He Is Still Risen

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 30, 2008

He Is Still Risen!
Philippians 2:1-11
John 20:19-23

It was the end of the day on Sunday.
The early evening sky had a purple hue
as the sun dropped over the horizon.
The disciples had gathered back in their safe house,
behind locked doors.
They were still filled with fear,
as they waited for the opportunity
to slip out of the city to avoid arrest.

Mary Magdalene knocked on the door,
and slipped in when the door was opened just a crack.
“I have seen him!” she said.
She spoke not in a shout, but in a loud whisper,
aware of the need to be careful,
as she tried to contain her excitement.
“The tomb is empty.
The Lord is risen.
I have seen him!”

The disciples reacted with utter disbelief.
Poor Mary, they all thought,
once possessed of seven demons,
then cured by the Lord,
she had clearly relapsed back into madness:
She was seeing and hearing things.
She had been there at the foot of the cross.
she had seen the Lord die,
watched him take his last breath,
watched his head fall to his chest,
his arms and legs go limp.
She had been there with Jesus’ mother,
both of them numb with grief.
She was the one who was going to prepare the body
earlier that morning.
The experience of the past three days
had obviously overwhelmed her.
Poor Mary….

The room was dimly lit, just two small lamps
burning olive oil, giving off a vague light.
And then as the disciples fumbled for words,
trying to figure out what to say to Mary,
how to respond to her delusions,
there he was!
The Lord!
Was it a ghost?
Were they all suffering from the same delusion?
Had their collective grief taken hold of them
and driven them all into madness?
Were they all seeing the same thing?

Jesus spoke.
“Peace be with you.”
The sound of his voice,
the very way he said the words,
“peace be with you”
filled them all with an incredible feeling:
a feeling of calm, of confidence, of hope,
and yes… of peace.

No one said a word.
But their senses were all tingling
as they looked and they listened.
And then Jesus invited them to touch,
so that they would know that it was
indeed him, the Lord,
alive, raised,
with them.
And they all rejoiced and crowded around him.
But still, no one said a word.

Jesus broke the silence a second time,
“Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me,
so I send you.”
And then he breathed on the gathered group,
and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them,
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

And with that he was gone.
Gone.
What had they seen?
What had they witnessed?
They were so exhausted emotionally and physically,
they were likely to see and believe anything.
And yet, they knew he had been there,
been with them, not a ghost, but the Lord!

The Lord risen! There with them! Alive!
As though he had never died.
And as night fell on the disciples,
a feeling of hope filled them,
flooding the room,
as though the roof had been removed
and the morning sun was beaming on them.

John gave us a different recounting
of how the disciples received the Holy Spirit;
different from the story we are more familiar with,
the one that Luke recorded in his Acts of the Apostles,
where the disciples received the Holy Spirit
on the day we know as Pentecost.

John’s story is compelling, I think,
because here the Resurrection of Jesus,
Easter Sunday, marks the start of the new life in Christ,
and the new mission the disciples are called to.
There is no delay; the time is now!
But either way, the followers of Jesus Christ
are empowered and enabled by the Spirit,
and then sent to take the good news of the gospel
out into the world,
sent out to bear witness to God’s unwavering love
given in Jesus Christ.
A group that had cowered in uncertainty and fear
were now strong, convicted, committed, courageous
and ready to work.
This first group of Easter people
had been commissioned by Jesus and now
had a Kingdom to proclaim,
a Kingdom to build.

We are their successors as Easter people;
And we have the same calling:
to go out and proclaim the Kingdom,
to go out and build the Kingdom,
to go out and bear witness to God’s love in Christ.

We have received the same tools
the apostles in that room had:
the peace of Christ,
and the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that’s all we need.
Some five hundred years earlier,
the Lord spoke through the prophet Zechariah,
and said that was how he was going to send
out his children into the world,
“Not by might, nor by power,
but by my spirit”
(Zechariah 4:6)
That’s how you and I are called,
empowered, and sent out as Easter people.

As we talked about last week,
Easter is not the end of Lent,
but the beginning of new life,
“God’s new project” in the world
and that new project means we have work to do
as God’s children and as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit,
you and I are called to be Kingdom builders.
Professor Daniel Migliore reminds us that
“The Spirit is in constant motion
to further human transformation
and to bring the whole creation
to completion in God’s kingdom of peace and justice.”
(Migliore, The Power of God, 75)

“to bring the whole creation to completion
in God’s kingdom of peace and justice.”
To complete the job,
that’s our calling as God works through you and me.

