'Risen Today': The Resurrection as Good News Now

Thursday 28th February 2008

The lectures were held in The Guildhall, Winchester

Read the transcript of the lecture below, followed by the questions & answers - or click here to go directly to the Q & A transcript.

Transcript of the lecture:

'Risen Today': The Resurrection as Good News Now

The subject for this afternoon is 'Risen Today' and what I want to do is spell out a bit further, in five broad areas, where I think the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus Christ today impacts directly on our lives, on what we want to communicate to people around us, and to the world in general: five dimensions of the Good News that are rooted in the resurrection.

First: to believe that Jesus is risen is to believe that when you've worked it all out, Jesus is the point where human histories converge. But that implies of course that there is such a thing as a human being. To say humanity exists, that there is such a thing as a human being, is to say there is something about being human that is non-negotiable: we are human because God has created us like this and we are human because God has destined us for communion with him through Jesus Christ and whatever human being you meet in any situation whatsoever, there is something absolutely central, non-negotiable about that. There is such a thing as humanity. Because Jesus is Lord, and if all human stories converge on him—if he is, as Browning said in his wonderful poem on the Fourth Gospel, 'the groom to every bride', the one who completes every human life—then there is such a thing as humanity. And that means we have grounds for resisting all those things that get in the way of humanity: all those ways, subtle and unsubtle, that human beings have invented to stop themselves and other people being human beings.

So we begin with that firm pronouncement, that if Jesus is risen, there is a human destiny. Every human life has something about it, distinctive, immoveable, given by God, given in the hope of Christ. And I've always been very taken by those theologians, especially in the Eastern Christian world, who've emphasized that human beings were made with dignity and liberty and glory so that, one day, they would be proper companions for Jesus Christ. Human nature was endowed with all its gifts so that it would one day be a proper vehicle for the transforming work of God the Father. So without underrating the capacity of human beings for destructiveness and for getting their world in a mess, the resurrection imposes on us a very high doctrine of humanity. It tells us not only that God exists, but that we do, and that we have a purpose and a destiny. And if it's true that the resurrection tells us there's never going to be any change in the frame of reference in which God relates to us, that's the kind of conviction that leads people to resist so bravely when they're up against de humanizing or inhuman systems. The people who resist de humanizing tyrannies in our age or in any age, are on the whole people who believe not only in God but in humanity. Not in humanity in a sort of humanistic and optimistic sense but believe that humanity has its dignity and its glory because it's called to communion with God in Jesus Christ.

So there's a first dimension of Good News: if Jesus is risen, human beings really exist, and they exist for a purpose. And there's something about them that can't be taken away by tyranny or convenience, by functionalism or totalitarianism, by the hard totalitarianisms that we've seen so much of in the twentieth century, or by the soft totalitarianism that erodes our sense of what's humanly distinctive in a more comfortable culture. And that also says something about how we approach the Bible. It may sound a slightly odd connection to make: but bear with me for a moment. If this is true, if human beings really exist and they find their destiny and their hope in relation to Jesus, then there is something about that book which conveys to us the reality of Jesus that remains resonant and real for any and all kinds of human being. There's something about this book that is fundamentally human as well as divine. And human beings as they read it may expect to find themselves addressed in the depth of their humanity, challenged and enriched. That's a sort of footnote to what I've been saying about human nature at large. It means that wherever we go, with the biblical story in our hands with the vision of Jesus in our eyes, there is a perfectly proper expectation that human beings will resonate with what's being spoken of. They may not quite know how they do it or why, and they may not do it in the ways or at the times or in the contexts where we'd like them to. But we go on in mission, because of that conviction that there is such a thing as the human heart and human destiny. And that these words will find an echo in some way.

