Home » State Networks » New South Wales news and activities

Resurrection Religion

A number of years ago a minister of a different Wesley church told me the story of one particular Easter Sunday. Perhaps like many other Wesley churches, this one had within the worship space a picture of John Wesley, the one most of us are familiar with; Wesley in his black gown and clerical collar staring back with a fixed and brooding glare at anyone who dared to look at him. Far from being placed in a respectful, yet inconspicuous position, the picture hung imposingly behind the pulpit. So every time the minister preached he had John Wesley literally looking over his shoulder. No pressure. On this Easter Sunday, believing that the focus should be elsewhere, and reasoning that the great man himself would surely have deferred, the minister took the picture down. So that day there was both an empty tomb and an empty wall. He then went on to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus in full voice. What do you think was the thing he received most comments about following on from the service? I'm fairly sure there was another resurrection not long after.

In thinking about what I might speak about today, the resurrection of Jesus and its impact in daily ministry seemed like a good choice for at least three reasons.

1) We're now in the Easter season, only two weeks ago we celebrated the joy of Easter Day and the risen Lord.

2) As a young minister not long out of college ready to take on the world, it's the experiences of resurrection hope in people's lives and their witness to it that have made the most impact on me thus far.

3) The resurrection of Jesus is still the heartbeat of the Christian faith; of all we believe, of all we proclaim, of all we expect, of all we are.

St Paul makes it plain for us in 1 Corinthians 15, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." (1 Cor. 15: 14). In Athens on Mars Hill it is Paul's preaching of the resurrection that is the lightening rod which invokes the impassioned responses. "When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed." (Acts 17: 32-34).

I remember asking a friend of mine who was in ministry and had been for many years, why he ever wanted to do it. Without even thinking he said in a kind of off hand manner, ‘change the world', as if there was no other possible answer anyone could give to that question, and it was so obvious that it didn't really bear any lengthy consideration. When we look at it seriously, I think this is really the answer all of us engaged in ministry give to that same question. We want to change the world for the good. Or perhaps more accurately, we want to take part in God's mission to change the world in the power of the resurrected Christ; to see this same power flow into people's lives and hearts, into our churches and communities, into the world we know.

The British historian David Bebbington tells a lovely story in his seminal work, the rather mundanely titled: Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, no doubt a big seller down at the local Angus & Robertson. He tells of a nineteenth century Quaker gentleman under his breath one day bemoaning what he saw as the rather repetitive nature of the preaching: ‘The atonement, always the atonement', he said, ‘Have they nothing else to say?!.' Bebbington is probably best known for what has come to be called the ‘Bebbington quadrilateral', a definition of what it means to be evangelical - and he finds four common threads: 1) biblicism, the centrality of the Scriptural witness, 2) crucicentrism, or the centrality of the cross and the atonement (as the gentleman attested), 3) conversionism, the belief people need to be converted, and 4) activism, the expression of the gospel in action in the world.

Ironically, though we could argue that the resurrection is assumed in each of these threads, it is not mentioned specifically in Bebbington's 4 points. The man complains about the constant preaching of atonement not the resurrection. Well, I guess what I'm wanting to say is that it is only through the resurrection of Jesus that the sum of the Christian life and faith, as well as its component parts, certainly the hope we proclaim Jesus holds for the world, have any real meaning and purpose. As was also true for Jesus' earliest followers, ministry & mission only finds its power and prophecy, its transformational character as it is entered into in the power of the risen Christ.

James S Stewart, a wonderful preacher of the last century rightly reminds us that without the resurrection, "Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Good Friday are helpless to save." The atonement itself loses its whole meaning and efficacy without the resurrection. If the Christian story ends on Good Friday, it ends in despair and death, and all the world's hope with it. Yet as we all know when we wake on Easter Sunday and declare ‘he is risen', a new day dawns for us all, one characterized by life, and life in abundance, where death itself and the grip of sin have been defeated. "God intends his pilgrims", Stewart again writes, "to struggle through the Slough of Despond, not to make it their theological home."

