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SHIFT Easter Sunday March 23, 2008
Happy Resurrection Day! May the good news that Christ has risen touch our hearts and change our lives, so that we might experience the shift that happens when we claim God’s love and truly become Easter people.
This may seem just a bit odd for Easter Sunday but we are going to start with a quiz this morning! I know it’s the beginning of Spring Break and taking a test is probably the last thing many of you want to do, but it’s the easy kind of quiz – true or false! So here we go… true or false…
I’m pretty sure that most of you are wondering what in the world any of this has to do with Easter, so let me see if I can make the connection. Some things are very difficult to believe because they sound so strange to us… so unbelievable… like 9000 year-old chewing gum, birds that eat the strips of rubber around car windows, and termites outweighing humans 10 to 1! For many of us, the Resurrection is one of those strange sounding, unbelievable ideas that we simply have trouble grasping. Maybe we need to make a shift in our understanding of the Resurrection so that we can live an Easter faith. Even though it may sound unbelievable, Christ has risen and, as the Gospel of Matthew proclaims, goes before us into this new day.
We wouldn’t be here this morning if we weren’t familiar with the stories of that first Easter morning. Jesus’ friends… his inner circle of followers… go to the tomb to prepare his body for burial but when they get there, the stone has been rolled away and they receive the news that “he has been raised.” In fear and trembling or in amazement and joy – depending on which of the Gospel stories you are reading – the disciples leave in silence or with great shouting – again depending on the story you happen to be reading.
Many people… maybe even most people… believe the stories of the resurrection of Jesus are historically true. Other people… maybe even lots of other people… have difficulty believing the stories to be true in that historical sense but understand them as metaphors pointing to the truth of God’s presence in the world. Either way, whether you believe or understand, the real question for us today is what do these stories mean in our lives? How do they cause us to experience the shift that leads to life as Easter people?
This year, as I was reading the Easter story again from Matthew’s Gospel, it was the earthquake that caught my attention. Matthew’s words… “And suddenly there was a great earthquake” jumped off the page and the images of shifting tectonic plates beneath the earth’s surface came to mind. Easter is huge. Easter is about shifting… shifting from old life to new life… from old understandings to new understandings… from old beliefs to new beliefs… from the way we are to the way God wants us to be. God raised Jesus from the dead and the everything shifted. God raises Jesus from the dead and the earth moves under our feet.
Barbara Brown Taylor, speaking of the earth-quaking, earth-shaking shift that comes on Easter morning acknowledges that… “Resurrection is so difficult from many angles that most Christians are content to think of it as something that happens after we die. God raised Jesus from the dead and took him to heaven. Because we believe in Jesus, God will do the same thing for us. So far, so good.”* We must admit, when we are most honest with ourselves, that this conventional understanding of the Resurrection is all that we really want. We come to worship on Easter passing time until we can get home to family and friends for a holiday meal and Easter Egg hunt. When we are most honest with ourselves, we must admit that we aren’t all that interested in any shift of understanding or belief. We are content believing that resurrection means we will go to heaven when we die. “But…” Taylor continues, if this is all Easter means “then today becomes the day we thank God for what will happen when our lives are over, and Christian faith becomes the faith of those who care less for life than afterlife.”*
United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon expresses the same idea with these words… “Listen to most Easter hymns and many Easter sermons, and you might think that the whole point of Easter is, ‘Jesus is raised… and now we too shall get to go to heaven’ with the emphasis decidedly on the second half of the affirmation.”** And, calling for the same earth-shaking shift in our understanding of the purpose of resurrection, Willimon continues, “But the gospels give the story of Easter an utterly this-world, present-age significance. Jesus Christ – whom we crucified – is revealed in his resurrection to be the true Lord of the world, this world, not some future world. Jesus is raised to reign now, not later… witnesses of the resurrection have a job to do…”
“Witnesses of the resurrection have a job to do.” It is time for a shift in our thinking… in our believing… a shift that is based on the Gospel story. Remember the passage we just heard? Matthew affirms that the angel of God… the young man in white who appears to the two women in the empty tomb… does not say that Jesus is going ahead of them to heaven. No, he says that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee… to where they live… to where their lives will continue. And, if we read John’s gospel, we discover that at the end of his resurrection day, the risen Christ came back to the disciples as they were sitting around the table together. He found them where they lived… where their lives were continuing. I believe that this is the power of the Easter story for us. God’s hope isn’t a distant possibility only experienced after we die. God’s hope is alive on earth right where we live.
