God’s new thing in Christ’s resurrection is very hard to comprehend, because everything is changed – but take heart. Others have gone before and show you the way.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year C
Texts: Luke 24:1-12; Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26

For the second time in three weeks, Isaiah proclaims to us God’s new creation.

Once again, the Creator of all says, “do not remember the former things,” rather “be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. A new heavens and a new earth.”

Nature itself is changed in God’s new thing, Isaiah declares. People who die at 100 years will be considered just a youth. War and violence won’t exist: if you build a house and plant the vineyards, you can live and enjoy that fruit.

We hear in Advent, from chapter 11, that the wolf and lamb will lie down together, but here God promises they will eat supper together. So again, nature itself is changed in God’s new thing – wolves have an entirely new nature. It is literally a new creation, with new rules and ways that the world works.

But it’s really hard to grasp such utter newness.

God’s new creation isn’t a friendly amendment, changing a little. Everything we believe is true about how the world works is upended. Predators and prey become beloved to each other. Weeping and death are no more. Peace and justice and safety are absolute: all can live in their homes and prosper.

We who trust in Christ believe this new creation began today, the day of Christ’s resurrection. Everything changed when Christ Jesus broke the power of death. Everything he taught that seemed so impossible by the rules of the world – loving your enemies and neighbors, knowing you are always loved by the Triune God, God’s children living in Christ transforming the whole world into peace and justice through love – all these things are now possible. Real. Because Christ is risen.

If we aren’t a little shaken by Easter’s truth, confused, startled, we need to listen to the Scriptures more deeply. Everything changes today. Everything.

So give these disciples a little slack.

They’ve had a week of seismic changes in how they understood the world to work.

Sunday was exhilarating; Thursday was perplexing, changing to terrifying; Friday was devastatingly unimaginable. Saturday was overwhelming lostness, trying to rebuild some idea of where to go from here. When Jesus died, every hope they had for who he was and what God was doing in him died, too.

So when the faithful women come to the tomb of Jesus and find it open and empty, of course they’re confused. The heavenly messengers sort of unfairly ask why they’re looking for the living among the dead: they couldn’t imagine he was alive. And forgive the male disciples, too, for doubting their sisters. The human mind can only go so far before shutting down.

How could any of them process yet another shift? Friday’s devastating loss forced a total re-evaluation of everything. And now this empty tomb, with the word that Jesus was actually alive?

But they did process it. We can see that from Paul’s words from twenty years later.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” Paul says, “we are of all people most to be pitied.” He’s talking about the promise of life after death, but hold that for a moment.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ” means that some of these Corinthians had faith in Christ for this life alone. That’s what these women and men who first found an empty tomb passed on to the world: everything Jesus taught them about life in Christ here was true. Real.

If Jesus is alive, then self-giving love cannot be stopped even by death. Loving enemies and praying for those who hurt you is possible and will change the world. God’s undying love for you that always searches until you are found is true. Jesus’ promise to be with you always in the Spirit is real and fills you with life and purpose.

They were confused at first, these disciples. But they eventually lived a whole new life, where the rules of how people deal with each other were completely new, changed. It was so different they called it the Way. The Way of Christ – loving, peacemaking, sharing, compassion, self-giving – this was what they found in the risen Christ. Reason to live and to hope here.

So twenty years after the Resurrection, people were coming to faith in Christ for this life, here.

Apparently many didn’t yet believe in a life after death. Paul’s Thessalonians and Corinthians both struggled with this. They had faith in Christ as a hope for this life. And they lived it in Christ. They loved it.

But here Paul says, if the joy of living this new creation Christ in this life – a good thing! – is all you have, you’re missing something. Because in those twenty years, some of the believers began to understand another profound joy of Christ’s resurrection: if Jesus broke death, it was broken for everyone.

And so we, 2,000 years later, come to Easter expecting part of our joy is this promise: death is not the end. Every year, some of us come here with new wounds at the death of someone we love, the pain of their absence, mourning a loss, looking for hope. And once again we hear Paul’s confidence, that Christ is only the first fruits of those who have died. All who die in Christ are raised to new life.

There’s actually hope for you today in the confusion and misunderstanding of these people.

Be patient with yourself if you don’t fully grasp God’s new creation in Christ. If twenty years after the Resurrection the Church was still coming to grips with the utter newness of what God is doing in Christ, don’t be hard on yourself if it takes you time.

But do be ready for everything to change. In a new creation, even wolves have a different nature. The dead don’t stay dead. God’s Spirit inhabits God’s children and they do amazing things.

So take heart: your prejudices and habits that are harmful, the vestiges of the old rules of a racist, sexist, elitist world that some of us find so hard to eliminate, they will be broken down and removed by God’s Spirit. It might take some time. But do know that the old rules have to go in God’s new creation. The struggles to love, especially those who hurt you, and to forgive, these will take time for the Spirit to resolve, but God will. Because those old ways have to go in the new creation. They all do.

And when you doubt God’s love in the face of death, the Spirit will help you trust in the promise of resurrection for all who are in Christ. Including those you love whom you miss so much.

