Sermon Library
“Following the Living Christ”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
September 14, 2008
Service Theme: Pentecost XVIII - 2008
Pentecost XVIII-2008 September 14, 2008
Following the Living Christ
By Gregg Anderson
Something Greater In Common
Tonight, Lexie Potampkin, Patricia Hill, Michael Stranahan and I will join about 25 other people at a retreat center with a spiritual name, La Casa De Maria, in a city with a spiritual name, Santa Barbara. We will be meeting with people from around the country with different backgrounds and faiths and led by exemplars from five major religions. We will learn about areas of distinction and areas of commonness. Throughout my involvement with Spiritual Paths, I seem to keep learning more about what we have in common than what we have apart.
As human beings we all long to be bound by an essence and an association with something that is benevolently greater than ourselves. The word religion means to bind or to bind back, to be eternally connected with creation and creator. Many religions call this creator God, Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah. We want to be related to the source which gave birth to our being. This is why we have an Adam and Eve story and we call God Father. We want to belong and be children of God. This innate and even instinctual yearning is perhaps our greatest need and is manifested in many different ways.
Prophets and Mediators
As human beings we invariably look for prophets and ways to help us be in relationship with our creator and bound to the source of all life, with God, if you will. There have been many great teachers and prophets that have helped human beings to be connected with that which is supreme. For us as Christians, Jesus has become our most significant mediator. Many Christians and other people of faith perceive Jesus as a great prophet and servant of God. Many other Christians perceive Jesus as actually either being God in human form or the very son of God and capable of miracles almost like the miracle of creation itself. This claim is not unlike other founders of major world religions. In the midst of a multitude of beliefs about Jesus throughout the beginning of his existence, Jesus does remain most respected and honored.
“One-Wayers”
There are some Christians who believe that there is only one way to God and that is through a very specific belief in Jesus. What is interesting is that there are many different groups of Christian “One-Wayers.” This is something like an oxymoronic phenomenon that there are different groups of Christians each saying that they are the bearers of the only way to God. They each believe that their particular one way to God and one way to understand Jesus is the only way. Unfortunately, there are more people who have either rejected or lost interest in Jesus if they have to affirm an extremely narrow perspective of Jesus. Such a confining and literalistic view of Jesus becomes incredulous to many people who want to conform to contemporary knowledge including the world of technology and science.
Religious Freedom
We all believe in religious freedom. I would like to encourage a greater freedom in our understandings of Jesus and also in our images of God. My purpose is to expand people’s attention and appreciation of the life of Jesus by saying that the one-way approach is really only one way and there are many legitimate ways to understand the life of Jesus. I want the life and purpose of Jesus to have wider applicability among more people, especially those who have rejected the narrower, constrained, literal projection of Jesus. My purpose is really rather evangelical, just not like what one typically defines as evangelical. Thomas Troeger helps us with a more inclusive vision of Jesus in his chapter entitled Following the Living Christ.
An Ancient Sarcophagus
Troeger begins by describing an ancient fourth century Christian sarcophagus. A sarcophagus is like a coffin, a stone box in which the remains of a loved one is placed for burial. Troeger verbally describes the engraving on the sarcophagus. Thanks to technology I found an actual photograph of the very sarcophagus Troeger is describing. He points out a number of symbols such as the cross, the first two letters of Christ’s name surrounded by the Roman wreath of victory. Arching over the whole cross and wreath is the dome of heaven. (View the sarcophagus on the last page of this sermon.)
He states that “what grips his attention most are the two figures underneath the crossbeam. On the right side there is a Roman soldier. He is sitting on a rock and is propping himself up with a large battle sword. The tip is in the ground, and he has placed his arms on the hilt of the sword to form a pillow for his head. He is sound asleep. On the opposite side of the cross is another figure, who like the soldier is sitting on a rock. It is difficult to tell if this is a man or a woman. But the right hand, which is the one we can see, is open with the palm facing upward. The head too is tilted up, and the eyes are open. All of these details are characteristic of the posture of early Christians at prayer. This praying figure looks at the XR circled by the wreath of victory that sits atop the cross. This praying figure, unlike the sleeping Roman soldier, sees the glory of the Christ and resurrection.”
“Through this sermon in stone, I hear the sculptor calling from the cloud of witnesses: ‘Are you asleep or awake to the resurrection? Are you praying, are you open to wonder, are you ready to receive the new life God brings out of death?’ That soldier asleep on his sword is an evocative symbol. The sword belongs not just to the soldier but to the Roman Empire. It stands for the power of the world: brutal, domineering, certain of its position and truth. Because the soldier is completely dependent upon the world’s power, he misses what is most important at the center of existence: the risen Christ, the new life that God brings forth from death.”
Beyond the Literal
Thomas Troeger does not limit resurrection to a literal resurrection. He writes, “Meditating upon the image, I realize that the sculptor has eschewed [ shied away from] a literal depiction of resurrection. There is no rock rolled aside, no body tramping out of the tomb, nothing to suggest that resurrection is artificial respiration and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Instead, the artist depends entirely on symbol: the victory wreath surrounding the letters of Christ, the doves on the cross, the posture of prayer. Resurrection is something greater than returning to the life that once was. Resurrection is new creation, new being. Through speech empowered by the Spirit, Jesus Christ himself is present within human consciousness. A literal picture would reveal that the sculpture is as dependent upon a constricted imagination as the soldier is on his sword. The risen Christ comes here and now to those who pray.”
