"Easter for Skeptics"

Matthew 28:1-10 - Galatians 1:11-24

Easter Sunday + April 24, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

“Early in the last century, in the days when the great fleets of whaling ships put out of New Bedford, Massachusetts to scour the oceans for whale oil, one of the most famous captains was Eleazar Hull. Captain Hull took his vessel into more remote seas, brought home greater quantities of oil, and lost fewer seamen in the process than any other master of his time. This was all the more remarkable because he had never had formal navigational training of any kind. When asked how he guided his ship so infallibly over the desert of waters, he would reply, “Well, I go up on deck, listen to the wind in the riggin’, get the drift of the sea, and take a long look at the stars. Then I set my course.”

One day, however, the march of time caught up with this ancient mariner. The insurance company whose policies covered the vessels of Captain Hull’s employers said they would no longer write a policy for any ship whose master did not meet certain formal standards of education in the science of navigation. Captain Hull’s superiors could understand the need for this new rule. But they were at a loss to know how to approach this proud old man who had spent his entire life on the deck of a ship and tell him that either he must go back to school like some apprentice seaman or be retired. After some discussion, they decided to meet the problem head-on. Three of the company’s top executives waited on Captain Hull and put the problem before him as tactfully as possible.

To their pleased surprise, the old fellow responded enthusiastically. He had, it appeared, always wanted to know something about this “new-fangled science of navigation” and he was quite willing to spend several months ashore studying it. So the arrangements were quickly made and Eleazar went back to school, studied hard, and graduated near the top of his class. Then he returned to his ship and put out to sea for the usual two year voyage.

When the captain’s friends heard that he was putting into port again, they all trooped down to the dock to meet him. They inquired eagerly how it felt to navigate “by the book” after so many years doing it the other way. “It was wonderful,” Captain Hull responded. “Whenever I wanted to set my course, I’d go down to my cabin, get out all my charts, work through the proper equation, and set my course with mathematical precision. Then I’d go up on deck, get the drift of the sea, listen to the wind in the riggin’, take a long look at the stars, and correct my computations for human error!”

My dear friends, if you have come to church this beautiful Easter morning hoping that your preacher would help you set your religious course with learned and scholarly theological arguments filled with scientific precision about the resurrection of Christ, you will go away sadly disappointed. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to. And I don’t!

However, I think I understand why we might want that kind of Easter message. In our scientific age, we have come to feel that unless something can be examined, measured, demonstrated, proven, then such a thing does not really exist and can have little or no value for us. Now mark you, no scientist would say that, but often we feel that way, I think. Yet, what a tremendous amount of human experience is left out when we approach life that way. In these past few years, I have come to have some real impatience with this “touch and feel” age of ours. I understand the frustration of a Blaise Pascal who could burst out in angry prayer: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God not of the philosophers and scholars.”

I say I have begun to have some of these feelings and I believe I have as much right to them as anyone here this morning because I have spent many years in the scholarly search after Christian truth. But I must admit that much of my search has simply left me knowing where the helpful answers I was seeking do not lie.

Be careful here, because I know that as soon as I have said that, someone will be rejoicing in his or her secret heart, some sincere and well-intentioned soul, who would now like to say to me, “Just so, preacher. Your human reason and intellect are of no use to you in matters of faith. Just accept the resurrection of Christ on faith alone and everything will be taken care of.” To such a person, I would respond, “My friend, I find that no more helpful than those people who are forever trying to “prove” the truth of Christianity or the Bible by science or archaeology. Your approach reminds me of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland who urged Alice to develop her faith by believing seven impossible things before breakfast each morning. Alice couldn’t do that and neither can I. I simply cannot swallow the resurrection like a raw oyster, trying to get it down as quickly as possible. No, I have to have some sense of what it means for me, how it relates to my life and the problems I face every day as I struggle to plot my life’s course. When people tell me that this is the sort of faith I should have, it sounds like they think we should have sent old Captain Hull up on deck blindfolded with his ears plugged with cotton, and told him to trust in God to get him through safely.

Do you see the dilemma I am setting up here? On the one hand, there is no final and conclusive way to make sense of the resurrection of Christ as an historical or scientific fact. We simply do not have – and never will have – the data. On the other hand, I am equally convinced that to insist the resurrection is “non-sense,” and that we must swallow it whole without even trying to understand it, is equally unhelpful.

How do we resolve this dilemma? For me, if the resurrection is to be real both in my faith and in my life, it must be intensely personal. Therefore, as I speak to you about the meaning of Christ’s resurrection this morning, I must do so by referring to my own life’s experiences – those reference points that have guided my life – those things that have made sense to me. I know that what I will say is limited, impartial, imperfect – but then it always is. All that I hope to do this Sunday or any Sunday is to share my experience with you – one human being to another – as together we struggle to make sense of our lives and find the right path to go.

So where do I begin when I try to make the resurrection part of my faith and life? I begin with people, the people I have known and loved in these brief years of my living, particularly, the people I have been privileged to know and love as a pastor. If there is anything unique in the ministry as a profession, it is this: you meet all kinds of people in all kinds of places under all kinds of circumstances.

