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March 23, 2008
More Than Lima Beans!
John 20: 11-18
“Why does the Gospel look to so many like a bowl of lima beans?” Asks author, Mark Labberton, for those who find the grace and truth of Jesus Christ convincing and compelling, such a question may seem absurd, if not blasphemous. But compared to the spiciness of the cultural concoctions that swirl around us in our globalized world, Jesus can seem like bland fare. Many have the impression that the gospel is small, smooth, and tasteless….that the fruit of the vine is just lima beans !” 1
I have been reading all kinds of articles and several books these past weeks of Lent as I have been dusting off my own ideas of what exactly is going on at the heart of the Easter faith that we all proclaim as Christians. In preparation for the Lenten study which I taught about Jesus the Messiah, I have been trying to get a fix on the orthodox view of who Jesus was and who Jesus is to us today…to me.
A theme which has struck me again and again is what this writer in the Evangelical Christian journal, Christianity Today, calls “The Lima Bean Gospel.” His point is that for a long time the church has been about a process of seeking the “lowest common denominator” as the faith of the church has been simplified and more than that, narrowed as if to protect it from any new ideas that might somehow pollute the truth or put too much pepper in the stew.
The thing is, the good news is so much bigger than we make it out to be. There were two forbidden fruit trees in the Garden of Eden, which you may or may not recall. One of them of course was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the fruit of which, the Lord commanded that Adam and Eve should never eat. The second tree, which is referenced at the very end of the story is the tree of life, the fruit of which brings immortality. It is that tree that I suppose many of us would associate with Easter. For if asked, what is Easter all about, “eternal life” would most likely be the answer you would hear most often…with “eternal life” being defined as “life after death.”
I noticed on a website the other day that New Scientist magazine is offering a cool prize — an extremely cool one — minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. The magazine has been revamped, and to promote its fresh look, the publication is offering readers a prize “to die for:” cryogenic treatment, which some people hope will give them new life after death.
The winner will not be able to collect the award until death, of course, and at that point he or she will chill out in a vat of liquid nitrogen at The Cryonics Institute of Michigan . If and when medical technology allows, the winner will be revived to live again. They hope….
Is that really what this Easter morning is really about? Immortality? It is the exact same thing as the grand prize of life in the deep freeze – the culmination of a frantic search for never-ending life, life after death. “God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever should believe in him would have eternal life…” You have heard that verse, John 3:16 a few times I would imagine. (If you look carefully, at lots of different sports events which are broadcast on television, you will see someone in the end zone or underneath the boards at a basketball game or behind the goal in the hockey rink with a sign that says just that, “John 3:16.”) What does it mean, it means that Jesus died for my sins so that I could go heaven! That's what it means at least to a lot of people and that is all.
I just find it hard to accept one who spoke of such radical love of neighbor and risked so much in his confrontation of the authorities of his day was all about getting to heaven. “Is it hard to explain why many look at the church and see a small bowl of lima beans? Where is the evidence that the reality is otherwise, that the Gospel really matters?” 2
Peter Steinfels, who writes a religion column for the New York Times ran story recently that points out that resurrection is often misunderstood, not only by Christians but by Jews as well, at least as when popular conceptions that are a part of the “narrowed down” scope of some current theology is compared with the history and written traditions of both of these faiths. 3
First of all, the article takes note of a recently published book from two members of the faculty at Harvard that argues that “resurrection” – the conviction that God will raise the dead at the end of time is central to both Jewish and Christian traditions…and was indeed the predominant understanding of the Judaism which was current during Jesus life. Remember, Martha the sister of Lazarus says, “I know that my brother will rise at the end of time with the resurrection of the dead.”
The tomb was empty, it surely means more than “life after death” or it would not have been so shocking to those who heard the rumors. To some, such as the Apostle Paul, it would later become an indication that the end time was indeed eminent, and that God would soon exercise holy judgment against the unrighteous. To others, it meant that God had overturned the power of the authorities that that caused Jesus to be killed in such an awful way. It is the ultimate vindication of the Way of Jesus versus the way of the religious with whom Jesus had encounters and conflicts continually during his ministry.
