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The Reverend Mark Byers
St. Ives’ Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia
2 Easter, Year B

Jesus Christ, You, Me, and the World of 'So What'

I receive an electronic newsletter called the “Daily Spirituality Newsletter.” At first, I thought this was funny, because this publication is put out monthly. But I guess it’s actually supposed to refer to the fact that, in the words of its subheading, it seeks to connect faith with daily life. So while I might have suggested a somewhat different name, I’m completely on board with the mission.

The most recent issue has a piece entitled, “Jesus is Risen, So What?” I like writing that deals with the reality that most Christians don’t feel very connected to Jesus Christ, so this sounded promising to me. I don’t know that the author actually ended up dealing with the question as I imagined he was going to. Don’t get me wrong: the article is pretty good stuff; I guess I was expecting something a little different, like why the Resurrection is relevant to the believer. When I read, “Jesus is Risen, So What?” that’s what I imagined was coming.

I don’t always hear people asking that question out loud, but it strikes me that it’s on people’s minds. It comes out in the way that people actually do church and spirituality, as contrasted with what Jesus actually asks us to do, and as contrasted with the vision of the prophets and evangelists.

We shout, “Alleleuia! Christ is Risen!” But so what? There are still soldiers dying in Iraq, there are still no Weapons of Mass Destruction, there is still a big hole in New York City where the World Trade Center used to stand, there are still people dying and miserable all over the world, even in this country, although here very often we suffer more from excess than lack, and our crisis is typically of meaning and relevance, rather than of existence.

Alleleuia. Christ is Risen. So what?

We can always personalize it. That works, right? If the grand vision of the kingdom doesn’t seem to be working, we can always make it about personal spiritual growth: the kingdom of God lies within us, friends, so we needn’t worry about the systemic evils that confront us, and that link us together in one big, familiar, if dysfunctional, human family. Say it loud: I’m saved and proud! It’s the question that most gets dodged, because it’s the question that the church has largely answered by avoiding it, or by changing the way we address it. What does it mean that Jesus Christ is risen if life in the world still looks the same as it did on Good Friday? So what?

In the upper room, the disciples had just learned the valuable and not all that novel lesson that if you try to change the system, the system will do you in. Because the system doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with itself, nor do most of the people who compose it believe there’s anything wrong with themselves individually. The Gospel says that the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, but John only wrote that because that’s who happened to want Jesus done in at that time and place. Trust me: this scene has played out plenty of times in plenty of places, and the people to be feared in all of those instances reflect the kind of diversity that a college admissions office could only dream of. Sin and untruth inhabit all peoples and times and places, including this place and this time and each of us.

The disciples start out in fear because they don’t want to end up as Jesus himself ended up. But Jesus comes into their midst and says, “Peace be with you.” Notice, he doesn’t say, “Don’t worry; you’re safe.” Because in reality, they aren’t safe. Jesus still has the wounds of his brutal execution to demonstrate that most emphatically, they are anything but safe, especially with him around.

And yet, they do have peace, because they have the very thing that Jesus promised. Death and suffering and the twisted system of sin that enfolds us all with falsehood and illusions and injustice may seem to have won, but Jesus standing there and offering, not safety, but peace, is victory of a kind that they never anticipated, and probably would never have asked for. After all, he then says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Which, given the nail holes and the pierced side, had to sound appealing.

In every system, political, social, familial, or religious, most of the time we don’t even think about how we participate. Most people are Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, or secular, or whatever they are simply because that’s what they were born and raised. If you want to see the power of the system, of any system, try and do something contrary to what the system currently does. You needn’t trumpet it from the rooftops. You needn’t even offer the sort of critique that Jesus does. Watch what happens when a Muslim in an Islamic country becomes a Christian, even if it happens relatively quietly. The system will do him or her in as surely as it did in Jesus. Watch what happens when an orthodox Jew leaves the faith. That person may not literally be killed, but many families actually go through formal mourning for that person, and live as if they had died, without any more contact at all. Watch what happens when a soldier or sailor doesn’t fit into his or her unit. The unit will find a way to expel that person from its midst, and oftentimes, it isn’t pretty.

Watch what happens when a member of a church community, especially a leader, tries to change in order to follow Jesus more closely. Man, can that look ugly. Over and over, the system has proven itself every bit as capable as it was in Jesus Christ’s day. Because the system is one way that sin operates. Sin isn’t always conscious moral choices that we make or don’t make. That’s our big mistake: imagining that sin is only the stuff that we are conscious of, that we choose or deny. Scripture lays out right choices for us, but also acknowledges that sin is a form of bondage: it is the power that holds us in its grip that doesn’t allow us to make real choices any longer. We choose whatever the system allows us to choose.

The Gospel vision is one of a world that chooses Jesus Christ and the unfolding Kingdom of God, rather than the path of the status quo. The status quo might be Christian or Jewish or multicultural. It might be bipartisan. It might be ideological. It might be military. It might be “the way we do things in this family.” The Gospel vision does not hate those who do not embrace it. In fact, the Gospel is precisely Jesus Christ’s way of living, and of inviting others to live, in order to reveal perfect love for others. We serve his vision most truly by living in ways that do not seek, primarily, our own good, but rather, that of our neighbor, even our Scientologist, or Muslim, or annoying Rush Limbaugh-spouting, or strident fundamentalist Christian, or self-righteous animal activist neighbor. Because we recognize the reality that we, but for Jesus Christ’s resurrection, are something like that person to others, in our own special way.

There is no special secret knowledge to this vision: we bring the same peace, the same possibility for forgiveness, the same self-denying love that Jesus himself brought to the disciples as they sat or stood about in the upper room. We bring the love that casts out fear, the fear that we will suffer the same fate that Jesus suffered if we’re foolish enough to refuse our customary roles. We bring Christ’s own vision of the world. And for him to sit at the right hand of the Father, and to have sent us out in his name, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is anything but “So what.” The next time you find yourself thinking, even in secret, even in the smallest, quietest voice imaginable, that you don’t know what difference it makes to embrace Jesus Christ… Well, you should know by now what to do. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not even saying it won’t hurt. But it’s definitely not “So what.” Alleluia. Christ is Risen.

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