Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis John 20: 1-18

Easter Sunday March 23, 2008

“Jesus on the Loose”

They thought they had finally gotten rid of Jesus and his dangerous little movement—for good. Hadn’t they totally discredited his claim to having some kind of special relationship to God by nailing him onto the cross just like any other trouble-maker? They had even taunted him-- “Hey, if you’re really the Son of God, why don’t you come down from the cross and show us your almighty power? You saved others; why can’t you save yourself?” But even though everybody was at least watching out of the corner of their eye just in case anything unusual happened…it hadn’t. His body hung as powerless as any other man’s until it heaved its last breath.

“Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter,” as the saying goes. And the sheep had scattered. They were even too yellow-bellied to hang around and watch him die—except for a few women and the disciple named John. The rest fled into the shadows.

So it was time for everybody to get back to business as usual. There’d be no more of this nonsense about sinners coming into God’s realm before the upstanding religious leaders. No more of this drivel about God seeking out the outcasts, the rejects and the Samaritans. No more of this subversive talk about God’s realm of forgiveness, compassion and peace being set loose in the world without respect for people’s position and power and authority.

It was time for everybody to get back to their places. Women, servants, poor, sinners, invalids. Hurry it up now. You can see what they did to Jesus. How much quicker will they do it to you.

By every human reckoning, that should have been the end of the Jesus movement. But then something happened that changed the course of history. Jesus started showing up, to Mary Magdalene for starters—to this mysterious woman out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons. And then he showed up to the other disciples, and to two nameless travelers walking to Emmaus, and to 500 people at once. And then he appeared to Paul who was busy throwing Christians in jail. Christ’s light knocked Paul right off his high horse, turned him around 180 degrees, and sent him into the world telling everybody that God was reconciling the whole world to Himself through Christ’s forgiving grace.

By this time, Jesus’ Spirit was so much on the loose that Jews, Gentiles, men, women, rich, poor, slaves, and free were coming together and sharing their possessions, food and money with each other, freely confessing their sins, laying hands on each other for healing, comforting each other in their sorrows, celebrating each other’s joys, encouraging each other’s gifts, and building up each other’s faith.

The world had never seen anything like this before—people from all these different divisions of people being all mixed up together and loving each other. These early followers felt such an extraordinary bond with each other, and through each other with Jesus, they began talking about themselves as one body—and not only that—as the very body of Christ. It was like they were each a different part of Christ’s body, working together as one.

As Christ’s body, they could see other people through Christ’s own eyes, and they could see the discarded people begging in the street as Christ’s brothers and sisters, instead of as people who were being punished by God. So they began providing homes for orphaned children, hospices for the sick and disabled, and shelters where aging widows could live in security.

As residents of the Roman Empire, they were supposed to profess that Caesar was a son of the gods, sent by the gods as a savior to bring peace to the world. The able-bodied men were required to join Caesar’s army to conquer more and more of the world’s people and bring them under Caesar’s domination and taxation. But with Jesus’ Spirit on the loose, they were seeing an alternative kingdom taking shape. They could already see the outlines of a social order that wasn’t based on domination of others but on service to others, that wasn’t built by coercion but by trust, that grew not through greed but through generosity, that was reinforced not by punishment but by forgiveness. They were experiencing for themselves that this was how true peace was created. This was how people were lifted out of human sin. This is how every person could grow into their own as a son or daughter of God, and come to reflect in their own being the very Spirit of Christ.

So these early Christians had to make a choice as to which savior they would profess allegiance to—Caesar or Jesus--and which kingdom they would give their lives to—the Empire of Rome or the kingdom of God. As they listened to their heart instead of their fear, their choice was clear. And they discovered an awesome thing. Jesus’ spirit was so present to them that even as they were being beaten, jailed, burned, or thrown to the lions, they could sing hymns, praise God, and pray for their persecutors.

Onlookers had never seen anything like this. They wanted to know this amazing freedom from fear and this irrepressible joy. So the more the Christians were persecuted, the more followers they attracted.

Century after century, Jesus kept calling ordinary people to do the extraordinary—to create a new kind of government of the people, by the people and for the people; to stand, work and fight against slavery until its chains were finally broken; to send children to schools instead of to factories and mines; to provide medicines and education to people in dangerous parts of the world; to shelter Jews from the Nazi Gestapo; to eradicate discrimination against women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities; to create local food pantries to make sure people don’t go hungry; to build decent houses for the poor through Habitat for Humanity; to walk in CROP Walks so that war refugees can get food and tents and people in flooded areas of the Midwest can get blankets and cleanup kits; to give some of their own money to One Great Hour of Sharing so children can be treated for illness instead of dying and people can have clean water so their children don’t get sick as often.

