oly Week filled with prayer, passion and incredibly beautiful and powerful music. Last night's "Sounds of Solace" moved me deeply - and I am so grateful to all who helped bring it into life. (We might even be able to share some of the sounds and visuals, we'll see.) If you are in town on Easter Sunday, please stop by at 10:30 am.Grace and peace to you today from God on this our Festival and Feast of the Resurrection: Christ is risen, beloved, he is risen indeed!
Do you know that old “call and response?”
• The preacher proclaims: Christ is risen – and the faithful people shout – no polite Reformed reply here, my friends – they shout: He is risen indeed!
• Try that again with me, ok: Christ is risen – he is risen indeed!
That’s a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of the Church – part of it is found in both the gospels of Luke and Matthew suggesting that we’re talking about an Easter greeting used by believers maybe only 30 or 40 years after Christ’s death – so this is a big one. It is a public announcement that we kno
w in our heart of hearts that the one who has been crucified – dead and buried and surrounded by Roman guards – has now also been raised to new life by the grace of God.
• This is NOT an Easter alternative to saying “good morning.” Nor is this proclamation some vague spiritual statement or religious poetry that sounds nice but has no real meaning.
• No, when we proclaim that Christ has risen we’re talking about an encounter with God’s love in action. Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America’s finest working preachers, reminds us that when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and discovered Jesus was missing:
(Unlike the inevitability of springtime…) this was entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground that is that…. You say good-bye. You pay your respects and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them…." So Mary is lost, "like an abandoned pup who had lost her master, staying rooted to the last place he had been without the least idea what to do next…"(Home by Another Way).
Another great American preacher, Frederick Buechner, goes further by reminding us that what Mary Magdalene experienced on Easter Sunday was not only unnatural, it was NO metaphor either:
(For those first believers) the Resurrection was n
o metaphor; it was the power of God. And when they spoke of Jesus as raised from the dead, they meant Jesus alive and at large in the world not as some shimmering ideal of human goodness or the achieving power of hopeful thought, but as the very power of life itself. If the life that was in Jesus died on the cross; if the love that was in him came to an end when his heart stopped beating; if the truth that he spoke was no more if no less timeless than the great truths of any time; if all that he had in him to give to the world was a little glimmer of light to make bearable the inexorable approach of endless night – then all was despair.
Are you still with me? Do you see where I’m going with this? What those early believers proclaimed when they greeted one another with the words, “Christ has risen, he has risen indeed” – and what we mean when we join the sacred throng in our generation – is NOT metaphorical, nor poetic, philosophical, erotic or hopeful (althought it is surely all of these things and more.) It is entirely unnatural – a true act of God’s grace in the world of time – for “unless something very real, but outside our ability to comprehend, indeed took place on that strange, confused morning there would be no New Testament, no Church and no Christianity.” (Buechner)
That’s the first truth I have to proclaim on Easter Sunday: I stand with that old, broken, sometimes right and
often confused, bewildering, annoying, insightful and exasperating apostle we call St. Paul who said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been futile!”
• You see, the earliest reference to Christ’s Resurrection comes from St. Paul – perhaps just 20 years after Christ’s death on the Cross – and Paul was not really interested in all the speculation that takes place around the empty tomb.
• That comes later – and I guess it has its place – but the truth be told, Paul doesn’t care, because for him the evidence that Jesus has been raised to new life by the grace of God is NOT the rolled away stone… but the carried away church.
• Brother Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms – spiritual birthplace of Habitat for Humanity – takes up St. Paul’s challenge in words that make my heart sing. And I’m going to give them to you in spades this Easter Sunday because they are so right: “The proof,” preaches Jordan, “that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples.”
The crowning evidence that Christ lives is NOT a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled community – not a rolled away stone, but a carried away church – because, you see, on the morning of the resurrection God put life in the present tense, not the future. God gave us not a promise but a presence – not a hope for the future but real power for the present – not so much the assurance that we
shall live someday but that Christ is risen in us today.
And here is the point: the resurrection is NOT to convince the incredulous nor to reassure the fearful, but to enkindle the hearts of believers… the evidence is not that the grave is empty, but that we are full… he is risen not because the dead rise, but because we are alive and doing the things he has taught us to do.
