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Sermon at The Church of The Holy Apostles, New York
April 20, 2003, The Sunday of the Resurrection:  Easter Day
Year B
By The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D.

Lesson: Acts 10: 34-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3: 1-4 

Alleluia, Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia.

            A deeply uncertain, unnerved, shell-shocked world.  A community of people gathered here, also deeply uncertain, unnerved, in our own way, even shell-shocked.  And yet it is Easter, with all the hope and joy and gladness Easter brings—at least is supposed to bring to us.  Where does one begin—or to put it more directly, where do I, where can I, how can I begin an Easter sermon this year?

            Well, when in doubt, one can always repair to that most profound theological interpreter of modern times, Charles Schulz—and his beloved Peanuts.  In a particularly insightful episode, Lucy approaches good old Charlie Brown, and proclaims to him, “You know, life is like an ocean liner.  Some people take their deck chair and put it on the stern, to see where they have been.  And some people put their deck chair on the bow, to see where they are going.  Charlie Brown, tell me.  Where do you want to put your deck chair?”  With Charlie Brown’s usual perplexed look, he confesses, “I don’t know.  I can’t even unfold my deck chair.”

            That says it all.  So much uncertainty.  So much unclarity.  A loss of our bearings.  Of not knowing where we are headed, of bewilderment as to where we have been.  Of sorting through the myriad and conflicting images of the present.  Of not knowing for certain where or how or even whether we can be grounded, how we can gain some perspective.  Of not even knowing how to unfold our deck chairs.

            From an uncertain war, to what seems an equally uncertain peace and future.  With a land and a city still living in fear, and with states and cities across our land facing draconian scenarios of massive cutbacks of so much that matters deeply to us. 

            We live in a world that seems deeply mired in Lent, and or perhaps even Holy Week.  These are images there that seem so very apt, so very appropriate.  The darkness of Tenebrae gets it just right—as we struggle to hang on to the vision of that last flickering light. 

            And yet here we are this morning with brass and organ and choir and tympani—resounding gloriously in this wonderfully live sacred space.  How can we, how might we dare to consider that we have passed over—or rather, that God has delivered us so that our proclamation this day is not abject fear and uncertainty, but rather unalloyed joy and hope and wonder?

            Well, the first thing I want to note is that we can so easily be myopic.  We see the world as we are experiencing it right now, and make our observations and generalizations based on what we see, what we know, what we experience now—and then we so easily imagine that we are unique in what we are facing. 

            It may be that in our post-9/11 world, we are being forced to be a bit more realistic about the human condition, about the nature of the world in which we find ourselves.  If we can understand the concept of a market bubble that could and in fact did burst, perhaps we can also sense that we have long lived in an American bubble that was simply unsustainable over the long haul.

            I mention this on Easter Day not to be down in the tooth when it would be nice for a change to be up, but rather to suggest that the joy of Easter may be even greater than we were first prepared to imagine.  For Easter is not the final capstone in completing that which is doing very well on its own, thank you very much.  It is rather, God’s decisive Yes to a world where death and evil would seem to reign—and to have the last word.

            Consider Jesus’ disciples at the end of Holy Week.  A dispirited, uncertain, fearful, disbelieving band, if ever there was one.  They had followed this remarkable teacher who did so much, who taught them so much, who seemed to promise so much. 

            They lived in a world under the domination of the Roman empire, where they lived in an insignificant vassal state run by collaborators.  The popular wisdom was that it would take a dramatic, divine intervention by God to change things for the better. 

            Jesus had stirred at least some hopes that maybe he would be such an agent of change—but he seemed to have something very different in mind.  But in the confusion and uncertainty of just what it was he was up to, he ended up getting killed nonetheless. 

            At the end of that drama, all those famous male disciples in one fashion or another forsook him and fled.  Only some of the women were brave enough to see his execution.  Joseph of Arimathea at least steps forward and gains permission to have the body of Jesus put in a proper tomb—a very hurried burial before the sabbath begins.  But no time to properly prepare the body for burial. 

            The sabbath passes and a bunch of dispirited disciples hide in a locked room.  Only those faithful women dare to venture out early on the first day of the week, seeking to pay their last respects to their fallen leader.  And so, in the Easter gospel we heard a few moments ago,  Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome, bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body.  It is a deeply grim time for all concerned.  Evil and death have once again had the last word.

Our Easter story in this year is taken from Mark, the earliest of our gospels.  That it is the earliest may mean that it is at least a bit closer to the events it is describing than the other gospels, although still, quite a number of years have passed before Mark’s gospel was actually written.  But still, it may be a bit less varnished than the other gospels, less influenced by events in the life of the early church that are then read back into the story of Jesus’ life and passion and resurrection.

