An Easter Sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church
April 16, 2006
“Now on the same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened”. As we hear again these words from our gospel text this morning, it is absolutely clear to me that these disciples are not taking a reflective stroll through a shaded garden. Only 48 hours before Jesus had been summarily executed. The disciples were getting “the hell out of Dodge” so that they will not meet the same fate as their leader. This was likely an animated conversation between labored breaths and anxious glances over their shoulders. They were talking about what they next move should be, lamenting what had happened, cursing Rome, cursing themselves for believing, cursing even Jesus who had aroused their hopes. This was grief laden, scared stiff, contentious debriefing under the shadow of death. As the exchange along the road makes perfectly clear, Jesus execution presented a crushing blow to the movement he founded. While they were walking a stranger comes near and joins them. “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along? They stood still looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “ are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?” “What things? He said. “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. And how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified. But we had hoped that he would be the one to liberate Israel.” If we listen intently, we can hear in these words all the grief and loss, all the fear and despair that the disciples carried in their hearts as they fled Jerusalem. This one line contains all the pathos and disillusionment that has ever been experienced in human history. The disciple Cleopas expresses what we sometimes believe to be true about the world we live in. Might makes right. The way of love is not only defeated but is often crushed by violent power. Power dominates and wins. 9/11 has made tragically clear the iron law of history: violence begets more violence until each of us and the whole world seems to be held captive in a seemingly endless spiral of violence.
“We had hoped that he would be the one to liberate Israel”. The disciples might have gone on to say: “And because we allowed ourselves to hope, we have opened ourselves to this danger, this sorrow, this disillusionment”. But the Stranger replies: “ O how foolish you are and slow to believe all that the prophets have declared. Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer? Then with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” If we could have overheard this walking Bible study with Jesus what would we discover about the prophetic agenda that causes so much trouble and suffering? Well the Biblical prophets were concerned about things that today might be labeled secular. The prophet’s of whom Jesus spoke defended the most vulnerable in society- the widow, the orphan, the migrant. The prophets were concerned about the treatment of workers and day laborers. They criticized absentee landlords and were concerned about land distribution,. They railed against the crushing debt of the poor and exorbitant interest on loans. They denounced inequitable taxation policy. They were concerned about fairness in courts, about economic divisions, about war and peace – the very stuff of politics. The prophets questioned authority, spoke truth to power, and gave voice to the voiceless. They stirred up the troops, picketed presidential palaces, questioned foreign policies based on military and economic domination and were accused of treason in times of national war making. For being the inconvenient conscience of the nation the prophets were put on trial, jailed, exiled or killed. Jesus was talking in the plainest possible terms so those two demoralized disciples can get it. Do not be surprised by recent events. History teaches us that prophets will suffer and be killed if they live the way of non-violent love. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained to all his disciples that the way to liberation in a world locked down by the spiral of violence is the way of non-violent love, sacrificial love, creative love.
And the Stranger continued to instruct his unknowing disciples. If you understand how throughout history the powers that be have responded to the prophets then this will help you understand the death of this Jesus of whom you speak. Here I want to build on an important point that Sue made in her sermon last week entitled “Did Jesus have to die? The death that Jesus experienced was not necessary because of the character of God. Nor was it necessary as a way to satisfy the divine need for vengeance or to satisfy some doctrine of atonement. . Jesus’ death in the prophetic tradition was however inevitable given the character of the powers that be with whom all prophets struggle. If as disciples we can begin to grasp this then we might be ready to understand that the cross of Jesus was not the triumph of violence but its defeat. We know as the disciples knew that death by crucifixion was Rome’s gruesome form of public execution reserved for political dissidents. Crucifixion was Rome’s way of intimidating everyone in the name of national security. It was paid advertising that said very plainly- look what happens to those who think they can challenge the sovereignty of Caesar’s power. And this is why the possibility of a crucified one being raised to new life was so very threatening to Rome. A risen Christ demonstrated that Rome’s ultimate form of social control had not defeated non-violent prophetic love. Resurrection was and is so threatening not because a resuscitated corpse upsets the laws of nature. No the resurrection was so threatening to Rome because it signaled that Jesus way, the prophetic way of non-violent love had been vindicated by God. For Resurrection of the Crucified is vindication of the Gospel of non-violence especially this most difficult bit about dying for the cause rather than killing for the cause.
