Dartmouth College - Rollins Chapel
April 16, 2006
Sunrise service - 6:30 AM
Richard R. Crocker, College Chaplain
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this
grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering
produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces
hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Romans
5:1-5
He has been raised; he is not here. Mark 16:6b
On this Easter Day, we must confront two facts. The first is that the story
of Jesus' resurrection - that he died, was buried, and on the third day rose
again - goes against everything we know about death. As far as we know, people
who die stay dead. Yes, people can be resuscitated, but only within minutes
after their heart stops beating. None of us have had the experience of these
women, who went to adorn the body of a dead man and found instead a messenger
of some sort, sitting in the tomb, telling them that the dead man had been
raised. On the face of it the story is incredible. It was incredible then; it
is incredible now. That is one fact.
But the second fact is that for almost 2000 years, many people have believed
the story. Millions of people are gathering in churches throughout the world
today - and there will be more next week when Eastern orthodox Christians
celebrate Easter - and they are greeting each other with the ancient Easter
greeting: "The Lord is risen; the Lord is risen indeed." And they are
singing the Easter hymns with fervor. Millions of people believe it. That too
is a fact. Now, if we want to be critical, as we learn to be at college, we can
say that we do not know that people really believe the story; we know only that
they say they do. And often there is a gap between what people say and what
they actually believe. But let us concede that of all the millions of people
who say they believe the story, there are some who actually, in fact, do
believe it with their whole hearts. Why? For the question at Easter is not,
"why don't more people believe this story?", but rather, "Why
does anyone believe it?" We will not find an answer to that question
chiefly by looking at ancient texts, but at experience.
You see, belief in the resurrection of Christ is not chiefly an intellectual
thing. It is rather an existential thing. People who truly believe in the
resurrection of Christ have not examined all possible theories and settled all
difficult questions. They are not all even particularly smart. And they are
certainly not always good. Belief in the resurrection is not an abstraction;
rather it is anchored in a particular kind of experience. And that experience
always includes suffering.
Isn't it remarkable that Christian faith is strongest, not among people who
have lived in luxury and ease, but among people who have suffered? Isn't it
remarkable that what is perhaps the strongest Christian community in American
history is found among people who experienced slavery here? While we can
probably agree that suffering is a universal part of the human condition, it is
nonetheless true that some of us suffer much more than others. Now don't get me
wrong; I am not saying that suffering in itself produces faith in the
resurrection of Christ. Many people who suffer come to a different faith, or
they conclude that no faith is possible for them. But I am maintaining that, of
the people who believe in the resurrection of Christ - who believe it genuinely
and whole-heartedly, the beginning of faith very often is suffering.
As St. Paul said, when we suffer, we learn to endure. We learn that we can
bear more than we thought we could bear. We learn that our broken hearts do not
necessarily isolate us, but can connect us to others. So endurance of suffering
produces a kind of character. A person who knows no suffering is necessarily
lacking in sympathy, while a person who has suffered can become, through
transformation, genuinely helpful. This is one of the secrets of the success of
alcoholics anonymous. Only a person who has suffered from alcohol addiction can
truly understand what another addict is experiencing. While many experts can
bring skills to the therapeutic process, alcoholics are uniquely successful in
helping other alcoholics transcend their addiction. Suffering produces
endurance, endurance produces character. The character produced by suffering is
not always appealing. People can become hard, isolated, cynical and distrusting
as a result of suffering. Or they can become more genuinely sympathetic and
kind human beings. So far, we are with St. Paul. It's the next step that is
harder. Character produces hope. When we have gained a sympathetic
character, we may either conclude that there is hope beyond suffering, or there
is not. Some people become hopeful and offer that hope to others. Others
despair. The spirit of hope is very different than the spirit of despair, but
each in anchored in the experience of suffering. And when we encounter a spirit
of genuine hopefulness - a spirit that does not deny suffering but grows out of
it, we call that spirit holy.
So while I can not convince anyone this Easter morning to believe the
incredible story, I can testify that an experience of the holy spirit of hope
empowers many people to believe, and perhaps you can become aware of that same
spirit in yourself. I would like to close with three brief stories. The first
two I know are true, because they happened to me. The first is about a man who
was my therapist, a pastoral counselor in New Jersey. As it happened, he had
lung cancer, and after alternating periods of remission and sickness, it became
clear that he would die. My last meeting with him was not in his office but at
his house. He could hardly breathe. even though he was receiving oxygen. It was
clear to us both that this would be our last meeting. As I told him good-bye
and gave him a hug, he spoke to me with difficulty and said, "I am sure we
will see each other again." He said he was sure. I have never forgotten
those words.
