Posted on by Bernie Nord

The Theology Of An Old Fart

It’s simple, I think, “as I approach the final curtain,” but for sure I can’t say “I did it my way.” (Though, maybe I can, as I think about it. I mean, there aren’t many others I know who claim afterlife – what we Christians call the Resurrection – is fundamental in every other faith tradition as well…and that St. Paul is the most important theologian for Christians…and that his first letter to the Corinthians is the most important book in our Bible.) So, maybe I have “done it my way.” Whatever. Probably it doesn’t matter. Who cares?

The simple thing is, the afterlife permits us to have hope in this life, which permits us to act lovingly in this life no matter what! No matter if it seems mad and impossible. No matter if it seems unscientific. No matter if most of the people around us don’t believe it!

St. Paul – the most important theologian, remember – says in 1st Corinthians – his most important book, remember – that “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (I Cor. 13:13, NRSV)

Love – i.e., acting selflessly, charitably, compassionately – is the goal and result, and, likewise, makes the most sense from whatever perspective we come, except, certainly, from the most extreme American capitalism way, which is to say, the Trump/Musk/Project 2025 way. Love is about the neighbor first. The T/M/P 2025 is about always winning and never – never, never, never – losing.

The trouble with love, however, is that it’s hard to do. Especially without faith. Faith is essential – faith that there is an afterlife and you and those you have loved (and even those you haven’t) will not disappear but will be perfected, which is to say, become without the blemishes, warts, and shortcomings, the very things that keep us separated and war-like. We are fallen creatures, after all, every one of us!

It’s hard to do without faith. Yet faith, enough of it at least, is attainable in this life…because it can be glimpsed at, occasionally and sometimes frequently, in this life.

Genetics will do it, but also relationships. In both cases, a loved one who has been lost can be seen in the faces, actions, hopes and ideals of those who remain. Resurrection is glimpsed – as “in a mirror, dimly” (I Cor. 12a) – but seen, nevertheless.

The glory of nature will also do it, as will the arts – music, dance, theater, the visual arts, you name it. All of these, like love, can raise us beyond the ordinary, scientific, measurable ways of this life, to give us a glimpse of the afterlife that lies beyond. It’s called transcendence. It’s called penetration of the great barrier called death that lies between this life and the next one, the one we Christians call Resurrection.

That’s pretty much it, the theology of an old fart. I always wish I could do a better job of explaining it. Neither the Church nor, to be fair, any of our faith-based institutions have done a great job at it. Too much competition over the centuries and millennia, maybe. Too many oversized egos? Too much “orthodoxy?” Who knows? It doesn’t matter. Part of faith is that a way will be found, somehow.

See you next time. “If there is a next time,” of course. God, I loved Saturday Night Live and Don Pardo!

Posted on by Bernie Nord

RUNNING IN THE DARK

An Easter Sermon I Wish I’d Preached

I Corinthians 15:19-26                                                                                                    John 20:1-18                      

For the last five months – ever since Election Day in November, actually – I’ve felt like I’ve been running around in the dark, hitting my head and my heart every day, maybe even more frequently, on one terrifying shock after another: Trump, Vance, Project 2025, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, Linda McMahon, the Department of Education, Social Security, the Smithsonian Institution, Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk. I could go on and on. One thing after another. Terrifying things for me. Horrific. But you get the idea. I’m running in the dark. And I’m afraid.

Mary Magdalene, a prostitute quite probably, and the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” a gay man possibly (Homosexuality, then, didn’t have the stigmas it has for us with our post-Victorian morality), and big, old lumbering Peter also ran that morning according to the story.

I love Peter and his boldness. There’s a book – Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by psychologist Susan Jeffers. That was Peter, feeling the fear of the dark, probably, but moving ahead, peeking. How else can one see what’s happening? You must look.

Now, unlike me, Mary and Peter and the other guy weren’t running blind, bumping their heads, hurting themselves. Quite the contrary. They ran toward a light. A light! Peter and the other disciple, almost immediately. Mary, eventually.

John, writing at the very end of the first century about things that happened some 70 years before, talks a lot about light…and darkness:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through it, and without it not one thing came into being. What has come into being in it was life, and “the life” was the light of all people. (All people, notice!) The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Oh my, do I ever need to hear that in my time of darkness! As do many Americans, maybe even most. As do most people on our planet. Like Mary and Peter and the other disciple, I need to see…and believe…and understand what happened that first Easter morning, just before dawn.

There is a way.

St. Paul, writing 50, even 60 years before John, explains to the little church he had founded in Corinth how it could have happened, and what he says seems to have caught on. Christianity is the largest faith tradition in the world. About 31% of the world’s population are Christians, which therefore causes me to think that we Christians have a special responsibility to be truthful and factual, and to get it right.