“While I reflect on the wisdom of the artist’s sermon, the Spirit identifies what keeps people as soundly asleep to the resurrection as the soldier’s sword. Our sword is the Bible. Our sword is religious cliché. Our sword is “Jesusolatry” - confining Christ to images of the itinerant preacher waling the hills of Palestine. Our sword is talking about the resurrection as past event or future hope but never present reality. Our sword is theological rigidity that blocks us from being open to spiritual resurrection here and now.”
Troeger uses the word “Biblicism” to describe a dependence on a book versus the very life of Christ. Biblicism indicates a religiosity that confuses a relationship to the living Christ with an obsession with scriptural texts. Biblicist versions of Christianity forget that God does not call us to return to the letter of the law but to follow Christ, and we are summoned to preach the gospel not the Bible. Furthermore, the gospel is not simply one of the four books written by the biblical evangelists: the gospel is the good news of God’s redemptive presence and purposes in the world. Gospel is the gracious impulse of God that sets all authentic witnesses to God into motion. The Gospel was there before the Bible, and it created the Bible” . . . [not the other way around].
“Christ is not confined to the Bible and the past. The risen Christ has not stopped growing and changing with history. We have a technical term for people who do not change: dead. If Christ has not changed since the resurrection, then Christ is no longer alive.” Troeger affirms, “But I know Christ is alive. I keep meeting Christ through people and events and prayer and at the altar which I take the bread and wine and feed on Christ in my heart by faith with thanksgiving.”
“And Jesus Increased in Wisdom”
“A biblicist may fire the familiar verse, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8). But the Gospels depict Jesus changing through his childhood days onward. We also have the verse in the Gospel of Luke, ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man’ (Luke 2:52). The church abuses the living Christ every time it denigrates the value of any human group on the basis of a constricted Biblicism. This is what led to scriptural justifications of slavery, the denial of full equality to women, and the condemnation of scientific worldviews at variance with ancient cosmologies. People have been proof-texting the bible since its canonization, interpreting a few isolated passages to maintain their bias. This exegesis grows exponentially, each side acting as if its interpretation of the Scriptures will finally settle the problem. This is Biblicism at its worst: using hermeneutical warfare to circumvent the living Christ, who through the ages has shown an ever growing capacity to embrace more and more of the human family.”
Asleep or Awake?
“All of us sometimes and some of us all the time are like the soldier asleep on his sword: we prefer to rest on the world’s securities or if not the world’s then the church’s. We cling to a form of belief that ensures God will not pull any surprises. We are like the religious authorities in Matthew: we really do not want any resurrection or anything new. We try to keep resurrection from happening so that we can stay in control of Jesus and use his name to command others: arguing endlessly about doctrine and scriptural interpretation while we fail to care for Christ among the least of our sisters and brothers, refusing the new gifts that the risen Christ offers for our worship and praise, constricting our imaginings of Christ to images that leave us comfortable and undisturbed. All of these fall under the general category of Jesusolatry: avoiding the living Christ by freezing Jesus in the past.”
“If one peels off the layers of various theologies, the holy always remains. Peeling off theological and doctrinal layers to reveal the holy is what the resurrection does. The busted tomb is like the God-shaped hole in the ceiling of the church. Since death, the one absolutely inviolable limit to life, is no longer fixed in place, it follows that we cannot rely on any other absolutism, including human articulations of religious belief. Resurrection marks the end of theological triumphalism. The relativism of visionary preaching is born of a passionate faith in the living Christ. The resurrection can reveal the transitory nature of all that we assume to be fixed. Religious rigidities are as effective in trapping Christ as the stone at the tomb. Resurrection shatters them all and leaves a God-shaped hole revealing the never-to-be controlled realities of Christ, the wind, and the cloud of witnesses.” (p. 105) Christ never said follow the Bible and the doctrines. Much rather, Christ said “Follow me.”
Visionary people and preachers give up the delusion of control. They become like the praying figure opposite the Roman soldier on the sarcophagus. Having no sword, no false expectation of salvation through technology to lean upon, they remain awake to the resurrections of life and an ever deepening relationship to the living Christ. The God-shaped hole invites us to preach not answers but the living Christ. Resurrection is no longer simply the once-a-year theme of Easter but it becomes for us the pattern that is to be found precisely within the ordinary round and daily routine of our lives.”
Real Resurrection
Resurrection is the opening of astonishing new possibilities when we give up the delusion that we control reality. Resurrection is the renewed love that friends, partners, and spouses discover when they let go of their need to reform the other. Resurrection is the vital ministry that results when a church releases its obsession with doing things as they always have. Resurrection is the fresh impulse that inspires artists when they discover a new vein of creativity. Resurrection is the surprising discovery of scientist who put aside an old theory in order to examine unexpected data. Resurrection is the future that opens to a society when it comes to terms with its injustice and prejudice.
Resurrection is releasing images which only preserve and open ourselves to the living Christ in our lives and in our world today. Being awake to the resurrection is being the person gazing upward in prayer with palms open to what may be – to what this living Christ and God brings. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
http://www.aspenchapel.org