The second story occurred recently when I visited William Sloane Coffin at
his home. Many of you know him or know about him - a former CIA agent who
became the chaplain of Yale and leader of civil rights and anti-war and
anti-nuclear weapons movements, perhaps the greatest voice of progressive
Christianity in America in the last fifty years - and a hero to many of us who
want Christian faith to make a difference in the world. He was arrested more
than once, as a freedom rider in Alabama and as a conspirator who aided draft
resisters during Vietnam. Reverend Coffin was seriously ill; he was under
hospice care. Nevertheless, we had an animated and joyous conversation by his
bed-side in his living room. We talked about politics, and the church, and
colleges, and faith. We talked about his relationship with Billy Graham, his
peer, who is also ill, and who has been the greatest voice for conservative
Christianity in the last generation. We talked about confronting death, since I
had been seriously ill and he - was dying. We talked about the death of his son
at age 23 in an automobile accident. I gave him a copy of his latest book,
entitled Letters to a Young Doubter, and asked him to inscribe it for
me. He wrote with difficulty. When I got home and looked at the inscription, I
saw that he had written, "With lots of hope - Bill." (Note: I wrote
these words about Bill Coffin for this sermon on Wednesday afternoon - April 11
- between 1:00 and 2 PM. As I wrote them, struggling, as perhaps you can
tell, I could hear him saying, "Come on, Crocker, tell the people
something hopeful. Enough of this equivocating! On Thursday morning, I learned
that Bill Coffin had died - on Wednesday afternoon about 1:30.)
Finally, I would like to share a story told to me by a colleague named Chuck
Rush. I don't know where he got it, but this is how he tells it:
I am reminded of a story from 1918 in
Russia, when the new Communist Commissars were fanning across the countryside
preaching the gospel of Marx with evangelistic zeal to peasants that had been
steeped in suffering for 10,000 years, steeped in Christianity for 1000 years.
A group of 7,000 peasants were assembled to hear a lecture in one of Moscow's
largest assembly halls. It was entitled "Religion the Opium of the
Masses." The Commissar delivered his speech with great passion and
enthusiasm, imitating the charisma of Lenin. He explained that the science of
dialectical materialism was the true light, which would forever supplant the
legendary mysteries of the Christian religion. He closed by making pointed
reference to what he described as the naïve, childish, ridiculous fable called
the Resurrection of Jesus. The people listened attentively. When he had
finished his lecture, he was very pleased with himself and with his
performance, and in an act of confidence, he invited anyone in that huge
audience that had a question or wanted to say something to respond by coming to
the platform. There was absolute silence in the vast hall. Nobody moved, no one
said anything.
Finally, a 26-year-old priest, just out of
seminary and recently ordained, stepped forward. The commissar looked at him
with scorn and contempt and said "you have two minutes and not a second
more." The priest replied, "I'll only need 5 seconds." He
mounted the platform, surveyed the vast throng of humanity, and in a loud and
defiant voice said "Christ is risen." With that 7000 people spoke as
one person and roared back "He is risen indeed!"[1]
These are all stories of hope - hope so firm that it transcend oppression,
disease, injustice, and death; hope that is acquainted with suffering and comes
to fruition in the affirmation that the Lord is risen indeed. All of these
stories concerns people who have communicated to me a hope based in the belief
of the resurrection of Christ. Other people may have other reasons for hope.
For me, the people who have nurtured and sustained my hope have been Christian.
And that is why I am a Christian too.
Hear finally these two testimonies - this one from St. Paul: "For in
hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what
is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with
patience." (Romans 8:24)
And this one from Bill Coffin, who was also a magnificent classical pianist:
"Of course life after death can no more be proved than disproved.... As a
child in the womb cannot conceive of life with air and light - the very stuff
of our existence - so it is hard for us to conceive of any other life without
the sustaining forces to which we are accustomed. But consider this: If we are
essentially spirit, not flesh; if what is substantial is intangible, if we are
spirits that have bodies and not the other way around, then it makes sense that
just as musicians can abandon their instruments to find others elsewhere, so at
death our spirits leave our bodies and find other forms in which to make new
music. "[2]
For the sign of hope that is Christ's resurrection, for the living Spirit of
hope that God has given us, and for all who have nurtured that spirit in us,
may God be praised, and we be thankful. Amen.
[1]Charles
Rush, Let this Cup Pass from Me, (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2000) p.
88-89.
[2] William Sloane
Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004) p. 170.
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