Life Before Death

Luke 24:1 – 12

Easter Sunday:  March 31, 2013

We often talk about resurrection as life after death.  We are not alive, we are born, we are alive in an imperfect/painful world, we die, and then, because we believe in the resurrection, we live again – in perfection, without pain, forever.  And it’s only that last one that is the resurrection.  Resurrection means perfection – and that is unattainable in this life, right?  That comes after we die a physical death.

But death, life, and resurrection don’t seem to be too much about psychological states for Jesus.  In the gospels, just to give a smattering, Jesus talks about the dead burying the dead, he talks about Moses as having never been dead.  Jesus “resurrects” Lazarus right back into a life that is as imperfect as when we left it.  And he says that those who want to save their lives must lose it. Death, the physical kind, is not the dividing line for Jesus between the unresurrected and the resurrected.  It’s not even the dividing line between the living and the dead – at least as Jesus saw it. 

We are all afraid of death – at least sometimes.  And not just physical death.  Maybe not even primarily physical death.  We’re also afraid of the death of the selves we have created to avoid the truths about who we are and the world we live in.  You know this self:  strong, capable, in control of our destiny, nice, helpful, generous. 

But these constructed selves require credentials to be believable.  So we do things to make us look strong: we help others but only if the power to do so stays in our hands.  We amass wealth so we can be seen as responsible providers and generous givers.  We show emotions in only socially accepted ways.  We work and work and work, and amass as much firepower as we can so we can be people who keep our families, our communities, our countries safe.  We do whatever it takes to hide, from ourselves and others, those things that would betray that façade we have constructed. 

Because these selves protect us.  They keep others from seeing those parts of us that we don’t like – and we’re positive others won’t like.  And they keep us from having to deal with the realities of being human in a broken world.  And so hide our brokennes, our vulnerability, our selfishness, anger, neediness, helplessness, fear, hatred.  We deny that things are out of our control, we deny our mortality until the very last second, we deny that our world is complex, that we are likely wrong as much as right, we deny that everyone is dependent on someone in some way, and we deny that we all are as deserving as everyone else of the abundance creation has to offer. 

Our carefully constructed selves hide all of this from the world – and, we hope beyond hope, from our own consciousness.

And that life – the constructed life – well we are at least as afraid of the death of that person as we are of our bodies.  Because the death of those selves entails huge loss as well.  Wealth.  Privilege. Being liked. Affirmation.  Status.  Sense of autonomy and agency.  Security.  Identity.  Comfort.  The selves we have created are to protect these things with all our might, and so it must be kept alive at all costs. 

And this affects how we live each day: 

Our fear of loss makes us cautious;  We fill up our schedules with things that make us look important.  We prioritize security over freedom from oppression; We become people pleasers instead of truth tellers; We live inauthentic, dishonest lives; We beg, steal, borrow and sometimes kill to maintain an illusion of who we are; We justify the unjustifiable; We cling to what we have until our knuckles turn white and our fingernails begin to pierce the skin of our palms; We tune out the suffering of others for fear it might mean we have to sacrifice.

But that life – that constructed life, we find out, is death.

Now, if you think Jesus didn’t have those fears, wasn’t subject to the same desires, didn’t fear the same losses, you are crazy – or at least you forgot that he was human.  And I think it might have been harder for him.  In his case, some of the Israelites had already created a false self for him – there for the taking, and it was a pretty cool false self.  And if he had stepped into it, he would have gained wealth, power, status, followers who worshipped him, and more. 

They had decided he was the Messiah, the savoir.  The fixer of all the world.  They expected him to make every evil disappear, every enemy fall, and to restore them to great glory because they were God’s chosen.  And whether or not a human Jesus could have done all of these things, he could have done everything in his power to try grab this false self and all that came with it, and hold on to it as long as possible.  If he had he could have enjoyed, at least for a while, all that came with being a Messiah.  And that would have putting all his energy into being something he was not…and his life would have looked much different.

But he rejected this.  He let this false self die.  He exposed himself over and over as the “not Messiah.”  He did nothing that the Messiah they imagined would do.  He was poor and chose to stay that way, had no palace or throne, or home for that matter.  He knew the truth about himself:  that he messed up, doubted, he was lowly, a servant, unimportant.  Jesus never denied his mortality – in fact, Jesus accepted his death.

And think about that death.  We’ve been thinking about it all week.  Think about what it meant to those at the time.  On the cross, Jesus was completely exposed for who he was. He did not save them from Rome.  He was no king.  He was vulnerable; humiliated; defeated; anointed by humans – not by God; he was a common criminal who did, in fact, violate both the religious and civil laws of his day.  He was like every other person on a cross that day. 

Messiah?  Hardly.  He let every aspect of being a Messiah die.  He gave up wealth, power, status, followers, friends, religion, and of course immortality, perfection, divinity.  Was he afraid – yes, we know he was:  Abba, take this cup from me.  God, why have you forsaken me.  Was he tempted – yes, we know he was, for 40 days and 40 nights by none other than Satan.  Did he let this control his life:  It seems not. 

And so, in that moment – on the cross – the most humbling of all moments, something was revealed that is so magnificent that we celebrate it year after year with flowers, music, processions:  The resurrection.  Notice:  I didn’t say that the resurrection happened in that moment.  Jesus was not resurrected when he died on the cross.  He was not even resurrected 3 days later.  The big secret, the big revelation, the one our Easter hymns don’t always tell us about, is that because of the death he chose, he was resurrected the whole time.  Resurrection for him meant life before death, not just life after death. 