Paul tells the Philippians in the passage that follows
our First Lesson,
“God …is at work in you,
enabling you to work for his good pleasure.”

And our first task, even before we feed the hungry,
house the homeless, or clothe the naked,
is to take that peace of Christ we’ve been given,
given by Christ himself,
given by the Holy Spirit,
and take that peace out into the world
as we build the Kingdom.
And we take that peace when we work for reconciliation
in our church, our communities,
our nation, and the world.

We live in a world that is desperate for this ministry,
this ministry of reconciliation.
We live in a world riven by divisions,
cultural, ethnic, political, social, and theological divisions,
that polarize us and paralyze us.
Even in churches we find deep divisions,
everyone staking out turf,
and then protecting that turf with a furious obsession.

I suspect that if Paul were to witness the divisions
that threaten our churches
and listen to the things we argue over,
he’d respond as he did
in his letter to the churches in Galatia,
a letter that is not a happy letter,
a letter which Paul begins not with
the warm greeting he used for the Philippians,
but with the words, “I am astonished!”
astonished and appalled by the things you are saying,
the things you are doing.
I think he’d go on to say,
“Don’t you remember what I wrote to those foolish Galatians:
“The whole law is summed up in a single commandment,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
If however you bite and devour one another,
take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
(Galatians 5:14)

Have we lost sight of our what it means to be Easter people?
Have we lost sight of what it means to be called,
empowered and sent forth
to minister in the name of Jesus Christ?
Have we lost sight of the fact that we have been called
not to minister in the name of judgment,
but in the name of Jesus Christ,
which means in the name of grace,
of love, of mercy, and of forgiveness?

it was James, the brother of our Lord,
who reminds us of how much damage we can do
each time we open our mouths.
How can we hope to build the Kingdom
if we are engaged tearing down ideas, individuals,
hope, progress, love, peace?
With every criticism, every snipe,
every attack, every judgment,
we tear down;
and fail our calling, in every setting:
not just in the church

This path of fractiousness and divisiveness
is one we’ve been down before;
In fact, it is a well-worn path.
The 1960s were years marked by deep divisions
politically, socially, and theologically.
Divisions and rifts had grown so deep
that the Presbyterian Church felt compelled to respond
with a new Confessional statement,
the first wholly new Confession in more than 300 years,
The Confession of 1967,
a confession that takes as its starting point
God’s reconciliation with his children through
his Son’s death and Resurrection.
The authors of the Confession said,
“God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ
and the mission of reconciliation
to which he has called his church
are the heart of the gospel in any age.
Our generation stands in peculiar need of
reconciliation in Christ.”
(Confession of 1967, 9.06)
It is a rich, wonderful Confession
and the words have become rather distressfully timely.

Another voice observed,
“Much of our contemporary Christianity
is not making people better,
but worse.
It accentuates bitterness, brings meanness, sanctions,
ignorance and bigotry,
[it] divides…and lapses from its high possibilities
into a force of spiritual deterioration and decay.”
(Harry Emerson Fosdick, Adventurous Religion, 276)

This powerful statement captures our need to work on reconciliation.
It also captures our need to work on history,
and to learn from the past.
For this statement was not from the Confession of 1967,
but rather from a essay written by the great preacher
Harry Emerson Fosdick in the year 1926!

Today is called the Second Sunday of Easter
on our liturgical calendar,
the Second Sunday in our new beginning.
The Second Sunday in our new calling
as we follow the Risen Christ
and bear witness in our words and deeds to
the love, mercy, peace and forgiveness of God
that is ours in Jesus Christ.

It is time to move beyond divisiveness and rancor,
it is time move beyond the biting and the devouring,
as Paul puts it so colorfully and accurately,
for no matter what the setting -- church, family,
society, nations –
we will consume ourselves.
At the beginning of the Book of Isaiah,
God calls his children to “reason together”
to set aside labels,
selfish interests,
judgment,
and work for a common good.

Did you hear Paul’s words to the Philippians:
“Be of the same mind, having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interest of others.
Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus.”

This is the ministry of reconciliation,
the ministry of “Peace be with you.”
For the joyful news is this: Christ is still risen,
and is here with us,
just as he was with the disciples
in that room on that first Easter Sunday.
Through Christ’s death and resurrection
we have been reconciled to God
and we are called by Christ
to build on God’s ministry of reconciliation with us
by taking a ministry of reconciliation out into the world.
We have been called, empowered,
and each of us is now being sent.
So go into the world ministering
in the name and life of Jesus Christ.
And Peace be with you.
AMEN