The Fixed Point

By The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven, Sabbatical Priest

“You are witnesses of these things.” May I speak in the name of the Living God. Amen.

Thirty years ago I heard a lecture by Timothy Leary. You remember him. Timothy Leary was famous in the 60s and 70s as a psychologist, a futurist, a proponent of psychedelic drug research. He advocated using LSD to expand consciousness and coined the phrase: turn on, tune in, drop out. He called himself a “stand up philosopher” and when I heard him he was trying to turn us on to his vision of expanding consciousness that would enable humankind to make scientific and social breakthroughs equipping us to live in space, in life spans far beyond our earthly ones.

It was the kind of philosophy created to elicit the response: far out man. Only he was dismayed by people’s lack of enthusiasm for it. “I tell people: You could live forever, man. And they say: But my whole life is centered on death.” It’s the only thing I remember from the lecture. I guess I tuned in and dropped out of the rest of what he said. “But my whole life is centered on death.” Was mine, I wondered? Death is the one certainty in the chaotic flux of life: its fixed point. “Death and taxes” goes the old joke. Death gives life urgency and poignancy. What happens if you it that away?

Leary was talking about avoiding death. Easter talks about Christ being raised from death. Both have implications we’re quick to gloss over. Considering this increases my compassion for the disciples this morning because I have to admit my first thought on hearing that they think Jesus is a ghost in the gospel this morning is: you’ve got to be kidding. It is Easter evening. The women came at the crack of dawn with their news of angels, an empty tomb and a risen Christ but the Eleven and the rest dismissed it as “an idle tale and they did not believe them.” By the end of the day things are looking up and they’re saying: The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. Finally, just before our passage two travelers arrive from Emmaus telling of a stranger who had fallen in step with them along the way, setting their hearts on fire as he opened the scripture to them “and how he had made himself known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

“As they were saying this,” our passage opens, “Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” And, frankly, what I’m looking for—or would be if I were hearing this for the first time—is a joyful reunion! You know when they fall down and worship him: forgiven, found and free, when everyone realizes it’s going to be all right. Peace be with you. As Deacon Chris pointed out in her Easter Vigil sermon that would be the satisfying thing to happen at this point in the story. But it doesn’t. Whatever assurance the disciples may have had evaporates. “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”

Understandably somewhat vexed Jesus asks, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Why are you so upset? Why do doubting questions flood your minds? Just as understandably vexed inside their terrified skins the disciples are thinking, well because you’re dead, Jesus. You were so thoroughly dead. Dead people stay dead. It’s one of life’s great certainties. I love the bible’s honesty. There’s no attempt to make the disciples better than they were or the moment more than it was. Confronted with the risen Christ in his inexpressible mystery —a human being beyond human whom even death couldn’t contain—they weren’t reassured: “they were startled and terrified.”

“Look at my hands,” says Jesus, “look at my feet—it’s really me. Touch me. A ghost doesn’t have muscle and bone like this. “As he said this he showed them his hands and his feet.” And the disciples know it’s true. They also know that flesh and blood doesn’t usually appear within locked doors. What are they seeing? They can’t believe what they were seeing. Maybe Leary is right: Our lives are centered on death: that fixed point, unable to see beyond it. It was all too much: it was too good to be true. “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, [Jesus] said to them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.” Ghosts don’t eat.

Then he got down to business, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” And just as he had on the road to Emmaus he opened their minds to understand the scripture, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.” This is just the beginning, says Jesus, the starting place. The world won’t come to you, you must go to the world. “You are witnesses of these things.”

“You are witnesses of these things.” Them? Us? Witnesses of the one who was crucified for living the way he did? Witnesses of the one who engendered love and hate in equal measure? Witnesses of the one who would not fight back—whose weapon of choice was love? Talk about startling and terrifying! The good news of repentance and forgiveness for ALL nations that Jesus died to give is to be entrusted to the Eleven and the rest? To people who thought the women’s words were an ‘idle tale,’ who thought the risen Christ was a ghost? The message of salvation is entrusted to these people? Is entrusted to us? We talk a lot about our faith in God but it is God’s faith in us that blows me away. We run when the going gets rough. We don’t believe others when they tell us about him. We think he’s a ghost when he shows us again and again he’s as real as the nail marks in his hands and feet. And he entrusts the proclamation of this to US? I don’t know! We cry. I’m not sure I believe in you! “That’s OK,” says God, “I believe in you!”

I don’t think the disciples resisted the resurrection because they didn’t understand what it meant, though of course that was part of it. I think they resisted it because on some deep disconcerting level it was beginning to dawn on them all-too-well what it meant. What if death is NOT the end? Not the final end we fear it is? Then one of the great known boundaries of life is gone. Not because we won’t go through it—as Timothy Leary was hoping—but because we will be expected to take it on knowing God holds the victory. Friends, death is a good “out,” you know. Something the world understands it’s reasonable to make decisions in terms of as in: I can’t stand in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, I can’t admit I’m a Christian in certain parts of Iraq, I can’t defy the unjust laws against women in Afghanistan: I could die.

The disciples see the Risen Lord and think: He’s not here to reassure us. He’s here to CALL us. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Their minds are reeling with the implications. Did you see how fast the crowd turned against him? It could turn against US. Even if he DOES live he had to go through HELL first to be both literal and theological about it. O dear God if Jesus is really RAISED, really LIVES than all of life is turned upside down. Talk about a trip, a mind bending, mind altering, life changing trip! Timothy Leary was looking for expanded consciousness? Well, he was about 2 millennia too late. He wasn’t ahead of his time but behind it. Easter is the ultimate expansion of consciousness no psychedelic mind altering drugs needed. Not a mere continuation of life-as-we-know-it but an experience of the Kingdom of God breaking in through the crucified and risen Christ—transcending life and death, time and space in a way they won’t really understand until they’re caught up in it themselves through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Friends, if Christ is Risen reason for fear has been dealt a great blow. If Christ is Risen reason for inaction has been dealt a great blow. Possibilities for change and transformation through the forgiveness of sins the confronting of evil, the power of love breaks the heart open makes the mind reel. God wants to do something great with us – like change the world and transform lives. Christ comes to us and for us—and always also for others. Christ has paved the way for us and lays his claim upon us: You are witnesses of these things.

The stories of Easter, in their honesty and restraint, come as annual reminders of the END of the story. The “fixed point” of our lives is not death but Christ Crucified and Risen. We can’t stay locked in a room afraid of ghosts anymore. We don’t have to stay locked in our lives afraid of ghosts anymore: because he lives: he LIVES and in him and by him and through him so do we. We are to witness to that by the way we live our lives—by our courage, vulnerability and love. Death is not the end. Violence and oppression and injustice do not win. We are called to risk compassion and truth and solidarity: because he lives. In the resurrection death is diminished and LIFE itself, all caps, opens up in all its possibilities both here—and in some mysterious way yet to be revealed—beyond. We are witnesses of these things.

© 2009 The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven