removed and he was not there. The tomb is a place for the dead – and Jesus is not to be found there. Jesus has been raised. Mark reminds us that the body was of a person crucified by order of the authorities. Jesus was rejected by the Jewish religious authorities and executed by the Roman political power; they said ‘no’ to Jesus’s way of living. God, however has raised Jesus; God says ‘yes’ to Jesus and vindicates him.

In Mark the disciples are told they will see Jesus again and in order to do this, they have to go back to Galilee – back to the place where it all started, back to the beginning, back to the proclamation of the way and the Kingdom. That is where they will see Jesus again, this is where their faith will be renewed, this is where they will know the forgiveness of Jesus and be able to start again, knowing that Jesus is alive and always will be, without limitation of time or space.

We simply don’t know what happened  in those first few weeks and months after Jesus was executed. We don’t know how long it was before all the remaining disciples and followers of Jesus came to the realisation that the crucifixion was not the end, but the beginning of a new life in which Jesus was seen and known through the Spirit. The New Testament uses picture language to describe the  Resurrection, the Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. It uses sacred time scales: ‘after three days’,  ‘after 40 days’ to speak of the coming of the Holy Spirit, through which the followers of Jesus knew his presence and strength to be with them again.

We do not know how soon the sharing of bread and wine (as we shall do in a few moments) became the defining moment of communion with the Risen Lord. We do not know who searched the Hebrew Scriptures to find passages and prophecies to illuminate and express their experience of the life and death and resurrection of their crucified master, and to affirm their belief that he was God’s Messiah and God’s favoured Son.

We do know that the questions were answered in several different ways, and that the pieces of the puzzle that were discovered in the tomb were put together by different groups to give slightly different answers; and we know that some of those answers were collected together in what we now know as the New Testament, to inform and guide our thinking about the significance of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our time.

We do know that the followers of Jesus were transformed by their experiences of meeting the Risen Lord, from frightened men and women, into a congregation fired by the power of the Spirit, which enabled them to proclaim their faith in life and in death, and which gave birth to the Christian church which spread throughout the entire world, and is still growing.

We know that, however we understand what happened in Jerusalem and Galilee two thousand years ago, it continues to provide inspiration and meaning to us and our fellow Christians, and to reveal the surprise and puzzle of the love and forgiveness of God to us, again and again.

That inspiration enables us to face the pain and suffering and abuse of power that still scar the lives of so many people in the world today, and to affirm that if we face them without resorting to violence or hatred, as Jesus did; if we continue to follow in the way that Jesus showed us; and to affirm the values of the Kingdom that Jesus lived and died for, we too will be raised by God from the old selfish life that ends in death to the life that never ends.

So we can say, as we say every year:

‘Surprise!’

‘Christ is risen!’

‘He is risen indeed!’

‘Alleluia!’

‘Amen!’