For centuries now the resurrection of Jesus Christ has been the foundation for a theology of personal salvation. Many a Christian has sought the sacrament of baptism, the gold standard of claiming one’s faith in Jesus as Lord and savior, to ensure their place in the eternal heavens. Emperor Constantine, under whom Christianity was first legalized and recognized as a legitimate faith tradition around 350, delayed his own baptism until he lay upon his deathbed reasoning that only then would he not have time to sin thereby rendering the sacrament null and void. The driving force for the institutional church for centuries has been based on the mutually accepted agreement between the church and its followers, which goes something like this. Membership has it benefits, not to mention it insures that you are, as some phrase it, "saved". Whenever I hear this I cannot help but wonder: Saved from what? Being saved does not cover anyone else however, just you. I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard someone lament the fate of a loved one because they haven’t been ‘saved’. It’s every man for himself, as the saying goes. Within this narrow line of reasoning, anyone not baptized would not be welcome in heaven, including newborns. And then there is the problem of those pesky mortal sins, which apparently have the power to trump the benefits of baptism.... and we’re back to Constantine. This is just a minute sampling of historical theologies of the cross. But just because something is historical or even traditional, does not make it right. In fact, what I have just described to you is good theology gone terribly wrong.
In the 300 years before Constantine took up the cause of Christianity, and had the vision of the cross as a sword, and before he build huge basilicas that spoke more of his delusions of grandeur then the Gospel it proclaimed, there was a kinder, simpler Christianity. A Christianity that I think Jesus might have actually felt good about. A Christianity in which membership did not have benefits but was based on convictions that people felt so strongly about they died by the thousands to defend them. These convictions had to do with proclaiming a kingdom that was primarily interested in caring for the poor and the ill, the displaced, prisoners, and the destitute, who were primarily women, widows in particular, and children. They did not confess any creed but relied on the simple tools given to them by the earliest believers: The Holy Scriptures, the Lord’s Prayer, the teaching of the faith and the sacrament of baptism in its most basic form, worship based on lessons from scripture and the sacraments of bread and wine. These Christians worshiped in secret because it was illegal and the penalties were unimaginably horrible. Nonetheless, there were a lot of them, and they were neither quiet nor invisible; so much so that Constantine decided it would be better to legalize the faith in order to bring peace to his kingdom lest it be torn apart from civil unrest. He employed the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy. And it worked. There was peace in Constantinople, but Christianity has never been the same. So it seems to me that there is no better time than Easter morning to separate the goats from the sheep; to be reminded that the faith to which we hold fast is not rooted in doctrines or canon law or complicated theological constructs, nor in the authority of churches we have instituted or the offices that serve them, including the priesthood, but in the saving work of the cross. We have made it very complicated over these last 1700 years. Ironically, our intellectual attempts to fully understand the resurrection and attach concrete meaning to it have made it less accessible. Some of this work is very good and very helpful to lots of people. And some of it is just shameful. So how do we know what to believe?
This is an cartoon from a group called Christians tired of being misrepresented, that has been going around Facebook for a while.
Most Christians don’t want a complicated faith system and I count myself among them. The basic things we need to know about God can be found in the Bible, which can be summarized as the following:
God made us.
God loves us.
God calls us home, repeatedly.
God forgives us, repeatedly.
God speaks to us through many voices, repeatedly.
God provides everything that sustains all life.
God requires: That the love we have for God is all consuming and that we love all of creation just as much, including our neighbor.
God is eternally present and available.
God raised Jesus from the dead as a testament to these truths.
And as Rabbi Hillel says, the rest is commentary.
This is our story. It has withstood the test of time. Christianity might have changed significantly over the decades but human beings, not so much. Perhaps that’s why Christianity, as an institution, often fails to deliver, but the story is still as strong as ever. The story does not compel us to seek after personal salvation, but rather to proclaim the gift of salvation for all of humanity - those who deserve it as much as those who, to us, don't come close. 'Gift' being the key word: it is not a time limited offer, there is no Easter special, it cannot be bought, sold or traded, or even possessed.
When we train new acolytes, we pair them with someone who has been doing it for awhile and tell the new kid: “Just do what they do and you’ll be fine. That’s how I started out in my own faith journey as a young adult. I studied the people in my faith community that I admired for the strength of their faith and the power of their convictions, and I just did what they did until I was ready to do it for myself. I still do this. Many people, of all ages, serve unknowingly as my teachers. One of those people has recently died. But his Christian witness will live on in all the ways he taught me about living out faith. Here are a few things I observed about Bill that are filled with wisdom for the taking: He loved spending Sunday morning in church. He believed that Jesus lived, died, and rose on the third day and that in some mysterious way that made his life fuller and richer. He believed that the sacrament of holy communion was essential to his spiritual health and well-being. He believed in the mystery of the resurrection and felt no particular need to fully understand it or explain it. He believed that praying for others is as good for them as it is for us. He believed that kindness was the first mark of authentic Christianity. He never once told me what he believed, he just lived it. And I'm just going to do what he did.
