I have to confess, I worried way more about the Children’s homily than I did about this one. If you are visiting and wondering about the laughs and whispers, some are probably making a joke about the fact that I have seven kids. I know, what priest with seven kids struggles to connect with youth? I usually connect well with kids one on one or in small groups, but sermons geared toward the youth are a different animal. The other issue at play, though, is the desire we clergy have to make the sermon on this day memorable. It is no secret that lots of folk show up to church on Christmas and Easter who barely grace the doors of church any other time of year. Pastors hope that we can connect with them and inspire them to seek God more. If we say the one right phrase or have the most engaging sermon, maybe they will return? Fortunately for all of us gathered here this morning, this my 22 Easter sermon. I know I am not charismatic and I know, absent God doing something amazing, some of you will already be tuned out. But maybe, just maybe, if I can have a youth remember chocolate carrots from the Gardener, I might say something today that reminds us adults of God’s love and desires for us.
Why are we all here this morning? Some might rather be lounging in bed doom scrolling. Others might wish they were on a golf course or puttering around the house. As I suggested to the youth, some of us are probably here because someone made us. Maybe a mom or a grandmom or someone else literally forced some of us to attend church this day. We like the family meal that is planned, or maybe we like some of the distant family members that will be present and the shenanigans that they bring. Maybe we just like the ritual. Perhaps we like the petit fours or the mimosas that these crazy Adventers enjoy when they celebrate Easter. There are probably many different reasons that we come. Hopefully, maybe in a deep place we are not yet aware, maybe we think we need the comfort of a the story, just as the youth expressed they enjoyed from Good Night Moon or Dr. Seuss or Narnia or whatever favorite book memory they named or of which you thought when you were answering that question for yourself.
We live in a world that seems crazy. The rules which we were taught do not seem really to apply. Adulting, as my older kids like to say, is hard. We Americans like to think we are the good guys in the world. We defend the democracies and condemn the despots. But those of us who have watched the wars in Ukraine and in Iran are realizing that does not really describe us. Heck, we are supposed to think of war as a last resort; many of us, however, have become accepting to what we thought were unimaginable events or atrocities. When is the last time we even thought of what it must be like to have drones and missiles falling around us, opening up craters around us only a little smaller than the potholes that form in Middle Tennessee over the winter?
I know one of the matriarchs of the Armenians that will meet here in a couple hours has become so used to the war in Ukraine that she does not fear for her extended families’ survival like she does for her sister in Iran. That is emphatically NOT a criticism of her worries. It is an acknowledgement, though, that we sometimes allow the world to change our perspective, how we see things. Her extended families in both Russia and Ukraine have survived more than three years of that battle. They have expressed to her their patterns of response. Plus, she can communicate with them nearly all the time via internet or phone. The confrontation in Iran, though, is new, just a few weeks old. And she is unable to check in with her sister, even though she can see the house on some of the major news networks’ reporting.
We understand that de-sensitization on some level, though. We have all been through a pandemic. We understand the fear, the isolation, the economic issues, and the attack on sanity that human beings experience is such crises, even if we do appreciate the fact that some of our friends or coworkers are not as quick to expose us to the newest virus like they were six years ago. To be fair to the family members, most of them expose us before they recognize they have been exposed, right? But for a while, we thought of all that accompanying the pandemic as “the new normal.”
Speaking of economic issues, at least we do not have to worry about those. It’s not like we are paying $4 at the pump here in Nashville for gasoline or higher prices for our necessities of life which, as it turns out, depend on trucks and airplanes to make it to our houses and apartments. But at least we live in a city where the cost of housing is reasonable, and the next generation can easily afford to move out of our homes into their own because of the availability of high paying jobs, right? Given the chuckles and elbows, maybe some of you because you enjoy sarcasm.
Then there are the personal things that are crazy, in addition to the big picture things. Some of us are dealing with job difficulties. Some of us are dealing with health issues and perhaps even scares. Some of us are probably dealing issues of frayed or broken relationships. Maybe some of us are dreading today because those issues will rear their heads once again?
All of us are dealing with death. Well, maybe I should say we are all dealing with the consequences of death to be more accurate. We have all buried loved ones. Some of us have buried classmates and coworkers. Some of us have had our own dance with death as we struggled with cancer or heart attacks or whatever serious illness. There are people, people important to us, whom we see no longer, to use the language of the BCP. Some of them were those people in our lives who helped make us feel secure, loved, or comforted when we were younger and not expected to be the ones providing that to the generations after us yet.
None of this, absolutely none of this was likely on our radar as we read those books with loving parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles in our lives in our youth. And to be absolutely clear, we need to remember that not everyone had that loving support upon which our youth today and many of us were reflecting as we considered our favorite bedtime rituals.