And to paraphrase another crusty old saint – St Mark Twain to be exact – who when asked whether or not he believed in infant baptism said, “Believe in it, hell I’ve seen it” – I have to say me, too! Believe in the resurrected Lord – the carried away faith community – the full hearts of believers who stand up to fear, danger, confusion and death in order to make the loving grace of Jesus flesh: believe in it, hell, I’ve seen it, too!
• Haven’t you? I KNOW you have – I KNOW it!
• We are resurrection people, beloved, who can say without reservation: Christ has risen… he has risen indeed because we have seen it and experienced it.
Now if I were smart, I would quit right here, and I think I can hear somebody thinking: Please be smart, preacher. That’s enough for today – play it smart and sit down. But we need to share two more essential truths about this Feast of the Resurrection and shame on me if I don’t lift them up on this day of days.
First, the Resurrection – the truth of Christ’s living presence beyond the Cross and death – is not a doctrinal or theological truth that you are asked to accept or embrace in the abstract. Like the wise old doctors of the church have always said: our faith is not in doctrine or words, but in Christ Jesus and his love. So please understand that if you are having trouble with all this resurrection talk – not comprehending exactly what it really means – that’s ok. You see, even in the resurrection, Jesus makes his presence known NOT in “a blaze of unearthly light,” to quote Buechner again, but in the midst of us. Christ most often comes:
Not in the midst of a sermon, nor in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but… at supper time – around a table –
or walking along a road. This is where all the stories about Christ’s resurrection happen: in the real and common events of life. Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there – someone she first thought was the gardener – only to grasp it was Christ… or Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, “Children, do you have any fish?”; or the those men at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of bread.
Jesus never approaches us from on high – but always from in the midst – in the midst of people – ordinary people like you and me – and in the midst of our real lives and the questions those real lives demands. (Buechner) And that is crucial for us to know: our ordinary, broken, wounded and wonderful lives is where we will meet the Risen Lord – most often when we least expect it – so if you are worried or confused or hurting, let me say to you what an old, old preacher said to me: Hold on, baby, it is still Friday for you, but Sunday is coming.
And I mean that: you may feel beaten – like St. Paul – and your body may be battered, but hold on, baby, it is still Friday for you and Sunday – and I mean Easter Sunday – is still coming. And that’s not cheap or manipulative pulpiteering: look at what happened in the life of Mary Magdalene for her story is truly ours as well.
• Who was she among the disciples? The least of the lowest – a woman who had once been afflicted by mental disease – a real no body. And now, after the Cross, everything that mattered to her was gone. Dead. Destroyed.
• Maybe you’ve felt that way – maybe you feel that way today – there are a lot of reasons to feel alone – or dead – or without hope. So pay attention to Magdalene, beloved: in fact, HOLD on, because it may still be Friday for you but Easter Sunday is… what? Easter Sunday is coming.
Look at Mary – the no body – who is heartbroken and soul sick – and what happens? She is the one God chooses – in all four gospels – she is the one invited by God
to become the first and abiding witness to the Resurrection. She was the first in the community to have her heart filled because…
Jesus comes to her first – with intimacy and tender healing he comes into her midst – knowing full well that she is a woman and a no body. And what happens next? Is she left alone? Is she forgotten and abandoned? No, like another old timer put it: Mary was a no body – who became a somebody who goes on to tell every body that any and all bodies can be filled by God’s grace from the inside out because God’s love won’t stop at the grave.
And that is my last word for today: the reason we have to hold on when it feels like Friday is because the one who is coming on Sunday – the one who was raised from the dead and fills our hearts from the inside out – refuses to let us lock him out of our hearts. The resurrection of Jesus has NOTHING to do with our feelings: we can’t earn or purchase this love; it has nothing to do with being members of the right club or race or religion – Jesus doesn’t care if you are a Republican or a Democratic – or a Kiwanis or a member of the country club.
• God’s love in Jesus Christ is not about figuring out how to be good enough and smart enough to satisfy and fulfill all of God’s commandments.
