A
Reflection for the Feast of the Resurrection All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC April 1, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Paul
writes to the people in Corinth who are wasting energy over conflicts
about who is right in the squabbles they have with each other. Paul
says “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn
had received.” He then passes on what is known as the Kerygma,
the core of the message being proclaimed by the early church. That
core message that was passed on to Paul which he shares with anyone
who will listen is “I am living with you in a new age which is
ushered in by Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection and union with God
as the Christ, the Messiah who has lead me and will lead all people
back to a relationship with God, through the Spirit which he gave to
me and to all who place their trust in him to lead a new life where
forgiveness, reconciliation and union with God are given as a gift of
love.”
Paul
says that was passed on to him when he was an enemy of the early
Christians and a gift of loving grace was given to him, a love so
great that he was forgiven before he even asked for forgiveness,
brought into fellowship with those who were once his enemies, and
with whom he shared God’s Spirit, reaching out to others in loving
forgiveness so together they work for rebuilding the broken world.
Kerygma
is a body of personal stories shared not by professional theologians
but by ordinary people who have grown into a deeper awareness of a
life of grace. Kerygma is not an orthodox Creedal substitute that you
have to profess in order to be let into communion, rather it is
thanks from the heart said by word and deed in many different ways.
Peter,
in the reading from the Book of Acts, is telling his take of the
Kerygma. As a disciple to the earthly Jesus, Peter had been a
stumbling block to Jesus’s teachings over and over again, and by
his denial of Jesus, had been complicit in his crucifixion. Peter
finds, however, that the resurrected Christ speaks of love and
forgiveness to him, and he realizes through his experience that there
is nothing you can ever do, nothing that you can ever be, that is
greater than the gift of God’s love for you. Peter passed on what
has been passed on to him.
In
the Gospel lesson from Mark for today, women come to the grave as an
act of love to anoint the body of the man who had loved them. They
are passing on the love that they had received. There they met a
“Young Man”, who is not named, dressed in a white robe. Two
chapters earlier in Mark’s Gospel there is another unnamed “Young
Man” who runs away from the arrest of Jesus, and when the guards
try to arrest him, they grab his linen cloth and the “Young Man”
flees away naked. The “Young Man” who flees in shame might be the
one now given the robe of purification as he was forgiven, and he
passes on to the women what has been given to him, that there is no
reason to hold on to shame, no reason to be afraid, for the author of
all love is alive and his spirit will never leave us. Some of the
commentators suggest that this “Young Man” might be John Mark,
that person who tradition tells us might be the author of this
Gospel.
What
has been passed on to you and what do you then pass on to others as
your Kerygma? What did you learn from your parents?. . . your
schools? . . your friends?. . . your elected leaders? . . . your
media figures? . . . your church? What have you chosen to pass on
from what you have received?
One
of the things I enjoy at All Saints’ are our Ministry Moments where
a lay person speaks about how their faith has been nourished by
working in a particular ministry of helping others. Rather than issue
a call for needed volunteers for these worthwhile projects, I ask
them to pass on what they have received.
The
way that Christianity grew in the first couple of centuries was by
people sharing their lives, personally sharing what had happened to
them. In sociologist Rodney Stark’s book, The
Triumph of Christianity, which
was based on his previous studies of modern religious movements such
as Mormonism, he looks at the growth of the early church from the 20
or so followers of Jesus at the time of his death around 32 AD to the
Declaration of Constantine as a most favored religion in the Roman
Empire in 312 AD. If we assume that the Roman Empire in the 4th
Century had about 60 million people and about 10% of them were
Christians, that would mean there were 6 million Christians of many
different theological stripes. This assumes an annual rate of 40%
growth which is possible if people share their stories with others by
word and deed, demonstrating what living as a Christian was all
about. It was not about teaching theology but about sharing.
After
Christianity starts getting legal and being fed at the government
trough, it changes from being spread by people sharing real lives to
a cultivation of a clerical caste of Priests and Bishops who tell
people what to do, with Creeds telling them the official position on
what to believe, coercion with punishment after death for sin and
punishment in this life for being a heretic. It moves from being a
life-giving force to being a way to fit into the larger community of
the state. It becomes a place to do officially-sponsored rituals
instead of neighbors sharing the joys of God in their lives and the
ways they found strength to meet the difficulties in this broken
world.
I
admit that I am one of the members of the priestly caste and, for the
first several years of my membership, my main way of preaching was to
teach theology and to straighten out thinking. It was fun and I
enjoyed the delusion of being the smartest person in the room with
the right educational credentials. I have come to realize that
doesn’t work and I have moved from lectures and sermons to
reflections with a lot more sharing, passing on, of what I have
received.
As
you know, I am retiring as the Rector of this church at the end of
this month. I will take some months off trying to figure out how I
may faithfully live as a Christian without being paid and to continue
to pass on my Kerygma of what I have received.
What
have you chosen to pass on from what you have received?
I
Pass On What Was Passed On To Me
I
pass on what was passed on to me,
listening
to spaces between words,
as
I would to hear the songs of birds,
being
still as she’s asking me to see
what
are her deep hopes and fears
before
I even dare to say; “Oh yes,
I
have shared some of them I guess,
but
don’t be afraid, for over the years
I
have learned to trust that the power
greater
than ourselves is not shirking
the
promise to redeem our working,
giving
us strength thru that last hour,
when
we come face to face with the one
who
greets us when all our work is done.”
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