April 8, 2007 - The Resurrection of our Lord
Luke 24
Grace and peace to you from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!
Many of you might have been caught a little off guard this morning. You got up and got all dressed up, came to church (found a parking space and a seat) and settled in for the bells and whistles (or lilies and trumpets) of the “Easter Morning Big Event.” Instead, you were submitted to the somewhat disconcerting (albeit beautifully proclaimed) choral piece, “Once Upon a Tree.” I could almost feel the stirring. Did we miss a meeting? Isn’t it Easter? Why are we being pushed back a few days to ponder once again that terrible display of human sin and cruelty that led up to the painful death of Jesus of Nazareth? Why are we being forced to look up at that cross, and to feel the emotions we would so readily put behind us in favor of the glory? Why must we be reminded that Christ’s Passionate darkness even happened? WHY ARE YOU PUTTING US THROUGH THE KNOTHOLE ALL OVER AGAIN?
Because, dearest friends, without Good Friday there is no Easter. Without death there is no possibility of Resurrection. Without a life worth walking away from, there is no hope for new life. And without you risking losing yourself, you will never fully experience the love that God intended for you.
You know it’s true, don’t you? We begin our lives, hopefully, steeped in the love of our families and surrounded with friends. But then we begin to “fall in love” and we learn that love works best when we give of ourselves – when we “give up” our selves – for it is in that sacrifice of our greatest treasure – us – we find something even more precious. The point is simply, “one cannot choose to love, without choosing to die. For to love is to make oneself vulnerable; to risk suffering, even death for another. Death makes love possible. In fact, it was through the death of God’s own Son that God attempts to capture our heart for all eternity.
Doesn’t seem fair, does it, that we have that kind of power over God? When you really think it through it is such an enigma, a curious paradox, a cosmic joke that God would allow us to choose for ourselves. Because in creating us with freedom of the will, God created us with the power to walk away. And my, oh my, we know how to walk away. We know how to give God lip-service while at the same time seizing life on our own terms. We fill our lives with junk and spend our days in pursuit of all things meaningless. We grieve the heart of God.
It reminds me of stories I have heard from the folks who have come back from the Mexico mission or our Katrina Relief trips; stories about crushing poverty and houses that have been filled with mud for almost two years. Most disasters deal the death blow all at once, like a tornado or a fire – one minute you have a life – the next minute it’s gone. But life across our border and on the Gulf coast is like experiencing a slow dying; houses made of cardboard and houses full of memories and memorabilia caked over with mud. Streets covered with dust; walls covered with mold. Lives drained of resources.
Those houses could be us. For there are some sitting right here this morning whose lives are falling apart. There are some who know what it feels like to see the waters rage around them and wash away everything to economics, politics, cancer, or divorce, betrayal by someone close, disappointment in a treasured love or even death. And there are also those who look pretty good on the outside, but are covered with layer after layer of mud on the inside: day after day in a pointless job, or a loveless marriage, without friends or someone to love, or meaninglessness or “nowhere else to turn-ness.” Those are the lives that we all share, until someone in a white Tyvek disaster-relief jumpsuit walks into our lives and becomes Christ’s heart to us. Or someone arrives to build us an adobe house, or someone reaches out and touches us deeply with a word of comfort and hope. For new life comes only at the hands of love.
There is a wonderful tale told from a source we might not readily access. That is the philosophy of the Sufi: “Once upon a time, the story tells, a Sufi, or wise man, stopped by a flooding riverbed to rest. The rising waters licked the low-hanging branches of trees that lined the creek. And there, on one of them, a scorpion struggled to avoid the rising stream. Aware that the scorpion would drown soon if not brought to dry land, the Sufi stretched along the branch and reached out his hand time after time to touch the stranded scorpion that stung him over and over again. But still the scorpion kept its grip on the branch. ‘Sufi,’ said a passerby, ‘Don't you realize that if you touch that scorpion it will sting you?’ And the Sufi replied as he reached out for the scorpion one more time, ‘Ah, so it is, my friend. But just because it is the scorpion's nature to sting, does not mean that I should abandon my nature to save.’" (as told by Sr. Joan Chittister, “Not the results that count, but the becoming – Lent and Sufism philosophy,” in the National Catholic Reporter, 3/16/01)
For some folks – Easter is all just a glorious Sunday and words – life has been good, and filled with love – and for you the message of Easter is not new life from dead life – but new life beyond what you could imagine for yourselves. For you, Easter is challenge, a call and a sending to be the one in the white jumpsuit – mucking out the dead mud in someone elses’ empty tomb. Don’t know where to do this work? Don’t even know how to begin to find a way to serve God in this world? Well, be confident that God is faithfully working in you at this very moment. And remember, even Jesus prepared for 30 years before spending his last three for you.
Holy Week exists to drag us through the knothole. Our lives reflect this struggle every day in a million different ways. But what does Easter mean? Different things to different lives. Perhaps your answer is,
“God raised Jesus from the dead.” Or maybe it’s “Jesus saved me from my sins.” What about “It proves that God loves me no matter what” or even “Now I know that I will be raised on the last day and spend eternity in heaven.” Today I’d like to suggest something different, something further: how about, “Easter means that now my life is not my own, because of Jesus’ emptying himself on the cross – my life belongs elsewhere.”
And so Easter unfolds in each life. Perhaps you are out there for today and today only. Perhaps you sit here 52 Sundays a year. But no matter how you come today, you are welcome in this place. You are forgiven for your mud and your poverty and your sinful, stinging nature. And at this altar, we are all the same: those with power and those with none; those with wealth and education, and those for whom these gifts mean little; those with health and love and those who yearn for either; those who are dead, and those who need to be fed.
And so, as followers of this one who would love us enough to sacrifice his body, his blood, his very breath, we are called again to the table to give up our power and take on the power of God.
That is the essence of Easter. That God so loved the whole world that he emptied himself on the cross, so that whoever chooses God over self, might have eternal life. In heaven, and in this very day. Rejoice!
