Responding
to the Resurrection
Acts
4:32-35
Luke
reports the aftermath of the first Easter, he tells us:
With
great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus.
Everything
that follows in the Church’s history and in the lives of all the
Christians begins with this and is build on this foundation. Christianity
begins and is build on the foundation of Jesus’ Resurrection and
the apostles’ testimony to it. There
is no getting round this. The
Resurrection is central to Christianity. It
is not too much to say: no Resurrection, no Christianity. This
observation is true in a double sense. If
there is no Resurrection then there is very little content to
Christianity. Paul
recognised this quite early, he says:
“. . . if
Christ has not been raised then our proclamation has been in vain and
your faith has been in vain.” (1
Corinthians 15:14)
But
in another sense, no Resurrection,
no Christianity, because the Church is an immediate response to an
historical event. From
an historical point of view, if the Resurrection
hadn’t happened, the church wouldn’t have happened. It
is not just that Christians are “followers of Christ.” We
are fundamentally different from the followers of other illustrious
(but now dead) teachers/leaders of the past. Christianity
is of a fundamentally different order from those other movements that
exist in the world. We
are not the same as say, Marxists. Our
commitment to Christ is not the same as the their commitment to Karl
Marxists. Though
it has to be said that our commitment to Jesus’ teachings should be
at least as strong as theirs is to the teachings of a dead German
economist and philosopher! We
not only follow the teachings of Jesus, we also respond to something
that happened to him. Jesus
is alive! That
is the witness of the apostles, and that is the testimony of the
Church ever since. The
demand which that witness and testimony place before us is: how are
we, how are you going to respond? What
are you going to do about that?
The
Resurrection shows that the universe is not as we usually assume it
to be. What
we thought about the world turns out to be false. The
way the world works is not as it appears at first sight. How
things are, are not as the “World” is determined to tell us. The
event of the Resurrection, and our knowledge of it fundamentally
changes our understanding of the world, and our understanding of our
place in it. After
the Resurrection we do not and we cannot see ourselves and the world
in the same light. Jesus
was dead, but he hasn’t stayed dead. We
acclaim: Christ is alive!
Death
does not have the last word about Jesus. The
central promise of the gospel is that those who place their trust in
Jesus will share in that life. Death
will not have the last word over those who follow Jesus, who commit
themselves to him and his teaching, who allow his risen life to
determine their lives. Which
always leaves us with the question, what should that life look like?
How
are you going to respond? What
are you going to do about that? One
might claim that the answer to that question is individual and it is
spiritual. That
the answer to that question is what we might call “existential.” How
we might respond to the Resurrection has to do with ourselves, our
own being, own existence.
In
particular the Resurrection has the power to change our attitude to
our own mortality. The
Resurrection of Jesus at the very least gives us grounds for hope
about that. The
gospel has the power to release us from the fear of death and to live
happier and more fulfilled lives. All
this may be true. Indeed
perhaps if we were to compare the lived experience of Christians with
that of non-Christians you would perhaps discover that is the case. Overall,
probably, you would find that as a rule Christians do live happier
more fulfilled lives. But
at the individual level, which of course is what we’re talking about,
you would also find plenty of counter examples. There
are many non-Christians who live perfectly happy and fulfilled lives,
just as there is no shortage of Christians whose lives are burdened
even blighted by what live actually brings to them in spite of their
faith.
And
it has to be said, this individualised, what we might call
“existential” take on the Resurrection and on Christianity, is
exactly what we might expect to find in a society and culture
produced by advanced consumer capitalism. Such
a take on the Resurrection and such a response to it owes as much to
the individualism of our times as it does to the gospel itself.
How
are you going to respond to the Resurrection? What
are you going to do about that? One
way to answer that question is to ask another: what happened? How
did those who had direct experience of the Resurrection respond? What
did those who heard the testimony of the apostles do about it? This
is, of course, why Luke the book of Acts in the first place, to
provide us exactly with that, a picture of how the followers of Jesus
responded to the Resurrection. He
shows us what happened.
“Now
the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and of one
one mind and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions but
everything was owned in common. . . and great grace was upon them
all. There was not any needy person among them.”
The
first thing that has to be said about Luke’s picture of the first
response to the Resurrection is that it is “social.” The
impact which the Resurrection has, contrary to how people now might
think to respond, was not simply individual and confined to a realm
we might call “spiritual.” The
Resurrection is a real event in the real world, and it has real world
consequences. Whilst
it does change individual attitudes of people to themselves, their
lives and their mortality, it plays out most importantly in relation
to others and in the formation of a community. What
happens after the Resurrection is the Church. How
to respond to the Resurrection is the Church. The
Resurrection has social consequences, it leads to the formation of a
distinctive community. This
community has two very clear features: It
is a reconciled community, they “were of one heart and one
soul.” And
it practised economic justice, “there was not a needy person
among them.” The
truth is you can’t have one of those without the other. The
contemporary slogan: no justice, no peace, is not wrong. What
the Resurrection produces, the immediate response to it is a
revolutionary social transformation.
