A Sermon preached on Easter Day 2014 at St. Augustine's, Wiesbaden
Acts
10:34-43, Colossians 3:1-4, John 20:1-18, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
In
an article I recently read online, on an Episcopal Church website, today,
Easter Day, was described as “the triumphant
ending to the Greatest Story Ever Told.” Well I disagree entirely ….. I bet
that’s got your attention!
And why do I
disagree? Well to start I find the descriptions of the Resurrection in the
gospels anything but triumphant. The Resurrection itself is not described at
all- no Hollywood effects like a mysterious glow from the tomb or the stone covering
the entrance exploding into myriad pieces. What we have instead is surprisingly
restrained and low key. We just read about an empty tomb, left over linen, mystified
friends and disciples, fear, sadness, and uncertainty. All that the ‘other
disciple’ and Peter get to see when they reach the tomb and look inside are
linen wrappings and a rolled up cloth. So it would seem that the body has not
been stolen – who would go to the bother of unwrapping it? But where is it then?
Mary’s encounter
with Jesus is also unspectacular. OK, she does see two angels in white, that is
not an everyday experience, at least nor for me, but it doesn’t seem to worry
her. And when she does meet Jesus she mistakes him for a gardener. This all makes
the Resurrection something very intimate and personal. As Peter says in the
sermon recorded in the Acts of the Apostles: “God allowed him to appear, not to
all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank
with him after he rose from the dead.”
This is a Resurrection
experience that is available to us too. We can experience it through faith and
in our hearts and as those chosen by God as witnesses we will also eat and
drink with our Lord and Savior at his table later in the service. Yes, the
Resurrection is the triumph of life over death and of love over hate. But it is
not triumphant – and in the history of the Christian church we have been
furthest from Jesus’ teaching and from God’s will when we have acted
triumphantly!
To quote Winston
Churchill: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the
beginning.” Easter really is not the ending, it is a new beginning. As John
makes clear, Jesus‘ own ministry in the world is not complete at this point, he
still has to return to his and our Father, and he still has to give us all the
gift of the Holy Spirit. There is meaning in the Resurrection happening on what
we now call Sunday, and not on Saturday, the Sabbath, the day of rest after God
had finished Creation. Jesus rises on the first day of the week, which Sunday
still is in some calendars, because his Resurrection is the beginning of a new
creation, a new life, and a new world.
Look at the encounter between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.
He is both the same as before and changed. And when he tells her not to hold on
to me, not to cling to him he is warning her that a new relationship has begun
that will not be like the old one. In this new relationship she, and the
disciples now described as Jesus’ brothers, and we as their successors on
faith, can be as intimate with God as Jesus is. Soon it will be time for Jesus to
leave and return to the Father. So he sends her, as the first Apostle, the
Apostle to the Apostles. This is another important, primary role for women in
this Gospel – after the Woman at the Well who was the first missionary. She is
sent to tell the others all that Jesus had told her and to get them ready for
their new beginning and for the beginning of their mission to preach and to
testify as Peter puts it in his sermon in Acts.
So Easter is not triumphant, and not the ending – but why isn’t it the Greatest Story Ever Told? Of course it is a great story and a great
message. Just look at what Peter squeezes into a few lines of his sermon when
he summarizes all of Jesus life and works and the meaning of his death: God is
the God of every nation and Jesus is the Lord of all. But calling this the Greatest
Story Ever Told makes it sound as if it is finished. We’ve reached the end, we
know ‘whodunnit,’ we can close the book and put it back on the shelf and look
for a new one. And many people do. They look for an exciting new story in the
secular myth of progress and personal striving or in some new form of
spirituality. That’s not their fault, it’s our fault, because we have not made
clear enough that our story is still in the process of being told. We are both
the storytellers and part of the story. Like Peter we are called to tell people
what happened, how God became human and dwelt with us, what the incarnate Son
taught and did and how he lived as an example, how he died for us and for our
sins, how he rose again and what the Kingdom of God that he inaugurated looks
like, what our renewed lives and a renewed world can be like, and how we can
help bring that about.
I understand why Christians,
together with Jews and Moslems, are sometimes called a People of the Book – and
it is important to emphasize what we have in common with those two other
religions. But we are not a People of the Book; we are a People of a Life. Jesus
Christ is what was revealed to us, not the books that humans wrote to record
his life
I am going to finish
with a poem from a collection called “Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture.”
It too describes a beginning that is anything but triumphant and a new story
that has only just begun and is still to be told. It is the great story, that
greatest story that begins at Easter and can save us all:
Going and Telling[1]
Go.
Tell my friends. I am giving you the word. Tell them.
It is
finished, and the new story has begun.
The
body that holds you now
Alive
and warm, is as real
As
the body you saw mutilated,
Mocked,
betrayed, brutalized.
Even
though jeers drowned out the message
Of
justice for the poor,
Release
for the oppressed,
Unimagined
forbearance,
Even
though
It
seems as though the promise I brought
Was
pounded down
With
the nails
They
drove into these hands
Go
and tell them:
They
cannot kill it.
Step
back. Take these wounded hands.
Clasp
them in your own.
Gaze
back at me, and see
The
dancing in my eyes.
Now
go.
Go
and tell them
This
life you are holding
Nothing
can kill it.
Go.
Go and tell them
You
will see me
Again.
Amen
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