Sermon for March 31, 2024 - The Sunday of the Resurrection
Easter Sunday
It is finally Easter morning! It has been a long journey with Jesus through this Holy Week; from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, to his final intimate moments amongst friends in that upper room, to the garden of his betrayal, to his humiliation in front of a kangaroo court, to his torture and crucifixion on the cross, to his burial in a rock hewn tomb. We have once again come to the tomb; anticipating the rock to be just where we left it Friday evening. We have once again come to the tomb ready to finish preparing the body and say final goodbyes. Once again, we have come to the tomb, and it is empty.
On that first Easter morning a young man dressed in white greets Mary Magdalene and the other women in the empty tomb where they had just laid Jesus two days prior. The young man tells the women that Jesus is risen. He has come back from the dead, alive, resurrected, and yet he is still very wounded. Jesus’ body is still wounded by the torture that preceded his crucifixion, and the horrific piercing wounds to his side and to his hands, hanging from the cross. None of these wounds are healed. And Jesus’ heart is no doubt also wounded by the betrayal and abandonment of his closest friends; the disciples who literally left Jesus hanging.
The women, who were there when their Lord was crucified, witnessed it all, a horrific experience. And this surely leaves the women wounded by the trauma. Meanwhile the disciples are hiding; hiding in their own fear, sorrow, and shame, and this, too, shows a wounding. No one can hurt us like we can hurt ourselves, when we become our own worst enemy. On this day of resurrection, everyone in the Gospel story is not okay. They don’t know it yet, but they are in desperate need of hope, of new life. Everyone is wounded, and this is likely true for many of us here. We can simultaneously acknowledge Jesus’ resurrection and, at the same time, acknowledge that everything is not all right in our world or in our own lives. Many of us here today bear the wounds of life, of one sort or another. We too need to experience the resurrection, the power of new life in God. As my former bishop back in Massachusetts, Barbara C. Harris, was fond of saying, “We are a resurrection people living in a Good Friday world.”
This is why Saint Paul often speaks of “the hope of the resurrection.” He says, we have hope in the resurrection because we do not yet completely see it or experience it. We have some early signs of the resurrection; we surely have a desire and expectation for resurrection. Yet meanwhile we must wait patiently for what Jesus’ resurrection will fully mean.
We have hope for the resurrection of the dead, especially for those whom we love who have already died: for children and youth, and for those in the prime of life. We have hope that those who have died in old age with disease, or diminishment, or in tragedy, or in terror. We have hope that they will know the healing in death that they did not know in this life. So many people in this world die in unexpected, sometimes tragic ways, or by the slow stealing of their lives by disease and diminishment. So many people – those whom we hold in our hearts and love for all our lives, and those who are unknown to us, whom we only read about in the media – so many people die with a measure of tragedy. You may find enormous comfort in looking to Jesus for those who have died, praying that Jesus complete in death his healing work as their Messiah, their Christ. I know I do; especially for those members of my family who died because their bodies failed them, filling them with pain and suffering. We are given a picture of this in the Book of Revelation, where we hear that those who have passed through the ordeal of this life will be given an eternal sheltering by God. “…They will hunger no more, and thirst no more… and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” This is part of the hope of resurrection that becomes an enormous source of comfort in this life. These words continuously echo in my heart and mind as a well from which I draw hope.
The hope for the resurrection of the dead, the hope of heaven, is also about reunion with those who belong to one another, who love one another, those who have already passed from this life to the next. Our scriptures give us a kind of impressionistic picture of heaven, which includes streets of gold and pearly gates and other things of great ornamental value. That works, if that is what brings comfort. Another picture of heaven I find much more compelling is about the reunion with our loved ones. I want to have tea again with my maternal grandmother and hear her tell family stories in her high society Virginian accent. I want to fly in a hot air balloon again with my uncle. I want to see my father’s smile one more time. Maybe you wish something similar from your own family. I’m not sure how all that works, because we talk about the resurrection of the body, of our being given new bodies, whole bodies, healed bodies. My grandparents always seemed old to me; I cannot imagine them with a young body, a whole body, a new body. And yet, in God’s economy, we are all children of God. Somehow – no matter our generation – we will know one another and be fully known to one another, and yet be made new and whole and brought together again to dwell with God.
As we come once again to the empty tomb, we have been given the gift of hope in Jesus’ resurrection in the here-and-now. Our job is to claim that hope; to live as resurrected people. At this time in your life, you may be keenly aware of your own woundedness. For the present, we can claim our hope in the resurrection, not from what we see, but from what we remember. This morning many of us likely rose with the rising sun. But, when you are in the middle of the dark night, there is absolutely no clue that a dawning will ever happen, no reason to even imagine light again filling your world…except if you remember that, amazingly enough, it has happened before, even after the darkest of nights. This gives us hope that the dawn shall happen again. In the early third century Clement of Alexandria said, “Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawns.” The resurrection will dawn on us, as it has before, and that is a promise Christ gives us: the hope of the resurrection.
Live in the power of the resurrection today. We will never be alone. Jesus gives us the promise that his presence and power are with us always. If life is just hell for you right now, claim that resurrection hope and take great comfort in Jesus’ promise that he’s come “to seek and to save the lost.” We say, in the traditional language of the Apostles’ Creed, that Jesus “was crucified, dead, and buried [and] he descended into hell…” Into hell. Why to hell? To rescue lost souls. To save those who are lost in hell. Our Eastern Christian brothers and sisters, spend yesterday Holy Saturday, remembering Christ’s harrowing of Hell. They remember that Jesus came to liberate us from all that binds and confines us. You can visit hell many times before you die. I know I have; stuck a cycle of suffering that seemed to have no end. If you’ve been there, or if you are there now, know that Jesus has come to rescue, retrieve, redeem, restore you back to life with his healing light and life and love. You are not lost. You are found. And what Jesus finds in you, Jesus loves.
If you are afraid just now, if fear holds sway in your life, just remember that fear is getting in the way of Jesus who is the way, and the truth, and the life. Jesus shows us the way to live our life from the inside out. There’s nothing to be afraid of “out there.” Jesus speaks of this endlessly: to not be afraid. He’s not scolding us that we shouldn’t be afraid because there’s plenty of things you could be afraid of. Jesus says you don’t need to be afraid, because he is with us always, even to the end. The end of life on this earth is death. In the beginning, God created life and life includes death. Don’t be afraid of either life or death. In death, Jesus goes before us to ferry us, then to welcome us home. Don’t be afraid. You don’t need to be afraid. You are not alone. That is our hope in Jesus. That is our hope in God to make all things new. Now is the time to claim that hope.
