The last enemy is death: What Harry Potter taught me about being Christian

1 Corinthians 15:1-26,51-57

The year was 2001 and I was a high school sophomore with a pretty good idea that what I wanted to be in life was a pastor, which is not exactly the typical thing a sophomore in high school wants to be so I wasn’t one to talk much about it. I also had many ideas about what a good Christian pastor looked like— the kind of interests he had, the kind of music he listened to, the things he should be doing and not doing. I had all these things floating around my head, and one of the particular things I believed was this idea that a person can choose either to live in reality or escape from reality, and that Christians are supposed to live in the real world. I had just read The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and found myself disturbed that people would choose parties and alcohol and casual relationships as an alternative to a purposeful life. As a Christian I felt not only that I should be doing the right things but also that I need not bother wasting any time reading fanciful stories or watching many movies or anything that might suggest an alternative to that good, Christian life. I believed, in short, that everything should be explicitly Christian for it to be good.

            So, here I was a sophomore in high school when my family decided to go to a movie on Thanksgiving following our family get-together, as was often our custom. And they decided we would see the newly released Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. I knew a little about this movie. I had occasionally heard my mom and my brother reading from the Harry Potter series; it was the most popular series of books in the world at the time, but I had more or less completely ignored it to that point. My disinterest didn’t have so much to do with witchcraft, which I knew that some Christians were upset about, though maybe that was in the back of my mind too, I’m not sure. But I think I didn’t really care about it because I thought there was nothing here of redeeming Christian value. It wasn’t explicitly Christian; it wasn’t telling me about Jesus or about how to live as a person who follows Jesus, so it seemed like a distraction from reality.

            So I went to this movie expecting not very much. Well, about halfway through I found myself having an unexpected experience: I was becoming deeply affected by the characters and themes of this movie. Maybe some of you have had this experience with different things in your life. It might have been a book or a movie or a TV show or a play or a piece of music or something else—something that was like an onion, which, when peeled away, gave you a better and better understanding of life. In that theater, that day, I realized, even if I couldn’t have ever put it into words as a 15-year-old, that I was living the Christian life in the wrong way. I was trying to isolate myself from everything bad in the world in order that I might be a good Christian when a Christian is actually supposed to go toward what is rotten and point to Christ where you least expect him, because the true radicalness of the gospel is that death and life are turned upside down by Jesus.

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’

-1 Corinthians 15:55

Alien righteousness (it's even stranger and more awesome than it sounds)

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

            Last week, in talking about the way we are called to live as Christians, I said that “being a true Christ-follower is a different kind of foolishness.” I’d like to say that I planned that for this week’s reading, but if you believe that then you obviously have a higher view of my sermon preparation right now than I do. I didn’t read 1 Corinthians 1 until, oh, this past Friday, and only then I came across those words that we all have probably heard, but were already on my mind from the actions of Paul and Silas last week: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

            The secret of that line, which is really no secret at all, is that we are all perishing and we are all saved. We are all sinners; we are all saints. We are all redeemed; we are all not yet. But I think when I say that your eyes gloss over. I think it doesn’t resonate, because the both/and language of Lutheranism sounds beautiful but it’s sometimes difficult to translate that into our life experience. Just because our theology is good doesn’t mean that it’s inspiring, and if our beliefs do not spur us on to something better then I don’t think they’re very helpful.

            Now I know this was a busy week around these parts, but how many of you saw Bob Upgren talk either at Lancaster or at Maria on Wednesday? Awesome speaker. Great artist. The kind of thing that moves you and that gets you thinking. Hopefully the kind of thing that gets people to look at their own lives and re-orient them toward something better. But I have to confess one of my first thoughts, which isn’t necessarily very good. Upgren was coming at God from a perspective I hear a lot, and probably you do too. In fact, probably a good majority of you are right on board with what he was saying, which is that God gives us a gift of salvation and all we have to do is accept it. This, alongside the idea that we need to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, is one of the most widely held beliefs about what makes a person a Christian today; so much so, in fact, that many people just take it for granted that all Christians would agree with that. Well, I don’t. And, actually, a long history of Christian theologians stretching back further than you imagine also has a problem with that. There are very few new beliefs, just repacked old beliefs, and the idea that we have to accept the gift of salvation, or that we have to accept Jesus, is a form of semipelagianism, which was condemned as heresy in the Second Council of Orange in the year 529.

