BELIEVING BACKWARDS [sun, 4-9-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BELIEVING BACKWARDS [sun, 4-9-23]

 

I had been the preacher at her church for seven years when Jane said to me, “I just can’t believe in the resurrection.”

Jane was one of the best Christians I ever knew. Sunday School teacher. Lay Leader of our congregation. But not just a good church member, which we often equate with being a good Christian. She was deeply committed to growing spiritually and acting ethically  

I thought, “I am a complete failure. Jane has heard me preach for seven Easters, and I haven’t preached well enough for her to believe.”

Part of the problem, of course, is what we mean by believe. Jane was using it in its intellectual credence meaning. As in, “I believe in gravity.”

Reminds me of the old woodsman who was asked if he believed in infant baptism. “Believe in it?” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve seen it done.”

Jane hadn’t seen resurrection done, so she didn’t believe.

But as I thought about the ineffectiveness of my preaching, I realized that the problem was that I started at the beginning, “a very good place to start,” as the song “Do Re Me” puts it. A good place to start a song, but not the best place to start with God.

I had always started theologically at Christmas. And who wouldn’t? After all, the Easter bunny can’t hold a marshmallow peep to Santa Claus.

More importantly, my favorite book as a child was Cornelia Meigs’ Mother Makes Christmas, about a poor family where the mother manages to create the joy of Christmas out of nothing. That’s what I wanted to do for the world. My starting point was Christmas.

Jane caused me to rethink my starting point. She had help from philosophical theologian Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, since I was reading him at the time.

Rosenstock-Huessy says that to understand the Gospel, the good news of God in Christ, you have to start at the end, with the resurrection. You have to “understand backward.”

I’m not sure if Jane ever became a “believer” in resurrection, the way she believed in gravity and infant baptism and the church, but it doesn’t matter. She knows all about it, now that she is where all her days start with resurrection. Where sermons and preachers aren’t necessary… maybe not even tolerated…

We understand Christ, and God, by understanding backward, by starting at the end, which is the real beginning.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

John Robert McFarland