I find that quite exciting because there are all sorts of ways of reading the Bible, as you well know, but Christians read the Bible not as a document from history, but as a world into which they enter so that God may meet them. That's what the Bible's there for, and that only makes sense in the light of a resurrection belief. I've argued once or twice in the past that the whole doctrine of Christ's Lordship develops and fleshes itself out in the early Church in the very process of mission. You understand more fully who Jesus is, the more people you try and share him with. Because people recognize him, though they come from wildly diverse backgrounds, they recognize him though their humanity is very diverse, they recognize the humanity they share with him and so open up their own humanity to God. Something similar may apply to how we use the Bible. It does still amaze me (and I speak as no fundamentalist) that the Bible continues to be a book that decisively, critically illuminates the humanity of people from such wildly diverse cultural backgrounds. And whatever the challenges there are about interpreting it in those various backgrounds, it's still that story, those words, which have that effect. I think that's all to do, somehow with the resurrection.

So moving on to the second dimension of Good News: the world really can change. If the resurrection is about that all-important, decisive, central moment around which the whole history of the world pivoted, turned into a new direction; something has happened within history that has altered what is possible. Someone has made an irreversible breakthrough in the definition of humanity, which can never be undone. To believe that the world can change, that God can turn history on its pivot, is to believe in all sorts of human situations that it is possible for things to be different. And I think that's the basis of all the ways in which Christians are regularly and systematically a nuisance to people who want a tidy world. The Roman Empire was, in many ways a very efficient and comprehensive and well-run organization. Unfortunately, it didn't have room for the vision of humanity that the Gospel introduced. And thus Christianity was a major nuisance to the Roman Empire. It was a major nuisance to the Third Reich and a major nuisance to the Soviet Union. It's quite a problem in China, and it's got its moments in the UK too! And it's because of that sense of 'the way things happen to be is not the way they have to be' that Christians go on being tiresome in society, to say 'well, actually it could be that human beings could live into a bigger space, a higher vocation, a greater glory'. One of the wonderful things that Christianity always says to human beings in absolutely any situation is 'there's more to you than you think'. That's not to buy into the awful, sentimental, modern nonsense about 'you can be anything you want to be' (actually, you can't). It does say 'the way things are is not the way things are destined to be. Under God, with wisdom, discernment and courage, you can find out what changes are possible, because the world can change'. God can be known and served: human beings can live differently: the body of Christ shows us there are ways of living together as human beings that are not tribal, violent, exclusive and anxious. That's quite a bit of Good News to be going on with. It's what St Paul talks about when he writes in Galatians 6 about life in the Spirit. It's about that counter-cultural reality which says to the world around 'it doesn't have to be like this, there's more to it than that.' It's living at odds with the world's systems of rivalries, the world's systems of mutual exclusion and fear. And all of that is about living really, truly and fully in God's future, beginning now. God can rule now, already, the Kingdom has drawn near, is at hand, round the corner, on the doorstep.

St Augustine, when he wrote his great treatise on the City of God, said that the Kingdom of God was the lives of the Saints. Holy people show what it's like for God to rule. And I find that a very illuminating way of thinking about the Saints, that they're where the Kingdom of God is and you can name your own saints, not just the ones in the windows or the calendar, but the people you know, who have shown the Kingdom, the possibility of things being different. There is such a thing as humanity. Human history can change. God can rule here and now.

