A Sermon for Easter Sunday
March 27, 2016
Easter 2016
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
Why are you here today?
What have you come out to see?
Maybe you’re here to hunt easter eggs. I’m glad you’re here because I’m sure not going to go looking for all those eggs. Hunting for easter eggs is a fine reason to be here today.
Maybe you’re here for the hymns and the flowers and the buzz of the big easter crowd. More good reasons to be here in this room this morning.
Maybe you’re here as a gift to someone who loves you, someone who said, “Oh please come, please let’s go together.” I can’t imagine a better reason to be here today.
Maybe you’re here because the Jesus story has caught you in some new way, or has been a part of your journey as long as you can remember.
Maybe you’ve come to recall and reconnect and be touched once again by the celebration of this most festive day, with its mystery and it’s uncanny ability to show us something new, no matter how many Easters we have known.
Or maybe you are here because, where else would you be? This is what I do. I wouldn’t miss this day.
These are all fine reasons for showing up today.
What I hope you are hearing is that we all have our reasons for being here today and that is not just ok, it is an important message of the resurrection, especially in Luke’s telling, the version we just heard. There are all kinds of ways to respond to this day, to be present in it, and only when we see that and recognize that our little piece of the puzzle fits and belongs with all the others do we begin realize the enormity of the message of the risen Christ. Christ comes to life and is present with us in as many ways as there are people in this room. That seems to be an important part of the good news we celebrate this morning. Think about the story we heard.
The scene opens with the women running to the tomb. Dutiful, pragmatic, they are where they need to be to take care of the business at hand. Many of us live such faithful lives.
They show up because someone must, and because even the events of the last few days don’t change the fact that they are Jesus’ friends, with responsibilities and continuing obligations to that relationship. They come out simply to do what needs to be done and are surprised to learn that their relationship with their friend and teacher is not ending, but just beginning. Sometimes just showing up can change everything.
Then they run back to the disciples and try to explain what has happened and their story is met with skepticism. Impossible, they say. These women were distraught, confused, unable to accept the reality of their friend’s death. Their story was is an idle tale. And yet from that very group, good old impulsive Peter just can’t stand it. As is so often the case with Peter, he is up and out the door before he knows what his feet are doing. He is skeptical like the others but he always leads with his heart and he is propelled by a glimmer of hope, somewhere deep within that maybe he hasn’t seen the last of Jesus. He runs to the tomb and ends up returning with the certainty that something new has taken place, something he can’t begin to understand. Somehow he knows that his journey with Jesus is not ended, but changed. I imagine that walk home…..so much to ponder….a future that lies in the unfamiliar..…
And what about those skeptics he left behind. The tradition tells us they all found ways to approach the mystery of the risen Christ. James ended up leading the church in Jerusalem. What happened between his rejecting what sounded like a crazy story and becoming a leader in the movement? It is good that we don’t have all the details of that transition. It is enough to know that he made that inner journey, and since we don’t know exactly how it happened, we are free to imagine ourselves into that open part of the story. Most of us know something about the tension between wanting to be open to something new and good and wanting to protect ourselves from being drawn into something a little too crazy. James and the others must have lived in that tension for some time.
I think of John, the beloved disciple. I think of the poetry attributed to him in the gospel that bears his name. I wonder if his approach to the resurrection began with a search for words that might begin to convey something of the unspeakable.
I think about Nathaniel who was surprised in the beginning when Jesus said he had seen him before they ever met. I wonder if maybe Jesus sought him out and doubled his surprise at how Jesus could be present with him, even when he wasn’t aware of that presence.
There are as many way to experience the resurrection today as there are people in this room, and more. I haven’t always believed that.
Like most of us, probably, I began this faith journey thinking there must be some right and proper way to understand all these stories, the church’s teachings, the faith in which I was raised.
I remember times of wishing I could believe what I was sure all these others around me must believe easily. I remember wondering what they would think of me if they knew what I really could and could not believe. One of the blessings of getting older, I’m finding, is a loss of the need for certainty….an understanding that what we know is very rarely the end of what we will know and that our lives are open in new ways in new seasons. Paul said about faith once, “we see through a glass darkly,” but the church doesn’t always lead with that bit of humility.
It is so easy to look up one day and decide that the way we have understood Christ doesn’t work any more, doesn’t fit where we are and what we have learned on our journey. Too often, when that happens, we turn away and think the story is ended. That may be the one truth Jesus’ friends shared in common, the belief that the story was over.
The Easter message that replaced that fear of loss was not a single, common message, but one that became real for each of them in different ways and in response to who there were and what they could take in. They each began to experience the risen Christ in ways that had to do with their gifts and their hopes and their particular place in the larger story. The message of Easter is that Christ is always new, alway coming to life in some new way to meet us in the here and now.
What seems obvious to me today is that over time, and in our life together with this mystery, and in stories like the one we heard this morning, Christ rises in new ways in new times throughout our lives. Just when we think he is gone, here he is again with some new connection, some new call, new hope, new next steps. What binds us together and calls us to celebrate today is the promise that we share in the risen life of Christ…..not in the particularities of that life, but in the promise that the one who was raised to new life invites us to new lives we have not yet imagined. Not just once, or twice, but over and over again.
That Easter message is for everyone.
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
JB
