In the name of the Risen Lord ✠ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
This is the day that the Lord has made, a glorious day unlike any other, that blest day that art hallowed forever whereon Christ arose and made all things new, so let us rejoice and be glad in it. My blessed brothers and sisters, it is so very, very good to see you all this morning. The last time we gathered together like this on Easter was three years ago on Easter of 2019. Seeing you in your Easter best, your smiling faces gladdens my heart and I know that God is pleased and rejoices with us in that we are able to again gather to proclaim that the Lord is risen indeed.
Easter
is about joy and wonder – the joy of our faith in knowing that Sin and Death
have been defeated and that abundant life is ours, and wonder in seeing just
how powerful and transformative the love of God is. My prayer is that you feel
that joy and wonder this morning. No matter where you are on your journey of
faith, the Easter message of joy and wonder is for you. I assure you – this is
a community of abundant grace and there is nothing but joy and welcome for all
this morning. In the reading from Acts, we heard St. Peter say, “I truly
understand that God shows no partiality.” We strive to be a beloved community in
the same way, without partiality. Perhaps you are here to make a family member
happy, maybe you’re here because there is no place in the world you’d rather
be, it could be that you have more doubts than beliefs this morning and you’re
not sure why you are here, and maybe you’re watching us online and are “here”
in a different way. Whatever your situation, you are always welcome, it is so
good to see you, and I hope the joy and wonder of Easter fills you this
morning.
Easter
is all about vision. On that Easter morning, everything changed. The empty tomb
and risen Jesus declare that the way of the Cross really is the way of life,
that death has done its worst and has been overcome, that no matter what we have
done and failed to do, we are forgiven and that new life is an ongoing
invitation to us all. In the Lord of the Rings books, one character asks
“Is everything sad going to come untrue?” Well, on Easter, we get the definitive
answer to that question: Yes! Death is undone and Resurrection life becomes gift
to us all.
I’ve
shared before one of my favorite lines from all of poetry. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
wrote, “Earth’s crammed with heaven / and every common bush afire with God /
but only they who see take off their shoes / the rest sit round and pluck
blackberries.” The thing about Easter is that God doesn’t force it on any of
us. God could have orchestrated things differently – Jesus could have torn the
sky apart and come on clouds descending, overthrowing the Roman occupation ofthe
Holy Land, casting down the mighty, and lifting up the lowly. But that is not
how God chose to have Easter happen. Instead, Easter is something that we come
and see, something that we discover. In fact, the word in the original Greek of
Luke for “they found the stone rolled away” is the root of the word “eureka.”
Easter leads us to a eureka moment of seeing God’s grace and love.
There’s
a book that I read recently called Thinking, Fast and Slow that goes
into great detail about how we think and about how easily our thinking is
fooled and manipulated. One of the traps that we fall into is a phrase the
author uses often: “what you see is all there is.” We all have a cognitive bias
for giving more weight to what is in front of us as opposed to things that we are
unaware of. We see this very bias unfolding in the text from Luke. On Easter
morning, the faithful women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ corpse so that it
won’t smell too badly as it decays. To their surprise, the huge stone has been
rolled away from the tomb’s entrance and there is no body lying there. Then two
angelic figures ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
That’s
a great question. Why do we look for the living among the dead? Why do we spend
so much time looking in the wrong places for what matters most? We look for
security in strength and bank accounts and wonder why we don’t ever seem to
feel any safer. We look for fulfillment in our accomplishments, but then wonder
why for all of the awards and certificates that we have, we can’t seem to
forget that one piece of criticism. We put our trust in leaders and politicians
who promise to transform society and make everything better, and then wonder
why not much of anything changes after November. We try mindfulness practices, adopt
philosophies, and read self-help books, but struggle to have a sense of peace
as we lie awake at night. Well, what you see is all there is, and if we are
looking for life among things that cannot give it to us, we’ll never find it.
When
Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the other Mary, and the rest of the women go to tell
the disciples about their eureka moment, they are soundly rejected. The word
that Luke uses for “idle tale” is the most condescending and dismissive word
there is. It’s where we get our word “delirious” from and it means “rubbish;
complete and utter nonsense.” Because what you see is all there is. And these
disciples hadn’t been to the tomb. They hadn’t seen the angel. They had never
seen someone die and then be Resurrected. They were limited to what they could
see, and how sad it is when we limit our faith to what we, in our blindness,
have not seen.
Whether
it’s with a telescope, microscope, infrared scanner, or eyeglasses, we all know
that there is more out there than we can see. The angels at the tomb help the
women to see more than they have seen. They said, “Remember how he told you…” And
what is that Jesus has told us that might enable us to see the Resurrection all
around us? “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “Love one another.” “I
am the Good Shepherd.” “This is my body, given for you.” “Your sins are forgiven.”
