Tenth Sunday Fter Pentecost Year C

Raised with Christ

I'm a chronic worrier you know. My wife calls me her little dark cloud. One of the many things that has always troubled me is the idea that I would die in the middle of something stupid or unworthy. You know, have a heart attack while arguing about a restaurant bill. Or drop dead while committing adultery. I've wondered about the stuff people would find in my house, the things I've written, things I've read, the stuff I eat and drink. Would I be at peace with everyone, or would there be a bunch of enemies out there that I died in the midst of battling? Would there be people openly or secretly dancing on my grave?

If I died today, what sort of conversations would people remember me having in my last days? What would people remember me being concerned about or interested in?

This isn't such a bad thing to think about, as Jesus himself reminds us this morning.

But something I haven't thought about as much, and I suppose I should, is what it would be like if I died and came back. And in a very real sense, this has happened to me, not once, but three or four times that I can remember, and that's just talking about physical death, moments when I literally came close to leaving this beautiful world and didn't.

There were also many times, even recent times, when I have died and returned to life in a spiritual sense. But even this is not exactly what Paul means.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he was transformed, or "transfigured," as the story of his mountaintop revelation says. He continued to be a person who ate and drank and touched people, but he also became a person who could walk through walls, materialize or dematerialize at will, or appear in forms unrecognizable to his friends. He was still a human being in the most ordinary sense of the term, but he had also become a divine being who could ascend into the hidden world of heaven, and even come back again.

When Paul says that we have been raised with Christ, he is suggesting that we have become ourselves such beings. Indeed, the stories about Paul in the book of Acts have some of these kinds of resurrection body miracles.

Obviously, we have never dematerialized in the literal sense. We can't walk through walls. But it may be that what Christ and his apostle Paul demonstrated to us in such a powerful literal way is what we are able to do in a figurative and spiritual way.

I whimsically suggested a trip to heaven and visits with angels a few weeks ago, but isn't this what Paul really is talking about? Isn't he suggesting that we can and should have a resurrection relationship with the risen Christ, that we should make the trip to heaven and worship the Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father?

Now we're Disciples of Christ, and we like to keep things real, you know. We have a certain rational, down-to-earth heritage that kind of goes against such mystical ideas. Let me see if I can break it down for us this morning.

If we absorb the stories of Jesus from the four gospels, if we absorb the stories of Israel in the Old Testament, these stories will begin to resonate in deep ways in our minds and hearts and spirits. They will become for us a kind of lens through which we look at ourselves and the world. Most importantly though, they will give us a means by which we can discern the presence of the living God, the creator of all that lives.

And then if we enter into relationship with this God, we will inexorably be led to building community with all who call on God's name. In building this community, we are further shaped and find more and more ways to see and experience God's Spirit.

Jesus so deeply entered into this world, the world of scripture, the world of his Jewish heritage, and most importantly the vision of the living God, that he renounced all that was powerful and impressive in his world in order to worship and love God alone. In turn he embraced all his brother and sister Jews, no matter what their sin. His renunciation of the world was so complete that the powers of the world executed him for it. And yet they could not defeat his God, who raised Jesus from the dead as the first gesture in making a new creation.

This is the resurrection we also can enter into, and the resurrection Paul is talking about. If we have been raised with Christ, we no longer are ruled by the desires the world tells us we should have, along with all the fears that come with them. If we have been raised with Christ, we are no longer angry about anything because nothing of real consequence can be taken from us when God is our Father. We never need to lie or twist the truth because we will not have anything to hide when our inappropriate desires and our anger and wrath has died on the cross with Christ.

You know, there are character defects of mine, sins, I guess you could call them, that have died on the cross with Christ. And you know how I know they've died? Well, first of all, I don't act on them anymore. But this is not why I know they've died. I know they've died because I grieve them the way I grieve the death of an old friend. They're like ghosts, sometimes I feel them hovering around me, but they are no longer real.

It's obvious from reading Paul that this is not the all-or-nothing, once-for-all thing some people make it out to be. Paul wouldn't be preaching these things if everybody got it right the first time. No this process of dying and rising, of being put to death for renouncing the world and then raised by the God we renounced it for, this process goes on and on. It's a way of life, an ongoing transformation God is working that Christ has opened for us.

Maybe my worrying will get fixed too, and the little dark cloud will dissolve in the sun.

Amen.