Acts 3:1-10
Ps 105:1-8
Luke 24:13-35

I hope you will forgive me this morning if my topic is not exactly what you might expect for an Easter week sermon. As I understood until about a year ago, deconstruction is a kind of post-modern rejection of the notion that literary texts have any inherent meaning in themselves, but rather that meaning is imposed by readers. This was a philosophical movement associated with the French writer Jacques Derrida. However, in the last few years,“Deconstructing Christianity” has become a kind of movement among mostly former evangelical young people to describe their process of re-examining and usually abandoning their Christian faith. Just in the last couple of weeks, a book entitled Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church has become a runaway best-seller.

Some have suggested that a kind of reverse “Great Awakening” is taking place in American culture, and this movement is being compared in significance to the revival movements of the nineteenth century or the Jesus Movement of my own generation – except, again, in reverse. Given the sheer scope and influence of this movement, I think that it is something that Christians, especially those of you who are going to be ordained clergy, and seminary professors like myself, need to be aware of. To ignore it would be like a missionary setting out for India who knew nothing about Hinduism or Islam or Sikhism.

What I know about deconstruction at this point is sketchy, and largely derived from YouTube videos supplied by young people – former evangelicals – who have deconstructed their faith. There seems to be a pattern: they are young (usually in their twenties or early thirties), they describe growing up within the culture of American Evangelicalism. They were members of youth groups; they were home schooled; they went on mission trips. The churches they describe seem to be mostly Baptistic or Pentecostal, and the theology they left seems conservative or traditionalist to the point of being Fundamentalist. They understand Christian faith to be in conflict with modern science, with modern historical method, and with modern psychology.

And they regularly describe a conflict between faith and reason, in which Christian faith seems to be opposed to rationality rather than the traditional Christian understanding of theology as faith seeking understanding. They seem largely ignorant of historic Christian theology or serious contemporary biblical scholarship. I have yet to come across one of these young people who claimed that they deconstructed their faith because they had read Augustine or the Cappadocians, Aquinas, Luther or Calvin, Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, N. T. Wright or Brevard Childs.

We might be tempted to dismiss deconstruction as a cultural movement specific to North American revivalism and pietism that has nothing to do with the kind of historic Reformation Christianity represented here at Trinity: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism. We may call ourselves Evangelicals, but we’re not that kind of Evangelical! I think that would be a mistake. First, Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian young adults exist, and we can expect that sooner rather than later, this cultural movement is going to come to our own churches. Second, the kinds of questions these young people raise are serious questions, and we need to take them seriously if we are going to address them.. Finally, I think some of us have something we could offer these young people. Many of us who are now Anglicans, Lutherans, or Presbyterians grew up within the culture of American revivalist Christianity, and went through our own processes of deconstruction that led us not away from historic Christianity, but to more historic forms of Christian faith. I myself was raised a Southern Baptist, but became an Anglican rather than an atheist.

While there is some variety about the reasons for what they call “deconversion,” I have begun to notice what I think is a common story told by many of the deconstructors. First, deconstruction starts with what is at least perceived to be a form of “spiritual abuse” in the church. The last generation has made clear that sexual abuse is a serious problem in the church, first for Roman Catholics, but in the last decade or so, for Protestants as well. But there are other kinds of abuse as well and specifically a kind of spiritual abuse that responds to young people who raise uncomfortable questions with distrust and silencing rather than with honest engagement. I certainly experienced something like this from some (certainly not all) of those in the church in which I grew up. A common meme associated with deconstruction is “There is no hate like Christian love.”

Second, insofar as the leadership of these churches identify their own beliefs and theological stances with the Bible, and fail to distinguish between their interpretations of the Bible and the voice of God, what young people hear is that to question abusive or authoritarian church leadership is in essence to question God. This creates a crisis of faith where these young people feel that they must choose between their own moral and intellectual integrity and membership in the church. If church leadership is perceived as abusive, young people also come to perceive the Christian God to whose authority the leadership appeals as an abusive God. In the end, those at the receiving end of spiritual abuse feel that they must make a choice between their own moral and intellectual integrity and not only the voice of the church, but their belief in the Christian God. So another common Internet meme reads “God is the Bad Guy” or “The God of the Bible is Evil.”

Finally, there is a process of deconstructing the Bible. As these disillusioned young people read the Bible that at one time had provided them with comfort, they now find themselves noticing problematic texts in the Bible. In particular, they distrust the God of the Old Testament as an abusive tyrant and a bully. While many still find Jesus attractive for saying things like we should not judge other people, the apostle Paul in particular is blamed for distorting Jesus’ message. Paul himself is dismissed as a rather nasty character who hated women and endorsed slavery. So the Bible itself is now read as an abusive text.

