In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
I opened my Easter Sunday sermon by saying “Easter comes just in the nick of time.” Given the challenges of life, we can all use an extra dose of joy and hope, which Easter delivers right when we need it. But then like a child who had too much sugar on Easter morning, the crash soon follows. As grand as Easter was, the lilies have all dropped their flowers, the trumpets are sitting in their cases, and eggs have all been found or forgotten. Easter might come in the nick of time, but it sure doesn’t seem to stick around as long as we might like.
In Eastertide, instead of a Gloria we sing the Pascha nostrum which includes the phrase “So also consider yourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” That’s what we proclaimed on Easter, and with the fanfare and flowers, maybe it’s a little bit easier to believe it on Easter morning. We may well proclaim that Sin and Death have been undone, but there’s really not a lot of evidence to suggest that much has changed. Sure, at the theological and spiritual level, we might understand Death differently. And while our spiritual understanding of Death absolutely influences how we deal with Death, the physics remain largely unchanged. Death remains a fact of life and Sin still runs rampant in ourselves and our society.
And so, we wonder, what difference did Easter make? Last Sunday, the sermon focused on divine hiddenness and something that many struggle with. A lot of us wish that faith was a bit easier and more obvious. Well, this is a similar point, why are the effects of Easter not quite as transformative as they seemingly promise to be?
Perhaps the reason why Easter doesn’t quite meet our expectations is that our expectations are flawed. Now, I realize how that sounds. I’m not here to say that God is great and we are the problem, as much as I think that might be the case. That just sounds, to me, like a theological sleight of hand that doesn’t address the pain of living in a world still plagued by Sin and Death. Saying that the problem is our perspective makes me feel like I’m giving you an onion instead of an apple to chew on.
The pain and suffering that we all experience because of Sin and Death is real, and as both a priest, pastor, and friend, I want to be able to say more than “well, let’s look at this from another angle.” Because looking at things from another angle doesn’t take away the trauma of abuse, the horrors of warfare, the heaviness of depression, the grips of addiction, or the grief of death.
A part of most coming of age stories is learning, accepting, and even appreciating that beauty and brokenness go together. If we expect that Easter is the quick-fix that is supposed to take away all difficulties, then not only do we misunderstand the promise but also our situation. What I am calling into question is our ability, or inability as the case may be, to receive all things, even the hard things, as gifts from God.
This topic has been on my mind for a while, as I’ve had conversations recently with people who are struggling with something significant – and the people I’m referring to are not members of this Parish, so don’t try to guess. One is facing cancer and another divorce. And both of these people, when telling me about their situation, said some version of “This isn’t a bad thing and I know that God is up to something bigger than I can realize, so everything great. Only positive vibes here.” Now I’m not criticizing them for clinging onto a life preserver in a difficult situation, I’ve used that same life preserver myself before. But there is something tragic that happens when instead of picking up the broken shards of life, we instead sweep them away and pretend the brokenness never happened. Framing it with the language of Scripture, we miss out on something very holy when we resort to platitudes instead of receiving beatitudes, which, as you know, also speak a blessing into brokenness.
This is what we see Psalm 30 describing: “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning… You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.” If we skip over the weeping and wailing, we miss out on the joy and dancing. It’s the same logic that we’ve been finding in the Prayer of St. Francis, that in giving we receive and it’s the pattern of our faith, as Good Friday and Easter are both essential. So if the issue is that Easter seems to have not fixed all our problems, it might be that the challenges of life are not problems to be fixed, but rather vehicles for God’s blessing.
Consider the first reading from Acts – in it, the Risen Jesus appears to Saul, who we know as St. Paul, and says “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Jesus is very clearly aligning and associating himself with those Saul had been persecuting. The Risen Jesus isn’t identified with the victorious, with the triumphant, with the strong, but with the suffering. A priest I know says, “God’s office is at the end of your rope.” This isn’t to say that we can’t find Jesus in the good times, but Jesus is particularly present in our suffering. If we refuse to allow ourselves to name the difficulties that we are face, we’ll miss that Jesus is there with us with words of blessing and comfort. Jesus is with us in our suffering, but if we insist on keeping a sunny-side theology then we’ll miss our Good Shepherd who is with us in the valley of the shadow of death.