In that experience, I can say to you with complete honesty that I have seen people come back to life who were dead. I do not mean physically dead. I am not talking about those once-in-a-while medical miracles where someone is snatched back from death by the skill of doctors. I certainly do not mean the testimony of little boys who go to heaven and come back to report to us what they have seen. No, I mean people who were dead as far as the meaning, the joy, the zest, the purpose of life are concerned. They had little to live for and less to die for and they knew it. So did I. They might as well have been dead and some of them said it in so many words. I think of one woman who said to me with tears streaming down her face, “Dave, what’s the use of anything now?” I have seen other people like that, including that same woman, come back to life and find life more abundant and joyful than they had ever known before.

I have seen other people whose lives had radiance and joy that was incredible. It was impossible to be with such a one for ten minutes without thinking, “What a tremendously alive person this is!” People like this who gave themselves without measure to great and good causes, who went the second and third and fourth miles, who never seemed to think that it was extraordinary how their lives were constantly being poured out on behalf of others.

What was the secret all these different people had found? Believe me; I am no less skeptical than you are. I have struggled to find an answer that would completely satisfy my human reason and I confess to you that I cannot. The only thing which comes home to me in greater certainty with every passing year is a conviction that Christ was alive in them. His life made their lives richer and fuller and more joyful than it could possibly have been without him.

Some of them used words like that to describe what had happened to them; some did not. Some would not have considered themselves Christians at all. And yet I know what I have seen. The identification marks were there: the outstretched hands, the willing feet, the tolerant mind, the tender heart, the outgoing love, the forgiving compassion. All of this was surrounded by a great self-forgetfulness that was matched by a deep concern for others. As I experienced those lives, I suddenly realized I knew one other who fully embodied all these qualities at their best and truest and I name him to you without apology: Jesus Christ. I have seen Christ, the living Christ, the risen Christ, in many faces. I have known beyond the power of understanding that Christ was living in them. I have caught my resurrection faith from them and I have said to myself, “No dead Christ could do that to anyone.” Friends, I can disprove and dismiss all the other supposed “proofs” of Christ’s resurrection except this one: I have seen his living face shining back at me in a thousand different living faces.

During my college years, I worked as an apprentice electrician in a paper mill during two summers. One of the first things we had to discover when working on a terminal box was which wire was the live wire. Believe me, you couldn’t mistake it if you did make a mistake! For me, in the same way, you cannot mistake the living power of Christ at work in a human life. Yes, Christ is more real in some people than in others, but you can’t miss him. A Christ who can bring a person back to real and authentic and whole and joyful human life – that is the risen Christ. A Christ who can sustain and strengthen and guide in every moment of a difficult and, perhaps, painful life journey – that is a risen Christ. A Christ who can inspire and enthuse and enable us to go far beyond what we thought we could accomplish – that is a risen Christ. That is the risen Christ I have found living and at work in my own life and in the life of others.

When that happened, I went back and read my Bible. I’m not suggesting that before this I hadn’t read my Bible because I had. Yet, before having this kind of experience, the Bible read like a book of ancient history – cold, dead, lifeless. Now when I read the stories of faith in the Bible they make sense to me. Now I understand what could turn a coward like Peter around and make him stand up for the Lord he had denied even if it cost him his life. Now I understand what could inspire a scholarly bigot like Saul and send him out as Paul to preach good news of human brotherhood and sisterhood to the entire Greco-Roman world. Now I know what the Biblical writers were trying to communicate in their strange stories of resurrection. Yes, I see all the contradictions, the discrepancies, the confusion. I see it all. But more and more as I grow older I really don’t care about that much anymore.

Like Captain Hull, I’ve read the books and appreciated them. I’ve studied the theories and learned the facts. Yet, when all is said and done, I am still listening for the wind in the riggin’, feeling the world under my feet, looking upward toward the stars to guide me home.

Exactly what happened to the women and the disciples that first Easter morning, I don’t know and I doubt that I ever will. And whatever Paul meant by his magnificent but cryptic statement that the Lord Jesus had also appeared in him, I cannot explain. And how that same risen Lord has made his way into the hearts and lives of countless men and women down through the ages is as much a mystery to me now as it has always been. But I do know that it is true. Christ is alive – now – today – in you and in me.

When we feel helpless and cannot do the things we must, there will be a power in our lives to give us the strength to lift up and move on. When moments come and we are wrapped up in ourselves, thinking only of our own needs and concerns, a power will break through that kind of living death and bring us to love and life again. We know now that time cannot take away from us those things that are most precious to us. We know now that God is the beginning and the end and in this mysterious life which has so much suffering as well as so much joy, there is present One who lived among us, died for us, and now lives for us and with us and in us. As surely as Paul could say that the Lord had appeared in him, so he has also appeared in me. Has he appeared in you?

If he has, then you know what Captain Hull felt when he heard the wind whistling through the riggin’, when he felt the surge and swell of the deck beneath his feet, when he saw the countless stars shimmering above him you know – you know with a passionate certainty that passes knowledge. And with Paul your life spills over with an incredible cry of joy: “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory!”

(I am indebted for the story about Captain Hull to a sermon by William Muehl in his book, “All the Damned Angels,” United Church Press, 1972.)