Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Easter Sermon
Bishop Paul V. MarshallAlleluia! Christ is risen.
It is a joy to greet each of you as we come to the greatest day of the church's year, the day of triumph for Christ, for life, humanity. But joy seems to be put on hold as our Gospel lesson interrupts with a grim scene in a cemetery, visitors quaking in terror and confusion.
No matter how much it hurts to lose someone, when they are dead, we try to get things settled so that we can go on with life. Imagine visiting the cemetery plot of someone you love and finding it wide open and empty with a James Dean look-a-like in a white tee shirt saying no, your loved one is no longer dead, and has gone back to where you first met them, and you should now go back there to meet them and move on with your relationship.
So Mark's gospel ends with the visitors at the tomb in terror and confusion. Just as you or I would be, whether we believed the strange young man or not.
Mark is not playing games with us--he is showing natural reaction, and letting the reader figure out that the resurrection calls each of us to go meet Christ and to find faith and a voice to tell about the resurrection.
Resurrection. God's longing for us, God's passion for reconciliation, restoration, and recreation of our life burst through when the same Jesus whom the world crucified has his love approved and vindicated in the dark eyes flashed wide in triumphant love. We are not speaking of resuscitation of a corpse, but some altogether new and yet the same Jesus. As Spock used to say to Captain Kirk, "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it." Or at least life, as more than we know it. Today we are asked to enter or at least to taste that life.
The problem that arises when this story is told is the same problem that has been around for 2000 years. I'm not asking for a show of hands, but I do wonder how many people in this room believe this story?
Next week, when the story of Thomas and his doubt rolls around, some preachers will try to transform the agony of doubt into some kind stoic heroism. Trust me; it happens. But that is not what is going on in the NT, and believe me, first-century people had functioning minds, too. How do we know any of this is true -- in the terror, amazement, and confusion of the proclamation that someone who was dead is not alive -- how do we know if any of this is true?
You can't argue about whether or not any more than you can argue about whether or not you can swim -- you have to get into the water. The only way to find out if the risen Christ is present and available is to try to live with him every day for fifty days, to participate in his life through prayer, acts of love, and participation in the life of his body the Church. Watch and listen for signs of a new reality. At Easter we debate nothing -- we do invite people into community as we go to all the Galilee's of life to meet him.
In a few minutes, when we say, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again," we are saying something about ourselves as followers of Jesus. Our destiny is the same as Christ's. The short epistle lesson today reflects on that truth and urges us to live in that reality. St. Paul says that the reality of our new life is hidden with Christ who is risen and is coming again. In the meantime, he says, the only way to find what is hidden is to "seek the things that are above," a way of saying that the more we live as followers of the Risen One, the more we will find our lives.
And we know that this is true. We know that the times when we are generous, the times when we are the ones to end arguments and patch up relationship, the times when we calmly stand for what is right, those are times when we find a new and better part of ourselves.
Today in many churches the Sunday School children find the Alleluia that was buried or hidden at the beginning of Lent. A way to understand the angel's charge to follow Jesus into Galilee is look for the Alleluia in my own heart, and to find and bring it out in others. Around the dinner table this afternoon, can you be the secret agent who helps other people remember joy?
We don't go hunting for Alleluia just to have a nice day or cheer up other people. We do it so that our children will know that there is much more to life than the grim business of keeping up with the Joneses. There is the adventure of finding oneself in God as we seek the greatest good, the highest and best use of our lives. No matter what else is going on, even crucifixions.
I live in my left brain too much to get the lyrical part of that thought right, so let me share the words of a woman of faith, a poet, who wrote,
The green of Jesus is breaking the ground and the sweet smell of delicious Jesus is opening the house and=8A the world is turning in the body of Jesus and the future is possible.
The future is possible. The parts of me that fear, the parts that stumble, the parts that regret and grieve -- *all* the parts of me, the imbecile and genius that is in each and every person, hear in the Easter Alleluia that the future is possible: possible ... accessible =2E.. ours ... in Jesus Christ. Easter calls us to live into that joyful truth every day.
So I say again, "Alleluia! Christ is risen!"
[The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.]
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