The politics of Easter and the resurrection

Stephen Kuhrt on the connection between the resurrection and global poverty.

A sermon preached at Christ Church, New Malden on World Poverty Day, 18th April 2010 when they hosted a visit by Nick Clegg MP who spoke on the issue of global poverty.

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You won’t need me to tell you that politicians sometimes get things wrong. MPs’ expenses being, of course, the obvious recent example. But there have been plenty of others as well. Many would say Tony Blair and the war on Iraq whilst others would  think of Margaret Thatcher and the Poll Tax. Going even further back people might even cite David Lloyd-George and ‘the sale of honours’ (yes I’m determined to be even handed this morning!). All examples of the fact that even the most successful politicians can sometimes get things majorly wrong.

Where I want to start this morning is with another example of a politician getting it badly wrong. And getting it wrong, in relation to the resurrection, the truth that Christians celebrate during this period of Easter. I won’t give away the identity of this politician or his party (because as I say, I want to be even handed). But in a diary that was later published and became quite well known, this is what he wrote after attending a church service, not at Easter, but Christmas:

'Went to a Midnight Carol Service this evening. It was pleasing. All the good tunes and a perfectly sensible message of reassurance about the resurrection. A good audience (including some in ‘crew cuts’ and ‘bomber jackets’) and not one mention from start to finish of the Third World or the need to ‘combat’ racism or homelessness or poverty or any of that crap’.

Now it’s honest, isn’t it, which I guess is one of the things that we want from our politicians. But is it right in its claim that the resurrection is just about personal reassurance rather than having anything to say about injustice in this present world?  I don’t believe so. And the reason that I don’t believe so is because it would really mean that Karl Marx, the founder of Communism was right when he declared that all religion, including Christianity, was the ‘opiate of the masses’. Opium, of course, is a drug and what Marx meant was that all this Christian stuff about hope for the future was really just a cynical ploy by those with power to make poorer people (and he was particularly thinking of workers) more likely to put up with their oppression rather than attempt to throw it off.  

I’ve already indicated that I don’t believe this to be the case. And the reason I don’t believe this is because, contrary to what Karl Marx said, the Christian hope - specifically the resurrection of Jesus Christ - the great truth of Easter, is something that actually couldn’t be more subversive and more challenging to the political status quo.

Contrary to what Karl Marx said, the Christian hope - specifically the resurrection of Jesus Christ - couldn’t be more subversive and more challenging to the political status quo.

The biblical background to the resurrection

That needs a bit of explanation. And it starts by us needing to recognise something that both non-Christians and Christians find incredibly difficult to understand, something which the New Testament is quite clear upon but which is clearly quite difficult to grasp: the hope of resurrection is not the same as believing in ‘going to heaven when we die’. We are promised that when we die, belonging to Jesus we will go to be safe with him, in heaven if you like (although it is significant that the New Testament is reluctant to describe it in that way). But see that as the final chapter of the story rather than penultimate one, make heaven somewhere we go to be forever rather than where we rest in Jesus ahead of the new creation and we will always end up with an apolitical Christianity.

Take resurrection, seriously, on the other hand, understand what it really means, recognise what the New Testament - particularly Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21 and 22 - is so clear about, and a very clear political agenda for Christians will then become very apparent.You see this is where Christianity, as in many ways, needs to get back to its Jewish roots and where the whole idea of resurrection originally came from. And where it came from, quite simply, was the belief that God isn’t going to allow evil and injustice to have the last word. God made the world, the Jews believed and rather than abandoning it when things went wrong, they therefore believed that their creator God would one day act to reverse all that evil and injustice within it. And resurrection – people who have died one day coming alive again, particularly when they had died as a result of injustice – was a crucial part of this. And that’s why that reference to the resurrection comes at the end of the book of Daniel (12:2) a book so dominated by how believers in Israel’s God are to conduct themselves under persecution. ‘Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth’ Daniel says ‘will awake some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt’ indicating resurrection as the definitive sign that God wasn’t going to let evil triumph over his world.

This is also why around the time that Jesus came, all those Jews who wanted the political status quo to change believed in the resurrection and all those who were wealthy and powerful didn’t. You might already know that the wealthy Jewish priests called the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection. When I was young I remember a number of preachers then being able to use the joke: ‘They were sad, you see’. But whilst that’s a good line, it does tend to disguise the fact that the reason why Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection. It wasn’t a disagreement with the Pharisees over an abstract piece of theology. The reason that the Sadducees wanted nothing to do with the idea of resurrection was because they knew what a radical challenge it presented to the status quo upon which their wealth and power depended. And that went for all those who were cruel and oppressive.

The political significance of the resurrection

Oscar Wilde, the man who wrote The Importance of Being Earnest also wrote a play called Salome, which isn’t so well known, probably because for the most part it’s not so good. But there’s a great bit within it where a messenger comes to Herod and reports what Jesus has been doing. Herod is fairly laid back until the messenger tells him that Jesus has been raising the dead. And at that point he becomes really agitated, ‘I do not wish him to do that” Herod says, “I forbid him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead. This man must be found and told that I forbid him to raise the dead’. And what Oscar Wilde showed he understood when he wrote these words was the political significance of the resurrection – namely that if death has been defeated, if the dead can be raised, the tyrant or oppressor knows that he has no weapons left. And that’s as a big a challenge to the political status quo as you could get.