Those
who respond to the Resurrection form a reconciled community. People
who know about the Resurrection can be at peace with one another. The
changed understanding of the universe which Jesus’ Resurrection
produces releases those who put their trust in it from the attitudes,
the defensiveness and the assertiveness, that sets people against on
another. The
Resurrection tells us something different about ourselves and about
our destiny, that saves us from trying to carve identity and purpose
out from one another. Those
who are responding to the Resurrection can live at peace with one
another because they have a shared purpose and a shared direction. They
do, as Luke puts it, have one heart and one soul.
This
might be the picture Luke wants to paint of the first Church. And
it is perhaps the picture of the Church which exists in the pious
imagination of preachers. But
it bears very little resemblance to any church which most of us have
had experience of. One
of the early opponents of Christianity once said: “See how these
Christians love one another.” When
those word were uttered the were a backhanded compliment. Christianity
was hard to dismiss because it had the power to create reconciled
communities. The
trouble is, when we quote those ancient words now we tend to do so
through gritted teeth, recognising their irony, using them only
sarcastically. The
early Church, the one pictured by Luke, presents a very fundamental
challenge to the contemporary Church. If
they responded to the Resurrection in that way, why to it seems so
hard for us?
If
the first distinctive feature of the Christian response to the
resurrection is seldom seen, it is at least possible to imagine. We
can at least imagine being members of a Church where we have be of
one heart and one soul with everyone around us. Not
least because it has probably happened for all of us, now and again,
at least for a moment. The
first feature is possible to imagine, the second is almost impossible
to picture. The
most startling feature of the first response to the Resurrection was
its economic impact. The
first Church reordered itself, and most particularly its material
possessions, for the benefit of all its members. It
created a community without private property and with mutual aid, where
all possession were held for the benefit of all, where
presumably all economic activity was directed to the well-being of
the whole community.
Luke’s
focus on money and on economic relationships comes as a surprise to
us. But
in both his Gospel and in the Book of Acts Luke spends a great deal
of time discussing issues we almost never dare to mention in church. It
was in fact Karl Marx who pointed out that almost all human attitudes
and interactions can be traced back to economic causes. Societies,
communities, are ordered according to who owns what, and who controls
the production and distribution of human needs. Luke
was no Marxist. But
there is some sense in which the first Christians were communists. After
all it is Jesus himself who says:
“For
where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” (Matthew
6:21)
The
response of the first Christians to the Resurrection is to reorder
their life together, and that means their economic life together, to
ensure that it works for the well-being of all. In
so doing they achieved the ideal to which communism aspires a society
which has, in Karl Marx’s phrase, moved from “each according to
their ability” to “each according to their need.” The
response to the resurrection is a revolutionary reordering of social
and economic relationships. The
first church in its life together also presents a picture, a model,
of the sort of world God intends for all.
But
such a picture of Church life bears no resemblance to the churches we
have experience of. And
the rejection of private property probably makes us rather
uncomfortable. We,
I suspect, are not prepared to become communists as part of our
response to the Resurrection. We
don’t see Christianity making that kind of profound difference to
how we order our lives together. Though
that response to the apostles’ testimony has never quite died out. There
has always remained a small part of the church which has been
determined to build the new world inside the shell of the old, and
was prepared to begin right away. We
could still look, if we wanted to, towards the Catholic Worker
Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin or the Bruderhof
founded by Eberhard Arnold, for examples of contemporary Christians
prepared to live out the same response to the Resurrection as the
Christians portrayed by Luke in Acts. Even
if, for whatever reasons, we aren’t prepared to go there ourselves,
yet.
The
picture which Luke offers us of how to respond to the Resurrection is
a challenge. It
is because the Church we are part of doesn’t look like the Church
he describes. This
perhaps makes us anxious, but it should also fill us with regret. The
Resurrection seems so much more powerful to them than it does to us. But
Luke doesn’t write to beat us up about ourselves. He
writes to inspire us. His
testimony is the same testimony as the apostles. “Christ
is alive!” he says. “Look
what is possible when you understand how the world really is!” The
power which broke the bonds of death at Easter is the same power
which is at work in us now. It
is the power which will reconcile us to another so that we can live
at peace, with one mind and one soul. It
is the power which will bring about economic justice, that releases
the tight grip of private property, and will mean that no on will be
in need. Christ
is alive, and that power is still active in the world. It
holds out both a challenge and a promise. Our
prayer can be that like the first Church for whom it could be said:
“Great
grace was was upon them all.”
That
this become true for us, and that response to the Resurrection become
ours as well.
Amen.
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