We remember the way Jesus lived, don’t we? The way Jesus lived pointed to the possibility of a world transformed by God’s love. The way Jesus lived challenged his followers to make a shift in their lives and live God’s love and God’s grace every day in every way. Jesus lived caring more about this life than about afterlife.
This Easter morning I believe that Jesus is still pointing us toward a world transformed by God’s love. Not a future world that is possible only after we die, but the world that is possible if we choose to live as Easter people. He is challenging us to keep hope alive. Jesus is calling us to live as faithful witnesses ensuring that all children everywhere have enough to eat and the elderly don’t have to worry about who will care for them once they can no longer care for themselves. Jesus is pointing to the possibility of a world where a homeless person sleeping outside the doors of the church is treated with respect and every person is valued as a person of sacred worth, no matter what. He is pointing to a world where keeping peace by making war… any war… must become unacceptable and where an unstable economy is nothing to fear because we believe in God’s world God is depending on us to share our wealth… divide our wealth… maybe even give up our wealth to insure that there is enough for all. He is pointing to a world that is warmed by our love and grace, by our acceptance and hope and not by our indulgent habits. Jesus is pointing to a world where a person is not judged by the color of their skin, the language they speak, the faith tradition that informs their life, the person they choose to love, or the money they have in the bank but by how they live as compassionate, caring human beings. Jesus is pointing to a world where we leave the judging to God.
Easter is huge. Easter is about shifting… shifting from old life to new life… from old understandings to new understandings… from old beliefs to new beliefs… from the way we are to the way God wants us to be. “Witnesses of the resurrection have a job to do.” Easter isn’t about who is going to heaven or hell. Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth who appeared to his followers not to tell them about life that is available after death but to challenge them to live as faithful witnesses of the Gospel in the present. As Bishop Willimon has said, “What if the great hell in life is not that we are without God, but that we can’t get rid of God who expects the best for us and from us.”
I read recently of a Benedictine sister who, as her own mother lay dying in a hospital bed, tried to reassure her with words of comfort and assurance of eternal life. The Benedictine sister reminded her mother “In heaven, everyone we love is there.” A comforting thought that many of us have offered to those we love. But her mother corrected her saying, “No, in heaven I will love everyone who’s there.”***
Why wait? The message of the Resurrection is that we don’t have to wait to love everyone who is here. In fact, we can’t wait. We must begin to love everyone who is here. The message of the Resurrection is that God is counting on us to become the hands and feet of Christ alive in the world today and tomorrow and the next. God is counting on us to shift our focus and live Easter people. As witnesses of the Resurrection we have a job to do. We must follow the Risen Christ.
In the end, what is true or false about monopoly money, hiccups, or toenails is interesting but not all that earthshaking. But what is true about the Resurrection is worth ten times our weight in termites and will last a lifetime in comparison to the flight of a chicken!
Happy Resurrection Day! May the good news that Christ has risen touch our hearts and change our lives, so that we might experience the shift that happens when we claim God’s love and truly become Easter people.
*From a sermon titled “Easter Sunday 2006” by Barbara Brown Taylor in the Easter 2008 “Journal for Preachers” **From a sermon titled “Preaching Easter in Alabama” by William Willimon in the Easter 2008 “Journal for Preachers” ***From Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris, page 367 |
