Sunday Musings
Resurrection Manifesto
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Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, the fifty-day season when Christians reflect on the meaning of the resurrection. The theme we’ve been exploring this year is “Practicing Resurrection.”
With the miracle of modern technology, I’ve been in Colorado Springs this weekend leading at event at First Congregational Church AND I was asked to record a sermon to be shared at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, SC. As it turns out, you can be in two places at the same time! I’m pretty certain that I’m the only Episcopalian preaching in two UCC churches today. 😁 (By the way, both are great churches that I love and highly recommend if you live in either of these cities and are looking for a faith community.)
Below is the recorded sermon for Circular Church — “Manifesto: Practice Resurrection.” I’m preaching a similar sermon in Colorado live on Sunday morning. I’ve also included an adapted transcript version if you prefer to read instead of listening.
The lectionary text for the day is Acts 2:42-47 — a manifesto for living the resurrection with imagination and courage.
Acts 2:42-47
Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
An edited transcript adaptation of the sermon:
Good morning.
I'm happy to be here at Circular Church in this video format, which is one of the new ways that we share in community with one another. And I'm glad to be with you on this fourth Sunday of Easter as we continue to celebrate and ruminate on the meaning of the resurrection.
This particular year, I've been thinking quite a bit about the wonderful poem by Wendell Barry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” The poem ends with the phrase, “practice resurrection.” I want to read to you from the poem, a poem I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with, and back the poem up to the reading today from the book of Acts.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Berry goes on with lots of other unexpected things to do and ends the poem with the words “practice resurrection.”
I think we misunderstand Berry’s point. When we hear those words, “practice resurrection,” the first thing we think of is, "Oh, I've got to get out, and I've got to do all of these things in order to demonstrate that my life is somehow transformed by those events 2000 years ago when the disciples proclaimed, “He isn't here. He is risen.”
There was a book published several years ago, a history of American Protestantism, bearing the title -- I've never been able to get it out of my mind -- The Work We Have to Do.
Protestants like work. Congregationalists and Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians, and all of the different kinds of Protestants, especially here in the United States: we're busy; being faithful keeps us busy.
We do believe that faith is about grace. That's the basic point of the gospel story, that God saves the world. God saves us.
Yet, when it comes to faith, we're not really working our way to heaven, although it sure looks like it. Protestants go out and do things. Protestants love cooking up projects, serving people, figuring out what to do with their buildings, forming committees to fix things, demonstrating the love of God by endless activity.
The poem by Wendell Berry seems to point there, as well. He lists so much to do:
Do something every day that won't compute. Love the Lord, love the world, work for nothing. Take all you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government. Embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to that which you don't understand.
It sounds like a to-do list. But what's interesting about the poem is it ends on a different note. These are the last lines:
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
What doesn't entirely compute in this poem is that he lists all of these things, this manifesto of things to do, but then ends it by urging us to rest easy in the fields, embracing what is nearest in thought, offering up confusing signs to a world who thinks that they can predict how we're going to act, and leave even our changes as a false trail. Be like the fox.
Practice resurrection.
Even in this wonderful poem that so many people in churches quote during the Easter season, we get an understanding of what it means to practice resurrection, to practice being an Easter people in a thoughtful alternative manner. Practicing resurrection isn’t quite what we expect.
Let’s think about this poem in relation to some fairly familiar verses from the Book of Acts. The lectionary today gives us verses that many people know. Indeed, some people laugh at these verses and refer to this as the text of “socialist Christianity.” Acts 2 reads: "They," that is the new believers who have just been baptized,
…devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and held all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number in those who were being saved.
Wendell Berry gave us a manifesto for practicing resurrection. The text from Acts is also a manifesto for practicing resurrection. And Acts, just like Wendell Berry’s poem, doesn't say what we sometimes think it says. It invites us into a kind of fearlessness and unexpected faith.
These words from Acts were written between about 75 and 100 CE. So this is a story that is written towards the end of the first century to reflect back on an episode that happened almost immediately after the resurrection.
We have the Easter events. We have the proclamation to the first of Jesus’ friends, followers, and disciples, that the Lord is no longer in the tomb, that the Lord is risen. These appearances of Jesus are very interesting and odd and turn the lives of those whom he knew upside down.
The experience of what happened on that Sunday, what happened all those years ago, changed all of the people who were involved in those events. And that early group of folks to whom these things occurred, they went out and started sharing this story with others. And so, we get this tale, this remembrance, in the Book of Acts from an episode that happens during the Feast of Pentecost. A whole lot of people hear Jesus’ friends telling the story of what happened with the resurrection. They also believe, and they're baptized.