• And please disabuse yourself of any notion that your bargaining with the Lord – O Lord if you please just help me now I will be good forever – will hasten the coming of Sunday morning to your Friday night blues.
Because, you see, the truth of Easter Sunday morning is that it is ALL about
God coming to us when we’re at our lowest – our worst – without any ability to even perceive that God’s love could be ours. Easter is God’s great YES to all our NO’s. “Easter Sunday is God’s way of saying to you and me, you might reject me if you will, but I am still going to have the last word.” (Clarence Jordan) You may be still trapped in sin – or fear – or addiction – or hatred – but listen up: My love is bigger than all your emptiness and failures. In fact, my YES is bigger than all your NOs!
So look (saith the Lord) I am going to put my son right back down there in the midst of you where he will dwell and take up residence as the Word made Flesh again and again. And when the time is right – and it will be different for each and all of you – I will be there for you on THIS side of the grave. And you can’t earn this blessing – you can’t negotiate this grace – and you can never be so stubborn or sinful that I will let you go! So listen up: I am coming – on this side of the grave – to fill you with my love because that is just who I am: the Lord your God.
And, beloved, that is who Mary met when it was her time – the one raised from the dead by God’s love – same thing happened to Peter and the disciple w
hom Jesus loved – they met him, too – when it was their time. As did Paul and Thomas and I dare say many who have gathered in this place today.
So please understand: being embraced by Christ’s resurrection love is not up to us – that’s God’s business in God’s time, ok?
• Some of us will be startled by this love – and we should be – some of us will eagerly run to the grave – some of us will oppose the Lord and some will be so stubborn that we will demand to put our hand into the wounded one’s side and see the evidence.
• That’s ok: we are all different and the Risen One comes into our midst and our differences – and still carries us into God’s love – because that is God’s nature. We’re just asked to hold on if life feels more like Friday right now than Easter Sunday because the Lord is coming.
That’s what Mary teaches – hold on. Today, I give thanks to God for the presence of Jesus Christ within us and among us. I give thanks to God for the evidence of the Resurrection you embody in the world. And I give thanks to God today that Lord comes to us not because we deserve it, but because God’s love is bigger than all our sin and fear and resistance put together. And so by grace like those before us we proclaim: Christ has risen… he has risen indeed!
• The preacher proclaims: Christ is risen – and the faithful people shout – no polite Reformed reply here, my friends – they shout: He is risen indeed!
• Try that again with me, ok: Christ is risen – he is risen indeed!
That’s a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of the Church – part of it is found in both the gospels of Luke and Matthew suggesting that we’re talking about an Easter greeting used by believers maybe only 30 or 40 years after Christ’s death – so this is a big one. It is a public announcement that we kno
w in our heart of hearts that the one who has been crucified – dead and buried and surrounded by Roman guards – has now also been raised to new life by the grace of God.• This is NOT an Easter alternative to saying “good morning.” Nor is this proclamation some vague spiritual statement or religious poetry that sounds nice but has no real meaning.
• No, when we proclaim that Christ has risen we’re talking about an encounter with God’s love in action. Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America’s finest working preachers, reminds us that when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and discovered Jesus was missing:
(Unlike the inevitability of springtime…) this was entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground that is that…. You say good-bye. You pay your respects and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them…." So Mary is lost, "like an abandoned pup who had lost her master, staying rooted to the last place he had been without the least idea what to do next…"(Home by Another Way).
