Home
Meet Father KempThe Fifth Sunday of Easter – 9 May 2010
On Friday morning, I witnessed the birth of Fletcher Murray Kemp, our fourth child in four years and four months. Life has never seemed so chaotic and yet so joyful. His birth has caused me to look back upon the births of our other children and I have noticed that preceding Edith, Gunder and Shirley’s birth I was overly confident in my abilities. I know that I have told you that before, but my parental over-confidence is similar to my, and I suspect your, over-confidence in Jesus’ resurrection.
I have always believed in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. I took it for granted that everyone would read the Easter stories in the Gospels and simply believe they were true and historical. However, during the past few years something new in the Easter story struck me like a passenger ferry in New York City: the disciples struggled to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. I have heard the Easter story thousands of times and I never realized that all of the disciples doubted. Of course, I had heard the story of doubting Thomas, but I always thought he was the lone doubter and I always looked down on him thinking he had a weak and feeble mind. Thomas, however, was not alone, his doubt is a picture of the doubt of all Jesus’ disciples.
The disciples doubt taught me that I was over confident in my belief. I was so sure of myself, so over confident of what I believed that I looked down upon others, even the apostle Thomas. My over-confidence gave me a feeling of superiority and this feeling of superiority created a powerful sense of self-righteousness. It seems crazy to admit that my over confidence in the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection – a true and necessary doctrine – created one of the deadliest sins, self-righteousness, but it is true. It is true because instead of being over-confident in God’s ability to keep his promise, like his promise to never let his holy one, Jesus, see bodily decay, my over-confidence was in my knowledge and my ability to believe and this unwittingly led me trivialize the great story of Easter.
Ironically, my over-confidence in my abilities to believe Jesus’ resurrection is very similar to our secular contemporaries’ over confident beliefs in their scientific abilities, which they use to reject Jesus’ resurrection. Many years ago, leading western intellectuals became over confident and this led them to reject all miracles, especially Jesus’ resurrection. For example, an 18th century Scottish philosopher, David Hume, over-confidently said, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle…”[1] As a result of their over-confidence, our culture tends to dismiss Jesus’ resurrection as a misguided myth created by uneducated peasants living in a superstitious age. Our cultures over-confidence in their abilities creates a feeling of superiority (which we may call chronological snobbery or cultural prejudice) and this feeling of superiority creates an intoxicating sense of self-righteousness. However, the doubt of the disciples exposes the self-righteous nature of our culture because it shows that it was just as hard for Jesus’ disciples, those who saw Jesus face to face, who heard him teach and who heard him say he would be crucified and three days later resurrected, to believe in his resurrection as it is for people today. The doubt of Jesus’ disciples challenges both the Christian and the non-Christian self-righteous over-confidence.
One probable reason Christians over-confidently trivialize Easter and non-Christians over-confidently dismiss Easter is the message Jesus’ disciples preached when they finally believed Jesus rose from the dead. This message is accurately summarized by St. Paul in Acts 13, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man [Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin: and by him all that believe are justified from all things.” Moreover, Jesus said in Luke 24, “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.” When the disciples began to believe Jesus had been bodily resurrected they began to preach that forgiveness was found in Jesus’ name. Further, if Jesus is the forgiver of sins he is also the true and just judge. As someone once said, “[In] the earliest apostolic proclamation about Jesus of Nazareth his death and resurrection were directly linked to two promises… the resurrection demonstrates that Jesus is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead, and the resurrection demonstrates that he is the one in whose name forgiveness of sins can be had here and now.”[2] We want to trivialize and dismiss Easter because Easter establishes Jesus as the world’s true judge and forgiver of sins and if Jesus is both our judge and forgiver, we cannot be over-confident in our abilities.
Thus, Christians may trivialize Easter because the resurrection established Jesus as the forgiver of sins and this means that Christians sin and need to be forgiven. Christians are called to be a light shining in the darkness, called to live holy, righteous, and joyous lives and there are times when in our desire to be righteous, holy, and joyous or as St. James said, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1:22) and as St. Paul said, “For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.” (Romans 2:13) We are our over-confidence in our abilities to create these qualities and to be doers and this can make us reticent to admit our need for forgiveness. To put it another way, there are times when our over-confidence in our abilities to believe Jesus’ resurrection leads to an over-confidence in our abilities to live holy and righteous lives and causes us to refuse to admit our failures and this creates in us a sense of superiority and self-righteousness, a self-righteousness that refuses to admit its faults and trespasses, as Robert Lewis Stevenson said, “Not every man is so great a coward as he thinks he is – nor yet so great a Christian.”[3]
Non-Christians may dismiss Easter because the resurrection established Jesus as the judge of the living and the dead. Someone once said, “[M]odern liberal [institutions have] claimed for [themselves] the right to make all judgments about everything, and so [want] to banish off the scene any rumors either of more ultimate judgments or, particularly, of judgments against [their] own absolute judgmental power.”[4] If the resurrection is true, it means that Jesus is the world’s true judge. That means that there is a true right and wrong. That means the morality is defined not by public vote, nor personal preference, nor cultural opinion, but by Jesus Christ. Since the fall of Adam and Eve all cultures, but especially western culture since the 1700’s, have been predicated on the over-confident assumption that we, humans, are the arbitrators of right and wrong.
I may have been over-confident in my parental abilities in the past, but as Fletcher’s birth approached, I became utterly under-confident. There are times when life with four children seems overwhelming and impossible just like there are times when living righteously and being doers of the word seem overwhelming impossible and this leads to despair. What is terrifying, however, is how despair makes life easy. When I despaired about life with four children, I stopped caring about being a father and husband, what is the point of trying if you are only going fail. Similarly, when I despair about living righteously, about being a light shining into darkness, about being a new creation in Christ Jesus, I stop trying to live as Jesus’ commands for what is the point if I always fail and can never get life right. The glory of Jesus’ resurrection, the glory of the Gospel is that my sins and my failures have been forgiven. It is not good when I am short tempered and inconsistent with my children, but when I fail the resurrected Jesus stand really and willing to forgive. Being a doer of the word and living a righteous and holy life does not mean to live a life of perfection (only Jesus has done that), it means living a life of repentance and forgiveness. That means that I can go forth to boldly love my children and wife and live a holy, righteous, and godly life to the best of my abilities because when I fail, Jesus’ forgiveness restores me. Thus, under-confident despair is just as sinful as over-confident self-righteousness.
The answer to over-confident self-righteousness and under-confident despair is confidence in Jesus Christ and his resurrection that guarantees forgiveness. Plain and simple confidence will be scorned by all those who glory in their over-confidence or find ease in their under-confidence, but to all who are spiritually weary and seek rest; to all who mourn and long for comfort; to all who struggle and desire hope; to all who sin and need a Savior; to all who are strangers and yearn for fellowship; to all who hunger and thirst after righteousness; and to whoever will come the message of the Gospel will be like sweet water on parched lips, salve on a wound and strong breeze that will blow away the clouds of despair. In fact, the proclamation that in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ there is forgiveness of sins is one of the only things we can confidently believe.
[1]David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Of Miracles”
[2] N.T Wright, Jesus the risen Judge – and forgiver, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Easter07.htm.
[3] Robert Lewis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae [1889]. Mr Mackellars’ Journey.
[4] N.T Wright, Jesus the risen Judge – and forgiver, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Easter07.htm. I have changed the bracketed words, but hopefully not the meaning the Wright’s comment.
