Easter Changes Everything: A Sermon for Resurrection Sunday, April 16, 2006

Sermons are bit out of order.... things got whacky, and I got a bit behind on posting things, around Easter. So I'm getting things posted as I can, and not necessarily in the order in which they were preached.

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that “pierced” died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

When Updike writes that the Resurrection of Christ was real, and bodily, and solid, and definite, and monstrous, and inconvenient .... what he means is “Easter changes everything!”

We aren’t really sure who went first to that Tomb in that Garden that Sunday morning long ago. John seems to suggest that Mary Magdalen went there alone ... Matthew says she was accompanied by “the other Mary,” and Mark says that Salome was there also, and Luke reports that the mother of James and Joanna were there. Whoever the women may have been, what we do know is that something incredible happened to them, that is - they encountered the Risen Christ, that they were terrified by this confrontation, and for some time they said nothing to anyone about it. Mark says pointedly, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Someone has suggested that these women were the first Episcopalians: They were blown away by the best news ever revealed in the history ofv he world, before and since – and they don't tell anyone! We Anglicans have remained faithful to this scripture ever since! It's been said that the only commandment we've ever obeyed is Jesus' command to secrecy, "Don't tell anyone!" Give us another 2000 years and we might start spreading the news.

We know the news today because Mary Magdalene and her friends eventually did tell someone and the news spread. But it is easy to understand why they were so afraid and why they wouldn’t have said anything right away. Consider....

They had bought the oils and spices required to prepare the dead. They planned to anoint Jesus. As they walked to burial place they were probably talking about what they would find there. The women had a specific tasks to accomplish ... they had carried them, their Franklin-Covey Day Planner or their Palm Pilot would have had the following in their “to-do list”:

1) Go to the tomb
2) Find someone to roll away the stone
3) Prepare Jesus' body

Their anticipated day, though sad, was planned and simple. They would remove the linens in which Joseph of Arimathea had wrapped Jesus. They would carefully wash their rabbi’s body anoint it with the oils and the herbs, wrap it again, and place it in the tomb in the manner prescribed by the Law. It would be a sad and painful task, but it also be a familiar and comforting one.

And then God changed everything. No wonder alarm and terror and amazement seized them. Until now the women (and all disciples, in fact) only had to mourn the loss of a great teacher and friend whose only fault may have been to mislead them into thinking he was something he obviously was not. Since he had died, he couldn't be the one for whom they had hoped. They had been wrong about him.

Until now, their feelings had been those of mourning and perhaps mingled with regret that they had followed a man whose life had ended in failure, being tried and executed as a criminal. Until now.... Now they have to deal with the very scary thought, the very real fear that maybe they have been following not the wrong guy, but the right guy. A guy more right than they had ever imagined. And if that was true, consider the implications about how they would have to live and what they would have to do. Their routines would have to be thrown away.

Faced with such a reality, I'd be terrified too. And like them, I would probably not want to say a whole lot to anyone until I sorted a few things out! Eventually, they did sort it all out, eventually they shared the news of what had happened, and the world hasn’t been the same since. The resurrection changed everything.

Through Christ’s resurrection God give us reason laugh at our death sentence by punctuating it with a living exclamation mark. On this day and in days to come may we remember that there are many times and circumstances when God restates the joyful resurrection proclamation, when resurrection continues to change everything:

* Abilities faded and forgotten are channeled toward new creativity: that's resurrection.

* Friendships once killed by frosty misunderstanding bloom again in warm reconciliation: that's resurrection.

* Hopes glimmering and gone are rekindled by expressions of caring: that's resurrection.

* Faith, dulled by lack of exercise, dances again to God's everyday rhythms: that's resurrection.

We worship the God whose resurrecting power changes everything. That’s why Easter is really a holiday for adults more than for children. Children don’t yet have those faded and forgotten abilities to be brought back to new creativity. Children haven’t yet felt the pain of a dead friendship. Children haven’t yet lost hope nor had their faith dulled by routine and neglect. Children enjoy Easter, I’m sure – there are Easter egg hunts, and the story of the Easter bunny, and lots of candy ... but Easter really isn’t a children’s holiday.

The American Orthodox writer Frederica Matthewes-Green writes:

Easter just isn't fun in the same way Christmas is, a type of fun that could be better described as styled for children. It's a commonplace to say that "Christmas is for children," but what about Easter? Is it for children, too?