But it's not just about here and now, and here's the third dimension of Good News. In the sort of perspective we've been outlining, death is real and yet conquerable. You don't have to deny the reality of death, in fact there couldn't be anything worse than denying the reality of death, because that is encouraging people to live out a lie. What you can say is that God is never at the end of his resources when we are at the end of ours. When we face death, God says 'I'm on the far side of it', and a relationship with God is therefore not exhausted by the set of horizons we're use to here and now. Eternal life, not just life after death and not just some sort of survival of death. (Christians really ought to be much more unpleasantly critical than they often are of the idea that we survive death. We don't.) We die, and God brings us to life. That, I believe, is the biblical proclamation; it's not that some little bit of it somehow hangs on rather half-heartedly for some indefinite period, but that God re-makes us. And that of course, is ones of the things that enables us to face, honestly, our fear of death and annihilation. I've sometimes said our belief in eternal life and resurrection life with God in heaven doesn't depend so much on what we believe about our humanity, as if there were a little immortal bit of it that hung on, it depends on what we believe about God: that God is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, the God who raises the dead, the God who brings what is from what is not, who brings life out of death. So, that's the third aspect: not a bland proclamation that we can hope for immortality in the general sense of surviving things, but the ability to confront death and the utter reality of the loss and the tragedy involved, knowing that God is greater, and that our horizons, bounded by death, are not God's horizons. And when we've learned to look death in the face, then all kind of other fears and anxieties perhaps fall into perspective. I think that's quite an important aspect of preaching the resurrection.

In addressing our fear of death, it addresses so many others fears as well, because so many of our fears are actually the fear of death, defeat, annihilation, powerlessness, the fear of not being there, not being able to make our presence felt or make our will real. And God through the preaching of the resurrection says to each one of us – as of course Jesus says so often, so firmly in the Gospels – do not be afraid. It is so telling that the words of Jesus after the resurrection to his disciples are, again and again, 'Don't be afraid!' Or elsewhere, 'I have overcome the world', or 'It is I.' And when the very roots of our anxiety and fear are challenged in that way, I think it's part of the process by which we come to be less afraid of one another, of what's different or uncomfortable. When we face what's really other – the person, or situation, culture, philosophy, religion – quite often the anxiety with which we approach it, is an anxiety that perhaps we won't survive the encounter. But, if God has said to us 'don't be afraid, I've overcome the world', well, what is there to be afraid of? It's a big thing to take on board, but I think that fundamental fearlessness that ought to come if we really heard the Gospel of the resurrection begins to affect and dissolve so many other of our fears. It's this absolute sense of rootedness in what God has done that pervades the letters of Paul. It's to do with the confidence that we have that a place has been cleared for us, a place to stand, a place where we belong with Jesus in the presence of God the Father.

The fourth dimension of Good News the resurrection has to say to us is quite a practical one – about our prayer. I think all I've said so far really obliges us to think quite hard and quite freshly about prayer. It's far too easy to fall into the way of thinking of prayer as a sort of 'storming' of heaven, a campaign: somehow we've got to get enough petitions together to make God change his mind; or we've really got to exert a bit of pressure on God to make him do what we want; or even God's a very long way off and we've got to make a lot of noise to attract his attention; and all the various distortions of prayer that are around. (They're nearly all, incidentally, contained in Elijah's rude remarks about the priests of Baal – but that's another story!) If all this is right, if we are being introduced into a new world, the place where Jesus is, then prayer is most deeply 'allowing God to happen in us,' the Spirit bringing Christ alive in us, being in the place where Christ is real, with the Spirit coming into us to bring Christ alive in our own hearts. This is very much what St Paul writes on virtually every page, especially of the Corinthian letters. We enter in the Spirit, into the place of the risen Christ, saying 'Abba, Father'. We let Christ literally 'take place' in us, happen, live in us. And that is one of the roots of silent and contemplative prayer, where in suspending our own concerns, words and fussiness, we let God be in us. We breathe in, deeply, taking the Holy Spirit into body, mind and soul, so that Christ may breathe out. Breathe out and the words 'Abba, Father' say what he has to say, eternally, to God the Father. The practice of silent prayer, with that in mind, I think, rests on the resurrection mystery, that Christ has made a place for us. And I don't think we could make very much sense of the distinctively Christian understanding of contemplation, without that resurrection dimension. There are, of course, plenty of techniques and traditions in the religions of the world that value contemplation or meditation in silence. And from many of them we can learn, and I have learned a huge amount. But for us to make something like Christian sense of it all, I think we need that Trinitarian perspective, grounded in the resurrection. When I come before God in silence, I come before God allowing the Holy Spirit to put Christ's words into my mouth, to let my breath breathed anew by the Spirit, carry the words of Christ, and just let the Trinity be where I am when I pray.