The disciples in John's version of Easter basically come and look and go away, not with exaltation, but with a sense of one more defeat – now they have taken his body too! To Mary Magdalene, at least at first, the empty tomb meant much the same thing that something had been done to the body of the teacher from whom she had experienced so much love.
Mary Magdalene had been possessed by demons – we don't know what they were or what kind of hell they had put her through, what we do know is that Jesus healed her. Perhaps it was because, through Jesus healing words, she had already traveled back to life from such a dark and insidious place herself, she was not willing to just go away. When the stranger in the garden, the one she thought was the gardener asked her, “Whom do you seek?” she did not at first recognize him. But the question engaged her – what was she looking for? “Tell me, where have they laid my Lord?” When the stranger said her name she knew him.
As someone has put it, “She, like we, can't quite yet take hold of that resurrected person in the middle of the story. She, like we, couldn't hold him there, keep him there. Life goes on, death continues to stalk us, and we are left with many tears that have not yet been dried from our eyes. But we do have a hope, a living hope. And that has to be enough…More than enough.” 4
As I looked over the back of the Easter Bulletin this morning and saw the names of my parents, now both gone – but well remembered, I just want to affirm how much it means to me to know that there is something more after death – that they are indeed watching over me. I believe this and believe in some way, in God's graceful plan for life, we will be reunited. I know that. But Easter, my point this morning is that the empty tomb, the risen Christ, Easter is about more than that.
He was dead to her, to the disciples, to the world, but now he is alive. “I have seen the Lord!” That means that Jesus is alive to more than one historical place and time, he is alive for all time...for our time, as well. What Mary realized in the middle of being questioned by the stranger, is that gift of hope which Jesus offered time and time again. It was the gift that brought her out of the turmoil of her demonized life. It was in the questions that hope is offered, because it implies a choice. Jesus was a man of questions.
“What is it I can do for you?” Blind Bartimaeus had been screaming at Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” “What is it I can do for you?” This was an offer of life, not later, but now. Hope...the offer of options, of transformation in the moment...resurrection hope is in the questions.
The volunteer tutor was asked to visit a nine-year-old in a large city hospital. She took the boy's name and room number and was told by the boy's teacher that they were studying nouns and adverbs in class. It wasn't until the tutor got to the boy's room that she realized the boy was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a nine-year-old so horribly burned and in such great pain. She felt she couldn't just turn and leave, so gathered her courage and entered the room.
"Hi, I'm the hospital teacher," she stammered. "Your teacher asked me to help you with nouns and adverbs." And, clumsily, she launched into the lesson, asking one grammar question after another..
The next morning a nurse called the tutor. "What did you do to that boy?" The tutor immediately began a tearful apology, but the nurse interrupted her.
"No, no, no. You don't understand. We've been very worried about him. But since you were here, he's fighting back , he's responding to treatment. It's as though he's decided to live."
The boy explained that he had given up hope, until the tutor came. "I figured they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a kid who's dying, would they? " 5 That hope brought radical transformation.
Jesus is present in those dark places as a sign of hope. As Jurgen Moltmann argues in his classic Theology of Hope , resurrection hope proves its power "in contradiction to our present experience of suffering, evil, and death." 6 Suffering, evil and death are the norm in a world where the dead stay dead. Resurrection gives hope of triumph over tragedy, of a radical transformation of this dying world.
Hope is born in not knowing where you are going but knowing who is leading the way, and that the way leads to life, no matter what obstacles and what the apparent cost. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be” said Shakespeare. The symbolic meaning of the resurrection is to die to one's smaller self – the lima beanie self and then discover one's larger self…give up the “lima beans” and realize the savory stew of options that hope makes possible.
Jesus made the way for us, from empty tomb out onto the road of life and asks us to join him there, now! Not later. Alleluia, he is risen! He is alive. Amen.
1Mark Labberton, “The Lima Bean Gospel” Christianity Today, January 2008, pp 32-36
2 Ibid, page 34
3Peter Steinfels, “Beliefs” NY Times, 15 March,2008
4 The Center for Excellence in preaching, Calvin College Website
5 Story told by Dr. Mickey Anders, First Christian Church, Pikeville, Kentucky, sermon for April 16, 2006, found on the web
6"Hope in the active voice," Connections, Solemnity of Christ the King, Nov. 1998 .
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