Sermon Tone Analysis

*I.*     *The 3-Days*

Between Good Friday and Easter there occurs a break, a waiting period, of three days.

Theology must remain silent about these three days, for they represent the reversal that is the fundamental mystery of God—the turn or reversal from death to life, from defeat to victory, from suffering to joy.

The God of and in Jesus Christ lives through and sustains the process of differentiation brought on by death and reunification brought on by the overcoming power of the freedom of love; God does not come to a halt at the moment of anguished death but goes on, brings life out of death, creates anew out of what is spent and broken.

God is an inexhaustible source of creative transformation.

But how God does this remains the fundamental mystery about God.

So theology, our God talk, must remains silent in the interval between Good Friday and Easter.

In the midst of suffering, defeat, despair, discouragement, we somehow find the resources to go on, to confront the challenges of life anew, to become engaged in the process of creative transformation, which is the divine process.

This is the mystery of the resurrection—and of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

*II.*

*I think them old slaves were able to grab hold to this mystery.*

You see it is impossible to understand fully the significance of eschatology in African American religious experience without attention to its role in the freedom struggle of black people.

Eschatology refers to the consummation and rectification of history and the persistence of hope.

The vision of a new order was indispensable to Africans languishing in the foul embrace of slavery because it kept the fires of freedom burning in their hearts.

Yet they were not content to claim solely an inner freedom.

The idea of the reign of God or the Promised Land compelled them to proclaim and approximate it in their individual and collective existence.

These old slaves some how understood  this mystery surrounding the resurrection and immortality.

* *

*III.*

*We can hear and understanding of this mystery of resurrection and immortality in the writings of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.*

Reverend Dr. King in one of his graduate papers talked about "The Christian Faith in the Immortal Life."

In that paper he talked about how wide-spread doubt of immortality impacted his day.

How multitudes of people, even religious people, had lost the old, unquestioning faith in a life after death.

Even where the fact is {not} denied, it is no longer confidently affirmed.

The reasons he citied for the wide-spread doubt in immortality in his day was due to the Darwinian discovery concerning evolutionary origin of man;—  He cited the fact that men had gathered new hopes of racial progress in their day, and at their best are increasingly inclined to sink their individual prospects in their expectation for humanity;— and finally, he cited that the minds of men have been so preoccupied with the fascinating advances of this modern age that interest has been totally lost in anything beyond the grave.

*IV**.*

*How do we recover the link between resurrection and immortality?*

How do we recover lost faith in immortality?

Well one of the things which Martin Luther King pointed too is that this life must make a contribution to faith in immortality.

That is, if we are to make belief in immortality again a living issue to those who for the moment have it, we must begin by making them feel that life here is so significant that it deserves to go on.

Men will recover faith in immortality when they have recovered faith in life.

*A.*

*We do this first by acknowledging the fact that *

*      *the doctrine of immortality and resurrection link to it has been problematic in the history of Christian thought.

The notion of eternal life has been critiqued as "egoism" among the dominant classes and as an "opiate" among the dispossessed.

Despite the abuses, the personal dimension of hope suggests that only those who truly value life and its beauty can fully appreciate the significance of resurrection.

This means that pessimism is incompatible with belief in resurrection.

Resurrection does not primarily refer to a sensationalist recomposition of decaying flesh, because, as African traditional thought suggests, we are more than flesh.

The body is the unity of spirit and flesh.

Resurrection, in black religious experience, points to the survival of the personality beyond death, and one's continuing existence in the presence of God and the company of saints.

Only those who know what death is can know what the resurrection means.

Only those who "die in Christ" can experience the joy of eternal life in Christ.

This means that escape into materialism or the cheating of nature and the aging process beyond reasonable measures are incompatible with belief in resurrection.

*B**.*

*We also recover it by remembering those who have help our belief in immortality.*

There are some folks who makes it easy to believe in immortality.

If we think about it we know some folks who help to prop up our faith in immortality, like:

 

1.

Significant relative (My grandfather, my mother)

2.       Those moral and ethical leaders like a Dr. Martin Luther King or a Mohammad K 

3.

Jesus Christ

*V**.*

*There is two ways to interpret the resurrection (Conclusion)*

The main reason for the Christian's reason for believing in immortality is the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus resurrection is our proof of immortality.

Christian belief in immortality seems to have began with the resurrection of Jesus.

Of course there are two ways to interpret the resurrection.

*A.*

*Physical resurrection*

*1.*   *If we was to look at the* English word "resurrection" we would see that it lacks the apocalyptic overtones of awakening from the sleep of death; rather its Latin root suggests something like "the surging forth again of life out of death."

