imagining jesus with us

Easter Sunday ● April 20, 2025

Rev. Jeff Wells © 2025

Readings: John 13:34-35 & 1 John 3:16-18 and a reading from Catherine Keller

The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.

Watch the worship video recording on the Church of the Village YouTube channel here.

I love Jesus. When someone asks about my religious orientation, I call myself a follower of Jesus. On the other hand, I rarely claim the label “Christian” because so much that has been done in the name of Christianity horrifies me. Moreover, so much of classical Christian theology is problematic for me. That includes the literal resurrection of Jesus. So I have struggled often with how to frame my message on Easter Sunday.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe that the whole of Jesus’ life and each of our lives and of every creature – all of our thoughts, decisions, actions, suffering, joy, and love – every bit of our existence is a part of the life of God eternally when we die. I have no problem with calling that “resurrection,” even though I doubt that it will be a conscious, subjective experience for us.

Yet, we have many stories in the Gospels about Jesus’ closest followers having had surprising and, for some, shocking encounters with Jesus after his death on a cross. In these accounts we are told they experienced him risen from the dead, speaking to them, even breaking bread with them. So, I want to spend some time sharing my thoughts with you about how we might understand these stories and the experience of those early followers of Jesus. In the process, I hope we can get clearer on what Easter might mean for us today.

How can we understand the disciples’ experience? The idea of Jesus rising from the tomb seems incredible. According to the Gospel stories, it was hard to believe even for many at the time. But let’s try to put ourselves in the sandals of the women and men in these resurrection stories. They loved Jesus so much. They believed he had been sent by God to save their people – even to save the whole world from sin, suffering, oppression, and violence. So, when Jesus was humiliated and hung on a cross to die, their first reactions were confusion, despair, and fear. It must have felt like the whole movement they have given their lives to was over. And they felt their own lives were in danger.

Yet, I am certain those feelings were intermingled with other feelings. They remembered the depth and power of Jesus’ teaching. Their hearts were swelled with the great love he had shown for them. And they still felt in their bodies and spirits the intimate, loving relationship with Abba God that Jesus had helped them learn to embrace.

His closest followers, women and men, had experienced Jesus in many aspects of his life and ministry. They had seen with their own eyes the fullness of his self-giving love, the wisdom of his storytelling, and the compassion and care he showed for people – including strangers, foreigners, people of other religions, and those considered outcasts or impure by his own religion. It is clear to me, and must surely have been clear to his followers at the time, that in Jesus, God was trying to lure the whole world toward greater mutual love, compassion, caring, and celebration of our differences. And Jesus responded more fully to God’s call that any human I am aware of.

So, to me, it is not hard to imagine how, as their initial shock wore off, the disciples would have begun to feel his beautiful loving spirit still powerfully present with them. God obviously had a role in that. God’s lure surely beckoned them not to give up; not to give in to despair, but to hold on to the spirit of Jesus in their own spirits, hearts, and minds. Inspired by God, they refused to allow crucifixion to have the last word.

Furthermore, I can see how the disciples might have concluded that this anointed one, who some called the Messiah, could not possibly be dead and gone. How could one so holy and so good be constrained by a tomb or even by death? 

All these feelings were swirling around and being shared among the communities of the early followers of Jesus. Then, over several decades, these powerful feelings and memories became stories that were passed down and embellished in the attempt to capture their lived experience of both the horror of Jesus’ death and the keen sense they came to have that he was, somehow, still with them.

I have to say I love the resurrection stories. I have preached on them for 20 years. I also do not accept them as literal accounts of what actually happened. What I do believe is that, for us today, the most important Easter message is not that Jesus rose from the dead and, therefore, all we have to do is believe the resurrection saves us and the risen Christ will take care of the rest. No, the Gospels make clear that we are supposed to be the body of Christ now. We are the hands and feet of Jesus today. We are meant to carry on the great work he began. We are called to follow his teachings and the example he left us of loving God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and loving our perceived opponents and all those we may be inclined to dislike or even despise. We are called to love especially those neighbors who are most challenged by the circumstances of their lives. The spirit of Jesus among us asks and inspires us to give ourselves for others. As the passage from the Letter of John puts it so well, “our love must not be simply words or mere talk – it must be true love, which shows itself in action and truth.”

And we do not need to believe that Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of God in order to feel the spirit of his self-giving love residing in and among us. Instead, we feel that spirit because we have come to love who Jesus was, what he did and stood for, and what he still has to teach us. In this ongoing process of growth, we learn to intentionally and conscientiously practice the love Jesus taught and lived out to the end of his life.

Yes, I believe that God was in Jesus and Jesus was in God from his birth to his death. And not as “the only begotten son of God,” as the creed claims. Because I am certain that the same is true for each of us. God’s love was not incarnate only in Jesus. God is in John and Scarlet and Virginia and Sarah and Walter and every one of us and every human and every creature on the planet, though the circumstances of our lives and our social systems often interfere with our ability to hear God’s call to love and respond fully.

I reject the idea that Jesus died to save us from an angry God who required a scapegoat to take away our sins. So, I don’t feel the need to believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus or our own resurrection from death. I need only to love the Jesus I have come to know and desire to follow his way of self-giving love, compassion, and inclusive justice. If we have any chance of transforming the world for the common good of all, love is our only hope. And we have to cooperate with God to practice, share, and increase that love.

Jesus had a beautiful, bold, and loving spirit and his teachings, actions, and loving way of being continues to capture our imaginations. And because of Jesus, we are inspired to keep striving to be a love-your-neighbor church – to practice radical inclusion, celebrate the rainbow diversity of humanity, offer care for the spiritual, emotional, physical, and social needs of suffering people, and seek to build new human relations and social systems that promote the common flourishing of all creatures and the Earth.  

It was love that the Romans tried to kill when they nailed Jesus to a cross. But they failed. Love lives on under God’s inspiration. And Easter reminds us that Jesus lived and gave his life for love. In a way that is not “literal,” but is very real, Jesus lives on in us. And the spirit of Jesus continues to call us to carry on his great work of moving the whole of humanity and all of nature toward more loving interconnection, compassion, and care.

1   I am grateful to columnist David French for this formulation. See “To Embrace a Resurrection Faith, Choose a Love-Your-Neighbor Church,” New York Times, April 20, 2025.