There is a new book out by the distinguished theologian Harvey Cox entitled “Jesus comes to Harvard”. The book tells the story of how Cox as a professor at Harvard, offered a class on the morality of the historical Jesus that proved to be immensely popular among students. So many came out that they had to move the class to an auditorium. For several years the class did not include an examination of the resurrection accounts in the life of Jesus. Cox initially felt that stories of Christ’s resurrection had no real bearing on the morality of Jesus. But finally his students’ persistent curiosity persuaded Cox to include those Easter stories in his class but not without much study in preparation. As he looked at resurrection stories in the bible, Cox was surprised to find that they were not as much about immortality as they were about God's justice. He realized that they did not so much spring up from a yearning for life after death so much as from the conviction that a truly Just God simply had to vindicate the victims of injustice. And when Cox finally looked at the stories of Jesus own resurrection, it struck him like a lightning bolt. To restore a dead person to life is to strike a blow at mortality. But to restore a crucified man to life is to strike a blow at the violent system that executed him. His most startling insight is that the deep hope nourished by Christ’s resurrection is that god’s reign of shalom and nonviolent love will triumph in the end.
But let’s move that insight into the Resurrection from the classroom into the world. The story is told of Bishop Desmond tutu during the years of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. One Sunday as the people were gathered in St.George’s cathedral, the SA security police broke into the cathedral just at the point of Bishop Tutu’s sermon. You could feel the power of the people shrink in terror at the threat of yet more violence. Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of the cathedral, ready to arrest him for any prophetic utterance. After meeting their eyes with his steely gaze, he acknowledged their power. “ You are powerful, very powerful” he said but reminded them that he served a higher power than their political authority. And then in the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny Tutu told the representatives of Apartheid, “since you have already lost, I invite you this day to come over to the winning side. These words electrified the people; they began to sing and dance in exultation of the coming triumph of god’s love. The security police withdrew.
All over the world there are people of faith who are now beginning to see and act free of the domination system. No matter how terrible the sufferings of God’s people, the reign of God has already begun in their demonstration of non-violent love. This is no pious fiction. The power of God is already manifest because people, not just Christians but God’s people in all faith traditions who were formerly terrified are now willing to be fired from jobs, beaten, jailed, even killed for a fairer world. The authority of the Risen Christ is already establishing itself because victims of violence are not only affirming their own humanity, but also doing so in a way that affirms the humanity of their oppressors. You see my friends; our Christian faith does not wait for God’s sovereignty to be established on earth. We are called by Easter faith to behave as if that sovereignty of love and justice already holds full sway. The early Christians declared as fact what existed only in the imagination. Like god who in the moment of creation, calls forth from nothing all that is. So Easter faith calls into being what does not yet exist. And Easter faith races ahead to form something new that never was before. To say that God has defeated Satan and the powers and principalities that enslave the world in violence is ludicrous at one level. But it is our praise and songs of thanksgiving on this very Easter morning, which invoke a new reality that is only just beginning to come into being. We are like the people gathered in St. George’s cathedral under the deathly and violent shadow of Apartheid. Our worship and our songs of praise this day help to create that new reality in the only way that it can be created. For singing about this new reality is a way of bringing it about. By faith we act, without guarantees and without a lot of evidence that we are succeeding. But until that day when god’s reign of shalom is fully realized we know this: resistance to violence evil and death is the only way to live humanly in an inhuman world. Persistent struggle against Satan’s rule of violence and death is in fact what renders us human. Yet this is not a dreary prospect because we can already celebrate God’s triumph. This capacity to enjoy victory in the midst of calamity is one of the most baffling aspects of Christian hope. Those still in the clutches of the Enemy may not yet experience it fully, but the battle is already won. The struggle continues but the outcome is no longer in doubt. The far-off strains of a victory song already reach our ears and we are invited to join the chorus. This is the rock on which we stand: the absolute certainty of the triumph of God’s love in the world. Some have said that the world was forever changed on Sept. 11, 2001. But we believe the world was transformed in 33AD as two disillusioned disciples walked along the road to Emmaus and encountered a stranger who turned out to be the Crucified and risen one.
This sermon is indebted to the work of Ched Myers, Walter Wink and Jim Wallis.