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” “All shall be well,
and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” In every act of
love, in every shout of alleluia at the grave, in every occurrence of reconciliation,
in every glimpse of beauty, in every service to the least of these, in every
laugh of joy, in every struggle for justice, in every breaking of the bread, we
see signs of the Resurrection all around us.
This
is the most important thing about the Resurrection – it was not a really special
thing that happened to a really nice man who lived a really long time ago. The Resurrection
was not Jesus’ reward for living a faithful life. The Resurrection was not
something amazing that those people back then got to see and we don’t. The
Resurrection was not a historical event. Now hear what I’m saying – yes, Jesus truly
did rise from the dead just as sure as all of us rose from sleep this morning.
But the Resurrection is not an event that happened because it is a reality that
is happening, even now. History isn’t the right category for talking about Easter.
It would be like asking you how many inches blue is. It’s just not the right
way of seeing things.
Luke
clues us into this in the way the Easter account is recorded: “On the first day
of the week, at early dawn.” Luke is not giving us the coordinates to program
our time machines so that we can figure out when exactly this happened. Not at
all. Instead, Luke is describing what the Resurrection is all about. What else
happened on the first day of the week? On the very first day of the week, God
said “Let there be light” and there was light. The Resurrection is as essential
and pivotal an event as Creation itself. The Resurrection is more significant
than the Big Bang, more consequential than the cooling of the earth’s core,
more generative than the first time a single-celled organism split into two.
The Resurrection is the dawning of the New Creation.
We
saw this in both the reading from First Corinthians and in the quintessential
Easter hymn that we sang earlier, the Pascha nostrum. “In Christ we see
the first fruits of the dead: though Adam’s sin had doomed all flesh die, in
Christ’s new life shall all be made alive.” Resurrection isn’t only about Jesus
because it is about us all. God created us all as one, God loves us all as one,
and God saves us all as on. Redemption may well be experienced personally, but salvation
is never an individual event. The Resurrection is as foundational and pervasive
as atoms and gravity.
And
fundamentally, what the Resurrection would have us see is that God’s love for
us is stronger than anything that stands against us. As a part of my discipline
as a preacher, I listen to a handful of other preachers on podcasts each week, and
I always try to listen to a diversity of voices. In particular, there’s an African-American
preacher in Chicago that I like to listen to. One of the refrains that I’ve
learned from the Black church through him is “but early.” As soon as the
preacher says “but early” the congregation gets to the edge of their seats. The
organist starts to let their fingers dance on the keys. Because “but early”
signals that the preacher is about to tell us the Good News of what happened on
Easter morning. That though he had been rejected, that though they had nailed
him to the cross, that though he was sealed in the tomb, but early on the first
day of the week, the stone was rolled away and nothing was ever the same again.
Five
times in this Easter reading we have that word “but” and that is such an important
word to help us remember that things are not always as they seem, that there is
always more to come and see. We might have made a mistake, but God is merciful.
There might be a war raging, but the lion shall indeed lie down with the lamb. We
might have a tough diagnosis, but there is a balm in Gilead. We might be
estranged, but God is a God of reconciliation. We might not be sure how to make
a difficult decision, but God gives us the peace that passes all understanding.
We might be struggling with money, or substances, or power, but God says “I’ve
got a better way, follow me in the way of love.” We might be a sinner, but yet
while we still sinners, Christ died for us. We might be dead, but early on the
first day of the week, Jesus was raised from the dead, and raised all of Creation
with him.
Jesus
was the first fruit of the Resurrection, and you don’t have to be a farmer to
know that after the first fruit comes the harvest of the second fruits and the third
fruits and so on. Without question, the Resurrection is a reality that makes
all things different, and it is the gift that God has given us so that we can
enjoy the harvest of abundant life here and now. All those things that you hope
are true about God, and faith, and Easter – they are true, I promise. There is
always a reason for hope, a cause for joy, the possibility of reconciliation.
The
invitation of this morning to each of us is to come and see. As glorious and
joyful as this morning is, this Resurrection joy and wonder is something for us
to come and see every time we gather as beloved community. Come and see today,
and come and see next week, and come and see eternally the love of God that has
no limit and makes all things well.
I’ll
conclude with a few words from the Guatemalan poet, Julia Esquivel: “Join us in
[Easter] and you will know what it is to dream! Then you will know how
marvelous it is to live threatened with Resurrection! To dream awake, to keep
watch asleep, to live while dying, and to know ourselves already resurrected.”
That’s our prayer for today, and every day – may we come and see ourselves to
be already resurrected. Amen.
