SERMON FOR EASTER DAY

MARCH 31, 2002

CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER 

Let me begin this day by wishing the richest blessings of Easter to each of you! You and I have made our way to this vaulted and beautiful church rather like the disciples who went to the tomb where Jesus had been placed after his death.  It is morning, the first day of the week.  Mary Magdalene arrives while it is still dark.  Other disciples who had fled during the trials and torment of Jesus return to the group.  They appear one after the other to help prepare the body of Jesus for proper Jewish burial.  Or maybe, too curious to stay away, they came only to stand by silently.  We don’t know.  But they found their way to the tomb just as you found your way here, expecting something of truth or of relief, a sign of reassurance that after the terrible tragedy of Good Friday things might get better. 

They carried little with them that early morning, having few possessions anyway.  What they did carry amounted to broken hearts, disquieting questions, and frightening flashbacks to the moment in the Garden of Gethsemane when their rabbi was arrested and they did nothing.  Maybe they brought guilt too, but now he was dead, and they no longer could stay away. After the three short days they finally knew that they had to be participants instead of spectators.  Love, grief, guilt, fear, and confusion were their possessions that day.  We can imagine that their shoulders were heavily weighted down as they made their way through the morning light to the borrowed tomb. 

You and I come to this place bearing our own feelings and expectations.  One is sad as she remembers that last year her mother was in church with her.  Many are weary of war and terror and suicide bombings.  Another is hoping to see an old friend who may be in town for the weekend.  Someone else is frightened as he waits to learn the results of medical tests due tomorrow.  Another arrives with a great load of anger because after years of hard work, he has lost his job and nobody seems to care.  Still another comes ready to burst with joy at the prospect of her wedding.   A sad and angry lady wanders in, feeling betrayed by the accusations of abusive priests in her own church.   Another comes in, hopeful of gaining a little perspective on a world seemingly gone mad.  Still another, depressed and anxious, comes seeking an oasis of peace.  A teenager wonders impatiently about all the fuss over Easter, sure that it means nothing to a budding young scientist like himself.  Why have his parents dragged him here?  On and on it goes, the inventory of the baggage we bring to this great Gothic place on Easter and every other day we gather here around the Holy Table.  We take a break from routine to make a connection with God. 

Mostly what we bring is our humanity --  broken, anxious, lonely, sinful, shortsighted – all of it ours to cope with.  What we bring to the church as the disciples did to the tomb of mourning belongs to us, but do we own it really?   What we are belongs to God, entrusted to us in creation, and as we evolve into the complex beings each of us is.  We bring ourselves with all our liabilities, and our assets, before the throne of the invisible God, seeking approval, forgiveness, and validation as the sons and daughters of the One who loves us enough to sacrifice his Son on the Cross and raise Him from the deepest depths of death, for all for us.  We come for a taste of salvation.  God gained nothing through the death of Jesus Christ, only the chance to give us yet another gift, the most central and wonderful gift we can ever imagine, and can never gain on our own.   While our ordinary lives do not fulfill our hopes, God grants us the hope of eternal life, the forgiveness or sins, and a joyful place among the saints in light.  How God does this tirelessly and faithfully is not ours to know or try to disentangle.  God has the wisdom and the whole picture, not we. 

Those undistinguished disciples brought their own flawed humanity to the empty tomb on that first Easter Day.  They brought their inner turmoil and hopes and dreams.  Like us, they did not know what would become of their baggage.  Given their amazing experiences with Jesus of Nazareth, for nearly three years on the way to Easter, they remembered the promises and the miracles and the questions. Things were slowly and painfully beginning to fall into place, answers were still elusive, but they were beginning to understand what their mission was.  The disciples started to see, really see.  Their vision would take a long time to fulfill, and they would pass on the assignments to succeeding generations, all the way down to you and to me, nearly two thousand years of inherited faith, doubt, miracle, and obligation.   

God in Christ Jesus takes our humanity and hope and faith and blesses them, somehow in God’s time and scheme of things, transforming them into the work he has given us to do after we leave this great vaulted room.  Our visit to this room, like their visit to the tomb, cannot contain the whole story.  Precisely what we choose to do when we go out the door makes the difference.  As we give voice and energy and work to the silences we encounter here, we begin to grasp the meaning of Easter and all the Christian opportunities.  For it is outside where we find ourselves putting on the equipment of the Gospel, given to us inside, to proclaim and show the world the power behind the empty tomb and the vaulted room.  We are the Church.  We are the Body of Christ.  We are nothing short of the Resurrection itself.  And God expects great things from each of us.  Those holy expectations are what make Easter happy.  AMEN. 

                                                                                    The Rev. Richard H. Downes

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