All of that makes today’s Gospel lesson that much more important. Matthew’s account is simple. Matthew begins his narrative with the fact that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were going to the tomb of Jesus as dawn approached on the day after the sabbath, on what we call Sunday. Suddenly there was a great earthquake and the stone was rolled back. This is not the first seismos of Matthew’s Gospel. At the death of Jesus, the same happened, and the bodies of saints came out of their tombs and appeared to people all over Jerusalem. The angel descends and rolls back the stone covering Jesus’ tomb and sits on the stone. We know these details well. Some of us know them well enough to know the differences between Luke’s version and Mark’s version and John’s version. Scoffers claim those differences mean the experience was a fabrication rather than a story based on peoples’ recollections and perspectives.
The first important detail to notice is the angel. When did an angel first appear in Matthew’s Gospel? The announcement to Mary. Way back, nine months or so before the birth of Jesus, Mary is asked by the angel if she will consent to bear the Son of God, the Messiah. Mary understands biology well enough to understand that she cannot bear a son because she has not yet had sex with Joseph or any other man, and she challenges the angel. The angel reminds her that all things are possible with God, and she consents. Matthew’s story, in other words, is framed or bookended by the angels’ appearances. One announces the birth, the other announces the Resurrection. Everything in between is focused on the life and person and teaching of Jesus, the Son of God, His Beloved.
Want to know what God expects in a situation? Read between the angels, read about Jesus. Need to be reminded that God understands your hurt, your fears, your sufferings, your privation, or you? Read about Jesus. It is really that easy. We call Jesus the Living Word because He lived the torah on our behalf. We were able to see how God was calling us to live in the life of Jesus. No longer did we have to read those instructions or commandments in the torah to understand the life to which God was calling each and every human being. We were reminded by Jesus Himself that our call, those of us who claim Him as Lord and hope to one glorious day share in the experience described by Matthew this morning, is to love the Lord our God with everything we have and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It sounds simple, but it is incredibly hard, as we each find out as we grow up. All of that instruction is contained between the angels’ announcements to the Marys. And we are called to read, learn, and inwardly digest that, if we are going to call ourselves His disciples.
Notice a lesson some of us skip. Who receives this message from the angel? That’s right, the ladies. The ladies are shown the empty tomb and told to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is raised from the dead and will meet them in Galilee. That’s right. The supernatural event is for the benefit of the women. It makes sense, right? They were present when Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’ Body in the tomb and when Nicodemus wrapped the Body in strips of cloth and about 100 pounds of spices. And they were there when the stone was rolled in front of the tomb.
The stone is not rolled away so that Jesus can be resurrected! That has already happened! Nothing could interfere with God’s power, not the stone nor the guards. The stone is rolled away so that the Marys can see the tomb is empty and begin to understand what has happened. Notice, as they leave to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is raised, per the instruction of the angel, they have fear and great joy. They do not yet fully comprehend what has happened, but then who could? This is a new experience for all of them.
Speaking of the guards, notice the humor of the author here. If you do not know the story well, the guards are there on the orders of the chief priests. Once Jesus was buried on Good Friday, the chief priests and others approached Pilate and asked him to place a guard around the Tomb of Jesus to prevent His disciples from stealing His Body and pretending that Jesus was raised from the dead. Good, I see nods.
Have you ever noticed the ironic twist in that part of the story? Living tough guy guards are sent to guard the Body of a dead Rabbi and blasphemer. At the appearance of the angel, though, the formerly dead Rabbi is no longer in the tomb they are guarding, and they are frozen, like the dead, in fear! I sometimes think Matthew was having a bit of fun with this scene. As a former tax collector, he likely had guards to enforce his collections. He knew what they were like, how they behaved, and how they talked. Now, in the face of the activity of God they act like dead men!
Finally, the angel reminds us that Jesus has been raised. In English, we would say this is a passive verb. Someone else has raised Jesus. Clearly, given the context, it is God. God has raised Jesus from the dead as a final vindication that Jesus was and is who He claimed to be, that all of His teaching and examples were truly of God!
My job as a preacher and teacher of God’s holy mysteries is to remind you that these stories which took place almost 2000 years ago and 6500 miles away, have significance to our lives today, in this place. This may be the easiest day for that task. You are here. You want to know or to believe. All of us want it to be true. Why?
The first consequence of this comforting story is that our perspective is changed. Up until this point in the story, some can dismiss Jesus of Nazareth. Some wanted to limit His role to that of a poor, unheralded Rabbi. Some viewed Him as an unsanctioned prophet. More perceived Him as a blasphemer, because He dared to name Himself the Son of Man and the Son of God. Aside from a few insiders, both men and women, no one thought Him the heroic Messiah for whom they were looking to fulfill God’s promises to the patriarchs and matriarchs. And it took a lot of reflection even for those insiders to understand that the oppressor from which they were being freed was not Roman, but that of sin and death!