Another great American preacher, Frederick Buechner, goes further by reminding us that what Mary Magdalene experienced on Easter Sunday was not only unnatural, it was NO metaphor either:
(For those first believers) the Resurrection was n
o metaphor; it was the power of God. And when they spoke of Jesus as raised from the dead, they meant Jesus alive and at large in the world not as some shimmering ideal of human goodness or the achieving power of hopeful thought, but as the very power of life itself. If the life that was in Jesus died on the cross; if the love that was in him came to an end when his heart stopped beating; if the truth that he spoke was no more if no less timeless than the great truths of any time; if all that he had in him to give to the world was a little glimmer of light to make bearable the inexorable approach of endless night – then all was despair.Are you still with me? Do you see where I’m going with this? What those early believers proclaimed when they greeted one another with the words, “Christ has risen, he has risen indeed” – and what we mean when we join the sacred throng in our generation – is NOT metaphorical, nor poetic, philosophical, erotic or hopeful (althought it is surely all of these things and more.) It is entirely unnatural – a true act of God’s grace in the world of time – for “unless something very real, but outside our ability to comprehend, indeed took place on that strange, confused morning there would be no New Testament, no Church and no Christianity.” (Buechner)
That’s the first truth I have to proclaim on Easter Sunday: I stand with that old, broken, sometimes right and
often confused, bewildering, annoying, insightful and exasperating apostle we call St. Paul who said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been futile!”• You see, the earliest reference to Christ’s Resurrection comes from St. Paul – perhaps just 20 years after Christ’s death on the Cross – and Paul was not really interested in all the speculation that takes place around the empty tomb.
• That comes later – and I guess it has its place – but the truth be told, Paul doesn’t care, because for him the evidence that Jesus has been raised to new life by the grace of God is NOT the rolled away stone… but the carried away church.
• Brother Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms – spiritual birthplace of Habitat for Humanity – takes up St. Paul’s challenge in words that make my heart sing. And I’m going to give them to you in spades this Easter Sunday because they are so right: “The proof,” preaches Jordan, “that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples.”
The crowning evidence that Christ lives is NOT a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled community – not a rolled away stone, but a carried away church – because, you see, on the morning of the resurrection God put life in the present tense, not the future. God gave us not a promise but a presence – not a hope for the future but real power for the present – not so much the assurance that we
shall live someday but that Christ is risen in us today.And here is the point: the resurrection is NOT to convince the incredulous nor to reassure the fearful, but to enkindle the hearts of believers… the evidence is not that the grave is empty, but that we are full… he is risen not because the dead rise, but because we are alive and doing the things he has taught us to do.
And to paraphrase another crusty old saint – St Mark Twain to be exact – who when asked whether or not he believed in infant baptism said, “Believe in it, hell I’ve seen it” – I have to say me, too! Believe in the resurrected Lord – the carried away faith community – the full hearts of believers who stand up to fear, danger, confusion and death in order to make the loving grace of Jesus flesh: believe in it, hell, I’ve seen it, too!
• Haven’t you? I KNOW you have – I KNOW it!
• We are resurrection people, beloved, who can say without reservation: Christ has risen… he has risen indeed because we have seen it and experienced it.
Now if I were smart, I would quit right here, and I think I can hear somebody thinking: Please be smart, preacher. That’s enough for today – play it smart and sit down. But we need to share two more essential truths about this Feast of the Resurrection and shame on me if I don’t lift them up on this day of days.
First, the Resurrection – the truth of Christ’s living presence beyond the Cross and death – is not a doctrinal or theological truth that you are asked to accept or embrace in the abstract. Like the wise old doctors of the church have always said: our faith is not in doctrine or words, but in Christ Jesus and his love. So please understand that if you are having trouble with all this resurrection talk – not comprehending exactly what it really means – that’s ok. You see, even in the resurrection, Jesus makes his presence known NOT in “a blaze of unearthly light,” to quote Buechner again, but in the midst of us. Christ most often comes:
Not in the midst of a sermon, nor in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but… at supper time – around a table –
or walking along a road. This is where all the stories about Christ’s resurrection happen: in the real and common events of life. Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there – someone she first thought was the gardener – only to grasp it was Christ… or Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, “Children, do you have any fish?”; or the those men at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of bread.Jesus never approaches us from on high – but always from in the midst – in the midst of people – ordinary people like you and me – and in the midst of our real lives and the questions those real lives demands. (Buechner) And that is crucial for us to know: our ordinary, broken, wounded and wonderful lives is where we will meet the Risen Lord – most often when we least expect it – so if you are worried or confused or hurting, let me say to you what an old, old preacher said to me: Hold on, baby, it is still Friday for you, but Sunday is coming.
