“Gee, that was fun (I especially liked the music) but what does it all mean?”

First Sunday of Eastertide

Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31

I’m so glad that Thomas, the Patron Saint of Doubters, always makes his appearance this first Sunday after Easter in our cycle of scripture readings. Because by now, the Easter afterglow has worn off. We’ve sung the hymns, we’ve enjoyed the choirs, we’ve digested the Easter potluck, and we’ve probably even come down off our sugar high from all those chocolate bunnies, peeps and jelly beans. By the way: Peeps? Those are Satanic. They should really be outlawed.

By now, if not before, some of us may be wondering, like Thomas: What the heck was that all about? Do I really believe that story? How do I make sense of this?

So, I’d like to attempt an answer to those questions, with the help of a wonderful book by the well-known Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. It’s called The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem. They dig into Mark’s day-to-day account of the week leading up to Easter and, in doing so, give answer to many of the questions that doubting Thomases have.

So, let’s start with the question of Good Friday – Adam’s question from Palm Sunday: Why did they kill Jesus? Did Jesus really have to die? Did God want that to happen?

The most familiar explanation of Jesus’ death is called substitutionary atonement. It’s so familiar, I’m sure at least one of you can tell the rest of us what it means. So, one of you, tell us why Jesus had to die? Right. We’re sinners, and God is offended by this sin – sickened by it. There has to be a sacrifice or a punishment for sin before we can be forgiven, but one of us wouldn’t be adequate since we’re despicable sinners, right? So, it had to be a perfect human being. Only Jesus, the spotless lamb, could do the trick. Thus he is the sacrifice, and Good Friday is good because it is the day that makes God’s forgiveness of us possible. So, Jesus – literally – died for our sins.

A long time ago, I decided that I could not believe in a God that demanded this sort of sacrifice. That someone – namely, his own son – had to be tortured and murdered before God could get around to forgiving us. I knew I did wrong things, but I didn’t think I was so despicable that it demanded the killing of someone else. My own, mortal parents were capable of more love than God seemed capable of – they loved us more like the prodigal son’s father, unconditionally, putting up with our stupid behavior, ready to accept us even before we had “atoned.” If God was that sort of God – a divine child abuser – then I wanted nothing to do with ‘him.’

I think lots of Thomases feel this way, both in and out of the church. If you are one of those Thomases, you might be heartened to know that substitutionary atonement is not the only Christian understanding of “why Jesus had to die.” It took more than 1,000 years for it to become dominant, around the time that St. Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a theological treatise on it in 1097. Over the centuries, it has become the most common explanation. But it’s not necessarily the most Biblical explanation.

It’s true that the language of sacrifice is used in the New Testament, but it is only one of several different ways of talking about the meaning of Jesus’ execution. One way sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as the embodiment of a path of psychological and spiritual transformation that lies at the center of Christian life. Paul expresses this idea a lot, in writings such as “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” The old Paul has to die – has to be crucified – so that the new Paul, the one who is one with Christ, can live.

There’s a lot of truth, I think, in this spiritual and psychological reading of Jesus’ death -- one that many spiritual traditions affirm. It’s a natural human habit to become egotistic, centered in the “small self” with its anxieties and preoccupations. This small self can be both terribly anxious and fearful as well as preoccupied with its own accomplishments and successes. Part of our human task is to die to this small self, and rise again to a new, larger, more expansive self, one grounded in that which is ultimate, grounded in a compassion and peace that “surpasses understanding.” Grounded in God, who is the source of our “true self.”

There are also meanings behind the crucifixion that are much more political – Jesus countered the domination system of his day, a system in which about 1-2% of the population owned almost all the wealth, while the rest of the people lived in moderate to severe poverty. This economic exploitations was joined with political oppression and religious legitimation of the status quo. Jesus challenged the system, the reign of Caesar, with a vision and a passion for the reign of God, a reign where the least were first, and the first were last. A reign where all of God’s resources were distributed equitably among everyone.

Given how threatening this vision was to the status quo, the execution of Jesus was almost inevitable. Not because of divine necessity, but because this is what empires do to people who publicly and vigorously challenge them. Jesus’ passion for the reign of God to come on earth, as it is in heaven, got him killed.

I cannot affirm that Jesus died for the sins of the world. But I can affirm that Jesus was killed because of the sin of the world. I cannot believe in a God that demanded the death of Jesus to make “him” less angry at the rest of us. But I do believe in a God who wills the death of no one but who can turn even the worst thing into a very good thing.

