The Lack of an Audience--March 27, 2020

The Lack of an Audience--March 27, 2020

[Peter said:] "We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." [Acts 10:39-43]

Jesus doesn't require a news conference to rise from the dead.  In fact, it appears that God's deliberate plan was not to make a big public spectacle of Jesus' resurrection, but to let it happen subversively, like a divine conspiracy against death, right under the nose of the imperial so-and-sos... and to spread quietly, stealthily, almost secretly, while the world was looking the other way.

Easter, it would seem, is like the boiling of the proverbial pot--it doesn't happen when someone is watching.

For a lot of my Christian life, I rather arrogantly assumed this was a mistake, or at least a regrettable design flaw, to the plan of God. (I am thick-headed and dense sometimes, and I think I know better than God.  In these instances, I am, unsurprisingly, wrong.)  An earlier version of me used to think that God's Easter mistake was not having the resurrection of Jesus happen in broad daylight, with unquestionable clarity, in the heart of town, and with a cheering and applauding crowd.  Surely, if Easter had an audience, there would be no doubters, no lingering questions, and no need for a church to spread the news, right?  Everybody would have seen that Jesus was alive again, and that would settle it.

But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it was God's intentional choice to raise Jesus in the pre-dawn darkness of a sleepy Sunday morning without anybody watching it happen.  I am convinced that there is something more important to God than measuring crowd-size or needing adulating fans, and I think that is part of what this is all about.  God's ego doesn't need stroking, and so God doesn't need to put on a show to get our fawning praise or awe-struck cheering.  In other words, God doesn't pull off a resurrection because the Almighty needs an audience, but because God is always about the work of raising up what is dead, whether or not anybody else notices.

So, yes, the news that Jesus is alive needs to be shared far and wide--after all, people need to be freed from the fear that death gets the last word over us!  But God doesn't need an audience to make it happen.  God doesn't need packed pews and bustling crowds to see the moment of resurrection, and God doesn't need us to have watched it happen out of some insecure need to be in the limelight.

And that really is saying something.

We've all lived through moments where someone hijacks a situation to make it all about themselves, right? We've all known folks who seem to be always "on," like an entertainer in search of an audience, who need constant attention, constant affirmation, constant praise and adulation, and who get testy when the camera is on anybody else.  Maybe all of us struggle with that need for the spotlight sometimes, but I'll bet you have lived through situations where someone is over the top with it.  And you can tell, you can just tell, that the ones who put themselves at the center of attention aren't really interested in doing good for others, but in making themselves the story.  You get the sense that if you just barely scratch the surface of the public personas they are presenting, you'll see a terribly insecure, trembling little kid on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum because not enough people are watching their antics.

And no matter how much such insecure showmen and impresarios want our praise in those moments, I just can't do it.  I can't worship or applaud the needy limelight stealers... because I can't trust them. I know that they aren't doing what they do for my benefit, or anybody else's, but just to feed their own attention-hungry egos.

But here is good news: God ain't like that.

The under-the-radar reveal of Jesus' resurrection--the central wonder of the Christian faith!--is what assures me that this is about God's love for the world and God's work to save us from death, rather than about some insecure need in the deity for more attention and ratings.  The news of the empty tomb needs to be shared far and wide now, but not so that God will feel more important or look "strong."  God doesn't need to impress anybody.  That means the resurrection really is about God's loving commitment to rescue us from the power of death, not about putting on a good show or bragging about the size of the crowd.  The fact that God pulled it off when nobody was there and didn't put it on a billboard for the world to see all at once is how you know.

So now... we are the ones tapped to share the news.  And as we do, it doesn't--at all--need to be about "us" and our egos.  We go and tell, in our words and actions, as many people as possible in whatever ways we can, that death's power doesn't get the last word, that God's love will not be stopped by the grave, and that God's grace does not care about getting attention for all of it.  We don't have to worry about having big crowds in worship (when we can be in worship again together).  We don't have to brag about who's got more social media followers than who.  We don't have to pretend we've got it all together in our lives (we don't really, anyway).  And we are freed from all of that garbage because we don't have to worry about getting attention for what we do or what we say--only to share the news that death doesn't get the last word, because Christ is risen, as far and wide as we can.

These days, it can feel like the church has been put into a coma.  But that isn't it.  We are simply being called to go underground like secret agents, not looking to put on a show, but to speak resurrection hope to people and to practice Christ's risen compassion for folks in ways that don't get headlines and won't draw a crowd.  

The lack of an audience does not stop Easter from happening, and it won't stop us from finding new venues and ways to share the news. Don't worry--that's not a design flaw.  That's how God intended it in the first place.

God of life, work your resurrecting power in whatever ways you see fit, and let us be a part of your divine conspiracy for life here and now.