It sure didn't seem so to me, back then. Compared to Christmas, Easter was boring. Chocolate bunnies: good. Scratchy new crinolines: bad. Long blah-blah-blah at church. A lot of wordy grown-up buildup leading to, it seemed, no payoff. You could always count on Christmas to change a lot of stuff, especially in the toybox. Easter didn't change anything.

***

I remember my toybox, but not much of what was in it, and I don't retain any of those thrilling Christmas toys today. When I grew up, I put away childish things. When I grew up I began to be concerned with bigger things, many of them difficult to comprehend. Like Mitch, I saw suffering and death. I saw people live through situations so crushingly unfair that it was impossible that the universe bore no witness, impossible that there was no God who could wipe tears away and effect justice on the last day. I saw people find within themselves nobility to overcome, as well, and heard them say the strength came from a source beyond their own.

These are not things children have to think about.

Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness. Yet in the midst of this desolation we find Jesus, triumphant over death and still shockingly alive, present to us in ways we cannot understand much less explain. In him we find vibrancy of life, and a firm compassion that does not deny our suffering but transforms and illuminates it. He is life itself. As life incarnate, he could not be held back by death.

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?" wrote St. John Chrysostom, in a 4th century sermon still used in every Orthodox church on Pascha (our name for Easter).

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life reigns.
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.

On Pascha we will sing, over and over, dozens of times, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." It is not a children's song. But grownups are taller, and can see farther, and know what hard blows life can bring. Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection.

Easter didn't change anything? Easter changes everything.

Let me say that one more time. Easter changes everything. This makes Easter the most important Christian holy day. It’s the most important day because it’s the resurrection of Jesus that shows the world that he wasn’t just an extraordinary person, or just a wise prophet, or a great teacher. The resurrection, Jesus coming back from death, was God’s way of showing the world that he is in control of everything, life and death, the spiritual realms and the physical world.

Without Easter we wouldn’t have much. We wouldn’t celebrate Christmas! Think about it. Who would care about the birthday of a child born to a poor carpenter and his wife in a tiny backwater of village? As good a man as that child could have grown to be, if the resurrection hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t really care. If there hadn’t been a resurrection, there wouldn’t be any churches, no Christians, no ultimate meaning for life on earth, no hope of heaven. There would be a lot less peace in the world … if you can imagine that. There would be much more need, much more suffering, much more greed, much more hatred … without the resurrection. Easter changes everything!

And, without Easter all we would know about love would be it’s shadow. Without the resurrection what Jesus did on the cross wouldn’t matter. It would have been seen as just one more Jewish martyr dying for his faith. A noble act, but it would have been quickly forgotten. Jesus faithfully going to the cross may have been a great act of faithfulness, but it doesn’t mean much until Jesus comes back from death. Then we get to see that his death on cross was even more an act of love. You see, ultimately, Easter is the source of how we know that God loves us. It’s the event we can point to and say, “Because of the resurrection, I can know for sure that God is alive and well and loves me! Not only does he love me enough to die for me, he loves me enough to come back for me!”

This is why the Gospel writers report that the women left the tomb with mixed emotions. Luke says they were both perplexed and terrified; Matthew says they went away “with [both] fear and great joy;” Mark describes them as filled with “terror and amazement.”

G.K. Chesterton once wrote:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

So we, too, leave the empty tomb of Jesus with mixed feelings, with perplexity and terror, with amazement, with fear and great joy.

The Methodist missionary Earl Stanley Jones, in his autobiography A Song of Ascents tells of an African who changed his name to “After” immediately following his conversion. He reasoned that all things were new and different and important after he met Christ. Easter is what makes us “After” Christians. “After” Easter, nothing in life is ever the same again. Easter changes everything.

Change moves us into the unknown, but if we are truly living after Easter, propelled by a faith in a Lord who lives, then there will be times when Christ will plant our feet on solid ground, give us a solid footing on which to stand. There will be other times when he will lead us into new and unfamiliar territories. The footing there may not be so solid. But then our God, whose resurrection changes everything, will teach us to fly: that's what the prophet Isaiah promised: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles ....”

Easter changes everything! Most of all, Easter changes us!

Christ is risen! Alleluia!