I want to talk this morning about resurrection practice.

My father was a master of bad jokes, the kind that make you groan. Here is one of his classics: Count Basie is hailed by a man on a midtown Manhattan street. The man asks Count Basie: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Count Basie replies.  Practice, man, practice.”

Nora Gallagher, wrote a book called Practicing Resurrection. In it she wonders whether Christians spend too much time discussing – even litmus testing one another – about the believability of Jesus’ resurrection.  In so doing, she fears we miss the point. She says:

When I think about the resurrection now, I do not only wonder what happened to Jesus. I ponder what happened to his disciples. Something happened to them, too. They went into hiding after the crucifixion, but after the resurrection appearances they were back out into the world. They became braver, stronger; they visited strangers, they 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. … What if the resurrection is not about the appearance of Jesus alone, but about what those appearances [of Jesus] point to, what they ask [of us]. It’s finally what we do with them that matters; make them into superstitions or use them as stepping stones to new life. Maybe resurrection like everything else needs to be practiced.

Resurrection: superstition or stepping stone to new life? How can a person tell? Like Count Basie said: “Practice man, practice.”

People are longing to practice resurrection in their lives. A man hears from his doctor the test results are not what he’d hoped for. A young woman loses her husband at much too early an age. People – far too many despite the good news in the national jobs report – looking for meaningful work. The class of 2010 set to graduate and jump into careers they’ve prepared for – they hope. Grown sons and daughter worn down caring for aging parents need some lifting up. Someone else is depressed struggling through life with no energy. People are longing for new life, for the practice of resurrection.

The women who arrived at the empty tomb that first Easter needed to practice resurrection. They had gone to the tomb to do the last possible things they could do for Jesus. They had witnessed his death.  Now they come with spices to anoint what was left of him. It was the least they could do.

Doesn’t your heart get heavy knowing you’re gonna be with someone you love for the last time? Not someone who you say: “Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out,” thankful they leave. There’s a weight in your chest when your time with someone you love and admire is over. One whose friendship and teaching stirred hope and possibilities in your soul now lays there lifeless, nail scarred hands and feet, the wound where they speared his side. His ashen gray skin says dead and gone, just like the hope you’d staked your life on. It’s not enough he’s dead, but how they’d killed him. He didn’t deserve it. So it goes with love and faithfulness in the world, you figure. It dies painful death. The world can be a fearsome, punishing place.   

But something happened when they reached the tomb. They entered the place of their disappointment and fears. They entered the place of death. They entered the place where they’d sealed Jesus tight from any more going wrong. But the stone that shut him up tight was rolled away. No big boulder across the entrance. No body. No nothing.

If it wasn’t for the sudden appearance of two men in dazzling white clothes, the women  might have thought it was just more one thing gone wrong, one more indignity, one more indecency, one more disappointment, one more problem. Enough!

At first, they were in no position to listen. They recoiled in fear. Wouldn’t you? Ducked-down in defensive posture. But the suddenly appearing men, light cascading over them, will not be silent:  Why do you look for the living among the dead? Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. – Luke 24:5b-6

“Remember how he told you…” say the angel-looking envoys of God.  “Remember.” In other words, “Practice man, practice.” Excuse me. In this case, “Practice women, practice.” Notice how the messengers of the Divine do not try to prove the fact of the resurrection. They say “remember what he told you.” Fall back on your experience with Jesus. In other words, practice. Practice resurrection. Go and tell what you’ve seen to the rest of the disciples. You’ve got the good news that Christ was risen from the dead, now change from being people who perform rites for dead people. Change into apostles who give witness to a living Lord.  Practice resurrection. Change from people who are fearful and frightened to people who boldly proclaim a gospel a that life is stronger than death, that God’s love is stronger than hate, that God’s peace is stronger than any power and force of human violence (like crucifixion).