It captures precisely the sense of "new birth" or "rebirth" found in the Fourth Gospel.

It is at the heart of what Christians mean by redemption.

The new life in question is transformed, faithful, liberated life in which the alienation and oppression of our corporate existence is being healed; life in which the broken faith at the heart of sin is being reconstructed.

*2.

**A physical interpretation of resurrection can be seen in the Christian perspective of Salvation History.

Cornel  West argues: *Christian claim that "Jesus arose from the dead" or that Jesus is "the firstborn from the dead" is a proclamation of a divine miracle of creation in that God has called back to life a new creature from the old, a new creation from the old, a new history from the old.

In this sense, the resurrection claim essentially refers to the inauguration of a new future, a future that promises redemption and deliverance.

The resurrection claim should mean to us that Jesus' victory over death ushered in a new age, an age in which the almighty power of God is already fulfilled but not yet consummated, and age in which death is conquered but not yet abolished.

This new age is an interim period in which this divine power in the form of the Holy Spirit is at work among us.

In this interim period, this Holy Spirit can be understood as the Reality of Jesus Christ to be existentially appropriated by fallen human beings for life sustenance, self-formation, self-maturation and societal transformation.

The significance of the resurrection claim within "true" Christian descriptions of the self, world and God is that, despite how tragic and hopeless present situations and circumstances appear to be, there is a God who sits high and looks low, a God who came into this filthy, fallen world in the form of a common peasant in order to commence a new epoch, an epoch in which Easter focuses our attention on the decisive victory of Jesus Christ and hence the possibility of our victory over our creaturehood, the old creation and this old world, with its history of oppression and exploitation.

So to be a Christian is to have a joyful attitude toward the resurrection claim, to stake one's life on it and to rest one's hope upon its promise-the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

*B**.*

*There is a spiritual interpretation of this resurrection*

*1.*   *Preaching - is spiritual (Conclusion)*

Finally, my brothers and sisters as I come to a close allow me to paraphrase in echoing Paul in the 15th Chapter of 2 Corinthians that engages the debate about the resurrection.

Why invest your life in trying to prop up others belief in resurrection or immortality?

What value then--- was there in fighting against the injustice of those who have the power, the means and the backing of the majority to make your life miserable or pleasurable?

---Why dream of a beloved community when you know they are just going to cut down the dreamer?

---Why give your life--- fighting against some evil to save a few folks, ---when after you are dead and gone some other evil is going to pop up--- enslaving the very ones you labor to free?

Why talk of a love ethic and nonviolent spirit, when you know that those who come along talking like that don't stay around long and generally die from violent means?

And if we who call our selves Christians are hoping and living for what we can gain down here in this life, ---and if we will never live again after we die, ---then we might as well go and have ourselves a good time: let us eat, drink, and be merry.

You only have one life to live so you might as well do whatever you need to do to get that dream house, that boat, that plane or that position.

Those retirement years you are hoping for are just around the corner, and if concern for the injustice perpetuated on your brother or sister is going to cause you to forfeit your retirement, then you better look the other way.

If in your preaching of the gospel ---your willingness to tell the unpopular truth, ---an allow the Spirit of God ---to use you to prick the heart of people -----------because of their struggle of loyalty to this world and what they say they believe, ----causes you to be silence, censure and scorned.

---Then you better --find your self ---another message ---because you will never have the opportunity ---to pastor that Mega Church and stand before thousand, drive the Lexus and live in that $400 thousand crib, ---and demonstrate to the world ---God's favor on your life --because of your success.

---If that's what your hope in Christ is all about, ---then you better hurry up ---and get with the program--- because death is right around the corner ----and no one knows exactly where it is.

You might as well do like everyone else loving and living for this life.

---Because as they say ---we all are Living to Die some day.

What's the difference?

For tomorrow we die, and that ends everything.

But we know better, don't be fooled, bad company corrupts a good conversation.

---This is what grabs me about this text: ----Is this not what we tell our children.

---Don't you here the father saying, you are my child, and I have counsel you and taught you how to live.

I've loved you, cultivated, nourish, and nurtured you.

You know me, and you know I know you.

I've loved you since conception, from the very beginning, took care of you when you couldn't take care of your self.

Even in your rebellious state, I have been there for you.

So stop acting like you not apart of this family, a part of this body.

Is that not what we tell our children.

*2.*

*The mystery concerning the resurrection is spiritual*

But Paul doesn't stop right there, he say wait a minute; let me show you a mystery of what it means to be a part of this body.

Now you have been wondering whether the dead shall be resurrected ---and have foolishly been asking what kind of body they shall have.