So how can it be that this man named Jesus who was eliminated on a Roman cross in such a distant time and place can still be on the loose in our world today? Andrew Harvey, a prolific author, educator and mystical scholar, ventures an answer to that question. Harvey traces Jesus’ own path to union with God, beginning with his being filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism, through his purging himself of his ego’s attachments and personal desires during his temptation in the wilderness, through his moment-to-moment aligning himself with God’s love, God’s power, God’s wisdom, and God’s will as he poured himself into his ministry and embodied God’s living Spirit to people. Jesus the man was so emptied of himself that he could truthfully say, “I and the Father are one.”

But there was one more level of union with God that awaited him, and it would take the cross to reach it. In his horrifying crucifixion and death, Jesus had to yield to abandonment, rejection, humiliation, excruciating pain, powerlessness, and even the feeling of godforsakenness. Who he had become, what he had accomplished and what he hoped for were totally stripped away on that cross. As every vestige of himself was annihilated, all he could do was love, surrender, and trust, as he moved deeper and deeper into the darkest night of his soul.

Because Jesus released every shred of his mortal, human self in his death, all that was left was pure Spirit, pure Light, pure Love, pure Life. As Andrew Harvey says, in his death, Jesus “Christed himself”—he entered into total union with the full, blazing glory of God, whose Life, Love and Creative Power are the Source and Essence of everything.

So God’s formless, timeless, boundless Self now can be said to have Jesus’ face on it. God wears the face of someone we can know and trust as our brother, teacher, guide, and friend. God the Creator, God the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit are one in the ongoing birthing and rebirthing of Creation.¹

And what God and the Christ continually seek to give birth to in our world is a reign of love, truth, reconciliation, shalom, of the truth that sets us free. We could call all of this the work of atonement, which can also be pronounced at-One-ment. God continually seeks to create at-One-ment on every level of reality—within our hearts, within our personal relationships, within our faith communities, within our society, within Creation itself.

But it all begins within ourselves. So let’s start there, because that’s where we all need to start. Jesus’ Spirit is on the loose right here today, and what Jesus wants for you to know today is what he wanted every sinner, every outcast, and every broken person he touched to know—that in spite of who you are, what you’ve done, what you think, or how you feel, God’s love for you is still total, unconditional and eternal. God can only love what God has made—and beneath all your fears, doubts, shame and confusion, there is a precious, eternal soul that was created by God to love, to learn, to grow, to create, to unwrap its gifts, and to find its purpose by serving the world. Much of our world seems hell-bent on keeping us from finding this part of ourself. And a lot of religion has told us we can only be acceptable to God by striving to become what we’re not. But hear the good news. At-One-ment is always available to us by starting right where we are and bringing love into it.

I invite you to try that right now. Bring into your mind whatever it is that seems to be keeping you from feeling at-One-ment or inner peace in your life right now. It could be a regret, a resentment, worry, confusion, doubt, or any “negative” state of mind….Just let the feeling come up and feel what it’s like to carry it….Now bring Jesus’ compassionate face into the picture—the Jesus who befriended prostitutes and tax collectors, the Jesus who calmed the storm, the Jesus who sought out the lost sheep to bring them home, the Jesus who prayed that even those who were crucifying him be forgiven. Let Jesus hold the part of you that feels out of joint in simple, total, non-judging, unconditional love….And then let your spirit join Jesus’ Spirit in holding this part of yourself in that same unconditional love. Allow yourself to love yourself just as you are, because that’s how Jesus loves you. And then listen to whatever love leads you to do, to let go of, to learn, or to embrace.

This is where Christ’s work of at-One-ment always begins. When we are divided against ourselves, love and only love can make us whole.

And Jesus is on the loose in this church, creating a place of love, healing and shalom right here in our midst. We can feel his spirit growing among us whenever we communicate to a stranger, “Welcome home, welcome home. There’s a place for your soul to grow here. There’s plenty of love to share and truth to discover, whether you’re certain or searching, whether you have lots of resources or lots of needs, whether you were practically born in a church or never thought you’d get caught dead inside a church. In Christ we are all one body, and through Christ, we are all in the process of becoming who we most deeply and truly are.”

Jesus is on the loose right here and right now, teaching us the secret to having life in all its abundance and living lives that are tinged with eternity. Jesus is teaching us the fulfillment of living in gratitude instead of greed, the joy of living in generosity instead of self indulgence, the peace of living in understanding instead of judgment, the richness of living in harmony with creation instead of exploitation of it. As we do this, we ourselves are helping God give birth to a new order of love, peace and hope, right here in our community.

By all human reckoning, the little Jesus movement that started in Palestine 2000 years ago should have ended with Jesus’ brutal execution. But it didn’t. Mysteriously, Jesus started showing up in people’s lives. Jesus’ Spirit was on the loose, calling people of every description to follow him still. Jesus continued God’s ongoing work of mending the brokenness within us, healing the divisions between us, and creating a whole new order of love, unity and shalom among us.

How would someone come to believe in such a miracle as this? What if our hearts, our lives, our church, the world we are creating, is all the evidence they would need to see that Jesus is alive, that Christ is risen and is on the loose today?