THE DAY OF THE RESURRECTION, YEAR A
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
23 MARCH 2008
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Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18
Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! Happy Easter!
It’s good we have the lilies and the jelly beans. We have to have the chocolates and the bells and the soaring music. We need all of them today, because we can’t possibly explain this day. We need these outward signs. God is in them, God is in the details. Everywhere we look and listen and taste today!
But here’s a question. It’s a question someone posed the other day to all of us who would be preaching Easter sermons. How, this person asked us, how will you be preaching Easter joy to people who know no joy? How will you preach to people whose bodies ache and who are cast down? How will you manage to preach to people who are waiting with fear in their hearts for medical test results, or to people who have lost someone they love or to people who have lost their homes to foreclosure or who live with the threat of foreclosure hanging over their heads? How will you preach to folks who have had comfortable lives up to now, but who have become frightened? How will you preach Easter and resurrection to this broken and distracted world?
That’s not a question just for professional preachers. It’s a question for every baptized Christian who trusts in the resurrection of Jesus and who is called on to spread the Good News. How do we do that? All of us?
Here’s what I know. Behind all the lilies and chocolates, all the alleluias and wonderful music lies this truth: Christ was raised out of darkness and pain, not peace and security. Jesus was raised from the DEAD. Easter came through the Cross. The light of Christ first dawned on some very terrified and disheartened people, while the rest of the world chugged along, oblivious.
Remember: Jesus had become an outcast. He was a failed prophet who had not been the savior so many had counted on. He was a disgraced and murdered criminal. One of his friends had betrayed him and the rest had crept away from his tomb in despair and anguish and for fear of their own lives. It wasn’t a happy scene.
A day passed. A day when Jesus was very dead and God was very silent. On the third day, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb to weep and mourn. She couldn’t bear to stay away. And as the day’s light began to poke through the trees, the first flickering flame of Easter came to her. Two angels were there. And then there was someone else. The gardener? “It’s YOU!” she breathed. It was Jesus.
“I have seen the Lord!” Mary hurried away to say that to her friends.
Easter had arrived in Jerusalem.
How can we preach Easter hope not only to the comfortable and satisfied but to broken down souls in a damaged world? Remember that question.
Easter resurrection came for Mary and for the other disciples in their dark terror. Easter resurrection comes for all of us who find ourselves in the shadows. Easter means that Jesus lives in the middle of the pain and despair of each broken down soul in every corner of this hurting world. Easter means that Jesus lives even in terrible silence when it seems that God is nowhere to be found.
Easter doesn’t mean that all of our dreams and wishes will come true so we can finally go back to our normal lives unscathed---that our favorite candidate will win the election or that our house will finally sell next week or that our disease will suddenly be obliterated or our children will be perfect in every way, whatever that means, or that we won’t have any crab grass when the grass finally starts to grow this year.
Easter does mean that everything that has controlled our lives and weighed us down—even death-- no longer has the last word with us. The lilies and alleluias, the jelly beans and soaring music are signs for us of the new and continuing-forever gift of resurrection joy: that God through the Cross of his Son is with us no matter what, to carry us through no matter what, so that forevermore we can say, Happy Easter, the Lord is risen, no matter what!