So here I was thinking some of these things on Wednesday night and for a moment I was despairing about it, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard fantastic speakers with great messages cheapen grace by suggesting that it is dependent on our response to it. And here was another one.

            But then I realized something. This is not a problem with what only people are saying about God. This is a problem with Lutherans ourselves, because we have done a terrible job of articulating what salvation means to us. In our stead, every other faith tradition has told us what salvation is and so our people have no language to talk about salvation apart from what others are saying. This is our fault and it is our problem. Our way of talking about our faith has become saying that we are not like them. They tell you that you need to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Well, we’re not like that! They tell you that you need to be a good person in order to be saved. But we’re not like that!

The intersection of ourselves and our world

Acts 17:1-9

            Sometimes the most discouraging part of reading the Bible is how little we can relate. It becomes difficult to see ourselves in these amazing situations and characters and we find ourselves distanced by the language. There are “thees” and “thous” and “shalts,” not to mention all those names. It’s sort of like explaining how to say “Wayzata” to anybody from outside of Minnesota—it doesn’t seem to make any sense. Then, there are modern translations of the Bible that sound a little more colloquial but it still sometimes feels like a code—like nobody talks like this, really. Of course, there are also all the completely unrelatable moments. You know, it’s just hard to put yourself in the place of the centurion watching Jesus die or one of the people on the hill watching the bread and fish multiply or one of the disciples in the boat when Jesus comes walking across the sea. These moments are so exceptional we just can’t relate.

            And yet, sometimes we can relate exactly. In Acts 17 when Paul and Silas visited a couple of villages in the Greek region of Thessalonica they went there to tell people about Jesus. They were in all likelihood the first to share this good news that Jesus had died and was risen to this part of the world. Their results in sharing this good news are, I think, pretty much what we would expect. Some of them were persuaded and some were not. People who were oppressed, generally, had their coming-to-Jesus moment. The rulers, the leaders of the synagogue and others, were not as enthused. They saw this as a political movement that needed to be stomped out.

            And you know what? They were right. It was a political movement. A very strange political movement. A political movement that has been used and abused by flawed human beings ever since Jesus rose from the dead. The synagogue leaders got it. They knew that whoever claimed to be a Jesus-follower was claiming a dangerous kind of politics based on self-sacrificial love and grief and suffering; they also understood that such beliefs could be misused and championed to claim authority over them. Two thousand years of history has given us many examples of Christians killing in the name of God, lording their beliefs over the Jews, even blaming them for Jesus’ death.

            This is foolishness. But being a true Christ-follower is a different kind of foolishness. The reason I can relate to Paul and Silas is because some people followed and some people resisted, and I experience this every day. It gets even messier still because some of those that follow are in it for themselves, while some of them are in it because they actually believe in Jesus with all the challenges and struggles that entails. And even that’s probably too simple because many of those who do not follow remain pondering in their hearts what all of this means; they just aren’t in a place to take a leap of faith. I truly believe that we are all created with a yearning for God inside of us; that God doesn’t give some the gift of faith and others the gift of skepticism or anything like that. Instead, we all are born to be Jesus-followers and on some level we all want God to fill that hole inside of us, but we are complicated people faced with immense challenges to our faith. To assume that I get it and you don’t, or you get it and somebody else doesn’t, is the wrong way to look at faith. I don’t blame the person who is not persuaded by Paul or Silas or you or me, and I don’t blame the one doing the persuading, as if perhaps they could have done a better job of it somehow. Rather, I pray for each to come to faith in their own time.

Outside In: Why the Holy Spirit uses the voices of the voiceless

Acts 3:1-10

            A lot has happened between last week and this one in the book of Acts. Last week, in Acts 1, the disciples were watching Jesus ascend into heaven and acting dumbfounded that he didn’t give them the military victory they were after. This is a far cry from this week, in Acts 3, as we find Peter and John doing their absolute best Jesus impersonation, healing in the same way that Jesus healed, speaking in the same way Jesus spoke; simply, being pretty good followers of Jesus. Somehow, in the span of two chapters the disciples figured it out. Something clicked. And that something is the Holy Spirit.

