Raised with Christ

Raised with Christ (Easter Sunday, 2002)

"So if you have been raised with Christ…." Colossians 3:1

In the New Testament resurrection is not something which happened only once, nor is it something which happens only at the end of Time, but it is something which happens for Christians even now. St. Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation." That's resurrection. "The old has passed away, the new has come." It can't be clearer than that. To the Colossians he wrote: "So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is…" In Greek, "you have been raised with" is one word and Paul appears to have made it up, as if we were to say "con-resurrected", which is not a word. That's how close he felt the believer is to the Lord.

Leslie Weatherhead used to say that the Christian life itself is a living fellowship with a risen and living Lord who gives us his "transforming friendship". It is that transforming friendship which is all the "proof" - and I hate to use that word but it is the only word I know - we need for the extraordinary events of that first Easter morn.

This new life is based on that first Easter. This is the central miracle of Christian Faith. There would be no Christian Church at all without this basic miracle. Jesus would have died and been forgotten, that is sure. Unlike the crucifixion, no one actually saw the resurrection, but there can be no doubt that the beaten band of discouraged disciples experienced the presence of the Risen Christ with them. The whole New Testament breathes this conviction. St. Paul had his own encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus and his life was turned around. He preached the resurrection, but he never tried to prove it. The "proof" was in the fact that Christians experienced the Risen Christ in their lives.

The faith of the first Christians was not founded on arguments about the empty tomb, which in itself proved nothing. It was founded on their encounters with the Risen Christ and the new life they found in him.
If we have been raised with Christ this has obvious implications. Paul writes "seek the things that are above." He does not mean being other-worldly. He does mean that we should have about us always the perspective of eternity. For our day I think this means three things.

The first is not to give in to pessimism about the world. The Christian faith is the most realistic faith when it comes to assessing the human situation. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." There are no surprises for a Christian reading the newspaper. We've seen it before and we'll see it again. Man's inhumanity to man, the persistence of evil. It's easy to give in to pessimism. But the message of scripture is of God who despite human sin enters boldly into human history and will not give up on us.

Easter proclaims that though evil may seem for a time to prosper in the end it will not have the last word. "The powers of death have done their worst, but Christ their legions hath dispersed." A Christian who has been truly "raised with Christ" will be realistic about humanity's capacity for sin and evil but still trust in the power of God to overcome it.

Right now we are thinking of the terrible situation in the Middle East. On both sides the worst seems to be triumphing over the best, voices of moderation seem stifled, and the Oslo peace accords seem dead in the water. And all of this is swirling around where the first Easter took place.

Jimmy Carter was instrumental in bringing about the historic settlement between Egypt and Israel. The famous photo of him between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat tells the story. Jimmy Carter, as everyone knows, is probably the most believing Christian who ever became president in our times. After his presidency he set up the Carter Center to work on conflict resolution. There are 15 principles for peacemakers and the 15th is "Never despair, even when the situation seems hopeless."

That must come from a person who has truly been "raised with Christ".

Being "raised with Christ" not only is about our outlook on the future of the world but it also has meaning for us individually. Being a "raised with Christ" Christian means that we know through the power of the resurrection that our sins are forgiven, the past is past, there is no need to go on over and over with "should-have-beens" and "might-have-beens" but to go forward. The angel told the disciples, "he is not here, he is gone on ahead of you to Galilee". Gone on ahead of you. The whole idea of justification by faith is forward looking, to the future.

We are opened up to a new future, each of us, by the assurance that Christ died for us, that in his death he overcame the powers of sin and death, and we have forgiveness and new life in him. When he wrote to the Galatians Paul talked about this as "freedom".

James McCord was president of Princeton seminary for many years. He wrote that the drama of Easter is the overwhelming awareness of God coursing through our struggles. Our struggles to build a home, to raise a family, to put food on the table, to survive economic set backs. God is not "out there" and aloof but right here with us as we are "raised with Christ" and he is as close to us as that one word in Greek can represent - "con-resurrected". It is the miracle of God's grace that enables us each one to rise above the struggles of today and to make all things new.

You may remember five years ago a young woman named Nicole Barrett who was living then in Maspeth was attacked on Madison Avenue by a stranger who smashed a six-pound paving stone into her head. Moments before the attack she had been absorbed in the pleasures of a new haircut and a new coat and her new life in the city after her move from a small town in Texas. In a moment her skull and her life were shattered.

She was left all but dead. Somehow, miraculously, she came through a series of operations at Bellevue and even took the stand to testify against her attacker. A year later she told a reporter in Texas, "I'm not going to spend my life agonizing over the bad things that happen. I will always think positive, always look forward. Who is going to try to tell me I can't live? Or that I have to be sick? Don't tell me that I can't get out of bed."

That is the kind of spirit which goes with the first Easter. It is the same spirit we have seen come to the fore in this country since 9/11. It is a spirit which will not be defeated by bad events and will look forward.

Finally, if we have been raised with Christ we know that this life is not all there is. There is something more and far greater to come. The New Testament speaks of the new life we have now in Christ as a "foretaste" or "down-payment", a first-fruits of the final glory which is to come. And this means that physical death has absolutely lost its sting, it is a transitional stage for what is to come.

This is what is meant by the words of Jesus, "No one who is alive and has faith in me shall ever die." Of course, we have to pay our debt to nature, but if this is all there is, as St. Paul said, then we of all people are most to be pitied. But he roundly affirms that what is sown a physical body will be raised a spiritual body, something entirely new but recognizably a continuation of our individuality, just as the resurrection appearances of Jesus show him as the Lord but also different. "I am persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," wrote Paul to the Romans.

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is….