Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

“Christ is risen from the grave, trampling down death by death and on those in the tomb bestowing life.” (a stanza of religious poetry, a verse from Jerusalem)

In the church calendar, the Sunday after Easter is traditionally known as Low Sunday to differentiate it from the “High Feast” Easter.  However, in most churches in North America, Low Sunday can also refer to the low church attendance on this day, back to business as usual, a normal routine after the Easter Rush.  I am happy to see that this is not the case here at Westminister Presbyterian Church.

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 As we read the verses in the Gospel lesson for today, we are reminded once again that at Easter, the church itself rises up.  The first disciples receive the Spirit and are given new life, not in any kind of triumphalistic sense, but in the sense that they learn what it means to live again in the light of the resurrection.  At the end of the road, they discover that there is a new beginning.

We confess in the Apostle’s Creed our belief in the resurrection of the body.   The rising up of the Church as the Body of Christ is the best way I can think of that describes that experience.  The rising of the church, the resurrection of the Christian community, has been time and again been an experience that we have witnessed in the Church ecumenical.

I spent more than twenty years of my life living and working with the Church in the PRC, where almost all Christians refer to their experience since the late 1970s as a resurrection.  Before that time, there were no churches open in China, and Christians suffered bitter persecution during the infamous Cultural Revolution era (1966 – 1976). But in the late 1970s, things began to change.  In many Chinese cities, the churches were reopened for the first time on Easter day in 1978.  In Shanghai, Christian leaders were informed by the authorities only a few weeks before Easter that they could again hold services of worship. The government no doubt thought that very few would show up, and many pastors were themselves unsure of what would happen.  They didn’t have access to the television or the media to make an announcement, and they didn’t have the funds to get the churches ready.  Yet the news spread by word of mouth.

One older pastor related his experience to me. Together with a few others, he cleaned the Church and they made ready for Easter day.  They had few Bibles, and no hymnals, but many knew some older hymns by heart, and many more had memorized large sections of the Bible.  This sustained them during their years of suffering.  But how many people world come to the service?  Would they be afraid to show up?  After all, there would be police outside the building to keep order and see what was going on, and this might discourage people from coming to church.  Rev. Shi went to the church very early on Easter morning, around 4:00 am, to get ready.  To his great surprise, there was already a line of people stretching all around the church.  Many had been waiting for several hours, and when the doors of the church opened at 6:00, the building was soon packed. Chairs had to be brought in from neighboring houses.  Many people stood in the aisles, and even the courtyard was full.  The people wanted to practice hymns before the service and hear the Bible read at dictation speed so that they could copy down the verses.  Many young people were worshipping in church for the first time, and women and men from the older generation had tears in their eyes as they saw friends they had not seen for twenty years.  It was Easter, and the church had risen up.

 The story in China since that time has been nothing short of miraculous.  The church has been growing there faster than any country on earth over the last 25 years.   7-8 new churches a day; more than 32 million Bibles have been printed; 18 Bible colleges and seminaries have been opened or reopened.  This is truly a resurrection experience.  The church is still facing enormous problems, but it has been raised.

The Gospel verses which we have read for today have special meaning for Chinese Christians.  The first 20 chapters of John were not written for a particular church, but for non-Christians, quite possibly in the city of Alexandria. The final verses in Chapter 20 were probably the end of the Gospel as it was originally composed. You can see a hint of the original intended readership in the last verse of Chapter 20 which was read just now:  “But these (verses) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing in him you may have life in his name.” The form of the Greek verb which here is translated as “come to believe” (pisteusete) suggests a non-Christian audience.  (Other ancient versions (and you can see this as footnote n if you consult your NRSV pew Bibles) read “continue to believe” which is a later change, one suggesting a Christian readership.)  In other words, the original words of John have a missionary significance; they were written for people who were then at the margins of the church and the Christ experience.