Those people, hearing this second-wave telling of the story of the resurrection, begin immediately to live differently. In effect, they hear about the resurrection, they get baptized, and they begin to practice the resurrection.
We have this list of four things that they do – a manifesto. And what do they do?
They devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. They break bread together, and they pray.
Now, I don't know how you receive those words.
Apostles’ Teaching — When I’ve heard sermons about this text, a well-meaning preacher will say, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” Immediately the idea that comes in the head of many churchgoers is they're learning theology, they are learning the apostles’ teaching. Well, gosh, that must mean the Apostles’ Creed. They're learning about the creeds.
Fellowship — When I think of fellowship in a church, I think of the parish hall, and I think of what happens after church on Sunday. I think about having good church coffee and great cookies after a service. I might think about a Bible study. I might think about a book group. I might think about some other activity. The church picnic.
Breaking bread — I think of the Eucharist or the communion service, a weekly celebration in my church. Little bits of bread and sips of wine.
And prayers — I am an Episcopalian, so I think of the liturgy. You’re Congregationalists, you have shared prayers. You have prayers that you say over and over. You have extemporaneous prayers and prayers that are written for you in community or shared by your denomination. You don't do them as regularly as, say, Episcopalians do out of the Book of Common Prayer. But most of us know particular forms or bodies of prayer.
Now, if we stop and think about the fact that the story in Acts remembers an event that happened just weeks after that very first-ever Easter Sunday, it becomes clear that those newly baptized people — the people who had just heard about Jesus' resurrection — didn't have any of this stuff we associate with church.
Because they didn't have a church. There were no church buildings. There was nowhere they could go to and say, "Oh, I'm now in church." I don't even know that they had that word church.
When you think about the apostles’ teaching, they sure as heck don't have the Apostles’ Creed. That doesn't show up until 300 years later.
There are no parish halls, there's no church. What do they mean by fellowship?
Breaking of bread, well, they're feeding one another, but they probably don't have a thing like what we know as Eucharist or the Lord's Supper today.
And prayers, what were they praying? They certainly weren't praying from a Book of Common Prayer, and they weren't praying prayers that were written by some official denominational office and they weren't praying written prayers passed on by pastors and religious professionals.
So, what are these things – this manifesto – the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers?
We assume we know what they did, but we don't really. Yet, this is how these first believers practiced resurrection.
To imagine what they actually did, I want to draw from a couple of pieces of biblical scholarship and suggest to you that what is happening here is a lot less like a manifesto for work and more like a manifesto of a transformed life.
The apostles’ teaching: what were the apostles teaching to these folks who heard the very first message? From the book of Acts, we know that they were essentially teaching the salvation history of the Hebrew people and about Jesus' own life in ministry. Then, they taught that he was crucified by the Romans and that he was raised. That's the apostles’ teaching. It's really the story of the Old Testament, the scriptures that they had, and then that was tagged with their experience of who Jesus was and this event of Easter Sunday.
There has been a suggestion that the apostles did teach a kind of nascent or rudimentary creed as well. Creeds did develop fairly early in life of the Christian Church, and the first creeds were relatively simple.
Often, we’ve been told that the very first creed was “Jesus is Lord” or “he is risen.” Those are, indeed, credal statements. Those are assertions of belief; not intellectual belief but of an experiential belief about who Jesus was. Stephen Patterson, who teaches New Testament, wrote a book five years ago where he examined this issue of what the first creed might be. Through historical reconstruction, he came up with the first probable baptismal creed of the Christian Church, one that was likely operative within a year or two after Jesus had died.
That first creed went something like this:
For you are all children of God. You are all children of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek. There is no slave or free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in the Spirit.
You might recognize those words because Paul will include them in the Book of Galatians, which is one of the earliest books in the New Testament. Galatians was written probably around the year of 40, maybe 42, no later than 50, within a decade or so of when Jesus was executed.
Somehow, very early on, these words began to mark the Christian experience. Jesus had broken down the boundaries. Jesus had broken down the boundaries of death, and Jesus had broken down the boundaries that separate us as human beings. Jesus had broken down the walls of, if you listen to the words, Jew and Greek, the walls of ethnic and religious identity, slave and free. Jesus had broken down the walls of economic class, and there is no male and female. Jesus had broken down the walls of gender.
