If I were to ask
you what day of the week it is, I am pretty certain of the sort of answers that
I would get, all of them correct, even as they vary from one another. Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013, the day after
Saturday, or for the more numerically inclined, the 7th day of the
week or the 1st day of the week, depending on how you like to carve
up that particular pie. And because you
are people of intelligence, and let’s be honest, that’s not the most difficult
question, you would be correct. Correct
not just in the specific answers that you have given, but correct in testifying
to the reality that stand behind them.
Yes, the old trustworthy things of this life, the patterns, the
predictability, all the things that hold like the ink on a calendar. The fact that Sunday follows Saturday and
precedes Monday. Or that each day is
made of 24 hours, each hour made of 60 minutes and so forth. What I am getting at here is that there are
certain things we simply take for granted as being true, certain basic and
fundamental realities and truths. Night
will surely follow day; if I toss a shoe in the air, it will come down. The
way the calendar works, or the way that spring follows winter. There are
certain predictable patterns that govern our lives, so predictable are they,
that we scarcely even realize they exist.
And perhaps
there is nothing more certain, more fundamental about this life than the fact
that it ends. “Death and taxes” the old
adage goes, and with good reason. Against
our anger and our sorrow and our protest and our raging against the dying of
the light, our dead stay that way. And
those first women headed out to Jesus’ tomb, this is something they know as
well. Look what they carry; look at
their purpose. Spices to guard Jesus’
body against the encroaching stench. One
last act of devotion to their Rabbi, one last kindness to their friend. Their purpose in keeping with what they and
we know to be certain about this world.
As surely as the sun rises and Monday follows Sunday, so their Jesus so
brutally and publicly executed is in that tomb where he was previously laid.
And
no doubt that the stone was rolled away had to come as a bit of a shock, some
small and upsetting news, but nothing that would rearrange one’s entire
understanding of God and the world.
Instead, the questions are probably closer to who would be so cruel as
to vandalize a grave or so depraved as to steal from the dead? But then, just then, as they entered that
tomb looking for the body of Jesus, they find not him but two men dazzling in
their transcendent white. “Why do you
look for the living among the dead?”
they ask, as though that question could be so glibly asked in this situation. And let us not gloss over this question too
quickly. I mean, look at what the angels
are saying! We need to back the question
up a step. Why after all, should there
be the expectation that this one was dead is now living? The dead stay dead, don’t they? Don’t we know this as sure as we know
anything? Isn’t this the one fact, the
one truth around which we build our entire lives?
And
so we come to this Easter morning, all suit and tie and pretty dresses and kids
already hopped on too much sugar, we come to this Easter morning not to have
our sense of reality, our sense of who we are, our sense of the sure and true
things in this life, yes, we come not to have them confirmed but indeed to have
them converted. We come because for that
tomb to be empty, for Christ to no longer be among the dead but rather now
among the living, this quite literally changes everything. Let us not
understate this reality nor cover it over with sentimental thoughts and quite
reasonable expectations. Rather, why
don’t we look this strange, sublime and, yes, terrifying event square in the
face. In the words of John Updike, let
us not “mock God with metaphor,” saying things to ourselves like this story is
just Jesus’ disciples keeping his memory alive, or that Jesus’ cause will live
on in his followers. These sort of metaphors
never really saved anyone. Because in the space of that empty tomb, in the
emptiness which now fills it, make no mistake, the very fabric of reality has
come to bear a different story. A story that
cannot be contained or understood according to calendars and clocks, patterns
and expectations. Death’s once certain
foundation is no longer so certain. For
Christ is no longer among the dead, but is now freed from death to be among the
living. Yes, all he predicted has come
to pass, and just as surely as he hung on the cross, so too, he now is raised
by the power of the Spirit in the glory of his Father. Raised to seek out those who abandoned and
betrayed him and to give unto them the Father’s very peace. Raised to entrust
the proclamation of his resurrection to those who will continue to stare on in
awe and fear as he, he resurrected and freed from death, as he gathers again
with them in their midst. Raised to be,
in his body, the very reconciliation between God and sinful humans, and indeed
the reconiciliation among sinful humans of all sorts.
And
so we gather here yes on Easter Sunday, yes March 31, 2013, yes the 7th
day of the week. But that is not on the
only reality in which we gather. For we
are gathered also on this the 8th day, the day of God’s utterly new
creation. The day in which death itself
has been defeated and the promise of the resurrection made sure. The day in which it may be legitimately
asked, “why look for the living amongst the dead?” For it is this day in which
time’s cruel grasp has been broken and all things made new. A day that can
hardly be described or enumerated, for it has no beginning nor end. And please dear people of God, do not think
for one moment that you need to wait until your own deaths for this reality to
claim you. Oh yes, we are not yet what
we will be, we do not as yet, see God face-to-face, but that does not mean that
all must be postponed. Because you, you
in the power of the faith that God has given you, the faith that binds you to
Christ and his resurrected life, you already have one foot in the door. All the other stories that may claim you,
stories about scarcity and getting what is yours with no concern for your
neighbor, stories about eating and drinking and making merry for tomorrow we
die, yes, it is time to step away from those stories. To step into this 8th day, this
day not of the dead but of the living.
This day in which God’s abundance is more than we need to be sustained,
forgiven and blessed beyond measure. This
day in which we neither carelessly through away nor cling too closely to the
good things of this life.This eighth day in which we are again given to our
neighbors in the love eternal that has already claimed us. For
Jesus Christ is risen, and in him, you are already risen, as well. And it will take the eternity of God’s eight
day to truly live and love this truth.
Thank God we now have that excess of time. For Christ is risen; he is risen,
indeed. Halleluiah.
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