April 16, 2017 - Easter

Sermons by Hamilton

Scripture: MATTHEW 28:1-10
It’s an ordinary day, isn’t it. The sun came up beautifully. It will probably rain later. One couple woke up happy to be alive and in love. Another woke up still not speaking after a spat from hours, or days, before. Someone here was thrilled beyond belief at the treasures in their Easter basket. Someone else was disappointed that their Easter basket didn’t have their favorites. Yet someone else—or maybe it’s the same person—will throw a hissy fit this afternoon. Just an ordinary day.
And what about that long-ago day? It, too, was an ordinary day, the day after the Sabbath. Not unlike a regular Monday morning for us. Life for the followers of Jesus had seemed to come to an end two days earlier. This man on whom they had bet everything had been put to death. And they themselves had behaved terribly. They had run from their leader. They had betrayed, denied, and abandoned him. And then he had died an ignominious death. What else could possibly go wrong? Get me out of here, they must have been thinking. This is a disaster.
Then in the middle of that ordinary day, something happened. We don’t know exactly what. Despite our endless curiosity, the Bible doesn’t say. The gospels are absolutely silent on the matter. In today’s story from Matthew, for example, we get vivid details about an earthquake, a rock that’s moved, an angel announcing news. The two Marys are there and they talk with the angel. But not a single word about what happens to Jesus. Other ancient writings imagine in detail what might have happened to Jesus during the resurrection. But not the gospels.
As tempting as it may be to know exactly how it all unfolded, those who assembled the Bible were wise, I think, to include only the extremely reticent descriptions we have in the gospels. Because there’s something about the spare accounts of scripture that rings true for that magnificent event at the core of our faith.
A full and captivating story has led us to this decisive and riveting turning point. Some women who loved Jesus come to the place his body had been laid and they find his tomb empty. We don’t know what exactly happens between the time Jesus’ dead body is laid in the tomb and the time he comes back, alive, to the women who have been distraught at his loss. All we’re told is that “he has been raised” (Matthew 28:6). These grieving, yearning women then leave the tomb, and what happens immediately? They see Jesus again. And they run to tell others this astounding news.
And it all happens on an ordinary day, in the middle of their home towns, as they prepare their meals and walk their dogs and build their homes—as they go about their daily lives, in other words. “Jesus . . . even now is going ahead of you to Galilee” (28:7). Galilee is the very place that they live. And it’s the place they’re sent to share the good news of what they themselves have experienced. Jesus will meet you where? Where you live, and where you share the blessing of God’s love with those you encounter. It’s astonishingly simple and ordinary. We may not know precisely what happened to Jesus. But we do know this: Jesus will meet you at home, and where you work, and where you serve.
The heart of this story isn’t some showy, never-to-be-repeated tour-de-force on God’s part, a kind of Cecil B. DeMille miracle, as if to say: “Look what I can do!” The heart of the story is that the apparently dead Jesus comes back to life and visits you and me. The resurrected Christ returns to us again and again, and showers us with grace, and calls us into ministry. Right where we are. On ordinary days.
The verbs in a story tell us a lot. One of the verbs that appears again and again in this story is the verb “see.” Some form of that word—see or look or behold—appears seven times (28:1, 2, 6, 7[twice], 9, 10) in this short episode. That’s a lot of looking and seeing. The two Marys go to the tomb to see it, and frankly to see Jesus. They’re reassured that they will see Jesus in Galilee. They’re instructed to tell the disciples that they, too, will see Jesus in Galilee.
This verb “see” is so crucial to the story because it’s so often what we fail to do. We look through life rather than at it. Or we fixate on the negative—we see primarily its scars and ugliness—which are, of course, very real. In staring hard at those blemishes, though, we go through what sometimes seems the drudgery of our daily lives and miss the spark of holiness and beauty and resurrection that fills the earth with grace. So “see,” the story seems to tell us. “Look.” Gaze at the moments of grace that transform us and the world. And theologian Dorothy Harvey identifies just what to look for: “When all that separates and injures and destroys is overcome by that which unites, heals and creates in the ordinary routine of our daily lives, resurrection has taken place” (quoted in Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, p. 130). On an ordinary day in Galilee, on an ordinary day in the Chagrin Valley, in your home and mine, “Behold.” Grace abounds. New life and hope appear. Death is conquered.
Because what we see, when we really look, are infinite signs of divine grace remaking the world, uniting and healing and creating it, and giving it joy and peace and splendor. Here the patriarch of a family dies and the family is comforted to know that his death is not the end, that new life awaits him. There a man grieves at the death of his wife, and knows fullness of life in the blessing of his family and friends. Here a woman with unrelenting anxiety finds a measure of solace in playing the piano and joining her friends at a game of tennis. And just there a girl who cannot bear to look at herself in the mirror breathes in a breath of hope as her family surrounds her with love and acceptance.
