What an
incredible story! Think about it: your best friend has just been executed,
dead beyond a shadow of a doubt. The next thing you know is that he
is alive, raised from the dead, standing right in front of you. How
to believe it! How to make any sense of it? How to comprehend that from
that moment on everything would be different?
I'm tempted
to say that the story begins on the Friday before with Jesus' death
on a cross. Actually, the story really begins with the birth of Jesus.
We know that story well: The announcement of the Angel Gabriel to Mary
that she would bear a child whose name would be Jesus, an Aramaic derivative
from the Hebrew Joshua which means "God saves;" no room in
the inn at Bethlehem with Mary and Joseph forced to take refuge in a
stable-"Away in a manger, no crib for a bed;" that his birth
was attended by shepherds and angels and wise men; but then having to
flee to Egypt to escape the intention of King Herod to kill any pretenders
to his throne. If we continue with that sub-story we encounter the viciousness
of King Herod who did in fact slaughter the children of Bethlehem, and
we are reminded that despite "the hopes and dreams that are met
in thee tonight," Jesus was born into a dangerous world, a world
where the innocent were at risk, a world full of injustice and cruelty,
a world so in need of the peace the birth of Jesus promised.
To be
sure, we live in a dangerous world, frightening, really. How well I
remember as a child of five the air raid drills in my first school.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the threat of German submarines were
wakeup calls that our isolation was no longer a security. How well I
remember as a young teenager conversations about bomb shelters in case
of a nuclear attack. History has taught us how close we came to that
particular holocaust, and despite the end of the Cold War there still
exist nuclear weapons here and abroad capable of global annihilation.
I think of the Lost Boys of the Sudan who as children had to deal with
inconceivable deprivation and horror, tens of thousands killed simply
trying to find a safe place. I think of baby girls in China who are
killed just because they are girls. Thank God we live in America, but
9/11 has punctured any bubble of security we might have had in much
the same way that the Laurie Dann shootings in Winnetka made us realize
that even in this community we are not immune, that the innocent in
all our communities be they Bethlehem, the Sudan, Iraq, Chicago, or
Winnetka are at risk.
But if
the story of Jesus' resurrection includes the circumstances of his birth,
it also includes the circumstances of his life, especially his extraordinary
three years of ministry. That began with his baptism we think at about
age 30 when his cousin John the Baptist introduces us to Jesus, "Behold
the Lamb of God." Behold the lamb, the one whose sacrifice will
forgive your sins. It was however by any measure a ministry of phenomenal
success. This young, charismatic carpenter from Nazareth started off
like gangbusters and attracted huge crowds with his preaching and teaching.
He was known as a healer who could cure leprosy, who could cast out
demons, who could even raise the dead. He was something of an iconoclast
in his challenge to conventional religion and was therefore perceived
as a threat by both of the centers of power in Palestine, the Jewish
Sanhedrin, and the Roman procurator.
In many
ways the success of Jesus in his ministry is very appealing in today's
culture of success. The friendly little church around the corner just
like the Mom and Pop store around the corner are being replaced by mega
churches and Wal-Mart -read L & A and Office Depot. I remember one
article I read that described Jesus' management style as particularly
effective-a sort of Herb Kelleher, founder and chairman of Southwest
Airlines: thoughtful, decisive, a visionary who can motivate others.
And yet, we know today the climate in which leadership is exercised
in this country and throughout the world is particularly toxic. We are
driven by the need to be popular and tell people what they want to hear,
rather than what they need to hear. That was certainly true in Jesus'
case and brings us squarely to the story of his death.
On Good
Friday we rehearsed the story of that death and are painfully aware
that the bread and circuses of Jesus' success in ministry, all of those
hosannas on Palm Sunday, could not save him from the disappointment
of those who would set him up as the Messiah King and those who understood
that any description of a king was a threat. Much has been made this
past year of "Who killed Jesus?" The answer is that all of
us killed him: the Jewish religious leaders, Pontius Pilate and Roman
soldiers, those in the crowd, and you and me. It is human sin that nailed
him to the tree and like Jesus' birth, and like Jesus' life, the story
of his dying and death is very much our story as well. The centuries
and centuries of violence and inhumanity and injustice and hatred and
greed continue to plague us. And yet the tree of his death turned out
to be a tree of life revealed early that Sunday morning with Mary Magdalene's
discovery that Jesus was alive.
