Christianity is a Response, Theology is Re-reading
As I reflect on Mark’s resurrection account, it makes me think that for the very first followers of Christ the question was not about a list of beliefs or some cultural identity. Rather their primary question was simple, “how do we respond to the empty tomb?” In fact, the whole New Testament seems to be about many different characters and communities grappling with this one question. That is why the New Testament reads like people trying to figure stuff out in real time, messy as it is with disagreement, letter writing, correction, and so on.
Today, I take comfort in thinking that Christianity is about responding to the empty tomb. It makes room for differing experiences, and unique points of view that must be considered in table fellowship settings, or in councils, but a place of unity amidst the diversity nonetheless. So what is the work of theology? On this Holy Saturday, I am taking more comfort and direction from Fr. John Behr’s The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death. There he writes, “theology begins, rather, with the opening of the scriptures by the risen Lord, so that his disciples can see how they all speak of him and the necessity of his Passion, and so be prepared to share the meal to which he invites them, when he is recognized and disappears from sight (Lk 24.27-32), creating in them a desire for the Coming One. It is based on Peter’s acknowledgement that he had betrayed Christ, that he was complicit in his death, but is nevertheless, and as a forgiven sinner, called to be an apostle, proclaiming the forgiveness of Christ, his mercy and his love—a new creation (Behr, 141-12).”
I know by quoting Behr I am skipping past Holy Saturday to a Resurrection narrative. But it is appealing to think about, considering that one reason I write in this space is that it serves as a laboratory for thinking, preaching, and leading in an age of increasing secularity and church decline. Yes, I think one faithful NT understanding of Christianity is connected to “responding to the empty tomb” and I think it is also faithful to think that theology begins re-reading the scriptures in light of the empty tomb, but I also think these tonal notes make sense to a population that is not interested in the “institutionality” of church or anything else. Both are about relational practices, and both imply table fellowship. Neither are reducible to dogma, or tradition, but the real living experience of a church alive responding, discussing, reading and re-reading, and thus making new sense of something one could scarcely dare to imagine—death turned inside out.
Further, for Behr, theology begins with re-reading scriptures through Jesus in preparation for the Eucharistic meal or table fellowship. The driving thread here is not a statement of doctrine or proposition, but a practice—Eucharist. Christians are indeed people who practice a meal together. And I believe that NONES, the disaffiliated, people fed up with church abuse and hypocrisy will be more winsomely called not to an institution, but to a practice. On this Holy Saturday I am asking myself how my preaching can lead to a response to an empty tomb, a re-reading of scripture, and drive to the table which is our unifying practice.
Have a blessed saturday.