Eyewitness to Hope
Eyewitness to Hope
The reason that priests bow at the Sanctus is what you’ve heard from Isaiah this morning. When we sing, we sing the song of the angels: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts...” So as Isaiah confessed his unworthiness before the divine presence, so we priests bow as sign of our unworthiness. Then, like Isaiah, we are quick to say, “Here am I; send me!” Perhaps too quick. Wait, what should I say — Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand? “Then I said, ‘How long, O Lord?’ And he said: ‘Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate...The holy seed is its stump.’”
There are consequences to years of economic exploitation and hedonistic pleasure-seeking. Both were forms of idolatry according to the prophet. But what hadn’t been revealed to Isaiah was the possibility that there might be more than a stump left, which brings us to today’s portion of the 15th chapter of St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians.
Why are we here? We greatly value the beauty of our worship, the joy of our fellowship, the sense of purpose in our outreach and advocacy for peace and justice; and occasionally we might argue about some of those things. But why come together every Sunday for all these things? There are service organizations that do outreach and advocacy without any mention of God. There are groups of friends who share common interests without God getting in the way. There are and have been artists who have given us works of such beauty that we felt moved in ways that might be called spiritual. None of these require that we sign on every Sunday to a proposition that, if made about anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth, we would question the sanity of the proposer.
And yet, here are we, about to repeat, “On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.” How is this possible? Why do I believe this, why do you believe this? For me, no one has answered that existential question better than St. Paul in today’s reading from the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians.
“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Another word for “handing on” is tradition. The bishops of the Second Vatican Council called it the “living witness of Tradition.” In The Episcopal Church, you might have heard of the three-legged stool: scripture, tradition, reason, as our basis of authority for discerning what is true or untrue according to our faith. That metaphor is taken from the Elizabethan era theologian Richard Hooker. He himself did not use that metaphor; a more accurate metaphor would be a tricycle, with scripture as the biggest and most important wheel, with tradition and reason providing balance.
Hooker was clear that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and contain all things necessary to salvation. But arguing against the radical Puritans of his time who wanted to purge the Anglican Church of anything that smacked of Catholicism, like Tradition, Hooker pointed out that the only way we know which writings about God and Jesus were to be considered holy, was that some bishops got together at Nicaea in modern day Turkey in 325 (1700 years ago this May) and decided which of those writings were consistent with what had been “handed on” to them, and what they had “received” going back to Paul. So, while Holy Scripture itself is our authority knowing the truth, Hooker insisted, Scripture’s authority rested on that process of handing on we call Tradition.
And what had been handed on to Paul and what had he received “of first importance?” That Jesus of Nazareth had died, that his body had been buried like any other corpse, and that corpse had been raised from death. Not included in today’s reading is Paul’s proclamation that not just Jesus, but all who believe in him will share in the “resurrection of the dead,” literally the “raising of the corpses.” In all our struggles, setbacks, failures, defeats, this is what we look for, the resurrection of the dead. No great work of art, no human organization, can promise anything like this.
But how can Paul promise this? “And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” Cephas is the Greek word for “rock,” as opposed to the Latin petros. Paul was the last of over 500 persons who saw a man who had been a corpse alive. And the same process of Tradition by which their testimony has been handed down testifies that many of them died rather than deny what they had seen.
This is what the Vatican II bishops called the living witness of tradition. Over 500 people testified to what they had seen, however improbable, and handed on that eyewitness testimony to the next generation. And when the next generation received that testimony into their hearts and minds as Paul “received” that testimony, then they became witnesses who handed on that testimony to the next generation, and so on, and so on. If a generation is about 25 years, we’re now in the eightieth generation of witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Less than 100, eighty generations isn’t that long ago. Eternal cites have been conquered. Empires have come and gone. Great men and women have lived, and died. But the testimony of resurrection has been handed on and received, and outlived all of those great men and empires. This is the only testimony worthy of our hope, a hope that Paul expresses later, which isn’t just a hope, but a vision of the future:
“See, I will tell you a mystery: we shall not all die, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, for this corruptible nature must put on incorruptibility, this mortal nature put on immortality. And when this corruptible nature has put on incorruptibility, and this mortal nature has put on immortality, then will the written word occur: Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?”
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany
The Rev. David Kendrick
Feb 9 2025