And so
the penultimate story in these series of stories confronts us with the
dazzling, overwhelming fact that death could not contain Jesus. All
of a sudden the women see something that the world has been trying ever
since to comprehend. The stone has been rolled away from the tomb of
this world. The tomb enclosing death itself has been cracked open. A
world of violence and fear need not be the last word.
Now I
said penultimate story because the story doesn't end with the Resurrection.
Penultimate means next to last, and that last story is your story and
my story as we incorporate faith and hope and confidence that death-not
our death, not anyone's death-that death cannot defeat the life God
has in store for us. Moreover, this resurrected life business isn't
just for later, it's for right now.
But there's
the rub. How willing are we to have those stones rolled away in our
lives? All of us, obviously, hope for the healing of others, the signs
of resurrection in their life. And all of us know people in whom the
Resurrection is working miracles right now. Someone celebrating the
anniversary of sobriety. Someone who calls chemotherapy her best friend
because it's working. A premature baby who takes an agonizingly long
time to suck and swallow, but who is finally home with her parents and
siblings, a very happy family. Or one with chronic and disabling back
pain who discovers in all of his tests there is a tumor on his pancreas,
and because it was caught so early could be successfully surgically
removed. He still has back pain but being cancer-free is resurrection
enough for him. Or a ten-year old who presents himself at the altar
rail on a Healing Sunday and says simply, "I want to grow closer
to God." Dramatic and not-so dramatic examples of our gratitude
that the Resurrection can be seen in the lives of those we love, in
examples of bravery and heroism and sacrifice here at home and throughout
the world which insist that life is God's dream for us as well as God's
reality for us. Archbishop Desmond Tutu knows the truth of that when
he preached recently in Chicago citing the work of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa, when "we went the route of magnanimity
and generosity of spirit, and we have scored a spectacular victory over
the viciousness of apartheid [through forgiveness and love]."
Such
is our gratitude for others, but what of ourselves? A hospital chaplain
once commented that 85% of people waking up in the recovery room after
surgery said the same thing first. It is not, to our surprise, "Am
I OK?" or, "Did you get it all?" What they say is, "Did
I talk much and what did I say?" That chaplain said it means that
85% of the people you will ever meet in life would rather die than make
a fool of themselves. But he also went on to say that what people are
really asking is the human question: Can I be loved if I am known? Could
it be possible that, if others knew the secrets of my heart, the failures,
the fears, the corners cut, and the love of self, could it be that if
the real me is exposed that anyone could love me? So often it's because
we are so afraid to find out whether the answer could be "Yes,"
that we hide or we cover up or we push away. If the real me is exposed,
can I be loved? (I am grateful to Jim Donald and his Easter Sermon in
2003 for this illustration.)
The proclamation
of Easter Day-now let's take a deep breath everyone-is that every person
here today, however you found yourself here today, that every person
is known just as we are, and loved by God just as we are. God knows
all of us are a work in progress, but the Resurrection wasn't just for
the spiritual giants among us. It's for the doubters, for those who
don't think they know enough of the story or when to say "Amen,"
for those who are afraid to give up their secrets lest we invoke the
judgment of others, for those on the way up and on the way down, it's
for whatever winning team or losing team you play for, for the tiniest
child and our most senior citizen, for the visitor, for the hesitant,
the worried and anxious, the distracted, (anyone distracted lately?),
for the Senior Warden and the Sexton, for the Flower Guild and those
who are allergic, for the lovers and makers of music and for those who
can't carry a tune in a bucket, for those who only put a quarter in
their mite boxes yesterday and for those who put a quarter in every
day for forty days, for those who are hanging on by their fingernails
and those for whom the world is their oyster (at least for now)-surely
you get the picture: the Resurrection is for you. God loves you completely
and utterly, Jesus died for you and was raised for you, the Holy Spirit
will heal you and strengthen you. We are so blessed my dear brothers
and sisters in Christ, so blessed.
Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