I have on my wall at work a photo of what I think must have been the immediate period after some particular funeral from the middle of last century. In the photo are a couple of ministers who surely have the grimmest and sternest looks on their faces you've ever seen. The photo is also in black & white which only adds to the austerity and gloominess of the whole scene. Above the photo, some humourist has written the caption, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always!'. Indeed.

All of us in ministry in any capacity would know, though, that quite often deep experiences of resurrection hope in daily church life can appear more the exception rather than the rule. Ministry with people is still the place where the power of the gospel must be appropriated into real lives and experiences. It's where ‘Thine Be the Glory' meets ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as thought they're here to stay.' And as such it's still the place where our expectations of the difference we can make in the world as ambassadors for Christ are well and truly tested. There are a number of contexts, ranging from the personal, to the congregational, to that of the wider church, through which we might be convinced that we are anything but a resurrection people.

Beginning with the personal, it seems plain that deflationary pressures are not wholly limited to the global economy. The personal deflation of those in ministerial leadership can come about variously and in different quantities; sometimes it might be through what seem like minor intra-church skirmishes and sometimes it can be in things that may have a more lasting impact. Thinking of the former kind for a minute, sometimes it can be in simple things. Just imagine the minister in my initial example greeting people at the door having left it all in the pulpit on Easter Day, wanting those there to take away the joy and hope of the risen Christ with them back into their daily life, only to be confronted with, ‘When are you going to put the picture back?' Or perhaps in my own experience at one of my placement churches during training where, having preached the morning sermon, I was met by a retired minister - always a slightly apprehensive moment for the young and impassioned - and was left with this little gem, ‘Thanks for that Michael. It reminded me of some of my early sermons, gee they were pathetic.' Point taken.

As you reflect on your own experiences in various ministries whether they be in youth groups, in pastoral care roles, in administration, or as an ordained minister, no doubt you have your own catalogue, those times when in big ways or small you've been left wondering, what am I really doing here?
What's more, any person in Christian leadership is constantly confronted by the brokenness and fractured nature of their own lives. Like St Paul, we too may find ourselves reflecting, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. & For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do..." (Romans 7: 15 & 19). Confession is our constant calling.

On a congregational level, again, most if not all of us here are probably aware of some of the experiences that leave us less than rejoicing and somewhat disheartened as to the future prospects of the church. In one of the congregations I work in we have a number of homeless people who come in each service to sit in the comfortable chairs and enjoy the warmth and protected environment. It is one of the great things about a place like Wesley Mission that people really struggling with life still find it a refuge in a variety of ways. What this can mean is that at various points in the service long and loud snoring can be heard for periods of time, sometimes loud and long enough for the whole congregation to hear. While it's wonderful that such folk can find a peaceful place for some rest, in one sense this is everything the church is for, I hope this posture is not a metaphor for the congregational vitality of all UCA congregations.

Lack of numbers, lack of passion, lack of grace and kindness among people. Long and dry church council meetings, petty feuds, bickering and power plays. Moribund sermons, uninspiring worship, biblical illiteracy. Traditionalism, over bearing nostalgia, reluctance to try new things. More interest in buildings than people, in money than mission, in personal priorities than pastoral care. It's a long list.

If, as the UCA BOU suggests, "The Congregation is the embodiment in one place of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping witnessing and serving as a fellowship of the Spirit in Christ." (Paragraph 15 (a)), then it should be the driving force of all that the church purports to be, yet so often we fail in this task.

Moving to the wider church within the UCA, things don't seem to get much better. The wider church processes can sometimes be the most frustrating to engage with. The model of conciliar councils, while theologically appealing in certain respects, creates a diffuse and often confused decision making process, and along with the consensus model, the safe place stipulations, and the complex labyrinth of boards, committees and agencies, can too easily be manipulated to serve particular agendas. And however we look at it, I think there can be no denying that almost from its inception the UCA has been over-governed, a fact that has only served to create a sometimes unconquerable gulf between people in the pews and wider church leaders and processes. In recent times, as we are all aware, this chicken came home to roost most powerfully and destructively in the debate over sexuality.

It's not difficult to become disheartened and deflated at the reality of much of this, especially as we consider that the broader context into which we proclaim the resurrection of Jesus is becoming better and better at discovering ways not to listen. I don't know about you, but there's just about nothing I find more frustrating than when Christian references are used for non-Christian means.

