Christianity is weird. Weird from the core. Christianity is weird because it’s core message is weird: Jesus of Nazareth is risen from the dead. That is weird. It is straight out of the Twilight Zone weird.
We are not used to the shocking angularity, the strange decentering that comes with that core proclamation. Largely because, over the years, we have done our very best to transform it into something less, well, shocking, angular, decentering, and, yes, weird. Lest we spook our friends and neighbors, we tell them what Easter is “really about.” The message of Easter is the message of Spring returning. It’s about nature’s reawakening to life after the long sleep of winter.
Or, the message of Easter is a picturesque way of saying our souls are immortal. The disciples, as they recalled the death of Jesus in their deepest grief, felt forgiven by him for their acts of betrayal and denial. And a dead person cannot forgive. So Jesus must really be somewhere, somehow, alive. And if they would model his life of forgiveness, they would one day live with him and as he does now on the far side of death.
It is the near universal testimony of New Testament scholars, however, that these re-presentations will not do. They agree that the disciples really believed Jesus was alive. That the communities that guarded their memories and compiled them into our Gospels believed the stories of the empty tomb. They agree that St. Paul really was talking about a body re-animated in 1 Cor. 15, from which came our Epistle last week. For the sake of clarity, we must add that these scholars do not necessarily write from the side of belief. Some—John Dominic Crossan or Elaine Pagels if you want names—are convinced that the evangelists, Paul, and the communities that grew up around their preaching, are wrong about the body of Jesus. But the skeptics agree with the believers—Bishop Tom Wright, your humble rector—that New Testament writers were talking about the body of Jesus when they talked about resurrection.
“Make no mistake,” writes the American novelist and poet John Updike, “if he rose at all, it was as his body.” And that is weird.
We get a glimpse of that weirdness in our lessons for today. It is the weirdness that terrifies the disciples on Easter day when, in a locked room, the Risen One appears to them. The only people who “came back from the dead,” in those days (and indeed in ours) were ghosts in search of vengeance. And on seeing the Risen One, the disciples were terrified—at least until Jesus promised peace and invited them to touch his decidedly solid self. No wonder Thomas says, one week later, “unless I too see, unless I touch, I will not believe.” Well no wonder.
In our lessons for today, the weirdness begins to spill over, to move beyond the strange thing that happened to the crucified Nazarene rabbi into the lives of his followers.
We begin in the book of Acts. Peter and John have been hauled before the Sanhedrin and accused—quite accurately in this case—of preaching the Gospel after they had been told not to. And after summarizing again the contents of their sermons (Jesus is the King (for that is what messiah meant). You killed him. God raised him. We saw him.) Peter makes a declaration: “We must obey God more than human laws.”
Whatever happened to Jesus, apparently, removed from Peter and John any fear of the those who had the power to put them to death—a power that these men will exercise ruthlessly in just a couple of chapters when, after having to listen to another sermon, they will seize a young deacon named Stephen, drag him into the street and stone him to death. Were they rebels? No. Were they going around the countryside inciting revolution? Hardly. Were they a new political faction? Oh hang on. That question is a little more difficult.
Let’s look at the New Testament Lesson. John the Revelator is writing a document to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia. He is writing on behalf of Jesus “the ruler of the kings of the earth. . . . who made us to be a kingdom.” There’s that political language again. Jesus is the king. His followers are subjects of a different kingdom. Is John inciting rebellion? No. The rest of his letter will call the churches to faithfulness to the way of Jesus even to the point of death. Is John inciting revolution? No. His message is that because Jesus is King, the evil powers of the world will eventually destroy themselves. The power of death they wield is not power to be feared, for Jesus has already defeated them. Is John part of a new political faction?
We’ll come back to that question. Our last stop on the way to an answer is the Gospel. The familiar story of Thomas. Thomas reminds us of us in his doubts. And so that’s the natural part of the story we gravitate toward. I want this morning to look instead at his confession. Upon greeting the risen one, Thomas falls to his knees and says, “My Lord and my God.” Here, we may think, we are on safer ground. None of this king business. This is the safe and safely hidden language of religion. Except it’s not. It is, in the time of the writing of the fourth Gospel, a title for Caesar. And Thomas takes that kingly title and says in effect, Caesar, this title is not yours. It belongs to Jesus. Is Thomas inciting a rebellion? No. Is he calling people to take up arms? Hardly. Is Thomas part of a new political faction?
Yes. And so is the writer of the Revelation. And so are Peter and John in the book of Acts. Jesus is King. You killed him. God raised him. We saw it. And here, here’s the point. We are finally answerable only to him and if you command us to disobey him, we won’t. Now THAT is weird.
Soon we will confess the Creed. We will, in those words, pledge our allegiance to the God who has come to us in Word giving again the promise that His life defeats those who hold the power of death, because it defeats death itself. We will in those words pledge allegiance to the One who by his Spirit will fill us with that death-defeating life when we eat and drink in faith and with thanksgiving. We will, in those words, take our place alongside Peter and John. Alongside John the Revelator. Alongside Thomas.
We stand alongside another whose death we commemorate tomorrow, who knew whom He served when he urged his critics to join him in disobedience when he wrote these words: “there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Like Martin Luther King, Jr., the first Christians rightly saw themselves as ambassadors of another kingdom, bound by a different set of laws. They saw themselves as exiles in a city far from their true home, as people who loved and prayed for their city, but who sometimes would not be welcome in it. And all that we do every Sunday is to reinstill in us that same sense of difference. Are we rebels? No. Do we incite riots? No. Are we a different political faction? Yes. Why? Because God has raised his King from the dead. And that is weird. But it’s also true. Stop doubting and believe.