So what, you might ask, does this have to do with Easter Week, and with the lectionary readings in particular? Sometimes I think we become so familiar with the biblical stories that we miss things that are staring us in the face. I would suggest that a primary irony of the deconstructing faith movement is that deconstruction is not new. A deconstruction story is at the very heart of the New Testament, and Christianity began as a sort of deconstruction movement. We see this in the Gospel reading this morning about the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. They are described as sad, and they are leaving Jerusalem because something bad has happened there. They encounter a stranger who asks them what they are talking about, and they respond, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:19).

The two disciples on the Emmaus Road share a common story with many of today’s Deconstructors. We sometimes forget that Jesus was a Jew, and his followers were Jews. These followers of Jesus have had their hopes dashed because they followed someone whom they believed, in their own words, was the “one to redeem Israel.” They describe Jesus as a “prophet mighty in word and deed before the people” (Luke 24:19). But their hopes were dashed because Jesus was crucified when the fellow religious leaders of their own people made an alliance with the Romans, the resident enemies and oppressors of the Jewish people. Whatever else we can say about it, the crucifixion of Jesus is a prime example of clerical abuse. However badly contemporary Christians might find themselves being treated by the leadership of our churches, we do not usually have to face death by torture. Of course, we should remember that Christian history includes names like Joan of Arc, Thomas More, and Thomas Cranmer.

The responses of Jesus’ immediate followers anticipates in a lot of ways the modern pattern of “deconstruction.” After Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers despaired, and they fled to the winds. If social media had existed at that time, and if they had been brave enough to do so, I can imagine some of Jesus’ disappointed followers might have let people know on Facebook or X or YouTube how they felt that they had been betrayed by their own religious leaders..

If the story of Jesus had ended with his crucifixion, something like deconstruction would have been an understandable response for Jesus’ followers. However, deconstruction demands reconstruction if it is not going to end up in pessimisim or cynicism or despair. Despite Jesus’ repeated predictions, that Jesus rose from the dead was a complete surprise to his followers, and Jesus’ resurrection undoes the despair that attaches itself to deconstruction.

The life and identity of Jesus combined with his resurrection means that the spiritual abuse that leads to deconstruction does not have the final word – and it does so in the following ways. First, there is the issue of Jesus’ personal identity. Dorothy L. Sayers in her essay “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged” points out that our familiarity with the Gospel story leads us to miss the significance of its central claim. If Jesus really is who the Gospels claim that he is, and who the historic Creeds affirm that he is – the Son of God incarnate, God became human, this has tremendous implications. Quoting Sayers: “[I]f the Church is right about him . . . . the man we hanged was God Almighty. So that is the outline of the official story – the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him.”

In other words, if Jesus of Nazareth really is who the Gospels say he is, then this says something about the identity of the God whom the Deconstructors distrust as a cosmic tyrant. Far from being a bully, the incarnation means that when God became one of us, he allowed himself to be the victim of the bullies. In the crucifixion of Jesus, God took his own medicine, as it were.

Second, the resurrection of Jesus addresses the concerns about abuse of authority and power that so often is part of the story of deconstruction. Karl Barth has some helpful insights here in his discussion of Jesus as the “Judge Judged in Our Place.” On the cross of Jesus, Jesus was judged by the religious and political leaders of his day as a criminal and religious subversive, and was found guilty. In judging Jesus, those who crucified him declared him to be in the wrong and to be condemned by God. However, by raising Jesus from the dead, God reversed the guilty verdict by which Jesus had been crucified. In vindicating Jesus, his Father demonstrated that Jesus alone was the one who had the right to pronounce the divine verdict, and the irony is that Jesus’ verdict is the verdict of the Good Shepherd who seeks for the lost sheep, the verdict of “not guilty.” The resurrection of Jesus reveals a pattern of cruciformity and resurrection that lies at the heart of the Gospel. Resurrection is the other side of deconstruction, and so the two disciples of the Emmaus Road were not left in their despair.

Other points in the Emmaus passage touch on the concerns raised by those deconstructing their faith. So next, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus lead to a re-reading of the Scriptures, and particularly the Old Testament. Throughout Jesus’ life, he addressed as his Father the Creator God of the Old Testament. If the God who is the Father of Jesus raised Jesus from the dead, then the God of the Old Testament cannot be the bad guy. Jesus responded to the disappointment of the two on the Emmaus Road with: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Luke writes, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27).

In the light of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, when we read the Old Testament, we find the clues of God’s speaking into goodness a good creation, of the same God rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt, of bringing life from death in the figure of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, of the restoring to life of the dead bones of Ezekiel’s vision. These are the clues that lead us to read the Old Testament in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and the New Testament in light of the Old Testament.