God’s resurrecting power is all around us, if only we have eyes and hearts to see. Mary, my wife, has a colleague who just told Mary about a recent trip she and her boyfriend had taken to Maine. One day this woman took a walk by herself on the rocks near the ocean. As she turned away from the sea that day, she noticed a group of people on the rocks above staring intently in her direction. When she looked around to see what might be grabbing their attention, she suddenly saw her boyfriend getting down on his knee in front of her. And what so transfixed the impromptu audience above them was that her boyfriend’s son, who has Down Syndrome, was kneeling next to his father, sharing in this proposal. Together they knelt. Together they presented the ring. And the three of them rejoiced. Behold. On an ordinary day. Resurrection.
The transforming, renewing love of God in its many guises is all around us, in a gazillion shapes and forms. A mother patiently builds Legos with her son. A father reads Goodnight Moon to his sleepy daughter. A man visits the nursing home each afternoon to spend time with his wife who now barely knows him. People from Federated Church serve a meal to poor and homeless people at St. Paul’s Church. Behold. On an ordinary day. Resurrection.
Love manifests God’s resurrection power. So, too, does hope, the sort of hope that draws those apparently defeated women to the tomb that day. James Carroll has written a marvelous autobiographical volume called An American Requiem. In it, he writes of an episode from his young adulthood. Carroll had gone to seminary to become a Roman Catholic priest. The seminary, not surprisingly, was a place of material deprivation, but he developed some wonderful friendships there.
One autumn day, he and a number of his classmates got into an argument about when the lake on campus would freeze over. Guesses ranged from November to January.
“Finally,” he says, “one of my classmates, a short, stocky Boston kid named Patrick Hughes who had said nothing until then, declared, ‘On December eighth, I’ll skate across the lake. Who wants to bet on it?’ [And we did bet on it. We bet the most valuable thing we could wager at that spartan seminary: desserts. Desserts were our] one source of power [there. S]oon Patrick had desserts for the next four months riding on his ability to skate across that lake on December 8.
“By Thanksgiving the lake showed no sign of freezing. Patrick would get up early every morning, don his cassock, slip down to the water to check, and then walk up to the chapel for morning prayer. We all knew what he was praying for. On December 3, when we woke up, there it was, the first thin glaze in the corner of the lake. That afternoon there was a delicate necklace of ice around the shore. Having bet against him, we gathered on the shore and groaned. By December 5, a thin sheet had spread all across the lake, but it would hardly hold a leaf. On the nights of the sixth and seventh, the temperature dropped, and in the daytime the sun hid, because on the morning of December 8, the ice looked good—or bad, depending on your bet. Desserts: . . . all that power. [The atmosphere was charged.]
“Right after chapel, hiking our cassocks, we clambered down to the water’s edge. Not water. Ice. Someone picked up a rock the size of a softball and dropped it on the surface, and the ice held. We all groaned except for Patrick, who sat down to put on his ice skates. Then someone else picked up a bigger rock, the size of a football, and threw it out. The rock broke the ice easily and disappeared. We all cheered. But Patrick, [was undeterred, and] kept [deftly] lacing up his skates. . .
“I stepped out onto the ice with one foot. I bounced it a couple of times, then my foot went through. ‘Pat,’ I said, ‘you can’t do this. It’s impossible.’
“My words registered not at all with him. He stood and went up the hill a little, to get a running start. I felt a real fear for him. [Then suddenly] he took off, launching himself out onto that shimmering surface. He hit it in stride, his legs pumping away. But he hit it with a great crack, and sure enough the ice broke. It was too thin. It was too soon. Oh, Patrick!
“Then we saw that the ice was breaking and opening not under him but behind him. He was ahead of the break, skating so fast and so lightly that even the thin ice was support enough for the instant he needed it. All of us on that shore, watching him barreling across that lake, were transformed. We forgot our desserts and all they meant to us. We began to cry after him, ‘Go Patrick! Go Patrick!’ As he shot across that ice, leaving behind a great crack, a wedge of black water, we knew we had never seen such courage before . . . We had never seen such a capacity for trust” (pp. 98-101).
Such trust. Such hope. Such love. These are ours this Easter Day if we but look. These are ours if we but dare. These are ours if we but receive and give ourselves in response. Behold. On an ordinary day. Resurrection.
Would you please stand. And I say to you:
Benediction: Rejoice, people of God! Christ is risen from the dead! Go in peace, to love and serve God, remembering that Christ is with you to the end of the age! Hallelujah!