Have you ever found an old bottle or coin or looked at an
old handwritten document from a previous century and squinted in order to
better interpret what it says?
Or traveled in another country with some but very limited
knowledge of the language and culture – and you find that a big part of your
experience is trying to interpret what’s going on, what it means that people
are saying this and doing that?
We are interpreters of our world. Interpreters of our experiences.
And this has been the way of human beings since the
beginning.
We base our decisions about the future on our experiences of
the past.
And each new present moment gets filtered through our accumulated
beliefs and fears and desires.
We bring a lot to each new moment.
But there are occasions when something happens to us that
completely changes our interpretative framework. A new insight into life emerges.
Perhaps it comes in the form of a book you read – one that
draws you in so deeply that during the last two hours as you are finishing it
while on vacation with your in-laws you are oblivious to everything that’s
going on around you.
Losing a friend to cancer.
Having your heartbroken by someone you trusted and loved and
opened yourself to.
Or perhaps it’s an experience of joy.
Finding love after a season of longing.
Starting a new career.
The birth of a child, a grandchild, a great-grandchild.
A new event happens and it changes the way we understand
ourselves and the way we tell our story.
We are a people who tell and retell the stories of our
lives.
We interpret and reinterpret the things that have happened
to us and the things that we have done.
Each new fact changes our interpretation, which then shapes
our way of living, believing, and acting.
I’m sure many of you have seen the picture of the duck which
is also a picture of a rabbit.
Both animals are there in the picture depending on how you
look at it.
It’s one of those puzzles.
You get a friend who has never seen it before and you say,
“check this out, what do you see?”
And they say “a duck, duh.”
And then you say – yes.
But there’s something more.
Something more. Do you see it?
The resurrection is the introduction of the “something more”
to the interpreting of our lives.
We habitually return to a way of seeing the world which is
in the words of Isaiah – under “the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the
sheet that is spread over all nations.”
What is this shroud, what is this sheet?
The prophet continues: “God will swallow up death forever.”
There’s a Latin phrase incurvatus
in se that Christians have used to describe the shroud that Isaiah refers
to. The phrase literally means “curving
in on oneself”
The gist is that human beings are beset by a kind of gravity
that causes our heart to curve in upon itself.
Left to our own devices, and merely following the experiences of our
lives, we are led to a posture of self-seeking and defense – we see the world
as threatening place – others as possible friends but also possible enemies –
and so we develop well-fortified selves, often looking out for number one above
all.
In other words, we have a tendency to interpret our world
through the lens of fear – and this makes us selfish and defensive people.
What I’m trying to describe here is not the whole truth of
any one person –
But it does seem that our hearts are pulled in this
direction and our society, our political and economic institutions operate with
this kind of “realism”
An interpretation of that humans are basically self-seeking
persons. End of story.
This is the shroud that is cast over all peoples.
This is the duck picture.
This is the duck picture.
But we read that after Sabbath “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint”
Jesus.
We see in these women responding to this order that is built
up around this incurvatus in se.
They had witnessed the political consequences of this way of
being, this way of interpreting the world.
They had seen one of the logical consequences in the
silencing of opposition and unjust execution of a righteous
man.
But as much they had been traumatized and horrified and as
much as they were grieved – a part of them probably felt a kind of resignation
– this is just the way the world works.
And so they bring spices to anoint his body -- their
teacher, their friend, the one who they had hoped was God’s chosen messiah who
would bring lasting change.
It was the duck picture.
It wasn’t until they arrived at the tomb that their reality
was fundamentally altered.
It was there that they saw the “something more” -- the
rabbit in the same picture as the duck.
The empty tomb is the “something more” that changes our way
of seeing the world, that alters our interpretation of our past, our present,
and our future.
John’s gospel calls Jesus the word, the logic, the reason of
God come among us.
Christians have sought to listen to that word, to behold
more clearly and truthfully that revelation.
A “something more” is revealed in the life and death and
resurrection of Jesus.
And what is the content of that revelation?
In the words of the Psalmist:
“O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast
love endures forever!”
What is revealed is the relentless and unstoppable and
unbounded love of God.
We are introduced to an ancient and yet strangely new
insight into the life for which we are created.
A key to a new interpretation of our world.
We behold in Jesus a “something more” that
In fact was always already there –
but somehow it took this one person,
this one event to make it clear and draw out the full
implications of this picture.
What Jesus shows us is that behind all of this
and at the end of all of this is not a nothing, a void.
Evil and destruction hover as part of the shroud over the
nations –
But they do not have the final word in the world which
exists in God’s being.
Rather, behind all of this and beyond all of this is a God
of life so full and creative that when that life is manifested in the flesh –
not even the most powerful empire of the ancient world can extinguish it.
And this power of God in Jesus has come among us in the Spirit.
Paul writes in Romans 5: “hope does not disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that
has been given to us.”
The Holy Spirit who continues to move among us – the
resurrection power,
the one who redeems and brings the New Creation,
who renews our hearts through grace and forgiveness,
who gives us a way forward where we feel there is no way.
And who opens our hearts and our eyes to the “something
more” –
the steadfast and enduring love of God –
who enables us to behold the world anew with eyes of faith
in the God
who loves us with a steadfast and everlasting love.
This is a new interpretation of the world that is as
liberating and as it is disorienting.
And so we see the women fleeing the tomb in amazement and
fear – and silent – not knowing what to
say – how to make sense of what they had experienced.
What they have seen has brought them to a state of
perplexity.
This for the ancient Greeks was the moment of great
possibility –
Socrates in all of his teaching sought to bring his students
to this perplexity –
because it was there that knowledge and growth was about to
occur.
What follows their fleeing in confusion?
If we read the book of Acts, and take in the stories of the
early Christians,
We get a picture of what followed.
What followed was a reinterpretation of the world,
and the fostering of a community which sought in every new
generation to listen to the Spirit
and allow the empty tomb to reorient their hearts and lives
to God and neighbor.
What followed was an amazing wave of spirit and of love.
Transformation.
Hospitals were formed, care was given to the poor and the
outcast.
Communities of generosity and mutual care began to eat
together, to pray together, to share life together.
Hearts were opened by the Spirit who reveals that “something
more” to the picture – the rabbit in addition to the duck.
I believe that God wants to open our eyes and open our
hearts,
And show us the “something more” of God’s steadfast love.
And I believe that God is already doing that among us.
In our experiences of sorrow, of joy, God draws us outward
from ourselves into the relationship to our Creator for which we are made.
At times it is disorienting to have our present
interpretations challenged.
But the end result, when God is in it, is freedom.
Freedom from fear, freedom from self.
Freedom to love and serve and rejoice in the goodness and
beauty that comes from the life of God.
“O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast
love endures forever!”
How might God be calling you to reinterpret your world?
How might God be calling you to open yourself to love?
How might the Spirit be bringing you into a resurrection
today?
I pray that you and I would continue in the daily task of opening
our hearts to God
and allowing the empty tomb to ever reinterpret our lives.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment