In the name of the Risen Lord, amen.
As
it is every Easter, my first word to you is “welcome.” There is something
special about Easter morning – signs of new life surround us in the form of
birds chirping and flowers blooming as we enter the church and who isn’t
stirred up by singing “Jesus Christ is risen today”? It will be Opening Day for
baseball soon, and so all is right with the world again after the cold and dark
of winter. Part of what makes this such a wonderful day is each of you. If you
were here for every single service of Holy Week, welcome to you. If you are
here against your will, but are just trying to make mom and dad happy, welcome
to you. If you are here as family and friends of the children who will baptized
this morning, welcome to you. If this is your first time worshiping at St. Luke’s
and are looking for a church home, know that you are always welcome. In the
reading from Acts this morning, St. Peter says “I truly understand that God
shows no partiality,” and I agree with that statement. Whatever your political
affiliation, whatever mistakes you’ve made, whatever doubts you have, welcome
in the name of the Risen Lord. Whoever you are, you are welcome here today.
My
advice for you today is to believe in as much of Easter as you can. If you,
without reservation, believe in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, that’s
wonderful. If you’re less sure about that, but still feel the sense of a higher
power in your life, that’s great. Believe in as much of the Easter story as you
can today, because it’s honest, and God will meet you as far as you’re able to
go in the journey of faith.
Before
getting too far into the Easter text from Luke this morning, I do want to mention
that Easter is something to be experienced, not explained. At the end of the
reading, after hearing that the tomb was empty, Peter runs to the tomb to see
for himself. He’s just like all of us. There is a reason why Easter Sunday is
the highest attended all year. Even if we’re not aware of it, something in our
souls urges us to come to church, even if we don’t regularly, and see if it
really is true that there is a power loose in our world that is more powerful
than death. But don’t get lost in the “how” of Easter. Reason has its limits,
and like the beauty of a sunset or the joy of child at play, there are some
truths, like the Resurrection, that the mind can defend but never discover. One
poet put it this way when writing about Easter: “Let us not mock God with
metaphor or analogy, sidestepping transcendence, let us walk through the door.”
And if we pay attention to Luke, we see that he doesn’t explain what happened
in the tomb. Jesus doesn’t even show up in the reading about his Resurrection.
Luke knows that the Resurrection is beyond explanation, so he doesn’t try. That’s
my second piece of advice this morning: experience Easter, don’t try to explain
it.
As
Luke tells it, there are three emotions that are experienced on that first
Easter morning, and if we consider them, we’ll come to experience the grace of
this day. The first emotion is fear. The faithful women come to the tomb early
on the first day of the week to anoint Jesus’ dead body and are stunned to find
the stone rolled away. Then two men, who we can assume are angels, appear next
to them and they are terrified. Indeed, if we let the truths of Easter enter
our lives, we, too, will be terrified.
One
of ways that Luke tells the story is with the dichotomy of forgetting and
remembering. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus has made it fairly clear that he
would die and rise again on the third day, but no one seems to remember that.
Death’s sting on Good Friday was too final for any hope to remain. Had they
remembered, likely all of Jerusalem would have been waiting at the tomb to see
if Jesus would emerge. But they forgot.
And
so the angels question them, “Why are you looking for the living among the
dead?” They remind the women of Jesus’ words, and when they remember, the
Resurrection takes root in their lives. The first evangelists to announce the
Good News of Easter were these women, but it only clicked for them once they
remembered. One theologian has said that “exile comes from forgetting and
redemption comes with memory.” Isn’t it fascinating that at the empty tomb, no
one gets it? No one says “Oh my goodness, he’s not here, he must be alive!”
Instead, they forgot the promise of Jesus and were afraid.
My
brothers and sisters, there are signs of the Resurrection all around us, each
and every day. How often do we not notice them? How often do we live in fear because
we’ve forgotten the promises of God? Our culture is absolutely plagued by fear
right now – fear of those who are different from us, fear about our finances,
fear about an illness, fears of domestic terrorism, fears about doing well on a
test at school. We are afraid because we’ve forgotten the promise of God that
all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. I’ve shared this
quote many times before, but it bears repeating, especially on Easter – what
God gives us is minimum protection with maximum support. When we forget that we
have support, we focus on building up protection and we end up shutting
ourselves off from God and others. The Resurrection shows us that though there
is pain, and rejection, and death, that God will always be with us. If we can
remember that, we can set aside our fears. When the women remember Jesus’
promises, they shared the Good News.