All four Gospels, and indeed the New Testament as a whole, may be read as missionary documents, written for a church on the move, a church in the act of becoming.  The New Testament does not advance carefully thought out and well-researched theological positions; it is written, as it were, on the run and in response to particular and urgent questions, which were being raised in the Church.  Who is Jesus Christ?  Was he raised from the dead?  How do we relate to the synagogue?  How should we treat new believers?  The Gospel of John is itself a testimony to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that people might come to believe that he was the Messiah.

As with the Gospel, so with the church itself, including the church in Tiburon.  The church is not an organization for Christians, much less a cozy community of like-minded individuals who happen to believe in Jesus Christ, or who want a place to send their children to Sunday School.  William Temple’s famous phrase says it best:  “The Christian Church is the only organization on earth, which exists for those who are not its members.”  In other words, the church exists for the mission of those beyond its walls.

This means that the church is a community that is sent out to live out God’s mission in the world.  This is what Jesus is telling his disciples in today’s lesson:

“Peace be with you.  As the Father sent me, so I send you.  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

A church, any church, is understood in light of its mission.  Ours is a functional understanding of Christian community.  Mission defines who the Church is for.  Mission defines who the Church is with.  Mission defines who the church is among.  Thus, in the words of Emil Brunner, “The Church exists by mission, as a fire exists by burning.” God sent Christ into the world; likewise, the Church is sent into the world.  Mission involves continuing the ministry begun with Jesus Christ.

This has been forgotten in many churches in the northern hemisphere, but it has not been forgotten by churches in the global south.  Many churches here in the US seem to be embarrassed by mission and the fact that Christians may actually have something to say to the world.  As a result, mission has been marginalized in our mainline churches.  We are in need of a new sense of the resurrection.  Although Christianity is experiencing something of a decline in the Christian West, it is precisely at the margins of church – in Asia, Africa and Latin America -- that the Holy Spirit is today inspiring new initiatives in mission.

Last month, I was attending a mission meeting in Capetown, South Africa, and I had a conversation with my good friend, Nestor Miguez, a New Testament professor and a pastor in the Methodist Church of Argentina.  His father, Jose Miguez-Bonino was one of the pioneers of Liberation Theology.  Liberation Theology has declined in importance in Latin America, and one of the reasons according to Nestor, is that it did not take the religious beliefs of the poor very seriously.  Hence, the popular saying, “When Liberation Theologians took the option for the poor, the poor took an option for Pentecostalism.”  This is not entirely true, but there is something truthful here.  All over the global South, Pentecostal Churches are growing, and they pose a challenge to churches like ours.

In Brazil, for example, the Pentecostals are growing at the expense of the historic Presbyterian (as well as Roman Catholic) churches.  I have been reading some of the testimonies of Brazilian Pentecostals, and they are quite moving.  Many Pentecostals seem to come much closer to the New Testament experience than we do at SFTS.  One of these is Dona Juliana, a poor woman from one of the favelas of Rio de Janiero who, in her own words, gave herself to Jesus and was baptized by the Holy Spirit.  She then plunged herself into full time church work, caring for the sick, visiting the poor and working for justice.  Listen to what she says about some of the other churches she visited:

“I visited other churches, more traditional ones, but they are different.  The pastors speak a lot, but they don’t think about the people.  In my church, the pastors speak with the people.  And many times you go to church with a serious problem in your life, and the preacher speaks directly to your problem.  This has happened with many people.  Jesus gives that gift to them.”(175)

I am not suggesting that we become Pentecostals, but I am saying that we have something to learn from the churches of the poor, whether in China, in Brazil or right here in the Bay Area.  The challenge for the historic Protestant churches like our own is to rediscover our common Christian identity with churches at the margins of our world, churches where people have only recently, “come to believe,” that Christ is the messiah.

We can do this when we engage in mission, when we open ourselves and our churches up to others; both extending and receiving hospitality.  To commit ourselves to mission is to be like the first disciples, sent out in the power of the Holy Spirit.  And thus sent out, the church will once again be risen up, as it was on that first Easter.  AMEN.