Although clearly and unambiguously written from the standpoint of the resurrection faith of the early church, there is nonetheless something very strange about this Easter gospel.  The three women brought spices so that they might anoint Jesus’ body.  It is just after sunrise.  They set out, and they wonder just who they might find who could roll away the stone from the tomb so they might enter it.  But they soon discover that the very large stone had already been rolled back.

With trepidation they enter the tomb, they see a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting to the right.  The Revised Standard Version suggested that the women were “amazed.”  The New Revised Standard Version suggests they were rather “alarmed.”  How about “terrified, scared out of their wits, rendered speechless, stuck dumb”?  These women can see that this man is no earthly creature, and further, the body of Jesus is nowhere to be found.

But then these words are spoken to them: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place where they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  Our Easter gospel lesson ends with these words: “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” 

There are no resurrection appearances in Mark—except in suspect verses generally thought by scholars to have been later appended to the passage we heard.  There is only the promise of what is to come.

They were afraid.  We are afraid.  Not knowing what to believe, what to make of this experience.  Of wanting to believe, to hope for more, yet given all they had been through, deeply uncertain, mistrustful, fearful, struck dumb.

Annie Dillard, in her Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes these perceptive words: “God, I am sorry I ran from you.  I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge.  For you meant only love, and I felt only fear, and pain.  So once in Israel, love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.”

And yet fearful as those women and we are—there is the promise that is announced.  “He is going before you.”  “Seek, be open, and you will find him.” 

Another commentator puts it this way:  “The capacity for humankind to prevail, by its own devices and desires, is unthinkable.  …For our own sake God realized this, even if we, in our hubris, did not and do not.  What we murder, God resurrects.  What we condemn, God exalts.  What we refute, God vindicates.  What we destroy, God revives.  Jesus is alive, and if we ever had any doubt about the grace of God—that God gives us not what we deserve but what we need, that God is on our side no matter what, that God wants our release from sin and death—come to the empty tomb.  Come in open vulnerability which means, ‘come as you are.’”

That is what those women did.  That is what we are invited to do.  To explore that empty tomb.  To hear those unbelievable words even in our fear and dis-ease: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised.  He is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

            What do we do with this open invitation to come and explore in all our vulnerability and uncertainty?  What do we do with the words that fill us with both fear and awe?  To put it another way, how can we find our risen Lord?   Or, to put it still another way, how can we open ourselves so that our risen Lord might find us?

            One thing for certain is that we are not likely to find or be found by forcing on ourselves a theological dogma to which we must give intellectual assent.  Resurrection is not a concept or proposition we are likely to get our heads around.   No, Easter is rather about finding and  encountering a Jesus who has in fact triumphed over death and vanquished it.  Easter is none other than encountering the risen and living Christ himself, today, here and now, who is present with us and calls us to new life, and who gives us a promise that we too will participate in his life in and with and through God. 

            To put it another way, our Easter faith comes not through argument, not even through some external “evidence,” but rather through our own deepest experience—a relationship with a Lord and God who loves us so much that he will not let us go.  And, paradoxically,  we know and feel and live into this new reality not when we have it most together, but rather in gentleness and tenderness and love and vulnerability—even in uncertainty and fear. 

            We find it not when we seek to be in charge, but rather when we know most certainly that we are not in charge.             

            It is in our weakness and vulnerability that we know, more, I think than at any other time, that nothing, and most certainly not death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now I do have to tell you, I’m still impatient.  I wish God would truly fix things, really fix them, now.  But of course that is precisely the kind of divine intervention the people in Jesus’ day wanted.  And we know that isn’t quite what Jesus brought.  As long as this world shall last, that likely will not happen, for folks will continue to have their agendas of what they want and need to have “fixed.”

But what has happened is even more important.  We have been given our life.  We have been given riches beyond measure, an economy of abundance, not one of scarcity.  We have been promised more than we can ask for or imagine.  Death is not, is not, the final word.  Not literally.  Not symbolically.  We do not have to be afraid.  We do not have to be fearful.  We do not have to be defensive.  We don’t have to hunker down.  We don’t even have to be small.  For our risen Lord calls us out from all of these things.

And we are freed as least from time to time to actually live our lives in the light of this new reality.  To witness to a different scheme of things, a different set of values.  To love and serve and respond to a still suffering and tragic world—for that is where we find the risen Christ who goes before us and calls us out—and gives us a destiny that nothing, not any-thing can destroy.

We have been given our life.  Our risen Lord goes ahead of us.  He is the source and author of our light and life, now, and for all eternity.   

Jesus Christ is risen today.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.

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