Which leads me to Easter… just what was that very good thing?

Now, some people say that that very good thing was that Jesus’ corpse physically rose from the grave. God transformed his dead body into one that lived again – that was able to talk and walk with his friends, eat food with them, appearing in a form that could be seen, heard and touched. This unique event in history means that Jesus really is the son of God, and that Christianity is true. And it demonstrates once and for all that death is dead – that we, like Jesus, will also be resurrected in heaven after we die. I know that many people – some of us, I think – believe that this is the good news, and if you can’t believe this, then you aren’t really a Christian.

But what about the doubting Thomases among us who can’t quite say yes to this? Is this really the only way we can understand Easter? I don’t believe it is.

To start with, there are mixed messages from the biblical accounts about what form Jesus takes after his resurrection – does he have a physical body like ours? Or is it some sort of transformed spiritual body – one that still bears our physical traits (like scars) but one that is also capable of appearing suddenly in rooms and perhaps even being in more than one place at a time? Or a vision? Paul – Acts. (You know, we in modern Western culture tend to disparage visions. We see them as hallucinations, as deviations from reality. And lots of times, they might be. I’ve been around enough schizophrenics in my time. But I believe they can also be disclosures of reality.)

Some biblical scholars believe it’s quite possible that the Gospel writers are using the language of parable metaphor rather than of historical reporting to talk about the events around Easter. Maybe they’re not expecting us to take this as historical fact. Maybe they’re expecting us to take this as a profoundly true metaphor.

To me, at some level, none of this debate about what happened to Jesus’ physical body matters. Something spectacularly wonderful and earth-shaking happened on Easter morning. Physical body or not, vision or not Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way. He lives. John Dominic Crossan puts it so well, “The essence of Easter is that despite his crucifixion, Jesus was for his followers alive, present, and empowering them to do the work of Kingdom still. That’s the only mystery and the only miracle and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s more than enough of both.”

Jesus lives, and because of that, his followers go from a group of dispirited, fearful people hiding behind locked doors to a group of bold, fearless “missionaries” – people who continue to announce and embody the good news of Jesus in the same way that he did while live. Listen to what Acts says about these early disciples (Acts 4:32-35):

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no
one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was
held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not
a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and
brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and
it was distributed to each as any had need.

This is the only miracle and mystery I need – that Jesus is alive and present enough to empower these people to throw off their fear and risk the same death Jesus had so that they could proclaim and live out his vision for the reign of God. The only miracle and mystery that I need is the that Jesus was alive and present enough to empower Ahmed, the guy from the children’s story, to do something as crazy as give away all his food to his hungry neighbors.

Jesus lives and that means that God has said “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the domination system that executed him. Jesus lives and that means that God has said that he is Lord of the earth, not the death-dealing powers that crucified him. Matthew puts it this way: That God has given the resurrected Jesus “all authority in heaven and on earth.” We may cringe when hear this, seeing in it a triumphalist claim that Christianity is the only way, that you have to believe in Jesus or else. I’m not at all sure that’s the way Matthew means it. I think he means, Jesus is Lord, which means that the Caesars of the world aren’t. Jesus is Lord, not the domination systems that oppress the poor to benefit the wealthy and the powerful. Jesus is Lord, not the religious systems that legitimate this oppression, nor the religious systems that marginalize and exclude whole groups of people.

I think I told you once about hearing Yvette Flunders, the lesbian African-American pastor of City of Refuge, here in San Francisco. She said, to a group of mainly white feminists, that she had been called on the carpet for using the patriarchal word “Lord.” But she refused to stop using that word because calling Jesus Lord meant that the homophobia that threatened to kill her spirit was not Lord; Jesus was Lord, not the racism that wanted to bring her down; Jesus was Lord, not the sexism that told her she couldn’t be a pastor, that wanted to keep her in her place. She went on to get ordained and to found a multiracial, multi-class church that has a vital, multi-million dollar foundation to aid those living with HIV/AIDS, especially in the African-American community. Yvette Flunders is one of the most powerful people I have ever come across and, I believe, it’s because Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord.

May this same Jesus be alive for us, present for us, continually empowering us to do the work of the Kingdom in our time and our place. Can I get an “amen” from the doubting Thomases?

Amen. Alleluia.