To briefly give you three:

1) (very relevant to our topic) The Easter football games that are advertised on TV using the resurrection motif - remember when [insert your team name here] came back from the dead to take a famous victory.

2) In a magazine a few years ago when a cooking article used the Lord's Prayer as a foundation for extolling the righteousness of particular foods - along the lines of give us today our high in fibre, multi-grain bread.

3) In a car magazine I was reading recently a headline extolling the virtues of cubic capacity and horsepower output of boat engines, ‘Water into Whine'.

Much of the wider Australian society simply looks past Christianity now. Churches are seen as relics of a bygone era, totally irrelevant to the real needs of people's lives, useful for weddings and funerals, but not much more, and once disused for lack of attendance turned into coffee or craft shops. Just this last week I was leading a devotion on one of our camps for disadvantaged children and I was asking them what they thought a minister does. One little girl shot up her hand and said, ‘Christens, marries and divorces people.' I reverted to the Meatloaf speculation that 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Engaging spirituality is thought to be found in other places and sadly, for all too often perfectly justifiable reasons, ministers are no longer seen as trustworthy. Militant atheism is on the attack, institutional religion is on the decline, and the church is caught somewhere between wanting to retreat within its own doors where it need speak only to itself, or turning itself into a social services provider, wholly separated from the all encompassing resurrection power and proclamation, where it doesn't need speak to anyone.

Connect this kind of mission field to an already distracted and internally conflicted church, and it seems the prospects for the hope of the risen Lord to be incorporated and appropriated into lives and communities is slim. It could easily appear that Good Friday has actually been the end point; that there is little or no hope beyond the grave.

Yet, marvellously, amazingly, it happens. God works often in spite of who we are, and through his power ministry does make a difference. The world does change. People do find new beginnings and restored lives and deep, deep wounds become cradles of the deep, deep love of Jesus. The new creation that Paul so boldly declared to be the result of Christ's living in us (2 Cor. 5: 17) is a potent reality not a theological nicety. I know this because I've seen it.

We have a man in our evening congregation whom I often take home after the service because he lives literally only 3 minutes from where I do. His name is Francis. Brought up with a nominally Catholic faith, the moorings to his spiritual tradition became more and more frayed and weakened over time. Estranged from much of his family and now into his 70s he has been dealing with the effects of Parkinson's disease for some years. The disease has hunched him over so badly that his whole body stands almost at a complete right angle from the waist. Walking is a serious challenge and is accomplished with a walker frame which acts as both a rest and a guide for him.

Quite apart from the physical issues, his posture and obvious bodily contortion have meant that his self esteem and confidence have been taken down to levels which seriously affected his outlook on life and relationships. Through one of our chaplains, who has been with him and sat with him and talked to him for many, many hours, at a point where he felt comfortable, he agreed to come to church. Like everything else, this was a challenge physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, but he came.

Last year in May, after attending with the chaplain on a number of occasions, over a number of weeks and months, and at his own request as he felt he had reached this point, we held a service in which he came forward, knelt at the prayer desk and affirmed his faith in Jesus Christ. Although I had sat with him and gone through the questions the Superintendent of Wesley Mission would ask and although I had reassured him over and over that he was loved and cherished by all who would be there, he was still concerned beforehand that he would not know what to say, and would find himself embarrassed. He was concerned he would shake so uncontrollably that he simply wouldn't be able to get any words out at all. As he knelt and responded, his voice started to waver. It became more and more broken and faint.

As this continued, another man, a regular member of the congregation, a man who had and has his own serious issues to deal with, a man whom our Superintendent had made a deal with that if he could stay sober for a whole year he would interview him on television, which he did, stepped forward onto the platform and placed his hand on Francis' shoulder. It was the very picture of all the Christian gospel is about. The very embodiment of Christian hope.

Today he is as frail as ever, and yet now he describes himself as a powerful man, a man of Jesus' power. For it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. (Gal 2: 20) And God's power is made perfect in his weakness. (2 Cor 12: 9) He walks around quite comfortably and happily in public on his own. He smiles more. He speaks to people more. And he knows a trust in God that holds him firm in a way that previously has seemed impossible.

