‘The Outcome of Your Faith’
(John 20:19-31; I Peter 1:3-9)
Last Sunday was Easter, the day of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. We shared music, readings, celebration, and joy. But so what? What’s actually different for the world? Speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, Peter says to his people, ‘you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribably and glorious joy, (and this is the bit I want to emphasize) for you are receiving the outcome of your faith …”. That’s the ‘so what?’ question. What is the outcome of this strange faith that the crucified Jesus is risen from the dead?
The NT gives a number of answers to this question. John talks in terms of life. After telling the dramatic story of Thomas’s doubts about talk of Jesus’ resurrection, John goes on to say that he has written these things down: ‘so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’ The outcome of faith in the resurrection is life, according to John. Faith in the resurrection is the conquest of the power of death.
Paul uses different terminology. His phrase is ‘new creation’. ‘If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.’ (2 Cor 5:17). Resurrection faith means new creation; a radical makeover of the old, the worn, the broken, and the botched.
Peter has a third go at it. His word is ‘salvation’. ‘ … for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.’ Resurrection faith is saving faith; that is, liberation from oppression; rescue from that which threatens creation’s well being.
So, the outcome of our faith in the resurrection of Jesus—the ‘so what’ issue—is, according to these primary witnesses, life as opposed to death; new creativity as opposed to old exhaustions; and salvation as opposed to threatened bondage.
Well, that’s terrific. But it’s pretty general. What do this life, creativity and liberation mean concretely. What is different in the world because Christ rose from the dead and his followers believed that he rose from the dead? Well, here are a number of things.
1. The first and most obvious outcome of resurrection is that Jesus is acknowledged as the Christ, the Son of God. Without the resurrection that truth would not be a part of our world. Paul states it explicitly in his letter to the Romans: Jesus, he writes, ‘was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.’ (Rom 1:4) Had Jesus’ life finished with his death on the cross, he would not have been received as the Christ of God. He would have been seen as another unfortunate victim of power politics and violent religion. Indeed that is exactly how his followers and his enemies saw him on the first Good Friday. Pilate and Caiaphas were satisfied they had scuttled Jesus’ cause for ever. His friends gave it away and fled. But the resurrection changed all that. Jesus’ life and death were suddenly understood to be God’s own redemptive presence in our world. That would not have been without the resurrection.
2. The second concrete outcome is this: the NT. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, not a word of this text would have appeared, much less survived to be in our hands. Every page of this famous text is written from the perspective of the resurrection. ‘These things are written that you might believe that (the risen) Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’. And what a massive difference that has made in the world. Think of the influence of these words across time and space. Millions of copies have been printed in hundreds of different languages.
I don’t know what your favourite words from the NT might be, but here are some of mine. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ How many times have those words brought life, hope, and liberation to me, and countless others, in times of distress? Without the resurrection they would simply not exist.
3. A third outcome of resurrection is the church, the living community of faith. We can see this reality actually take shape in the gospel story. The men and women who originally followed of Jesus were scattered, frightened, demoralized, and leaderless at his death. The thing that drew them back together and welded them into a community of love and witness was the resurrection. The church is the community of the resurrection. The risen Christ is its foundation; its continuing life; its source of creativity; its spring of courage to act for liberation. The church is the church because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
4. The fourth outcome of resurrection faith in the world that I want to mention is art. If faith that Christ is living were not active in the world, think of the music that would never have been heard. Hildergard of Bingen’s wonderful plainsongs. J S Bach’s ‘St Matthew’s Passion’, or ‘Jesu joy of our desiring’. Handel’s ‘Messiah’. Mozart’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’. Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’. Avo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel. All of them and a thousand other wonderful sounds exist in the world as direct outcomes of faith in the risen Christ.
The same can be said of poetry or art. Think of great paintings you know. Michelangelo’s ‘Sistine Chapel’; Fra Angelico’s ‘Annunciation’ with that amazing angel with rainbow wings facing a startled Mary; Rembrandt’s picture of ‘the holy family with angels’; Marc Chagall’s astonishing blue glass windows; the fan vaulted ceiling of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. Or the picture on the front of our bulletin this morning. The resurrection scene from Matthias Grunewald’s depiction of the Gospel story in his wonderful Isenheim Altarpeice. See how the whole of reality is lit by the brilliance streaming from the risen Lord. The old order of power and violence, symbolized by the topsy-turvy soldiers in the picture, is overturned. Life triumphs over the grave. Blessing supplants curse. Peace transcends war. Reconciliation embraces violence. This picture and a thousand others are concrete outcomes in the world of faith in the resurrection of Jesus. Without that, they would not be what they are.
5. A fifth outcome of resurrection faith is action for justice, peace and healing. Think of all the myriad of things that have been done by saints and ordinary souls for the life, re-creation and liberation of people, because these saints and souls believed the resurrection of Jesus. Hospitals, hospices, schools, universities, housing projects, relief efforts, food, water and waste management projects, peace actions, counseling, drug rehabilitation, marriage guidance, life line, women’s refuges, prison reform and visitation, legal advocacy, racial justice action. And the list goes on. Time would fail us to mention: Martin Luther King, Archbishop Tutu, Florence Nightingale, Julian of Norwich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paulo Romero, Dorothy Day. And so on. These lives and their courageous actions for peace and justice are outcomes of faith in the resurrection of Jesus.
6. Lastly, and a bit hesitantly, given the great things we have been considering, are you and me. We in this community are outcomes in the world of the resurrection too. I have seen and experienced something of that outcome in my time with you. And it has made a great difference. You took me in when I was in a situation of sadness and loss, and I wondered if it were ever possible to find new life, creativity and liberation again. But your friendship, acceptance, trust and wonderful sense of fun held me, encouraged me, and renewed my soul. I know it is ultimately the life of the risen Christ which renews us. But that life was made real to me by your company, worship, prayer, and life together. I have seen it. And I hope, so have you.
Jesus as the Christ. The NT. The church. The brilliance of music and art. Action for justice and peace. The life of our souls. These, amongst other things, are outcomes of faith in the resurrection of Jesus. They are, at least in part, an answer to the ‘so what? question of the Sunday after Easter.
Two things to say in closing. (i) Of course art, music and poetry, action for justice and peace, and love in community, are not the sole property of believers in the resurrection. Obviously not. These good things are held in common with people of other faiths and no faith at all. God’s life, creativity and liberation go beyond Christianity, of course. And we rejoice and support their reality wherever it is manifest.
(ii) There are many shadows in Christian expressions of life in the world. Texts from the NT have been used for violent ends. The church is tainted with sin as well as blessed with salvation. Christian art is not all glory and creativity. And our own souls are works in progress. We have a long way to go to reach that imperishable, unfading and undefiled glory of Christ the Peter speaks of as the final outcome of the resurrection. But we do find real outcomes of resurrection here in the world in a thousand forms. And at their best they always lead to life not death, creativity not staleness, liberation not bondage.
And so, listen to this. Without the resurrection of Jesus, this would never have entered my world, or yours.
Halleluiah Chorus. (CD 2, track 21)
Graeme Garrett
Kingston Baptist Church
First Sunday in Easter
May 1, 2011