WHY WE NEED EASTER NOW MORE THAN EVER
I Corinthians 15:1-22 Mark 16:1-8
Sermon from April 12, 2009 (Easter)
Let me begin by saying a “Blessed Easter” to you all. Let no chill in the air, no darkness of circumstance, no doubt of mind nor heaviness of heart, no familiarity with Easters past, deprive us of this day’s juice and joy. Christ’s resurrection turned the despair of the disciples into triumph. So let it be with us. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Poet George Herbert wrote:
What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.
All thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!
The disciples needed Easter. With the crucifixion of Jesus they went into seclusion — to rest, we may assume; as well as to recover from the disappointment of Jesus’ brutal death, to reflect on their own complicity and cowardice, and to begin thinking about their futures. The transformation of the disciples from this, from a ragtag gang of disheartened, dispirited losers (or so the world regarded them, and so they thought of themselves), skulking in the shadows, to a forceful, enthusiastic band of believers poised to go forth into all the world with the Gospel, this is the most remarkable makeover in human history, and can be explained only by the real-life and life-altering power of the resurrection.
This is the point the Apostle Paul eagerly makes in the passage read from I Corinthians, Chapter 15. It’s of “first importance,” he writes, that you understand what happened: that Christ “was raised on the third day,” that this was not a figure of speechy, not figment of someone’s overheated imagination nor mere wishful thinking, but he actually appeared — to his followers first, and then to many others, “more than five hundred at one time, most of whom are still alive.” If this were not so, then our faith would be vain and futile, a ludicrous, even laughable conceit. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” he declares. And this fact unleashes the greatest force imaginable. Easter-power transformed the disciples, and transformed disciples transformed the world.
But Easter wasn’t needed only back then. It’s needed now, as well. God knows, we need Easter now more than ever. Because, now more than ever, it looks and feels like a Good Friday world. Wars and rumors of wars persist. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Darfur, pirates on the seas and terrorists on land, it’s a battered and broken old world in which we live. Hunger persists. So do corruption and greed. Recession and recession-anxiety darken the atmosphere, while bitter debate concerning causes and solutions fill the air. Natural catastrophes, like last week’s earthquake in Italy, continue to strike, reminding us that for all the beauty of the earth, yet, in the words of singer Neco Case, “never turn your back on mother earth.” And to this litany of the world’s problems, each of us may add burdens we’re carrying in our own lives.
So if Easter is to transmit truth and power, it must come not as a tired religious ritual from earlier times, whose meaning is too ancient or mythic to address our present predicament. Rather, we need Easter now more than ever.
How does Easter meet this present need? I’d like to begin by saying a word or two about death, because death is the one problem all humans face, but which no human can solve, and which Easter most clearly and powerfully addresses. Easter declares, and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrates, that death is not final. Christ being raised from death was not intended by God as a singular display of divine power and might. Rather, the witness of scripture is that Christ’s victory over death prefigures our own. “As all die in Adam,” it is written, “so all will be made alive in Christ.”
To believe this inexpressibly wonderful promise, to believe that in Jesus Christ the doors of eternal life are sprung open, to believe this with our minds, and beyond belief, to trust it with our hearts, requires a great leap of faith. It’s implausible. It goes against what we know concerning space, time, and matter. It eludes commonsense.
And because scripture itself puts-forth so many different ideas about heaven, and so many different images of heaven, we may find ourselves with more questions than answers. Maybe it’s best not to spiritually sweat the details. In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein, he quotes Einstein’s wife Elsa, that her husband never drove a car because, she explained: “It was too complicated for him.” Quantum physics and relativity theory he “got,” but driving a car was “too complicated.” There’s something to be said, though, for staying focused on the big picture, on the things that really matter. When we try to overanalyze heaven, pressing for specifications that God does not intend for us to know (or they’d be in scripture), the whole idea of it may become too complicated and unbelievable. Better to focus on the big picture, to trust the promise, to rest in the blessed assurance that, as scripture declares, “when this earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).
The prospect of death continues to be unsettling, of course. Even for those of strong and steady faith, it may evoke worry and anxiety, perhaps even fear. Our natural instincts are to hold on to life, and these are good instincts, survival instincts that God has placed within us. But because of Easter, we know that when the time comes, we may let go.
Poet Rosanna Warren has crafted one of my favorites, titled simply, “Simile,” concerning the death of her mother. It goes:
As when her friend the crack Austrian skier, in the story
she often told us, had to face
his first Olympic ski jump and, from
the starting ramp over the chute that plunged
so vertiginously its bottom lip
disappeared from view, gazed
on a horizon of Alps that swam and dandled around him
like toy boats in a bathtub, and he could not
for all his iron determination,
training, and courage
ungrip his fingers from the railings of the starting gate, so that
his teammates had to join in prying
up, finger by finger, his hands
to free him, so
facing death, my
mother gripped the bed rails but still
stared straight ahead – and
who was it, finally,
who loosened
her hands? (The New Yorker, April 10, 2000, p. 46)
When our earthly life is over, we may permit the Holy Spirit to set our eyes on the horizon, to loosen our hands and our hold on this earthly life, and to deliver us into the promise of eternal life.
This Easter-outlook on death — that we may face death with confidence, poise and peace — transforms our attitudes toward life, as well, and amends how we choose to live. John Buchanan, my colleague at Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago, writes:
People who know the resurrection happened, or who choose
to trust in resurrection, live in a wholly new world where death
has no power.
When the message of God’s eternal kingdom is accepted in the heart of the believer, then God becomes king in the heart of the believer now. This changes everything! How can it not?
And what this battered and broken old world in which we live most needs, now more than ever, are Christians who are not Christians in name and ritual alone, but who are truly Easter-people – authentic and ardent, courageous, and caring, helpful and hopeful; people in whose hearts Christ is king.
Easter declares that we are here to love others, especially those whom we may find unlovable, or difficult to love, as in Jesus Christ God first loved us, unworthy though we were, and are; and Easter declares that we are here to be merciful to others, as in Jesus Christ God has forgiven us.
Easter declares that we are to live boldly, to take risks, to be daring more than devout, and passionate more than pious, for as has been said, the art of life is to die young as late as possible.
Easter declares that we are to set our minds on true and worthy things that last forever; to devote our days to prayer and praise and acts of service in the world; and to expend this life we have been given on holy and excellent purposes that will outlast it.
So, a blessed Easter to you; and a joyful Easter, as well, and an Easter that infuses you with renewed passion and commitment, and all strength in believing.
Poet Anne Sexton writes:
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail. (from The Awful Rowing Toward God)
All thanks be to God that out of the overflowing abundance of his love, we receive all we need, and much more besides.
