Preacher:
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
Response:
He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Is
he? Are
you quite sure of that?
Personally,
I would find it a great deal more reassuring if the women who are
there that morning – there in the cemetery, there at the tomb – depart
with a bounce in their step, and hope in their hearts, and
faith on their tongues.
They
do
not. Not only do they not skip away filled with faith and joy, on the
contrary, they flee
the tomb, seized with terror.
It
hardly
counts as a shout of victory over death.
And
one has to ask: Is
this any way to stage a resurrection?
Take
a
look:
Early
in
the morning, bearing spices with which to provide final, tender
ministrations to the body of the one they had so loved, the women
make their way to the tomb. Red-eyed and puffy-eyed from
sleeplessness and grief they pass quietly through streets and paths
until they reach the place of burial.
They
are
looking for the body, whose limbs they have come to caress with
ointments, whose dried blood they will wipe away, and whose torso
they will wrap in fragrant spices.
Instead,
they are startled by a young man – an angel perhaps – whose
first words are predictable enough. Anyone who knows their Bible
knows that 99 times out of a 100 when humans run into angels the
first words out of the angel’s mouth are always: “Do not be
afraid.”
I
suppose
this could reflect on angels. It could be that they are more
frightening to look at than our artists have imagined. Or, more
likely, it says something about the state in which angels typically
find us: afraid.
You
could
forgive angels for smelling our fear a mile away. After all, fear
seems to be a constant companion for us:
Our
ancestors slept fretfully and awoke warily each new day to the
terrifying prospect of having to tiptoe around dinosaurs. Perpetually
in need of food, they hunted powerful creatures with fangs, and claws
and horns. Our ancestors lived with fear.
All
these
millennia later, despite the frozen meat section in your grocery
store, we still live each day in a state of fear. These past months
we have been terrified together as the global financial markets
collapsed and giants of industry and finance showed a soft underbelly
many of us had never imagined was there. We have been, many still
are, terrified, by the prospect of empty retirement accounts, the
danger of losing homes, the inability to purchase for children the
educations for which we had been saving.
And
before
that, it we were terrified by terror. Before that there was anthrax,
Y2K, the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear holocaust …and there is
the ever-prospect of global warming.
Today,
some portion of our fellow citizens are so terrified by Barack Obama,
they fill the airwaves with apocalyptic language.
And,
too
there are the everyday terrors of boarding airplanes, of terrifying
medical diagnoses,
fear of
harm to our children, fear of facing life without loved ones who have
passed on, fear of losing jobs that had given us both security and
identity.
“Don’t
be afraid,” says the angel to Mary when, unmarried and barely a
teenager, she is found to be with child … a child, by the way, who
will live to be executed by the state.
“Don’t
be afraid!” says the angel to the women at the tomb … women who
had witnessed, only hours before, the excruciating horror, the pain,
the disgrace, the agony of crucifixion.
“Don’t
be afraid!” says the angel who finds us in a more or less constant
state of fear.
To
which
we are tempted to say back to the angel: “Easy for you to say.”
If
it were
up to me, I would have staged the resurrection quite differently. I
would have done everything possible to avoid the women running away
in fear.
I
would
have brought to that moment something, in fact, of the stagecraft we
have brought to this moment: trumpets, tympani, big hymns, blooming
flowers … and a brightly clad host of people, who at the moment of
resurrection would have uttered appropriate responses:
Oo!
Aaa! Well, I never! Wow-zer! … and of course, Alleluia! … people whose
eye-witness accounts would have put to rest forever all the
speculation, all the doubts, all the skeptics.
Instead,
having missed the resurrection by minutes, the women departed the
tomb afraid, seized with terror.
But
here’s
the thing: they didn’t stay afraid.
That’s
the story I want you to hear this morning. It did not happen
immediately … not that moment, not even that day.
Over
time
the women, and Peter, and the other disciples outgrew their fears.
Overtime, they grew less and less tentative, and more and more
confident of the real meaning of this morning, this Easter morning.
Over
time
they came to experience Jesus, not as a memory of one who had died,
but as a presence of one who yet lived. They came to know him as a
living, vital experiential presence … whose very and real presence
gave them courage.
Over
time
they came to trust that the One whom God sent to challenge the powers
and the principalities of this world, lives on.
They
came
to trust that the One who loved the unlovely, who lifted the
oppressed, lives on.
They
came
to know that the One who overcame divisions between Jew and Gentile,
male and female, slave and free, lives on … … and continues to
challenge human divisions through his followers.
The
truth
and claim of Easter – of resurrection – is not something that can
be arrived at in the twinkling of an eye. Not any more than the fears
which plague us can be overcome by the words of angel who proposes to
instruct us: “Don’t be afraid.”
You
have
come here this morning – some of you anyway – with hands on hips
just daring us to prove to you this improbable claim … that death
is dead … that God can do what we can barely imagine: awaken the
dead from their sleep and call them into glorious company with the
angels.
Now,
despite what you may think you know of God, God does not wish to be
to us a magician, but rather a mother …not a conjurer, but a
connector… not a performer, but a presence.
God
is
more shy than showy. God does not wish to wow us, so much as to woo
us.
God
will
not coerce you to faith … not even on Easter.
Easter
is
a dawning thing. Resurrection is a dawning thing … it dawns under
the power of relationship with the living Christ whose presence we
learn to see, and sense, and trust in the course of a life-time of
relationship and discipleship.
Easter
is
God’s tender, intimate whisper: “Don’t be afraid. I’ve got
you.”
Once that
has dawned, well, that’s something to celebrate.
