Resurrection Realism--September 14, 2021

Resurrection Realism--September 14, 2021

"[Abraham] considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead--and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back." [Hebrews 11:19]

There's a great line of Lesslie Newbigin that comes back to me in times like this.  The late theologian said, "I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead."

It might sound odd, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the Christian hope of resurrection is what grounds our faith in reality--a reality where, yes, death is real and cannot simply be wished away or ignored, and yet a reality where death does not get the last word.  Mere optimism wants to say, "Let's hope things don't get bad," or "The sun'll come up tomorrow!" or "I can feel things are getting better!" when those things may or may not happen.  Faith isn't about wishfully thinking that the worst won't happen--rather, trust in the God who raises the dead allows us to stare down the possibility that sometimes the worst does... and then God brings newness where we never saw it coming.  Optimism says, "Hopefully we can avoid the dark valley." Pessimism moans that we're in it already, all alone, and will probably never find our way out.  But faith in the living God says, "Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I don't have to be afraid, because you are with me, O God.  You promise to bring me through."

Abraham's faith was like that, as our author in Hebrews tells us.  When he ventured out to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Hebrews says that Abraham went with the faith that even if it came to it, God could raise the dead and restore the child of promise to life.  (And, not for nothing, in the original storytelling from Genesis 22, Abraham goes up the mountain with Isaac telling the hired men waiting behind, "We will go up and offer sacrifice, and then we will come back down to you," almost as if the old patriarch dares to believe even then that God can raise Isaac from the dead and send him back down with his dad.)  There's no swerving away from the reality of death--but there is the daring hope that God can and does call forth life again out the other side.

Sometimes I think we need the reminder that the Christian faith is that kind of death-and-resurrection thing, rather than a naive optimism that bad things won't happen to us because we believe in God.  We live in a time when folks use the word "faith" to mean all sorts of nonsense, from "I have faith, not fear, so I know I can't get COVID and don't need to get vaccinated," to "I have faith and have prayed, and therefore my team will win the game" (as though there weren't people fervently praying for the other team, too) or "Nothing bad will happen to the environment, because God will stop it from becoming a problem," or even, "I have faith that God will give me a bigger house, more money, and honor-roll kids."  These are not faith--these are nonsense dressed up in religious garb.

But real living daring faith can stare down the truth, unflinchingly, and yet trust that God can bring new creation where the worst happens.  Sometimes you don't get the job.  Sometimes the loved one doesn't get the miracle cure.  Sometimes the team loses. And sometimes the hurricanes are more intense than anyone imagined the would be.  Naming those realities isn't a lack of faith, but the necessary truth-telling that allows us to trust God even when everything else is coming undone, and to know that God reserves the right to call forth life to our dry bones.  

That's the crux--literally--of the good news: that God isn't just here to help us look on the bright side, but to bring new creation when everything has come apart in death.  Like Robert Farrar Capon says it, "Jesus came to raise the dead.... He did not come to improve the improvable.  He did not come to reform the reformable.  None of those things work."  From Abraham on Mount Moriah to the present day, the living God has been inspiring that kind of trust.  Mere optimism isn't enough, and relentless pessimism is inadequate as well.  We are called to be resurrection realists--who face the truth when rotten things happen rather than using piety as a pretense to avoid it, and then who place our confidence in God's ability to roll stones away from our deathly places.

Today, let's aim for that: let's be honest and real about the troubles and challenges in front of us, rather than wishing them away with some empty hope that "Things will just go back to normal!"  Let's face them down in our family life and our local economy; let's face them down in our churches and our schools.  Let's face them down in our cities and in our fields.  And then let us hand to God all that is dead within us and allow God to bring resurrection forth from us as well.

Lord God, call us to life again.  We dare to believe you can do it.  We even dare to believe you are summoning us in to resurrection right now.