Sermon
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
Christ is Risen!
What a day we celebrate today. What an event we celebrate and honor today.
The entire month of April this year is full of holy days for many religions. Ramadan began on April 1 for our Islamic brothers and sisters. April 14th was the first day of Vaisakhi for our Sikh, Jainism and Hindu friends. Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter are happening as we speak, literally! The Baha'I faith begins their celebration of Ridvan on April 20th. Ramadan will end in early May with the celebration of the end of the fast on Eid al-Fitr on May 2nd.
And of course those of the Jewish faith, as was Jesus, celebrated the first night of Passover on April 15th. We know this day as Good Friday, or Holy Friday. The first two nights and the last two night of the eight days of Passover are the holiest of the eight days. It was the first night of Passover when Jesus was handed over to Pilate, to be killed.
Reading the scripted version of the Passion events really brought home what was happening in the minds of the crowds, the religious authorities, and Pilate and others. Many people not normally in Jerualem would have been there at that time, having come to celebrate, unwittingly bringing a large audience to the events surrounding Jesus. We read how Peter found himself denying Jesus three times, just as Jesus predicted. We see how desperate Pilate was to rid himself of the decision to crucify Jesus. We see how insistent the religious authorities were in their desire to have Jesus put to death, as they brought him to Pilate because they themselves didn't have the authority. But Pilate, while he had the authority, didn't have a reason to kill him and didn't want to be a part of the confrontation or the fall out. Pilate basically said to Jesus over and over, “Dude, listen to me! I'm the one who can make a difference for you right now. Help me help you! Why won't you talk to me?”
And yet, it happened.
Composers have written many accounts of St. John's Passion. One of the most beautiful that I have ever heard is called “Passio”, written by Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer. He used a musical style that he invented that is very different than our western ear is used to when we hear the same St. John Passion written by Bach or others.1 I can still hear the dramatic line given to Pilate, a question never answered, “What is truth?!”
That is just one of many questions that the apostles and all of the disciples must have been considering on that lonely and empty day in-between Jesus' tortured death and the early morning experience that we read about in our scripture for today.
In the Luke version of this early morning experience, a small group of women go to the tomb and are met by angels and then they run to tell the disciples that the tomb is empty, and the disciples just think it is an idle tale. They never see Jesus. The Luke version leaves us at that place of being startled and confused and wanting to tell someone about it. This Johannian version completes the vision for us and describes more of the events. Mary discovers the tomb empty, runs to tell the disciples, and then the disciples return to see for themselves. Again, they all leave and return to their homes except for Mary. It is Mary alone in the garden who meets the resurrected Jesus. She weeps. Angels ask why she is weeping. Jesus asks why she is weeping.
Commentator Joy J. Moore says “Gardens are the place when heaven and earth collide.” I am always excited when any plant I have in my garden doesn't die – imagine my surprise when here in the start of my third spring season in my home, I find a dead flowering plant with new buds on it! You who know about gardens know that this happens. You know this and so you expect that there will be bulbs again in the future. In my garden this is a very unexpected thing! Gardens are places where we tend things. We find beauty even after dormancy. In the garden with Mary Jesus presents Mary with the first sight of his Risen self. The first visual example of what he had only been able to describe before. Yes, this is what I meant about eternal life; yes this is what I meant by rising again. You see me before your very eyes. Just imagine the gift that experience must have been.
Jesus was dead and now he is alive! Our Easter Season in the liturgical seasons of the church will last another six weeks. During the coming weeks we will read about the disciples' reactions, the events of Jesus time on earth after his resurrection before his ascension, the doubt and confusion and new belief that was the beginning of the telling and retelling of our Easter story.
After the death of Christ the disciples must have been asking themselves “What next?” Jesus led them to believe that they were going to be saved, so they imagined all that he might do – be the next king, institute new laws, bring about fairness and justice. But he died. They could not even imagine how any of that would happen now that Jesus was dead.
They couldn't imagine it because Jesus' death brought about a new thing. When God said “See I am doing a new thing.” God means new. So new that we don't have anything in our memory to look back on as a foundation for some new thing. Human brains catalog everything – so when we have a problem, our brain takes a millisecond to search that catalog for anything familiar that we can latch onto, and our solution starts there. But when the disciples found themselves without Jesus and tried to come up with a solution or way to be or a direction to think, their brain searched their catalog and came up empty.
So when Mary met Jesus in the garden, and when she ran to tell the others, nothing could have prepared her for what she felt and what she was experiencing. At the end of today's scripture the disciples are all left asking the same question but from a different place. “What next?” has taken on an even more befuddling concern.
It's understandable to me that the witnesses to this great event would have needed to catch their breath! The experience of the risen Jesus may not have immediately answered anyone's questions but brought more confusion instead. Slowly though, they would remember. Slowly over the next six weeks we will remember that Jesus did tell us about this death and new life. Slowly the New Creation that the resurrection has begun will come to be. Just as life was created from darkness in the beginning, the resurrection is our New Life created from the darkness of death. Our New Life, our Second Life, our Eternal Life is created, not imagined.
Imagination at its earliest root means to copy. Imagination is defined as a “faculty of the human mind which forms and manipulates images.”3 In order for us to imagine, we need a starting point. Creation though, comes from nothing. Only God can create in this way. For us as Christians Jesus' death and resurrection is a truth that we take on and begin our own new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” We are not a figment of God's imagination; we are not a copy of anything. We are new creations!
Let us open our eyes to what comes next!
Let us pray,
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1 “Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant.” (Google search)
2 This is where the word "Easter" comes from
3 "faculty of the mind which forms and manipulates images," mid-14c., ymaginacion, from Old French imaginacion "concept, mental picture; hallucination," from Latin imaginationem (nominative imaginatio) "imagination, a fancy," noun of action from past participle stem of imaginari "to form an image of, represent"), from imago "an image, a likeness," from stem of imitari "to copy, imitate" (from PIE root *aim- "to copy")
In my search for the meaning of the word “Easter” I discovered this picture for an article in April of 2017. The caption says that the photo is from Kiev, Ukraine. The timing tugged at my heart and so I include it here.
A woman looks at huge Easter eggs as they walk in the open air festival in the center of Kiev, Ukraine on Wednesday. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
