Too Good to be True? (Easter 1B)

“Too Good to be True?”

Easter 1B

8 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Festival Mass

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
Isaiah 25:6-9; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, and Mark 16:1-8

 

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.  For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe. (1 Cor. 15:1-11)

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Many “common sense” sayings are just plain wrong.  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” we say, but does that mean that a person is incapable of change?  Maybe “one bad apple does spoil the whole bunch,” but doesn’t it often happen that a “bad” person can be uplifted and bettered through associating with “good” ones?   And then there’s “the Lord helps those who help themselves,” a statement that seems to affirm a faith in God but actually says God is irrelevant.  

Think of the phrase “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” “It’s just too good to be true!”  What does this say about us?  That we have been so beaten up by life that we simply assume that if something is true, it will be disappointing?  That nothing true can be purely good?

Today is Easter Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is not popular in some quarters today to believe, let alone publicly proclaim, the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.  Many modern and post-modern thinkers are troubled by its literalism and physicality, and argue that it works better when understood as a story expressing our faith and values, but not as an affirmation about something that actually happened. 

I understand these feelings.  It is hard to believe in life after death.  The one thing we know, and that our experience tells us again and again, is that when you’re dead, you’re dead.  There is no coming back.  If someone does seem to come back, either they never were dead in the first place, or someone seems to be having a hallucination, a dream, or seems to be transported into flights of poetic beauty, of really good story-telling based in wishful thinking and not the hard, cruel facts of our existence. 

So some modern scholars and theologians believe the early disciples, after the disappointment, shock, and grief of his death held little bereavement groups. Trying to make sense of Jesus’ teachings, life, and death in light of the Hebrew Scriptures, they began to tell hopeful stories that ended up taking a narrative life of their own, reflected a generation later in the various contradictory resurrection stories found in the Gospels.

 

Behind this reflective way of trying to keep the hope and faith of these stories alive while trying to be honest with doubts about their historical accuracy is an underlying assumption, at least at the emotional level.  The story is just too good to be true.  

I agree that these stories are full of meaning beyond simple recounting of “what happened,” and admit that the details and differences in the stories handled down to us show the marks of oral tradition and story-telling that call into question their value as detailed chronicles of historical events. 

But I must say that as a historian, I find this purely mythological reading of the resurrection stories to be unconvincing.

The earliest account of this tradition as it develops that has survived is not found in the Gospels.  It is found in today’s epistle reading, where St. Paul, writing only about 15 years after Jesus’s death tells us of the “tradition” of “Good News” that was passed on to him by earlier Christians: that Jesus died and was buried, was raised, and then appeared.  It is from this early apostolic preaching that the various stories about Jesus’ death and bodily reappearance develop, moving from barebones angelic proclamation in the earliest Gospel, Mark, to more and more developed stories in the later Gospels.

The early disciples were no fools.  They knew the difference between wishful storytelling and personal experience.  The idea that the stories arose in small groups sitting shiva for Jesus is to my mind hardly likely.  There is just too quick a shift—from utter demoralization and despair at Jesus’ death to bull-headed and joyful optimism and willingness to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake—at the origin of Christianity.  For me, it is a much more probable to say that something shocking and unusual, even unique, happened on Easter morning than to argue that these stories arose simply as the result of proof-texting of the Hebrew scriptures.  The problem, of course, is whether we allow for the possibility of such a thing.   

We mustn’t be too hard on modern Christians who doubt Jesus’ resurrection.  It is clear from the stories themselves that the early disciples were themselves doubters.  It was too good to be true.  St. Thomas in John’s Gospel tells the other disciples,  “Unless I feel the prints of the nails in his hands, I will not believe your story of Jesus alive again.”

Thomas was not alone. The women in today’s reading from Mark see an angel at the tomb proclaiming that Jesus is not there but has risen.  The women run away “trembling with astonishment” and tell no one “because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).   That is where Mark in its earliest copies ends.

In Luke, as the women come back, they remember words that Jesus had said to them while he was alive, and this gives them the confidence to announce what the angel has said.  But the apostles take it as “an idle tale,” and do not believe them (Luke 24:10-11). 

In Matthew, when Jesus finally appears to the disciples after their return to Galilee, “they saw him and worshipped him, but some doubted” (Matt. 28:17).

It is clear that the disciples here do not know what to make of what has occurred—it was so unusual.  They believe in ghosts, but clearly this is no spirit.  They know that Jesus was dead and buried and are certain that people do not come back from the dead.  But here is Jesus talking to them, more alive than he has ever been before. 