If death has been defeated, if the dead can be raised, the tyrant or oppressor knows that he has no weapons left. That’s as a big a challenge to the political status quo as you can get.

You see if Jesus himself has just died and gone to heaven, if there had been no resurrection, that would have endorsed the political status quo because it would have left evil in charge of this world. And if all that is promised to those who belong to Jesus is ‘going to heaven when we die’ it would do exactly the same. And Karl Marx would be right about Christianity merely propping up ‘the powers that be’. But resurrection, on the other hand, Jesus being raised from death on Easter Day and its anticipation of the future resurrection of all God’s people, puts a bomb under the status quo because what it shows is that God isn’t going to abandon this world. It shows, in a way that nothing else really could, that God’s kingdom or radical power has broken into this world and started dismantling injustice and evil ahead of the day when these things will be totally destroyed. That’s what 1 Corinthians 15: 20-28 is talking about when it speaks of Jesus handing over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power, of Jesus reigning until he has put all the enemies under his feet and the last enemy to be destroyed being death. It’s all a huge statement of the truth that Jesus’ resurrection came to launch the process by which everything wrong with this world will be put right. 

What the resurrection should mean for us

What’s fascinating is the way in which 1 Corinthians chapter 15 ends. At the very end of that great chapter on the resurrection of Jesus and the final resurrection of his followers, it doesn’t say what we might expect it to say. The way we might expect it to end is by saying something like ‘and so what a wonderful hope you Christians have to reassure you’. But it doesn’t say that. Instead it says this: “Therefore my dear brothers (and sisters), stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labour in the Lord in not in vain”. In other words because of the resurrection of Jesus, you know that God’s perfect future is on its way and therefore you should be doing everything you can in the present to work with full confidence towards those things that Jesus is one day going to bring in their entirety.

To go back to that politician’s quote I began with, I don’t want to deny that the resurrection gives us reassurance. It does. But rather than a complacent reassurance that makes us as Christians happy to withdraw from the world and its problems, it should do the precise opposite. The resurrection should lead followers of Jesus to do everything we possibly can about those very things that that politician declared to be 'crap': bringing further justice to the Third World and seeking to ‘combat’ with all our might racism, homelessness, poverty and every other kind of evil and injustice that exists. The resurrection of Jesus is precisely about ‘all that crap’ and how Christians, in and under God’s power, should be at the forefront of getting rid of it.

The resurrection should lead followers of Jesus to do everything we possibly can about bringing justice to the Third World and seeking to ‘combat’ with all our might racism, homelessness, poverty and every other kind of evil and injustice that exists. The resurrection of Jesus is precisely about ‘all that crap’ and how Christians, in and under God’s power, should be at the forefront of getting rid of it.

If we are serious about taking such political action it very often starts on our doorstep with churches like Christ Church, New Malden doing everything that we possibly can about injustice locally. It's why, together with other churches in this area, we ran the Night Shelter for homeless people for twelve weeks this winter. It’s why we run the Grapevine lunch here on the first Sunday of every month. But it can’t stop there because a Christian response to injustice won’t just be responding to the results of injustice but seeking to bring change to those structures that cause this injustice as well. And that means us as Christians using our vote on May 6th to seek to bring into power (or perhaps maintain in power) both locally and nationally those whom we really believe will do most to bring about a greater amount of justice to this world. We might disagree on whom that might be, in fact we’re bound to. But seek that aim as we use our vote and the rest of the influence that we have and we can be sure that, in that instance we’ll be following the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Are we prepared to change our agenda?

That particularly goes for the issue of Global Poverty, this issue that with the help of Nick Clegg we’re thinking about this morning, the issue of those starving to death in other parts of the world or in desperate need whilst we in New Malden enjoy far more food and resources than we need. One of the problems around election time, and to some extent this was true of the recent TV Leaders Debate, is that a huge amount can so easily start surrounding the ‘what’s in it for me’ agenda. That’s very understandable but if that agenda does dominate the decisions we take about politics then we’ve got to be clear that global poverty will always be something that's getting worse rather than better. During the last General Election in 2005 the Make Poverty History Campaign did some good in raising the profile of poverty, but its major weakness was in soft pedalling the reality that for poverty to really end, we in places like New Malden will quite simply have to learn to live with less. We will have to abandon that ‘what’s in it for me’ agenda in favour of the ‘what will bring more of God’s justice to the poor’ agenda. Have that sort of change of heart and decide ahead of May 6th that not just our vote but every bit of influence we have will be used not for ourselves but for the poor, and real change is possible. And that particularly includes using our vote and influence for those people who because they live outside this country have no say at all in the election of those who will be part of deciding their fate. Do those things and we really will be showing the massive link that exists between ‘Easter and Politics’.

Stephen Kuhrt is Vicar of Christ Church, New Malden.

To find out more about the church, visit www.ccnm.org