Easter Day Sermon. Ayot and Welwyn: Ephesians 1: 15-end, Luke 24: 1-12: Colin Hull

The Resurrection of Jesus and our New Humanity

Introduction

Over the last few months BBC2 has been showing an in intriguing series on Meerkats, following the lives of an extended family of about 40 Meerkats living on the edge of the Atakama desert. (You may not have seen it if you have been at Evensong, although but it is repeated on Sat afternoons).

Meerkats are members of the mongoose family and live in southern Africa. The series has arisen from part of a study by Cambridge University over many years. Meerkats are highly social animals that collectively look after their young. They work collectively but are highly viscous to others outside their tribal group, with fights between groups where territories overlap.

I am reminded as well about Desmond Morris and some books I read many years ago; “The Naked Ape” (published 1967) and the “Human Zoo”. Morris had been at one time the curator of apes at London Zoo and wrote these books comparing the behaviour of humans with apes. Some serious researchers have since said his books were over simplistic but the idea of comparing ape and human behaviour has been taken up by others and have also made intensive studies of apes and social animals to look at their interactions and how they might relate to human psychology and behaviour. And have you seen some of those nature programs that focus on the lives of groups of chimps or gorillas? Social order and fights? For if the theory of human evolution is right then we have probably inherited many aspects of behaviour from our animal past and instincts.

I know that the theory of evolution is not accepted by some Christians but it remains the way most western people are now looking at life on this planet and it seems to me that we have to look at the bible and interpret it’s great stories and teaching in that light.

In much ape behaviour, as with the Meerkats there is a social hierarchy and also tribal loyalties. The tribal loyalties often produce situations of conflict. Many of our basic instincts from our ape ancestry might have had survival value on the African plains but are they right for modern humans?

It could be argued that much of what is labelled as sinfulness and evil in society is actually our refusal to grow up and leave behind certain parts of our ape ancestry and behaviour, failing to grow beyond that past into the real humanity God wants us to have.
For example, if we consider many of the world’s situations of conflict, it can be seen from the perspective of tribal and territorial rivalry, just an extension of those past tendencies. We have not grown up very well from this wild past.

But you may be wondering by now what all this has to do with Easter Sunday?

Well quite simply, Easter Sunday is about being and becoming a new type of humanity, evolving a new consciousness of the world, beyond our past instincts.
Jesus has shown the new type of humanity we are to be and He has been proved right in what he has said and done by the resurrection. Let me explain, I want to talk about two things:

The Resurrection proves Jesus is right.
The Resurrection is about our Power to be different

1. The Resurrection proves Jesus is right in all He preached and did

Jesus was put to death for being a trouble maker, who broke the tribal boundaries. It was a political death. He was persecuted because He was different. He had reached out to people the religious authorities said were unacceptable. He told people to love their enemies and do good to everyone. Our love of our neighbour is extended beyond our normal boundaries.

Jesus showed that people were forgivable and should be forgiven rather than respond with censure or retaliation.
He held up the faith of a foreign army captain as something He had not seen among his own people.
He talked to a despised Samaritan woman in the street and told the story of another Samaritan who showed more compassion than the good religious folk when they encountered a beaten up man at the roadside.
Jesus also rejected the style of life that seeks personal glory and ambition and the struggle for power over others, too often found in many societies. He spoke out about the abuse of personal power and wealth that left others outside. In many respects Jesus showed a style of living and humanity that was different to what was accepted and often lived.

For all this Jesus appeared to be a threat to some that provoked jealousy and opposition. The religious leaders saw Jesus as a threat to their order of things, breaking the rules and teaching others to do the same. For this reason, in their eyes Jesus was unholy. More than that Jesus made claims about Himself that were a blasphemy and was leading people astray. They thought they were right in killing him, and doing God’s will. When He dies on that day we call Good Friday, that was to have been the end of Him and His heretical teaching and way of life. The end of His claims and the end of those considered foolish in following and supporting him. What a relief, this trouble maker was dead.

But the Resurrection is God showing Jesus was right and His way of humanity was superior to the humanity of his killers, religious and political. If those who killed Him had been right we would never have heard of Jesus again, except as just another idealistic prophet and teacher that met an unfortunate end. But God had raised Jesus to life again as sign of His Favour and the Rightness of who Jesus was and what Jesus said and did.

The Resurrection was in many ways Incredible and even His own disciples were having difficulty in believing it. In all the gospels we read Jesus had warned them He would die because of opposition to His Way but that He would be raised up. Yet on that Easter morning the disciples were still surprised, as we heard in the reading from Luke. The women were surprised at what they found and the disciples would not believe them.

“They did not believe the women because their words seemed like nonsense”

So despite the authorities certainty of being right, and His own disciples unbelief, the Resurrection proves Jesus’ Words and actions to be True.
It proves all what He said about the world and the need for repentance.
It proved He was right about what He said about His own God-given authority and power
It proved He was right in all He did.

The resurrection was the victory of Jesus’ goodness and charity over the corruption of the world and all the tribal loyalties and struggle for personal power and territory. Because Jesus was proved right in what He said and did the Resurrection is also a testimony to the Truth of the New Humanity Jesus was showing.

There is an important tradition of teaching in the church called “Christus Exemplar” (Christ our Example), that Jesus shows how we ought to be. He is our pattern for true and faithful living in God’s power and image. Jesus in His humanity reveals what we are to become in all we do. What He did we are to follow. What he reveals about love and life is for us to be a New Reformed Humanity. Jesus shows this new humanity that is focused towards love:

Love for the God we known and that He reveals and focused on Him. To look to the eternal rather than the limitations of the world.
Jesus shows a new humanity based on faithful partnerships that endure with time and circumstances.
Forgiveness and peacemaking where there has been wrong, rather than retaliation
Love for the stranger
Love and solidarity with the marginalised of society
Standing up for what is right, despite whatever opposition it might bring.

Christ is our example in all this and more besides. This is the way of live to be honoured and to strive for. That brings me to my second point..

2. The Resurrection is about our power to be different

Resurrection of Jesus is more than an a hope of life beyond the grave, it is about our living in the confidence we can be different and better in the here and now. Often the Resurrection is thought of in terms of the Hope of Life after death and the Saving of Sinners to a new and everlasting life with God in a future time and place. This is all right but such a resurrection faith can just be a about the future and not how we are to be now. The Theologian Paul Tillich coined the phrase “The Eternal Now” to indicate that our resurrection life is also be found in having and living the new life of Christ in the here and now. The knowledge of the resurrection should be transforming us now by helping us to know the rightness of being new people who are being remade into the new humanity Jesus offers.

But this newness of life is not simply our own efforts to be nice people who love God. The Resurrection is about God’s power at work in us. Paul writes in Ephesians that he prays we may become more aware of what Christ has done, to grasp it more fully.

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints….

We need to be so much grasped by the truth of what He has taught and done and revealed that we are changed by it. We are called to a be a New Reformed Humanity and God has not left us to this on our own. Rather the same power that was at work in raising Jesus from the dead is also at work in us.

“…His incomparable great power of us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the His right hand..”

Just keep thinking of that.
The great power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you daily, to be a New Person, part of the New Humanity God is making through what Jesus has done.

A-men