Paul is the most important Christian theologian ever, in my opinion. And what he wrote to the Corinthian congregation in his first letter to them, between 52 and 56 A.D. is the most important book in the Bible, I think. Because…because it explains — factually and truthfully — what the most important doctrine of our faith, Resurrection, is.

Here’s what he says, we just read it: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” We do a lot of that, don’t we? We mistakenly and selfishly turn our religious practices – our prayers and our rituals – into ways of getting what we want in this life, and just this life.

It’s called the prosperity gospel, and it’s preached by the radio and television evangelists — Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman back in the day, Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson more recently and nowadays – and by President Donald J. Trump and Duke-educated Stephen Miller — because they know and are counting on what the Policy Circle and Barbara Bush Foundation are reporting: that 54% of American adults are illiterate. They can’t read or write above the 6th-grade level! 54%! When I graduated from high school in 1959, the rate of illiteracy was only 3%.

Keep them stupid, and they’ll believe anything is the implied assumption of Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller…and Project 2025. Maybe so. But, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied,” Paul says.

And then goes on: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” Did you hear that? “In fact,” Paul says, using one of the strongest and clearest words in the Greek language, en alitheia. In truth! In fact! Actually! Christ has been raised, as shall we. “For as all die in Adam (Not sure why Adam gets all the credit here; Eve took the first bite. Well, yes, I am sure…sad to say.) so all will be made alive in Christ…each in his/her own order.“

“All will be made alive!” You. And me. And them!

Later in the 15th chapter, Paul explains how this happens, and this is extremely important: “Someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! (Wow!) What you sow (He’s using a gardening metaphor here.) does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed…There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.“

Do you hear that? It’s so critically important! There is life that is perishable and fleeting on one side of a great dividing wall called death — or change, a better word, maybe — and afterlife on the other. For many things on the life side, the great wall is impenetrable and intended by God to be that way, I think: the great and good gifts of science, and philosophy, and history, and human knowledge, and intelligence generally.

But also on the life side of the great wall there are things and experiences that do have the capacity to penetrate (or transcend) death. And occasionally, at least, they give us a brief or momentary glimpse of the afterlife that is beyond. For example: the beauty of nature (the landscape, the sky, and so on); the arts (music, the visual arts, dance, theater) — and even one science subdivision, genetics.

Some years ago, a dear friend of ours died after a vicious struggle with ovarian cancer. I was devastated and began to lose my faith, actually. Marge had been a saint, a graduate nurse who taught nursing at the local community college. The night she died, her husband, also a nurse, incidentally, and three daughters, one of whom was a nurse too, and three others of us simply grabbed on to one another and sobbed.

But when we broke apart and I looked at each of their faces, I saw Marge. I saw her because of genetics in three cases, but I also saw her because her life and spirit had impacted those of us she had known, and it was etched in our faces. That was a glimpse of the reality of the Resurrection!

All of these things have the capacity to transcend (penetrate) the great wall of death and give us a glimpse, occasional as it might be, of the afterlife that lies beyond death. We Christians call it the Resurrection, but it’s also a thing in every one of the great faith traditions in human history. Check it out.

Paul, the greatest Christian theologian of all time, in the greatest and most important book he wrote, 1st Corinthians, , also talks about these glimpses we get. At the end of chapter 13, the love soliloquy read at weddings, he says, “like children (now, now in this life) we see in a mirror, dimly, but then (then, in the afterlife) we will see face to face. Now (now, in this life) I know only in part; then (then, in the afterlife) I will know fully.”

That’s how we see our afterlife, Resurrection, occasionally now.

But it takes faith to do it, of course A one-dimensional view – the scientific view, say – won’t cut it! You’ve got to acknowledge (to yourself, anyway) that there is another dimension out there other than our present experience, which is to say other than the cold, hard, scientific facts of this life.

That dimension is equally useful. It’s the dimension that permits us to see – glimpse, peek at occasionally – the thing we celebrate this Easter morning, Then, having seen the light in our own darkness while bumping and hurting our heads and our hearts, like big, old, lumbering Peter, we can move on boldly from where we now to do the thing St. Paul says at the end of the soliloquy in chapter 13 is the greatest thing of all: love.

Because now we can. Because that’s the thing that makes most sense. If people love one another, while it won’t last forever certainly, the world as well as its people — including our children and grandchildren — will survive. Happily, some of us (don’t kid yourselves) and a whole lot longer than if we do what Mr. Trump and his ilk suggest — hunker down and keep as much as we can for ourselves.

We can love! We actually can! Because we can do it without fear anymore. Not even of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk, or Project 2025. Not of anything! Because Christ has been raised from death, we are raised as well…to hope no matter what, and then to love…no matter what!

Amen.