April 11, 2004
Easter Sunday
Luke 24:1-12

The Easter story as told by Luke is all of ten sentences. You who are English lovers might have noticed that three of the ten begin with the word, "but". I recall my eighth grade English teacher, Miss Huizinga, warning us that we should never, never start a sentence with that word. "Never begin a sentence with a conjunction," was her famous injunction, unless you are very sure that what you have to say after that is very important.

Luke has something important to say. As Luke tells it, they came to the tomb at early dawn and found the stone rolled away. They didn't find a body. Two men in dazzling clothing greeted them and said "He is not here, he is risen." Reactions to the empty tomb were terror, confusion and doubt. The women ran to tell the eleven; they responded in disbelief. Actually, the word is translated more accurately as mistrust; they are highly suspicious and choose to receive the news as an idle tale.

We who are skeptical Christians can understand how those early ones perceived the empty tomb. It is a fair amount of new information to absorb. No wonder Luke portrays them as terrorized, confused and doubtful. There was at least one other emotion at play on that day.

The last person we read of in Luke's story is Peter, who receives the news with wonder. "Wonder kept dazzling me and I recall only wonder," wrote Czeslaw Milosz. The wonder of Peter was the same sort of wonder of the shepherds at the birth of Jesus, the same sort of wonder the disciples must have felt when Jesus walked on water or healed the paralytic or upon hearing the story of the Prodigal Son. We are getting warm now; wonder is as good as it gets in the story told by Luke.

Roberta Bondi, in her fine book, Memories of God, comments all her life she missed the most fundamental Christian reality, "It's not the suffering of the cross, but the life it brings," she writes, "the joy of the resurrection . . . Jesus did not die to bring death to the world, but to establish the life God intended for us from the beginning…the foundation of the universe for which God made us, to which God draws us, and in which God keeps us is not death, but joy."

This day, this Easter morning, we need not linger over whether we are empty tomb or resurrection of the body Christians, or agnostic skeptics, or even believing literalists, we can embrace the unexpected story of a God who would raise Jesus up, bringing joy, hope and promise into a world, which only days before, was stuck in Good Friday. Today, I want to be willing to be dazzled, to shake the surly bonds of earth and lift my eyes up to the heavens –in hope.

I had the pleasure this year, of being one of the Good Friday preachers at Grace Cathedral. It was a moving, three hour service, which ended under a centuries old Spanish cross with the body of the crucified Christ upon it. As we shared the body of Christ, the bread of heaven and the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation, under that cross, I had almost had enough of Good Friday. It was over-whelming to be stuck there. Then, on the way out of the service, the Dean took me through a tiny hallway behind the crucifix. Pinned along the narrow way were hundreds of early, flowering plants, tulips, lilies, hyacinths, hydrangeas and roses, Easter morning flowers, hiding out on Good Friday. "Easter joy is only a breath away," whispered the Dean. And it is so.

Today,

The green of Jesus is breaking the ground

And the sweet delicious smell of 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. (Lucille Clifton)

Most often Easter sermons speculate about the nature of the resurrection and the individual person of Jesus. Was it a literal event, a spiritual experience, a unique miracle, a symbolic statement about the way the Christian community experienced the abiding presence of Jesus? When we concentrate on that singular event, we fail to imagine what a resurrected society would look like, a community governed by the spirit of love. We forget that Christianity is not about the salvation of individuals, but about a whole people of God.

What would it be like if people of faith flooded the world with an active, faith-filled, joyful imagination?

Two weeks ago, Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the editorial pages of the NY Times called "Awaking to a Dream." In it he writes about being ready for a positive surprise, it has been so long since something really wonderful has surprised our world.

Well, today is a day which promises wonder and joy, new life and fresh hope to even the most cynical of cynics. It's a day to approach the world with resurrection imagination!

Imagine the Israelis and Palestinians lining up on opposite sides of the street and walking towards in each other into the middle of the road. They lay their weapons down and reach out their hands and their arms to each other in handshakes and embraces. Their weeping and their tears would wash away the generations of anger and rage that each has been holding toward the other. On a balcony overlooking the city, Arafat and Sharon would share a toast (maybe apple juice!) and walk back into their offices, side by side and get to work.

Imagine that on June 30^th, all troops are sent home from Iraq, because the Iraqi people have figured out how to run their country on their own and the international community has responded generously to their plight. There is plenty of water and food for children and mothers and fathers can find work. There are no troops needed because there is no conflict, only a desire to rebuild a country where Shiites and Sunnis and everyone else has freedom of religion and life.

Imagine the leaders of both political parties pledging to lead our country into creating a sustainable economy, of adopting a discipline of voluntary simplicity, of agreeing to use no more than our fair share of the worlds resources.

Imagine what would happen if we immediately cut our military budget by one half and used the surplus to raise the standard of living of the 1.2 billion people who live on less than one dollar a day.

Imagine a resurrected world, in which there is plenty of water and food in Africa and medicine for fighting AIDS is sent from all over the world–cheap and easily obtainable. Imagine, a vaccine has been developed against the AIDS virus and it too, is being shipped all over the world. AIDS, as we know it, is about to become obsolete.

Imagine that ordinary people get married and have children and lead normal lives as partners and lovers whether these ordinary couples are gay and straight, interracial and interfaithful. They have been blessed in sacred ceremonies and by civil law and no one bothers to ask questions, because everyone knows that love must dwell at the center of all relationships and that is what is of ultimate concern.

Imagine Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus getting together to celebrate each other's high holy days, as well as observing their own rites and rituals. There is among them, a celebration of the One God who reigns over all of the religions of the world, a God who is fair and just, a God whose name is Love, Allah, YHWH, and the Ground of all our beings. I recall a windy day standing on a beach in Tangier, with a Moroccan Muslim who began to pray for peace for all people. He broke down in tears and held his eyes from us. I pray for the day when all tears will be wiped away and we shall behold this new earth and new heaven.

This is a world of prayerful possibility: The lion lies down with the lamb, the poor are filled up with good things, all debts are forgiven and the creation groans with ecstatic fullness. As Walter Bruggemann asserts, "Easter is God's most radical, most extreme, most decisive answer to prayer." And what is prayer but the power of our imagination in petition to God?

This is the Easter we need to let our imaginations and our spirits soar with the news that the world can be reborn into hope and possibility. This is the day that the world as we know it, a world in which death, sin and betrayal have carried the day, a world in wounds are deep and suffering is real–this world has been overturned by the power, the grace and the Love of God. Emily Dickinson begins one of her poems, "I will die, but that is all I will do for death." The news we celebrate today is that death does not have ultimate dominion over us. Nothing in all creation separates us from the love of God we know today in Christ Jesus.

Thomas Merton was a deeply religious Trappist Monk whose vow of silence produced beautiful words. He wrote: "Let us recognize who we are: dervishes mad with secret love which cannot be bought or sold, and which the politician fears more than violent revolution, for violence changes nothing. Love changes everything."

Today, love changes everything. God's love for the world, our love and hope for the world, reflected in the life and faith of Jesus and us. On this day of resurrection, let our love for each other and our hope for the world be the prelude to the prayerful possibility of new life, new peace in our war-torn, terror-scarred world.

Emily Dickinson once again–

Love is like life–merely longer

Love is like death, during the grave

Love is the fellow of the Resurrection

Scooping up the dust and chanting-- Live.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it,

Christ the Lord is Risen today.

Alleluia!