“Practice women, practice.” Experience is important. We dare not, Church, ask people to believe something they cannot experience, rather offer people in word (teaching and preaching) sacrament (baptizing people with water thicker than blood and holy communion nurturing people to their place at God’s table) and action (putting God’s love to work serving homeless shelters, going on VIM Trips, teaching Sunday School, visiting the sick and shut in, working to break down the historic barriers between St. George’s and Mother Bethel, Zoar and St. Thomas as we’ve been doing) – we must offer people some ways and means to practice what it means to experience/encounter God alive, to practice resurrection.

“Practice women, practice.” Despite the strong affection I have for my gender, the Bible says the women at the empty tomb were the first practitioners of resurrection. On men. They told all they had seen and heard to the eleven men who’d packed it in after Jesus died. “Slow on the uptake,” is putting it kindly about men being first responders to the resurrection. They accuse the women of making the whole thing up. Eventually the “sons of Adam” get-it, thanks to the women, who according to Luke, were the first courageous apostles to practice resurrection, carrying its new-life message to the world. 

The good news of Easter, the message of resurrection: that Jesus, crucified, has been raised from the dead. Believing that changes everything: cruelty is not the last word, failure, sin, brokenness and evil – mine personally, ours systematically, locally, globally, nationally are redeemable, death does not get to  do its victory dance. Life does. The message of the resurrection says forgiveness, barrier-breaking love and life are the final realities of the world. The power of God is stronger than any boulder-shut tomb can hold.

But believing all that isn’t enough. Intellectual ascent to such wonderful theology isn’t enough. The message of Jesus raised from the dead is not brain food. It is life blood. How well the Wesley’s and the early Methodists (who give us this wonderful church and tradition) knew this life blood.  Faith isn’t for the head; it’s also for the heart. It is to be felt, experienced, practiced. What puts the “method” in Methodist is how ordered they were in creating avenues for people to experience and put into practice God’s overwhelming love. Practical divinity, John Wesley called it.  

Practice man, practice.

To all the sports fans in the congregation who hear former Philadelphia 76er Allen Iverson in their ears at the mere mention of the word “practice,”  remembering Iverson’s famous “Practice, you talkin’ about practice?” riff – to you I say, YES, I am talking about practice.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and author of God’s Politics tells an amazing story resurrection practiced. It takes place in South Africa when apartheid still had a strangle-hold on power and Nelson Mandela was still in prison. Wallace was at an ecumenical service at the Cathedral of St. George in Capetown. Bishop Desmond Tutu was presiding when a group of government security police broke into the service. Wallis says:

“Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral … They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days. … After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze… [Tutu] acknowledged their power ... but reminded them that he served a higher power than their political authority. Then, in a most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny… Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African Apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and an enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshippers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began dancing. We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces who not knowing what else to do, backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”

Ten years later, Wallis says he returned to South Africa to attend the inauguration of Nelson Mandela where he ran into Bishop Tutu and remembered that day. Wallis says he believes apartheid died NOT the day Mandela was released from prison or inaugurated president but that day at the cathedral.

What an amazing story to remember on the day, April 4,that we also remember Martin Luther King Jr. – not the tragedy of his horrible assassination alone but the resurrection that his vision that an assassin’s bullet could not kill; resurrection practiced, a legacy yet alive, inspiring, changing the lives, laws, culture of so many of us.

Practice man. Practice woman. Practice. Maybe like everything else, resurrection needs to be practiced. Is it possible to practice resurrection in your life where doubt, disappointment, hurt, worry, fear, grieving, bitterness, resentment, anger, grudge, failures hold you and yours in a death grip? Is it possible for us to practice resurrection in this divisive, contentious time in our nation? Is it possible for resurrection to happen in Haiti, Afghanistan, Chile, the Sudan… all the troubled parts of the world?

The promise of Easter says yes we can. We will not find the dead among the living. We must NOT go about living as if we were dead. Christ is risen! God open us to more than just faith in the resurrection, but to practice resurrection, the very means of faith and life come alive, God’s lifeblood flowing through our veins. Amen.

 

An abbreviated version of this sermon was preached at The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas at the Easter Dawn service. 

Rev. Alfred T. Day, III
Historic St. George's United Methodist Church
April 4, 2010