I don't think we could make any sense of the practice, without belief in the resurrection, without the belief that Christ, having passed from death to life, belongs now in God's eternity. As one French theologian put it 'Jesus is tipped over into the eternal life of God'. Standing eternally before God: holding our place there before God, so that where he is there we may be also (John 12).

Prayer does not have to be an attempt to get God's attention, not an action we perform on God all the time, but the action God desires to perform in us to bring us to life. And when people are faced with deep anxieties about their prayer life, it can at times be of the greatest importance to say to them 'prayer is also letting God be God'. And if you're feeling that you're exhausting yourself with the endless effort to concentrate properly, to get from here to there (wherever there is) you may very well need to hear the good news that prayer is also God being God in you, if you let him. It's not simple, or without hard work because letting God be God in you requires you to do a fair amount of spring-cleaning en route. But that's perhaps for another day. The Good News is that prayer is given to us as well as achieved, that prayer is not something we squeeze out with effort, but something that happens when we let God be God. A fine phrase of one Roman Catholic writer is: 'prayer is the mist that God sucks out of our marsh'. But that's perhaps a little negative: I prefer to think of the breathing in and breathing out of the body in prayer as the visible, sacramental image of the Holy Spirit speaking in Christ to the Father – in us.

And then, fifth, our worship too is about God coming to be in our midst, but God also coming to deal with the wholeness of who we are. I spoke of the resurrection of the body and its meaning being at least in part, that all that we are is of interest to God. And so to proclaim the resurrection is to say 'God's purpose is the transfiguration, not the cancellation of history in the material world'. God does not want to rub out what's there so that he can do something better, God is interested in all that we have become as historical and material beings, and that's what he will raise up. Which of course, gives a very serious and very profound theological valuation not just to our bodily and material selves, but to the material world in which we live. Belief in the resurrection has something very significantly to do with how we look at our environment. And I would say with great seriousness that part of the Good News that Christians have to utter and express in a world very anxious about that material environment, is that the matter of this world is God's before it is ours: that it requires our respect because God sees it and thinks it good. And that the affirmation of Jesus' resurrection, the great decisive change in the middle of material history, bears on how we see the material world as a whole. It touches our thoughts about the environment: it bears on climate change and energy usage and carbon footprints and all the rest, which may seem a very long way from Acts 2, and yet is not so far when you think it through. It grounds also the understanding of the Church's worship as sacramental, sacramental life which is not just a sort of magical attitude to things, but the belief that the material things of this world—water and bread and wine—can become precious carriers of the purpose and work of God, when they're brought into relation with the risen Jesus.

The importance, in our Eucharistic liturgy, of calling the Holy Spirit down upon ourselves and upon these material things is that we are actually asking in our eucharistic prayer for God to do some thing resurrection-shaped in the middle of our worship, for him to bring himself to life, as the bread is broken and the wine is shared and as we stretch out our hands and open our mouths. Without going into the immensely complicated details of the history of controversies over the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I would want to say there are two absolutely basic things about Christ's presence in Holy Communion that we need to hold fast to. One is that it is the action of God; the second is that God shows what he means in the things of this world. And in all that there is a resurrection-shaped event going on in Holy Communion. So the resurrection tells us something about how God sees history and matter, the stuff of our ordinary experience; how God is free to transfigure it in relation to Jesus; and how that transfigures our own understanding of our bodies and the environment in which we live, giving us very good reasons for being very suspicious of any Christianity that ignores the value of the body and that ignores the value of the environment – and yet looking not just for affirmation but also for transformation.

