Acts 2.42-47

show me the resurrection

The Dalai Lama is in Seattle for several days hosting the Seeds Of Compassion conference. The hope of the organizers is to stir up empathy for the Tibetan people in their long quest for freedom and liberation from the rule of China. Rather than stirring up violence, the Dalai Lama is stirring up compassion. Imagine that: the Tibetan’s political struggle for freedom from one of the world’s most repressive regimes is guided by a moral quest for public compassion. I think Christians can learn from their struggle.

It reminds me of the story I never tire of telling when the Dalai Lama and the Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton in 1968 when they were in Bangkok for an inter-religious conference. Merton was speaking with great enthusiasm about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and how that event is so crucial for his own faith and that of Christians everywhere. The Dalai Lama said to his friend, “Ah, my brother ... show me the resurrection.” The story breaks off there without any record of how Merton responded. Thomas Merton died that very week in a tragic accident. The Dalai Lama is still pursuing the question.

Show me the resurrection. I think that sums up what so many people ask of Christians and of the Church. Traditionally, the question has been answered in three ways: the witness of scripture, an empty tomb and lives changed by the Spirit of Christ what became known as the power of the resurrection. It’s lives changed that people want to know about.

Does what you profess on Easter actually influence how you live from day to day, at home and at work? How? Does it make any true difference on where you shop, what you consume, how you treat your family and your neighbors? Show me the resurrection, is not a request for historical evidence or doctrinal defense, both of which have their importance; it is a request to show how what you believe makes any difference in the way you actually live.

Do the strangers among us know that you follow a risen Christ who walked among as a stranger and invited us to open our very hearts to him? What about the immigrant who labors under the radar in fear, without any safety net? Or the unknown neighbor just up the street from you whose teenage daughter appears in the news in dreadful trouble? Or colleague who is falling deeper into moral danger without a clue? What about the hundreds people who come into our building for AA meetings, concerts and community gatherings? Show me the resurrection.

You can talk to me all you want and I will listen. At the end of the conversation I want to see it in your ordinary life.

People always ask Christians, Show me the resurrection. And, this is why the public personal foibles of Christians and the well-known failures of the Church are so devastating especially to those who are looking closely, even desperately, for signs of God’s presence in a this messy world. It’s not, as some suggest, that Christians are held to a unfair higher standard and never get a break. Please.

Will someone tell me when holding baptized Christians to a higher standard of moral life became an unfair burden? What we profess is that this way of life, following the risen Christ in a community of believers, is different. It is a higher standard than this sordid world. Beautifully so. I expect others to look upon this way of life with wonder and amazement. You love God and neighbor?

Show me the resurrection? Well it’s on display in the Acts of the Apostles: ordinary people breaking bread together, caring of one another and all in need, praying, sharing meals and living with glad and generous hearts. How could a people live like that? No wonder Luke says, Awe came among everyone.

That’s the way it has been for centuries. Ordinary people listening for God in worship, praying, studying scripture, caring for the needs of others, living lives of gladness and generosity. Some call this practicing resurrection, others practicing church. To some practicing church sounds like make-believe; children dressing up and staging plays for their parents who have sat down with friends for conversation.

Actually, this is exactly correct, in a very profound way. All of life is a dress rehearsal for the great feast that is to come in God’s time, when we hope to hear the words, well done good and faithful servant, enter now into the joy of your Father’s house. It’s all grand play we are in.

This is what the Church does, and has always done, to become the people of God capable of showing the resurrection in our life together. We practice resurrection so that we may grow into the fullness of Christ. Into this community we baptize Liam Salganik today, that he may grow into the life of Christ, able to show the power of the resurrection in his own life.

These are the habits of those living in the power of the resurrection:

•worshiping together regularly, offering praise and thanksgiving for God’s goodness among us.

•paying close attention to scripture, celebrating the Lord’s supper and praying with one another.

•sharing lives in common, attending to the needs of each person, generously offering our resources for the good of all.

•extending the fellowship of the Lord’s table to all our tables, breaking bread in our homes with glad and generous hearts, welcoming strangers and friends to share our abundance.

These are the ordinary habits of the Church that gained the goodwill of all the people. Increasingly, God added to their number people whose lives were being saved, which is another way of saying, they were being made whole.

A congregation becomes the Church capable of showing the resurrection by practicing this life now, day by day. It’s why worship is central to our common life, including the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. It’s why we care for those among us who are sick and in need. It’s why we extend the hospitality of Christ to strangers. We are become church by living in the power of the resurrection.

People who say to me, show me the resurrection, are not looking for high-sounding pronouncements, partisan rhetoric or even fixed answers to intractable problems. They are looking for a community that practices what it professes. When people discover a community that lives by what it professes – hospitality, mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness - they want to be a part of it, because everyone wants to be made whole.