Having everything turned upside down in God’s new creation is a challenge. So is unlearning how the world and our society say things have to work.

But now you know not to look for life in dead places like this world’s way. Now you know that Christ is risen, and everything is changed.

And now you have the comfort that if you and I are a little slow on the uptake, struggling sometimes to see this new creation and live in it, we’ve got good company in these faithful ones who first saw the risen Jesus. And now they’re standing on the sidelines cheering us as we walk our journey into God’s new creation, learning as we go, holding each other’s hands in hope.

Because nothing has ever been the same since that tomb was broken and Christ stepped out. It never will be, thanks be to God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Do you know what I have done to you? Jesus asks. May Christ open our eyes and hearts and transform us both to know and to do as Christ does.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Maundy Thursday
Text: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asked the disciples Thursday night.

What Jesus did is more than just what happened that night, with the meal and the footwashing. “Do you know what I have done to you?” can be asked of every step the Son of God took in these Three Days.

And now on this night, Jesus asks you the same question. Everything rests on your answer. And mine. And that of all who wish to follow Christ.

After washing their feet, Jesus asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

His disciples knew in their guts that what Jesus did was profoundly shocking. Our translation unwisely cleaned up the word John uses here. Jesus took the place of a slave, not a servant, John says. Paul likewise told the Philippians that Christ Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.

And we wince. We don’t want to hear ugly talk of slavery because we carry as a nation and a people the ugly stain of racism built for hundreds of years on dehumanizing millions of our siblings from Africa and other places, and committing genocide on millions of our siblings who were native to this land.

But Jesus doesn’t talk about it, either. Jesus, God-with-us, lives it, not identifying with the leaders and the privileged and the wealthy, or even his followers’ status, but taking the lowest place in his society, the place of a slave. Stripping down to his underclothes and taking a towel and bowl to the feet of the women and men gathered with him for supper.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means that the God of all creation took on all human oppression and prejudice and stands with the lowest?

After the meal, Jesus could have asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

Jesus took the Passover bread and called it his body. He shared wine and called it his blood. Do you see what he’s doing? Again, we’ve watered down the language, this time by over familiarity. “The body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

But Jesus is hours from having his body nailed to a cross, his blood poured out on the dusty stones of Jerusalem. All for love of you and all the creation. Jesus says that’s what you eat and drink here.

Eat his body, chew on Jesus’ vulnerable love, let it enter all your cells, change your DNA. Drink his blood, take his sacrificial love into your bloodstream and let it bathe your lungs for breathing and feed your limbs for moving. You are what you eat. So eat me, Jesus says. Drink me, Jesus says.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means for the God of all creation to pour out love like this, to be wounded and tortured and killed out of love for you and all God’s children?

In the Garden, Jesus could have asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

Go to Gethsemane and see Jesus – God-with-us, the Word who created all things – set aside all power and dominance and allow himself to be taken, betrayed, arrested.

Once more, we’ve domesticated the language. We easily recite, “Not my will but yours be done.” But do you know what that means?

Jesus, the Son of God, says once and for all that God will not use power over people. Manipulation and force and violence and getting what you want might be tools you’re encouraged to use, but the Triune God who made the creation and you will have none of it. Ever. God’s will is to resist all evil and hatred through non-violent love, not through power and might.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means that the God of all creation will not fight you, force you, overpower you, or anyone else?

If you understand the bowl and towel, the bread and wine, the agony in Gethsemane, the death on the cross, you will realize there are inevitable consequences for all who follow Christ.

You cannot be an oppressor, benefiting from a racist, sexist, elitist system, if you follow Christ Jesus. The ruler of creation became a slave, the oppressed one. That is where God’s love always is.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, do what I did. Be slaves to each other and the world. Only then will systems that oppress and marginalize and crush be dismantled.

You cannot eat and drink the vulnerable love of God and separate that from following Christ wholly with your life. God’s sacrificial love flows in your veins and transforms your cells because God wants to make you into that love.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, love as I love. Be vulnerable to each other, offering your lives for each other and the world. Only then will hatred and abuse and destruction be ended.

And you cannot use the power and privilege of this world for yourself if you follow Christ Jesus. The One who by will and desire created the universe does not will that your life be built on the backs of others, enforced by your weapons or anyone else’s, or by violence, or threats.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, put away your swords. Find your power in your non-violent love. Only then can evil and violent structures and societies be broken down and all people live in justice and peace.

Do you know what I have done to you?

You know the stories. But if you struggle with this deeper understanding that transforms the world, perhaps you could pray with me this night:

Christ Jesus, open my eyes to see you kneeling in subservience at my feet and bend my back to offer myself wholly and fully in service to all others as you did.

Loving Christ, open my heart to receive your suffering love in this Meal and widen my arms to offer myself wholly and fully in vulnerable love to all others as you did.

Prince of Peace, break my pride and insecurity so I recognize you setting aside power and violence to heal this world, and mold my will that I might offer myself wholly and fully and nonviolently as an agent of your peace and justice to all others as you did.

On this very night you said to us, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Blessed Jesus, give us the grace to know and to do, and, with you, to bring your healing to all.

Amen