And here’s something I think we miss in this story – something that can make the resurrection seem so distant:  In resurrection, all the imperfections, all the brokenness, doesn’t go away.  Jesus lived a resurrected life as a broken human being in a broken world.  It wasn’t his perfection that resurrected him.  It was his complete embrace – throughout his life – of his limitations, his humanness, and the ongoing, never-ending brokenness of the world that resurrected him.  Crazy, right?  Perplexing, to put it in Luke’s words.

But it’s worth celebrating, because look at what a resurrected life is like:

Released from his need to be something he was not, he could go where God sent him:  to the nobodies – the ones like him, because everyone is like him: human and broken.  He could love neighbor and enemy alike, in all their brokenness, as he loved himself – because they were all the same.  He could face the suffering of the world without believing he needed to fix it all, which freed him to reach out and heal the one right in front of him.  He could forgive because God had forgiven him.  He could eat with outcasts without fearing people’s judgments. He could admit when he was wrong without feeling like he was giving up himself.  He could give what he had, and accept what he needed.  He could challenge the powerful systems because their only tool of control was the threat of his death.  He could take on those who had distorted his religious tradition because he did not need their approval.  He could carry no weapons when faced with an army, respond to violence with the way of peace. 

He lived a faithful, resurrected life before death, all because of the death he chose.  And that is something to celebrate until the end of time.

What death do we choose?  We’re afraid to die as Jesus did…stripped of everything – stripped of our false selves, and all that we need to keep them alive.  We are afraid to let the self that others see die because we are afraid of being humiliated, scorned, judged.  We are afraid with the loss of this self we would lose our wealth, power, status, control, privilege.

And that’s okay.  It is scary.  We don’t want to end up on the cross.  I don’t think the fear of this ever goes away.  The problem is when these fears control us and conspire to keep our false selves alive at any cost.  If we allow those fears to control us, if we protect with all our might the constructed selves, the things we amass, the identity we love, the affirmation people give us:  If we can’t let those things die in spite of our fears, then all we can hope for is life after death.

Harsh, I know.  But think now about what this means:  If we buy all this, it seems that all that’s required for resurrection…for new life… is embracing that fact that we are broken people in a broken world; we let the false selves die.

Throughout Lent we have been confessing things – those things that are true about ourselves that we don’t always admit or embrace.  We have been writing our confessions either literally or symbolically, on these purple cards and then nailing them to the cross.  But we started off Lent talking about what confession is, and what it is not.  Too often, confession is about owning up to all the bad things about ourselves so we can feel bad, and then fix all the problems so we can be right with God.  The sin, we say, is what keeps us separated from God.

But I suggested that it is not the “sin” that separates us from God – it is the denial that there is any sin that separates us from God.  The barriers we erect around our true selves – those selves that are a wonderful mix of wholeness and brokenness, good and bad, beautiful and ugly – the barriers we put up to mask the brokenness, the bad, and the ugly are what separate us from God.  And not just from God, but from others.  And separation means alienation…and love dies.

In naming the brokenness, the barriers come down and we are united with God and with each other.  Not because we fixed the problem, or because we feel an appropriate amount of shame, but because we are no longer trying to be someone we are not.  In our confession, in our brokenness, we meet God…and that connection frees us – we are able now to be resurrected – to be alive on this earth instead of dead.

The cards are still up on the cross because the first, and maybe only, step to resurrection is naming and embracing the two-fold truth:  First, the truth of our brokenness, the world’s brokenness, and second, the truth that those are never going away, no matter how hard we try.

Death and brokenness are givens.  We can’t overcome them.  But we scurry about trying to live as if we can – as if others could.  When we accept that these are givens, it is right there that we meet God.  And that encounter can free us from the grip that the fear of death has on us.  In that encounter, brokenness remains, death is still a given, but we are resurrected because they no longer control us. Now we can live resurrected lives and free others to do the same.

And that might make us less cautious; we might prioritize freedom from oppression over security; we might be truth tellers; live authentic, honest lives; release our iron grip on what we have; embrace change; feel the suffering of others. 

And think about what happens then.

We are released from the need to be something we are not, and can go where God sends us:  to the nobodies – the ones like us, because everyone is like us: human and broken.  We can love neighbor and enemy as we love ourselves – because we are all the same.  We can face the suffering of the world without believing we needed to fix it all, which frees us to heal the one right in front of us.  We can forgive others – no matter how broken they are, because we know what it’s like to be forgiven for our brokenness.  We can eat with outcasts without fearing people’s judgments. We can admit when we are wrong without feeling like we are giving up ourselves.  We can give what we have, and accept what we need.  We can challenge the powerful systems.  We can take on those who have distorted our religious tradition because we don’t need their approval.  We can carry no weapons when faced with an army, respond to violence with the way of peace.  We can live a faithful, resurrected life before death, because of the death we choose.

And doesn’t the world need that:  Isn’t that exactly what the world needs:  Freedom from the powers that destroy – that make us the dead in the here and now.  When we become alive, we can raise up those around us.  Isn’t that what the world needs?  A little life before death.  A little resurrection.  Amen.