Another point concerns the hospitality of God. For the two disciples on the Emmaus Road, the turn from despair to hope, from deconstruction to reconstruction, is a gradual one, but there is a crucial turning point, and it comes when they exercise hospitality to a stranger. As they approach their village, the stranger who had joined them on the road, and who had begun to help them to understand the Scriptures with new eyes, acts as if he is going to continue on his way. Instead, they offer him hospitality: “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent” (Luke 24: 29) So the stranger stays with them, but in a paradoxical turn of events, the stranger they welcomed as a Guest, now becomes their Host, and they become his guests: “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them” (Luke 24: 30).

It is at this moment of the breaking of the bread that they finally recognize the stranger for who he is: “And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (Luke 24: 31-32).

As everyone knows, Luke is actually a two-volume work. In the apostle Peter’s Pentecost sermon in the Book of Acts, Peter announces: “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36). This crucified and risen Jesus who is announced as “Lord” in the Book of Acts is the same Jesus who is Lord in Luke’s Gospel, but before his resurrection, Jesus’ Lordship is hidden. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is the Lord who comes to serve. Jesus heals the sick, he casts out demons, he gathers around him a group of followers that includes fishermen and women. In his teaching, Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, to emulate a Samaritan who became a neighbor to someone in need. When Jesus’ disciples quarrel about which one of them is the greatest, Jesus replies: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:24-27).

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is the hidden Lord who serves at table, and he expects his followers not to abuse, but to serve one another. So it is the personal identity of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ as the hidden Lord who is not only the Great Deconstructor, but also the Great Reconstuctor. In the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Lord who offers us hospitality.

The final concern with deconstruction concerns community, particularly the problem of abusive communities. After recognizing Jesus in the breaking of bread, the two Emmaus disciples who had left behind a community returned to that community: “And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24: 33-35).

Note however that the two Emmaus disciples do not return to the community that had crucified Jesus. Reconstruction and recovery from abuse should not mean returning to be abused again. Nonetheless, to recover from deconstruction, to recover from spiritual abuse, we need community, and we need the community that is at least trying to follow Jesus. Is this community perfect, and free from those who, while claiming to follow Jesus act more like those who crucified him? No to the first, and, unfortunately, no to the second.

The same Evangelist who wrote the Gospel of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, and the book of Acts is not at all a story of completely selfless followers of Jesus. If we turn to the writings of the apostle Paul, much of what the deconstuctors of faith find offensive in Paul is rather Paul trying to herd back into the corral of discipleship those who claim to be following Jesus, but who do not treat their fellow Christians with the charity of Christian love. So there was already church abuse in the earliest church, and much of the book of Acts and the letters of Paul are about trying to correct it. The church needs to take such abuse seriously.

So the church is a mixed bag. The church is supposed to be about those who follow Jesus. But the church is also a history of people who drastically fail to follow Jesus. Too often the church abuses those who do try to follow Jesus, and too often the church behaves no better than the rest of the world. When the church fails, outsiders have a right to complain. Jesus himself said “By your fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16). And “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34). If Christians do not love one another, if we are not servants to one another, then not only outsiders but those inside will know us by our fruits.

I don’t want to end on a negative note. The New Testament can be brutally honest about the failures of the church. Read the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians or the Corinthians. But the primary word about the church is positive. Read the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The church is an alternative community, a new creation, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ.

If I were to coin a term for what I think the church should be, I would suggest “hospitable orthodoxy.” As Jesus expressed hospitality to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road, so the church needs to be a place not only where we get our theological and doctrinal ducks in a row, but a place where we welcome strangers, a place where we listen to one another before we speak, a place where we serve before we demand service.

Despite its many failures, the church is also made up of people who do attempt to follow Jesus, and who show that by how they love one another, and how they act as servants to one another. I have known a lot of those. I have known many of them in almost seventeen years of teaching at Trinity School for Ministry, faculty, staff, and students.Some of them are still here; some now serve the church elsewhere, and some are now members of the Church Triumphant. In the end, we must choose between deconstruction and reconstruction, between self-assertion and being servants to one another, between fleeing pain or taking up our cross to follow Jesus, between love and cynicism, between hope and despair.

What enables us to have hope for the church is finally, the identity of Jesus Christ as the One who reveals the love of his Father, who emptied himself of his exalted position as the pre-existent Lord to become a servant among us. Jesus died for us and he rose for us, he sometimes meets us in our fellow Christians, and Jesus promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. The church, for all of its past and present failures, is the Bride of Jesus Christ The apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, that he cleansed the church by washing her with water through the word, and the time will come when Jesus Christ the Bridegroom will present the church his Bride to himself, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (Eph. 5:24-27).