And all of this reminds us that the purposes and meanings of God are not just about what goes on in our heads, but about what we do with our bodies. The ethics of both sex and economics are grounded here. What we do with our bodies matters, speaks, communicates. What we do with our possessions matters, speaks, communicates. And that's why the resurrection has a decisive impact on how we think through moral questions. Christian morality is never just 'rule-keeping', it's always about how ourselves, our souls and bodies become signs of who and what God is: signs of faithfulness, generosity, grace and mercy. When my beloved and respected former colleague Oliver O'Donovan wrote his first really major book many years ago, he entitled it Resurrection and Moral Order: and there's a long, very sophisticated argument to say that belief in the resurrection is the foundation of all ethics. I think the Paul of I Corinthians would have understood that very well.

So, in all of that the resurrection appears to us as we preach it today, not simply as an isolated miracle of the past that confirms Jesus' authority – that may be part of it: but the resurrection is that present reality, that climate of belief and experience which orders and organizes the reality of the Church and the contours of our life together, life in the Body of Christ and life in the Spirit of Christ, which are so very much the same thing as St Paul sees it. The resurrection is what prompts into existence that new language that Christians speak, in their words and in their actions. The resurrection is the ground of how we make sense in what we do as much as in what we say.

When we preach the resurrection today, are these the things we preach? We can rightly, I think, preach that Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father in the power of the Spirit, as the Scriptures say. We can rightly preach that this event truly happened and made a difference. But I think we do need to spell out that difference as fully and as freely as we can, to spell it out in terms to address a culture in which, over the last century, various kinds of totalitarianism have pretended humanity is negotiable. The Gospel of the resurrection preaches into that and against that. Humanity is not negotiable. We preach into those places and environments of despair, where people don't believe that change is possible and don't believe that God's rule can already be real in the hearts and the lives of human beings. We preach into an environment where people assume we're moving towards a death that is simply the end of any story, and our relation with God – if we have one – is just in this life. We preach into and we preach against a view of prayer that is anxious, fearful, and takes for granted God is a long way off. We preach into and against an environment in which the body, the material world is underrated and abused. Is that what our sermons are going to be about, this Easter Sunday? Well I rather hope that some of that might creep in somewhere, because I think our world, for all those reasons, desperately needs the Good News of the resurrection, needs to hear the liberating further dimension that the Gospel establishes for us.

But if we stop preaching that, and if we stop talking about the resurrection, I think that (as I suggested earlier) the long term result is not just that we have tactfully removed a rather awkward bit of Christian belief. You remember (those of you who like me love Fawlty Towers) the moment where Mr Stubbs comes in to see the work that Mr O'Reilly has done on the fabric of the hotel building, and looks up to discover that Mr O'Reilly has put in a little wooden partition in one place and says 'My God, that's a supporting wall!' Well I feel like that about the resurrection really – removing the resurrection is an O'Reilly-type job in Christian theology: 'That's a supporting wall!' I want to say, and all sorts of things start falling off if it's not there. It leaves us with no real Christology; leaves us with not a great deal of mission impulse and mission confidence that what we're actually talking about is something capable of transforming any human situation; leaves us with a very thin and diminished version of what the Church really is turning it all too readily into a human association of people who happen to like each other or agree with each other – which as we know is not what the Church is really like! It leaves us very little in ethics except a set of rules. It doesn't have that sense that our mortal selves need to become radiant and potent with the sense of conveying God's meanings – that's what ethics is about. And sadly there are a few signs in our day that the Church has come quite close to forgetting what the resurrection truly is, and how radical the proclamation can be.

But rather than fight all the various tendencies piecemeal in the Church that might lead us to think this, rather than just fighting the thinning out of ethics, the misunderstandings of the nature of the Church, and the drying up of the mission impulse, let's once in a while get right back to the centre of it and restore something of what the initial burst, explosion, of resurrection faith is all about. Let's try to be once again this Easter—and please God every Easter, not to say every Sunday or every day—amazed and even, like the women at the tomb, frightened by the scope of the proclamation put before us – the proclamation that Christ is risen indeed, and risen today.

© Rowan Williams 2008

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