It still happens. People are still transformed. Lives are still rebuilt by the grace and healing of God. The resurrection power of the gospel is still that which provides the greatest hope there is. Ministry does make a difference, it does change the world, even if sometimes it seems that it is painstakingly slowly. And I have to say that when I see this happening, I feel reaffirmed in my calling to the task of ministry and mission in the world we know. Another minister has said to me, "Ministry can be brutal, but it's the only game in town." It is the only game in town, because it is the vehicle for sharing the good news of the resurrection of Jesus in word & deed. I don't know what would have happened to Francis if that chaplain hadn't taken the time and hadn't had the faith to sit and share with him for the many hours it has taken up til now. But I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't be the man he is today if she hadn't.

There is certainly an objective aspect to the resurrection, it is an event in history, an event through which God breaks open all history, an event of cosmic significance that finally and fully puts down the powers of sin and death; and there is certainly also a subjective side, where the power that raised Christ from the dead flows into hearts and minds and transforms people like you and me and Francis. It is when the objective and the subjective meet in the daily reality of ministry that the church has dynamite in its hands in a world which prefers to look in any other direction for its big bangs - money, status, greed, influence, particular ideologies, sex etc.

And I believe there is a lesson here for us all. It applies to the personal, the congregational, the wider church context, and that is to make sure that this is our only agenda. Whatever our role, whatever our place in the scheme of ministry, the resurrection is our agenda. We are a resurrection people. It is in the resurrection that Jesus is revealed fully to the disciples for who he is. It is as Thomas is confronted with the risen Christ, scars and all, that he comes to his confession of faith, ‘My Lord and my God.' (John 20: 28). It is in the knowledge that his redeemer lives that Francis is able to say, ‘I am a powerful man.'

It can be very easy in a church like the UCA to become distracted by the frustrations that sometimes feel like they engulf our existence; to become deflated and to feel like the cause is lost and hopeless. But I think that when we look closely enough we can see that glimpses of hope do emerge. There are good men and women of the gospel working away at every level of the church to bring about a better world. The three Presbytery Ministers I have most to do with are good examples of people within the system who haven't lost their theological and missional teeth. Each in their own way, with their own gifts and personalities, wants to see the church live up to its calling to be the witness for hope in the world it is meant to be.

We need to be people who affirm and encourage such endeavour and intent when we see it even if that sometimes means offering a word of support to those in leadership whom we may disagree with on other issues. The biggest crime in politics is not to be the person saying the wrong thing, but to be the wrong person saying the right thing. We must never allow ideological or personal prejudice to undercut our full throated support when the resurrection is proclaimed, wherever and by whomever it may be. And we must be willing ourselves to engage in the processes of the church to bring about change. You cannot criticise from the point of disengagement with any credibility. Tony Campolo and William Willimon are two Christian leaders from the US who have come to experience some of the opposition that arises when resurrection hope and the deep love of God is the only agenda, rather than political postures or personal antipathies.

There are of course many temptations in the face of perceived embarrassment or derision. Water down our message, hold to a diluted political correctness whenever we're in public, hide away and refuse to engage. They're temptations which we all fall into from time to time. But, if you're anything like me, it's the times when you see the change brought about in people's lives, that fire your energy to go on; to go on proclaiming, ‘he is risen'. So, be on the look out! Expect God to be doing things through your ministry and in your contexts. And hold onto them when he does.

I'm not sure how many times Charles Wesley's great hymn, ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today' would have been sung on Easter Day in churches around Australia, I'm guessing quite a few. I had it twice! But it still speaks of all we are as Christian people. Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia. I think Charles would surely have agreed with the minister taking down the picture of his brother John on Easter Day. I'm sure he would have said, there is only one point of focus today and it begins with the words, ‘I know that my redeemer lives.'

So it is for us. We are a resurrection people who exist in the ongoing power of the presence of Christ in the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father. This is who we are, this is what we proclaim, this is how we hope, this is what makes us new.

Thank you very much.

Rev. Michael Earl, Minister within Wesley MIssion.

 April 17, 2010

Share