And I mean that: you may feel beaten – like St. Paul – and your body may be battered, but hold on, baby, it is still Friday for you and Sunday – and I mean Easter Sunday – is still coming. And that’s not cheap or manipulative pulpiteering: look at what happened in the life of Mary Magdalene for her story is truly ours as well.
• Who was she among the disciples? The least of the lowest – a woman who had once been afflicted by mental disease – a real no body. And now, after the Cross, everything that mattered to her was gone. Dead. Destroyed.
• Maybe you’ve felt that way – maybe you feel that way today – there are a lot of reasons to feel alone – or dead – or without hope. So pay attention to Magdalene, beloved: in fact, HOLD on, because it may still be Friday for you but Easter Sunday is… what? Easter Sunday is coming.
Look at Mary – the no body – who is heartbroken and soul sick – and what happens? She is the one God chooses – in all four gospels – she is the one invited by God
to become the first and abiding witness to the Resurrection. She was the first in the community to have her heart filled because…Jesus comes to her first – with intimacy and tender healing he comes into her midst – knowing full well that she is a woman and a no body. And what happens next? Is she left alone? Is she forgotten and abandoned? No, like another old timer put it: Mary was a no body – who became a somebody who goes on to tell every body that any and all bodies can be filled by God’s grace from the inside out because God’s love won’t stop at the grave.
And that is my last word for today: the reason we have to hold on when it feels like Friday is because the one who is coming on Sunday – the one who was raised from the dead and fills our hearts from the inside out – refuses to let us lock him out of our hearts. The resurrection of Jesus has NOTHING to do with our feelings: we can’t earn or purchase this love; it has nothing to do with being members of the right club or race or religion – Jesus doesn’t care if you are a Republican or a Democratic – or a Kiwanis or a member of the country club.
• God’s love in Jesus Christ is not about figuring out how to be good enough and smart enough to satisfy and fulfill all of God’s commandments.
• And please disabuse yourself of any notion that your bargaining with the Lord – O Lord if you please just help me now I will be good forever – will hasten the coming of Sunday morning to your Friday night blues.
Because, you see, the truth of Easter Sunday morning is that it is ALL about
God coming to us when we’re at our lowest – our worst – without any ability to even perceive that God’s love could be ours. Easter is God’s great YES to all our NO’s. “Easter Sunday is God’s way of saying to you and me, you might reject me if you will, but I am still going to have the last word.” (Clarence Jordan) You may be still trapped in sin – or fear – or addiction – or hatred – but listen up: My love is bigger than all your emptiness and failures. In fact, my YES is bigger than all your NOs!So look (saith the Lord) I am going to put my son right back down there in the midst of you where he will dwell and take up residence as the Word made Flesh again and again. And when the time is right – and it will be different for each and all of you – I will be there for you on THIS side of the grave. And you can’t earn this blessing – you can’t negotiate this grace – and you can never be so stubborn or sinful that I will let you go! So listen up: I am coming – on this side of the grave – to fill you with my love because that is just who I am: the Lord your God.
And, beloved, that is who Mary met when it was her time – the one raised from the dead by God’s love – same thing happened to Peter and the disciple w
hom Jesus loved – they met him, too – when it was their time. As did Paul and Thomas and I dare say many who have gathered in this place today.So please understand: being embraced by Christ’s resurrection love is not up to us – that’s God’s business in God’s time, ok?
• Some of us will be startled by this love – and we should be – some of us will eagerly run to the grave – some of us will oppose the Lord and some will be so stubborn that we will demand to put our hand into the wounded one’s side and see the evidence.
• That’s ok: we are all different and the Risen One comes into our midst and our differences – and still carries us into God’s love – because that is God’s nature. We’re just asked to hold on if life feels more like Friday right now than Easter Sunday because the Lord is coming.
That’s what Mary teaches – hold on. Today, I give thanks to God for the presence of Jesus Christ within us and among us. I give thanks to God for the evidence of the Resurrection you embody in the world. And I give thanks to God today that Lord comes to us not because we deserve it, but because God’s love is bigger than all our sin and fear and resistance put together. And so by grace like those before us we proclaim: Christ has risen… he has risen indeed!
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