Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 16, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

No other faith makes as much of its founding figure’s death as Christianity. It is not an exaggeration to say that the death of Jesus as the heart of Christianity, to borrow a phrase from Marcus Borg. Just consider for a moment what the central symbol of Christianity is—a cross, one of the most diabolical and brutal instruments of torture and death that the sinful human mind has ever created. It is the thing the Romans used to torture and kill our founding figure, Jesus. On it he suffered. On it he died. And Christians of every variety throughout the world put it atop their churches, on their altars, and around their necks. We do too. On its fact it’s a very strange thing to do. It makes the judicial murder—that’s what capital punishment always is—of the one we call Lord and Savior central to the faith. It proclaims to the world that what this faith is primarily about is the death of its central figure Jesus.

How are we to understand the centrality of Jesus’ death in our faith? That has been a key Christian question from the very beginning. Most Christians, since the High Middle Ages at least, would answer that question by saying that Jesus’ death is central to Christianity because it is the atoning sacrifice for human sin. As most of you know, I reject that understanding of Jesus’ death. I have often preached from this pulpit and taught in other settings that Jesus’ death is central to Christianity not because it is an atoning sacrifice for human sin but because it is the fullest demonstration of God’s solidarity with us in our own suffering and death. That, I am convinced, is the deepest and truest meaning of the cross of Christ.

This morning, however, I want to suggest that there is another reason why the cross of Christ is the central Christian symbol and why our faith tradition makes such a big deal out of Jesus’ death. This reason brings into the story of Jesus’ death the fact that for us Christians Jesus’ death isn’t the end of his story. We are the faith that proclaims Jesus’ death to be sure, but we are also the faith that proclaims Jesus’ resurrection. We’ll do that most especially next Sunday, on Easter. The central Christian story is a story of both death and resurrection, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his book The Heart of Christianity Marcus Borg declares that the way that Jesus is talking about when he says in the Gospel of John “I am the way” is precisely the way of death and resurrection. Notice: It’s not the way of resurrection alone. It is the way of death and resurrection. And notice too: Death comes second. You don’t get to resurrection without going through death first. Death is the prerequisite for resurrection. The Christian tradition makes such a big deal out of Jesus’ death in part because the way of Jesus was the way of death and resurrection.

Which means that the Christian’s way is the way of death and resurrection. It may literally be the way of death and resurrection if, as Christianity has always professed, there will be a physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’m perfectly happy to leave all that up to God. I do know, however, that death and resurrection is metaphorically the Christian’s way. The way of death and resurrection has meaning for us in this life whether or not it has meaning for us beyond this life. Christ offers us new life, not just beyond this life but in this life; and just as his resurrection had to come after his death, so the new life he offers us requires that we die before we can receive it. I mean “die” metaphorically, of course. Death here is a metaphor for our giving up the things that are keeping us from the abundant new life that Christ wants us to have. We, like Jesus, don’t get to resurrection without dying first, without metaphorically dying to whatever in our lives is keeping us from being truly alive.

To illustrate, let me give you the main example of this truth from my own life. Most of you have heard it before; but I think it is a really good illustration, so I’m going to use it again. As most of you know, I used to be a lawyer. Technically I still am, and I still use my legal skills if not my actual Bar license on occasion. The point is that I used to work as a lawyer. I used to live as a lawyer. And working and living as a lawyer was killing me. Literally. I was completely burned out. I suffered from depression. I was nonfunctional at work and nonfunctional at home. I desperately needed new life. I desperately needed resurrection.

But to get to resurrection I had to die to what was keeping me from resurrection. I had to die to the way of life I had known. I had to die to the career I had pursued, not without some success, for many years. I had to die to an identity that I had worked long and hard to acquire and that had given my life shape and meaning for a long time. That way of life, that career, and that identity were keeping me from resurrection, from the new life to which God was calling me. To get to resurrection, I had to die to the life of a lawyer.

And dying to the life of a lawyer was really hard. I denied my need to do it literally for years. I fought it. I convinced myself again and again that I couldn’t do it. Only when it finally became clear to me that continuing to live as a lawyer might actually kill me did I begin to give it up. Only than did I begin the long process of dying to the life of a lawyer so that I could embrace new life as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And when I finally died to the life of a lawyer and accepted the new life to which God was calling me, I was reborn. I was resurrected. People who knew me then and who know me now say that I am a different person today than I was then. A better person. A more alive person. I was resurrected, not beyond this life but in this life. That is the way of death and resurrection. That is the way of the Christian.

Now, the death and resurrection in this life that is the Christian way doesn’t have to be as dramatic as my experience of dying to the life a lawyer was. Or it may be a different kind of dramatic; for, you see, there are all kinds of things that can keep us from new, resurrected life. Some of them are pretty obvious. Addictions of many kinds keep us from abundant life. We need to die to them; or, if we can never truly die to them, then we need to die to their control over our lives before we can truly live. Many of us have unhealthy habits that don’t rise—or fall—to the level of addictions but to which we still need to die before we can live a resurrection life. Habits like laziness, disorganization, a lack of confidence in our own abilities, fear of failure or even fear of success are all habits or habitual ways of thinking to which we need to die before we can truly life. Anger and resentment keep us from resurrection, and we need to die to them. We need to identify whatever it is in our lives that is keeping us from new life and die to it so that we can get to resurrection. You don’t get to resurrection without first going through death. That’s the Christian story. That’s the Christian way. It’s why Good Friday comes before Easter. Jesus had to die before he could rise. So do we.

And here’s another thing. For us in this life it’s not a once for all thing. We may have to die and rise again many times in this life before we truly attain the resurrection life to which God calls us. I died and rose again once. I probably need to do it again. You may have had a death and resurrection experience in your life too. That doesn’t mean you’re done dying and rising. It doesn’t mean that I am. God’s call to us is always to search our hearts for the things to which we must die before we can truly live.

So as we enter this Holy Week, when we walk with Jesus first to the cross and only then to resurrection, I urge all of us, myself as well as you. to consider: To what to we need to die this week before we can rise to newness of life? And once we think we’ve got that figured out to ask: Are we ready to do what it takes to get to resurrection? It’s not easy. If it were we’d already have done it. I wasn’t easy for Jesus. It really wasn’t easy for Jesus. But he said to God not my will but yours be done. God’s will for us is newness and wholeness of life. God’s will for us is resurrection, and you don’t get to resurrection without dying first. Are we ready? Are you? Am I? Amen.