But in this event, this act of raising Jesus from the dead, the perspective of all the people of God was changed! Sin and death, both of which had oppressed human beings since the days of the Garden of Eden were conquered. Jesus, God’s Resurrected Son, made it possible for human beings to be restored to that intimate relationship with the Creator and Maker of all things!
For you and me it is a reminder that war is not what God intended, privation is not what God intended, illness was not what God intended, estrangement was not what God intended, and death was not what God intended. In the work and person of Jesus of Nazareth, you and I are reminded of the love for which God has for each one of us. It is one thing to remind ourselves that He stamps His image in each one of us as we are created, but it is glorious to realize that, no matter the mess we have made of ourselves and others, He loved us so much that He condescended to become one of us, that He was willing to suffer the torture and humiliation of what we call Holy Week, that He was willing to be betrayed by friends, and that He was willing to die for us, that we might be able to become, to be re-created to use the fancy theological words, the children He intended us to be when He breathed our soul into each one of us! Now we know, if God is calling us to anything, we can accomplish it. We may lack any number of skills or strength or who knows what, but because He is the One sending us, our effort will not be in vain. And even if our effort seems to be futile and lead to our deaths, He has the power and desire to redeem us.
Perspective, of course, is not the only change we notice because of this Easter event. Power is the other. That one unconquerable foe, death, is overcome by God! Human beings waste fortunes putting it off or trying to dodge it. I don’t doubt today that some are trying to figure out how to plant human brains in robots or androids. We go to great efforts to avoid it because death seems the end of us. But this day reminds us that God conquers even death. Better still, He promises each one of us who believes in His Son that He will raise us from our own death, that Jesus is just the first fruits of that re-creation that is to come. One glorious Day, we, too, will experience that power at work in us.
But the Gospel News is always better and more, much like that scene in Narnia’s Last Battle! For now, because of Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension, we have access to that power to glorify God in our lives. We can feed the hungry, we can clothe the poor, we can shelter the homeless, we can heal the sick, we can testify to others, even the powerful–we can do all those things to which He calls His people to do. That the hearts of so many can be turned to such tasks is miracle enough, but He still does more. Volunteers at Body & Soul can attest to His miraculous provision in that work, now going on almost eight years. Some of us have seen or even experienced healing that our doctors cannot explain. And many active Adventers can now express in their own words how they have been glorified in Christ by their thank offering and obedience to God’s call on their lives.
The reason we gather here today, I am certain, is at least in part for comfort. Each one of us attending here today wants that time of innocent comfort we had were we fortunate to read stories with our loved ones in our youth. A few want that comfort that we were able to share with our children or grandchildren when the roles for us switched. We know the world in which we live is hard. Things are not the way we thought they would be in our youth. Work hard, do the right thing, and things will work out is not how this world works. Thankfully, this is not our world! Our citizenship lies elsewhere.
Hopefully, as I have been preaching and teaching today you are reminded of the comfort and joy this story gave you when you first heard it. The call of God should be the ultimate call of comfort. The Resurrection teaches us that God has power to redeem all things, even death. More importantly, the Resurrection reminds us that God wants to redeem all things in our lives. By virtue of our Baptism into His family, by virtue of us declaring that we want to serve and honor Him in our lives, you and I are promised the most amazing comfort imaginable. In fact, it is unimaginable because we cannot truly grasp the offer.
God has chosen to use us, ordinary people like you and me, to share His story with the people around us. We get to invite people into comfort that none of us can truly describe. Our Father in heaven, the One who created each one of us, who stamped each one of us with those characteristics of Him that we were called to demonstrate to the world, wants nothing more than for all of humanity to want to sit at His bosom and share the amazing stories of what He did in our lives, smiling knowingly at each one of us, like we smile at our children’s or grandchildren’s wonder at Peter Rabbit or Goodnight Moon or whatever stories they loved to read with us. We will again get to experience that comfort we had when we share that time with our loved ones, even those taken from us untimely early, who also claimed Him as Lord. And unfathomable as it sounds in these fleshy ears, we will share in that comfort with Him and one another, not for a few years, but for eternity. We will get to share those stories with our loved ones and listen to their stories, and all that in the presence of our loving Father in heaven smiling as we soak it all in. This story reminds us of His promise and power to make that happen, no matter what is happening in the world around us or even to us! And so we give thanks for His promises and His reassurance. Best of all, nourished by Christ’s Body and Blood, we head back out into that world to share His story of salvation!
In His promise,
Brian+
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