The first creed is not about Jesus being part of a trinity or being fully human and fully divine. That will come much, much later. That's not what the apostles taught, and it wasn’t what these first believers heard.
Patterson makes a convincing case that the first creed about a liberating Jesus represents the teaching of the very first Christians, of the apostles themselves. It's a creed of human solidarity: For you are all children of God in the spirit. There is no Jew or Greek. There is no slave or free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in the spirit.
And that makes some sense in relationship to this text because the text from Acts is a baptismal text. Those people were just baptized.
Patterson argues that the words that were said with those folks at baptism are words of liberation, the words of a God who has broken through all of the boundaries of human experience and created a new kind of community. That’s the meaning of fellowship. Fellowship is not a fellowship hall. Fellowship is not just a loose understanding of how we like each other or serve one another in a church or do nice things together. But instead, fellowship is a boundary-breaking friendship with God, the love of God bursting through. Jesus says, "I no longer call you servants, but I call you friends." A friendship between human beings and God, and true friendship, solidarity, between all human beings.
That friendship manifests itself, as it did in the Gospel of John, with a new meal, with the breaking of bread, sitting at a table of friends. Serving one another without having there be a head of table. Serving one another a meal regardless of social class, a meal that is a foretaste of the banquet of God for the whole of creation.
And so, what were they praying?
We have a pretty good indication of that in the Bible itself.
Oh, God, Abba, the one who is father and mother of us all, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are holding debts against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom forever. Amen.
That's what they were praying. They were praying to the one who is the Father and Mother of us all. Abba, whose name is hallowed at the center of all of creation. The way that you dream for us to live, dear Abba, may that be manifested here among us on earth. And the way that it's manifested is trusting you for daily bread, offering gratitude and praise, sharing with others, forgiving debts, forgiving those who hold us in debt, being freed from anything that would tempt us or frighten us, being able to resist that which is evil.
Those are the prayers. This is an astonishing list. The apostles’ teaching is solidarity between God and all of humanity. Fellowship is the manifestation of that solidarity in community. That community serves the whole of the community, around a table with no distinctions of class or race or gender or anything that would separate people, a meal of full total thanksgiving and liberation. Then, the prayers. "Oh God, you who have lived in heaven have come among us and bring that kingdom to us. Bring that kingdom to us. Bring that commonwealth among us."
And what's the result of this? Well, it says in the next half of the text that the disciples are filled with awe, that there is justice and sharing, economic equality, gratitude, and then, finally, others join them.
That's the manifesto for practicing resurrection.
It's not a list of committees. It's not a plan to fix anything. It isn’t an ethical to-do list. The manifesto for practicing resurrection is four simple things:
A community that understands itself to be a community that is in solidarity with God and neighbor.
A community that manifests that solidarity in deep friendship by living with one another and express that love in physical and embodied ways.
One of those embodied ways is eating together and offering boundless hospitality.
Then, finally, it's living a life of prayer that draws its heart out of the way that Jesus taught us to pray: about generosity and gratitude and freedom from debt, fear, and all that is evil.
Practice resurrection. It's not a long to-do list. It's not the work we have to do. It's not a call to exhaust yourself. It's a call to live. It's a call to live as humanly as we possibly can with and for one another and for the life of God in the world.
Amen.
INSPIRATION
They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!
― Kamand Kojouri, for more of the poet’s work, visit her website.
When I think about the resurrection now, I don't only think about what happened to Jesus. I think about what happened to his disciples. Something happened to them, too. They went into hiding after the crucifixion but after the resurrection appearances, they walked back out into the world. They became braver and stronger; they visited strangers, and healed the sick. It was not just what they saw when they saw Jesus, or how they saw it, but what was set free in them.
We spend so much time in the church 'believing' in the resurrection or 'not believing' (six impossible things before breakfast) that we may lose the point. What if the resurrection is not about the appearances of Jesus alone but also about what those appearances pointed to, what they asked? And it is finally what we do with them that matters — make them into superstitions or use them as stepping stones to new life.
We have to practice resurrection.
— Nora Gallagher, Practicing Resurrection
Thank you for your words today, Diana. Also thank you for the poem by Kamand Kojouri. As someone with Family in Ukraine, her words resonated with me. Everyone - please keep praying for the world. 💖🌍💖🙏💖
Absolutely wonderful! Just what I needed to hear. I plan to share with my team to remind them of what we are to "be about" in our walk. Thank you for the specifics, "practice ressurection!"