In Revelation, we see this as well. The song that the myriads sing around the throne of God is not “Worthy is the Lamb who turned into a lion and conquered all!” Not at all. Instead, we have “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered.” We don’t erase the pain; we don’t pretend that nothing bad happened. One early Church theologian said, “That which he has not assumed has not been healed, but that which has been joined to God is also saved.” Meaning that because the Lamb, Jesus, has suffered, suffering is also a place of blessing. It’s like that great spiritual – “There is a balm in Gilead;” the song isn’t “God erased my pain, and I no longer need healing.” Not at all. It’s why the Risen Jesus has scars and why the Lamb in Revelation is slaughtered. Suffering, as much as we might not like it or choose it, is not something that God chooses to erase, but rather use for the purposes of redemption.
The Roman Catholic priest and author, Richard Rohr, writes in a book called Everything Belongs, whose title says a lot, that nothing is wasted in God. God loves us deeply and will use anything and everything to bless us. If we refuse to feel the uncomfortable feelings or constantly take the easy way out, we are effectively refusing the blessings that God is transforming out of our pain and suffering. God’s love is so expansive, beautiful, and perfect that in it, everything belongs and truly, all can be made well.
One of the most powerful examples of this that I’ve encountered is a 2019 conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. I’ve referenced the interview before, but it’s always worth a rewatch. Cooper’s mother had recently died, and Colbert is offering support in that grief. Cooper asks him, through tears, “You once said, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts,’ do you really believe that?” Colbert smiles and says, “Yes. It is a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering.”
On this point, Colbert was riffing on some of JRR Tolkien’s writing and “punishment” doesn’t mean that God is willfully causing our suffering, rather “punishment” is a way of saying the consequences of sin. The point is that Colbert is opening us to the challenging but deep truth that everything belongs and because of that, every moment is an opportunity for God to be with us and bless us if we can hang onto the courage to feel, instead of numbing, our pain. As St. Paul writes in Romans, “all things work for good through the love of God.” It’s not that God breaks us in order to bless us; that’s sadistic. Rather it’s that God will bring more beauty and grace into our lives through the brokenness.
Colbert goes on to say that “I don’t want it to have happened; I want it to not have happened, but you can’t choose what you are grateful for.” Life is a package deal, and his suffering, he notes, is what allows him to be more fully alive and to be compassionate with others in their suffering. He says there is a difference between the have the best life and the most human life, and what suffering does is blesses us with the most humanity, which is a gift. Because if we exclude suffering and gloss over the pain with platitudes or distractions, we are closing ourselves off to the God who meets us in our pains and blesses us with gifts that we would otherwise never receive. And these blessings that come in suffering aren’t something extra that we might rather do without if the cost is suffering. No, as Colbert says, these blessings put us in touch with what it means to be fully alive, to have the abundance of life that Jesus brings to us.
As we saw in Acts, God transforms people and situations that are broken. Paul’s entire life changed on that day when he came in touch with suffering. The artist and theologian Makoto Fujimura has written about the Japanese idea of kintsugi, which can be translated as “broken perfection.” In art, it is the process of repairing broken pottery by mixing gold dust with glue, with the result that the restored product is more beautiful than the original. In this process, the brokenness is not erased or hidden, rather it is highlighted. And the breaking is what allowed for the blessing of an even greater beauty.
Fujimura notes that this concept is difficult for our culture to grasp. We are infatuated with efficiency and perfection, and our culture is one of disposability and upgrades. If something doesn’t work, we pitch it and get a new one. And so when something breaks or goes wrong, we are tempted to think that all is lost and hopeless. When we expect that God will click the “undo” button and just make all the bad things go away instead of receiving the blessings and beauty of being broken and healed, it can make Easter seem like an unfulfilled promise. In the language of Psalm 30, if we skip the tears in the night, there will be no doorway through which joy can come in the morning.
I know that no one wants to be broken. I don’t want it for myself, and I don’t want it for any of you. But I do want God to bless us with every blessing that God has, and a lot of those blessings come through pain. We might not be in control, but God is and that's a relief. As one theologian has put it, the Cross is the grain of the universe, and the Cross is about a love that blesses through brokenness. Though we are trained to avoid weakness, pain, and brokenness, the world is such a more beautiful place because of the Cross and the love and salvation that came through it.
This sermon is an invitation to practice the holy work of lament: of naming our pains and brokenness instead of rushing through them with platitudes. Jesus knows your pains and has a healing beatitude to speak into those pains. If you need a place to be, to talk, or to pray, that’s one of the primary reasons why this Parish pays a priest to be available and maintains this building to be open during the week. Please let me know how I can sit with you in your pain and together fix our eyes on the dawning rays of morning’s joy. For, indeed, love is making all things well and though weeping may spend the night, joy comes in the morning.