They struggle to understand and find the right words for it. 

They finally settle on an obscure image found in the Book of Daniel: the raising of the martyred righteous on the Last Day. Written during the Maccabean revolt, the book is concerned with the fate of righteous Jews who suffered torture and death at the hands of the Greek Syrian tyrants.  It says that God will act to right injustice.  He will create the righteous martyrs anew, and bring them forth alive from their graves, shining like the stars in heaven.

To be sure, talk about resurrection at the end of time is a literary and mythological image, not an historical one.  But the belief of the earliest disciples that Jesus after his death reappeared to them in bodily reality, itself the origin of the tales of specific resurrection appearances that developed later, to my mind is a fact of history.

It seems that the disciples themselves each had their own thresholds for when to stop saying, “it’s just too good to be true.”   Early on Easter morning in John, Mary Magdalene sees the resurrected Jesus by the tomb, but mistakes him for the gardener.  It is only when Jesus calls her by name that she recognizes him (John 20:25-16).  For her, it takes his voice.

In Luke, early in the evening on Easter Sunday, Jesus appears to two disciples walking to Emmaus.  For them, it takes Jesus' breaking bread with them for them to recognize him.   The act triggers memories of Jesus' open table-fellowship, his feeding of the outcast, and the strange Passover meal just days before where he said the Seder’s bread of affliction was his body and its celebratory wine his blood. 

When the two disciples arrive back in Jerusalem, they are told “the Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34).  Apparently for Peter, it was simply seeing the gentle eyes of Jesus—the eyes that had looked on him after his three-time denial—for him to recognize the Lord (cf. Luke 22:61).  

In Luke’s story, the disciples gather together late evening on Easter Sunday.  Jesus appears to them, but where John says simply that the disciples that evening (absent Thomas) “were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20), Luke tells more:  the disciples cannot believe their eyes, and wonder for a moment whether they are seeing a ghost.  Jesus replies, “see my hands and feet, it’s really me; touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).  They still “disbelieve from joy” (Luke 24:41).  “Too good to be true!”  It is only when Jesus eats a bit of roast fish that they recognize him (Luke 24:42-43). 

So when Thomas in John says, “unless I touch the wounds, I won’t believe,” he is no more a doubter than any of the other disciples, or than any of us.  We all have our own thresholds of trusting God, of believing, of having faith.   Mary needs to hear his voice; Peter see his eyes; others his breaking the bread, his eating fish.   When, the next Sunday, Jesus actually appears to Thomas, Thomas doesn’t need to touch him to believe.  He takes one look and declares, “My Lord and My God.”   Jesus himself praises Thomas for his affirmation, “Happy are you because you have seen and believed.  How much happier are those who, though not seeing, still believe.”

Jesus here is talking about us.  We are in the same place as the disciples before they actually see the risen Lord:  we each have our petty thresholds and barriers we set up for faith.  “I won’t believe in God if he doesn’t prevent evil and suffering.” “I can’t believe in God unless I see some miracle or vision.”  “I can’t believe in God unless I understand everything I desire to know.”  But this is just our beaten down hearts talking, afraid to trust because we have been hurt in the past, disillusioned by the world.  “It is too good to be true.”   This is not a description of the world, but an expression of our pain. 

That is the point of these stories.  Jesus taught by word and deed that this whole world is occupied enemy territory.  God’s putting things right, the in-breaking of God’s true kingship, was already set in motion in his person.  But Jesus’ death seemed to prove the foolishness of his teaching.   It was unjust, wrong, and horrible, proof of just how bad this monstrous world actually is. 

But a day after his burial, Jesus, more alive than he had ever been before, came back to his friends.  They had no doubt that he had been dead.  And the one before them now was so burningly alive that many of them had problems recognizing him. 

The way we can learn to recognize Jesus, and see God’s hand in our lives is by listening to these stories again and again and engaging with the one they tell about.  It is important that we care passionately about it, and if this means sometimes expressing our thresholds and being labeled as “doubters,” that’s O.K.  God can break down the walls we place around our hearts only if there is something there for him to grab onto.  It is our passion and yearning, for the good, the right, the holy, and the beautiful that provides the traction necessary. 

Let us be more honest in our prayer life, and express our complaints and conditions, so that God might break them down, and give us the great gift of letting us recognize him. 

In the name of God, Amen.