            I’m going to briefly touch on Acts chapter 2, which we did not read today or last week because it is a traditional reading on the day of Pentecost at the end of the Easter season and we will read it then, but it is critical to understanding what made the disciples change so here’s a little context. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit descends, people start speaking in tongues, they hear one another each in their own language, and the disciples emerge as different creatures. The Holy Spirit wrecks their old lives and makes them into the Jesus-followers they always should have been when he was alive. This is very good news for all of us, because, frankly, we don’t get to see Jesus face-to-face today, but we have the very same Holy Spirit messing with us that they did on that first Pentecost. And it can change us like it did them.

            So when Peter and John come across a man crippled by the gate, begging for a handout, they do the Jesus-thing: They heal him. They don’t give him food or money; they give him health—something he didn’t even ask for. Health is always a first sign of salvation. Every time. But they also give him more than that. This man, who was the least of those on the outside of the temple, becomes the one who witnesses to God inside the temple. The outside has come in. This is what Jesus was always doing.

            The man who was on the outside because of some imagined unworthiness becomes worthy because of what the Holy Spirit does through ordinary people. This is a story of how God makes the outside in. So, who are our outsiders? Who are we keeping at arm’s length? Because those are not just the people we are called to be nice to, or to feed, or to clothe; we’re not even called just to welcome them—yes, all that, but much more. Those are the people who will preach to us. They will tell us about God far more surely and more persuasively than the people on the inside. They are the ones whom the Holy Spirit will use, because they know what it feels like to be treated as unworthy.

So, who feels unworthy here?

The uncomfortable gift of the Holy Spirit

Acts 1:1-14

“In the first book, Theophilus,” begins Acts. The first book was the Gospel of Luke, also addressed to Theophilus, so as we turn toward Acts we should know that this is the setting and Luke, again, is the author. The Gospel account is over, Jesus needs to get off the stage, and we are left with the after-effects of the resurrection, which is why the book of Acts is about the community of faith and the earliest church. But, interestingly, Acts begins with Jesus still in the picture. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Gospel of Luke actually ends with Jesus ascending into heaven so it’s interesting that Luke wrote this twice. Apparently, Jesus had something important to say before leaving the scene.

            These few words that Jesus offers between verses 4 and 8 are, therefore, very important for framing the focus of the book of Acts.

He says, "This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." And then, following the disciples asking him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

Then, poof, he ascends into heaven in what is one of the strangest moments in human history, emphasizing all the more those few verses he said before heading off. The disciples want to move immediately to the restoration of Israel—they want the resurrection to announce a political victory—but Jesus turns it around on them with the promise of something different, something we know as the Holy Spirit.

            We tend to assume that these blockheads that were the disciples didn’t understand when Jesus talked about needing to die and rise again in his life, but the general assumption is that after he does die and rises from the dead they pretty much figure it out. Yet, here we see that’s not really the case. They really haven’t changed at all. If anything, their desire for the restoration of Israel, a political movement, only gains traction with the knowledge that their Lord was dead and now alive. They are people of the small picture.

            So, when Jesus responds by talking not about political victories but about the Holy Spirit you can imagine their disappointment. Jesus, even the resurrected Jesus, doesn’t always give us what we want, and little do the disciples know the future that awaits them. It’s persecution. And more persecution. Eleven of the twelve are on the path to dying for their faith in Jesus. None of them see the restoration of Israel. In fact, some of them may live to see the temple destroyed for the final time, while the land, which is already occupied by Rome, would not become a Jewish state until 1948, nearly two millennia later.

            The resurrection is no political victory. Instead, it’s a victory of a different sort. What Jesus promises is not that life will be good or easy but that the Holy Spirit is among us, moving through us, and that, when all is said and done, God wins. The deaths that we experience here are defeated on the cross and laid bare in the resurrection. The assurance of the Holy Spirit means that we are united by something deeper than our politics and wider than our personal ambitions. We are united in Christ by something deeply mysterious. The Holy Spirit is the way we know God in all God’s self—Father and Son—today.