The
next emotion that is experienced is doubt. When the women come to the disciples
to tell them about the empty tomb, the disciples think it is an “idle tale.” That’s
a very polite translation of that word in Greek. We’d better capture the nuance
of that word by translating it as “garbage,” “nonsense,” “bs.” When the
Resurrection is presented to the disciples, they utterly reject it. The empty
tomb was the absolute furthest thing from their minds on that Easter morning.
To me, one of the most crucial pieces of Scripture comes from Paul’s letter to
the Ephesians and he writes that “God’s power working in us can do more than we
can ask or imagine.”
The
Resurrection stretches our imaginations, it redefines what is possible, it is
grander than anything we could have ever hoped for. Doubt is a very reasonable
response to the Resurrection; but remember, the Resurrection is beyond reason.
Easter proclaims that the dead don’t stay in the tombs, that the poor won’t
always stay in poverty, that the disenfranchised won’t always be trampled on,
that the empires that stand today will one day fall. This is a liberating, but
also an unnerving, proclamation. Sometimes we just can’t fathom things that are
beyond our worldview, and so we doubt their veracity. It’s a reminder to us all
that doubt is a part of faith. So if you come to Easter with more doubts than
beliefs, with more questions than answers, with more fear than hope, know that
you’re in the company of the disciples, and that is good company to be a part
of.
Peter
then runs to the tomb, showing us again that the Resurrection can only be
experienced, not explained. Luke tells us that Peter’s response was “amazement.”
This new possibility overwhelms him, and it forever changes his life. As St.
Paul suggests in today’s reading from Corinthians, Easter isn’t just about the
change of Jesus’ existence from dead to alive, but that God changed the destiny
of all Creation in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And there is a very
important theological word that drives the whole Easter narrative and that very
important word is “but.” The whole of Christian proclamation hinges on a “but.” And it’s perfectly okay if that word makes you chuckle a bit. If you’ll recall from my Easter sermon last year, Easter is all about God’s holy humor that subverts the order of the world.
Five
times in the passage that we read from Luke, that word “but” is used. There was
Good Friday, but. There is death, but. There is doubt, but. There is fear, but.
There is division, war, addiction, hatred, loneliness, pain, despair, sin, but….
But, there is a new possibility that beyond our imaginations. But, there is
mercy, grace, forgiveness, boundless love, Resurrection. The miracle of Easter
is that there is a big “but” to the reality of sin and death, and that “but” is
God’s love that is always with us, despite our doubts, fears, mistakes, and
despite even our deaths, and that truly is amazing.
So
if Easter is something to be experienced, not understood, then I need to wrap
up this sermon and let you all get to it. This morning, my last piece of advice
is to remember that Easter is a verb – Eastering. The absolute worst thing that
we can do in response to Easter is to build a firewall around it, and we,
unfortunately, do this too often. We say that Easter was all about Jesus and
him securing life after death for us. That is to completely miss the point, it
is to keep Easter in our heads instead of our hearts. Easter isn’t a happy
ending to Good Friday, it is the start of the new creation. Easter is the day
when the hope of the future comes into the present. You don’t have to die in
order to live the Resurrected Life. And in just a moment, we’re going to enact
that by reaffirming our Baptismal vows and welcoming three young girls into the
power of the Resurrection.
We are an Easter people. Easter
has tangible implications for your life and our world. What would happen if the
new possibilities of Easter showed up more in our world – if love conquered
hatred, if presence trumped protection, if we focused more on life than death?
What would the Resurrection look like in our politics, on our City Council and
County Commission, around our dinner tables, in our classrooms, courtrooms, and
boardrooms? The proof of the Resurrection isn’t on the pages of the Bible, it
is found in your life.
Easter is not a celebration
of an event that happened 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, Eastering is the way of
living in light of the Resurrection. Eastering is about putting away our fears
by remembering God’s promises. Eastering is about opening our minds to the new possibilities
that are beyond our imaginations. Eastering is about being overtaken with
amazement as we encounter God’s defiant and victorious “but” to sin and death. May
the love and power of Easter remind you that there is always a “but.” And may
God bless you this Easter. Amen.
