Practicing Resurrection - Fr. Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church
Easter Sunday 2013
John 20: 1-18
Call: God is good!
Response: All the time!
Call: All the time.
Response: God is good!
Welcome to you on this Easter Sunday morning – the day of Resurrection. And isn’t this one of those wonderful, beautiful spring mornings when you can just sense and smell and almost touch the feeling of spring in the air. Bulbs are starting to pop through the ground, the snowdrops have been out for a couple of weeks. It feels like new life is all around us just ready to burst forth – reasserting the power of life after the cold and dreary winter we have endured. And this beautiful spring weather feels all the more beautiful and welcome in part because it is such a change from the winter.
Now imagine taking that almost euphoric feeling and placing it in your soul – as Pastor George Chien shared with us last night the words of the poet Lucille Clifton:
The green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible
That must be a little bit like what Mary felt as she stood weeping by the tomb then first recognized Jesus on that first Easter morning. For three days she and Jesus’ disciples had endured first the arrest, then the torture and finally the execution of their dear friend and teacher, Jesus. Even though Jesus had described the type of death he would undergo and assured them he would return, those words were just a blur now, lost in the tumultuous events that followed. So distraught was she that she didn’t even recognize Jesus when he first spoke to her by the tomb – she thought he was the gardener. It was only when he called her by name that she recognized him and her spirit soared. She then ran to tell the other disciples, who had already returned to their homes, convinced that it was all over. . . But it was only the beginning.
This is what Easter is supposed to feel like – a celebration of new life, new beginnings, new possibilities in life that could only be imagined before. But just as spring is somewhat sweeter because it follows winter, so resurrection can only be fully appreciated if we understand it as lowering the curtain on a former way of life and simultaneously raising the curtain as another life begins. It has been said accurately that there can be no Easter without Good Friday. Similarly, in order for us to embrace Resurrection life, we must understand that it I rooted in the events of Holy Week.
And so I want to suggest that as we consider what it means to Practice Resurrection, not just today but making the practice of Resurrection a regular part of our lives going forward – really making a difference in the way we live and relate to God and the world. I want to suggest that there are three steps of which we need to be mindful, and they parallel the steps we have taken through Lent, into Holy Week and now into Eastertide. These steps are Removal, Replanting and Receiving.
First, removal. The obvious here is that Jesus had to die before he could be resurrected. He had to be removed from this life in order to defeat the power of death. But do you notice this is a similar theme through God’s salvation history? Abraham was called away from his family, his social and financial security, to a place he knew nothing of. He had to do that in order to create a great nation. Now half of the world – all Christians, Muslims and Jews looks to him as their spiritual father. Jacob fled his family with nothing but his clothes with no assurance of ever returning and his only possession was his father’s blessing. Jacob’s son Joseph was kidnapped and sold away from his own family and sent to an alien, hostile Egypt, where, in furtherance of God’s mission and with God’s grace, he became the savior of the known world. Yet another example is the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt – the only story from the Hebrew Bible that is required to be a part of the Easter Vigil lessons.
There they were – trapped between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea, and they are screaming at Moses, “Were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die? We could have stayed slaves in Egypt, where at least we were fed and housed.” But God had a better plan for them – and God opened the Red Sea before them and led them into their future. This experience of removal is frequently a way God chooses to work.
Jesus’ work in the world on God’s behalf was completed. It was time for the next chapter.
In our own practice of Resurrection, we, too, have to begin with looking at the life we are living and countenance those aspects of our lives that are inadequate to supporting Resurrection Life. Supposedly this was work we have been doing throughout Lent – weeding out that which is not useful in order to make room for that which is useful. Just like cleaning out our homes, we know this is a job that is never really done. So if you didn’t get to complete it to your satisfaction before today, or even if you never started, that’s okay. It’s never too late to begin. The point here is that we want to free ourselves from being hostage to old ways that keep us prisoners in order that we can be free to embrace the new thing that God wants to do in our lives.
The second aspect of Practicing Resurrection is to be open to being replanted in a better place. For Jesus, this transplantation was literal – he literally ceased his earthly life and was rejoined with God in heaven.
Again, look at the stories from the Hebrew Bible, the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and the Israelites, and we see that it is part of God’s pattern to nudge God’s children from a lesser way of life to a fuller, more purposeful and productive way of being. In all four cases, people were uprooted and sent off to unknown places, and in each case, God’s mission was advanced through these human instruments in ways none of them ever could have imagined.
And this was true for the disciples as well. At first, all they could experience was the apparent reality of Jesus’ death. On the other hand, Jesus’ departure allowed the disciples to become closer to God, to become the apostles that Jesus’ intended for them to be. Instead of following Jesus around, the Lord would before long send his Holy Spirit who would guide them along new pathways leading to new horizons. That is far more pervasive than what Jesus could do by himself in a mortal body. Now they would hear from the Lord in ways that transcend language. Instead of hanging around Jerusalem and Galilee, they would begin to spread out over what was the known world, spreading the Good News to places where Jesus never ventured.
Another good example of removal and replanting in the New Testament is St. Paul – he was struck blind for a period of time in order that he might leave his former life of being a persecutor of the Gospel to becoming its most prolific writer and champion.
And so it is a necessary part of our own practice of Resurrection to be willing to go to places – either literally or figuratively – that may be unfamiliar or even unknown.
And this leads us to the third aspect of practicing Resurrection, and that is being open to receiving strength and power from God. More than being open to it, we have to trust that God will fulfill God’s promises. What is it that we receive? Well Jesus promised the disciples back in chapters 16 to 18 in the Gospel of John that they were to wait for the sending of the Holy Spirit, who would give them the wisdom, the power, the courage and the perseverance to continue Jesus work following his ascension. Throughout Lent and this past Holy Week, we have heard time and again of how God has led God’s people from places of slavery, misery and emptiness into new, unexpected and previously unimaginable place of freedom, purpose and glory. Over the coming weeks of the Easter season we will hear and experience other stories of how the resurrected Christ entered into the lives of his followers. The message of this morning is that the promise is renewed once again, there for us if we will only see it, believe in it and claim it.
All of us here today are beginning our celebration of the Resurrection in the right way -- we are here in a faithful, worshipping community, the gathered Body of Christ in the 21st Century, contributing our own witness to the truth of the Christian promise. But we sell that promise short if we understand this day of Easter as the culmination of the story and not the opening scene of a new story – in the words of St. Paul, the invitation, once again, to allow God in to do a new thing in our lives, and through us, to bring the world even just a little closer to the Kingdom of God. Amen.
Please pray with me: Lord, as Easter dawns, help me to welcome the morning with a fervent hope and to savor the joy of the risen Lord. Give me holy boldness and apostolic zeal to embrace my mission as Your disciple, as I join You in making all things new. Alleluia.