Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Got HOPE?


Easter Sermon March 23, 2008

Passing by a CVS pharmacy on Thursday, I noted the electronic sign: “We have all your Easter needs,” it announced. “All your Easter needs.” What are our “Easter needs?”

Does anyone really need cellophane grass in unreal pastel colors? Do we ‘need’ plastic eggs? Does anyone really need yet another stuffed animal, no matter how cute? Do we need cards, wrapping paper? Now some of us may argue that we ‘need’ chocolate but no one’s ever died for lack of it. And this Easter, we may also argue that we need the bright hope of blooming flowers, flowers that promise spring amidst the freak snowfall we’ve just slogged our ways through. But need them?

What do we really need? What brings us back to church today—some of us after spending the past three days in prayer and meditation, tracing Jesus’ last meal with his friends, his betrayal, torture and death? What do we need?

All our Easter needs. All the world’s Easter needs are for a sign of hope. What we need is not more colored eggs, not another piece of chocolate, not another squeaky bunny. What we need is hope.

And hope is what we’re given. Beyond our imagining, beyond our conception, beyond our ability to hold onto it. God gives us hope in the person of the Risen Christ.

Now there are those who argue about whether the resurrection was a fact, an event so stupendous that it has never been repeated. After all, no one was there with a video camera. Try as you might, you can search YouTube and you won’t see a clip of the flash of lightning, the crack of thunder, the earthquake and the guards running away in fear.

So what is left to us? What the Gospels ask is not "Do you believe?" but "Have you encountered a risen Christ? And to ask what changed? Is the wrong question. The question is, rather, “Who changed?!”

The burden of the New Testament is not that the world changed, but that ordinary men and women (the disciples, etc.) changed. Gomes

Look at the people surrounding Jesus before the resurrection—a scared and sorry lot if there ever was any. One of his friends betrayed him, the other their supposed leader denied him not once but three times. Everyone else ran away frightened and fearing for their lives. Is it any mistake Matthew’s gospel mentions the word fear four times in these 10 short verses?

What were the disciples afraid of? But when they arrived at the tomb, they found it empty. How did they react? Did their hearts leap? Did they dance a jig or burst out in laughter or song because he had risen the way he always said he would?

Maybe they feared the challenges that Jesus had set before them and sets before us -- the challenge to be poor in spirit, to embrace mourning, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to seek to serve others rather than to be big shots. Life is so much easier without these things. We want comfort, not challenge; ease, not adventure.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells the story about some of his fellow prisoners in the Dachau Nazi prison Camp during World War II. They had been held captive so long that when they were released he said, “they walked out into the sunlight, blinked nervously and then silently walked back into the familiar darkness of the prisons, to which they had been accustomed for such a long time.”

Maybe they were afraid because if Jesus wasn’t around, what would happen to his message? What would happen to the promise of God’s kingdom they had been hearing about and had been hoping to participate in? We have a clue in the reading from Jeremiah.

Here Jeremiah assures the “remnant” of the people left in Jerusalem that as a result of keeping the Covenant, they will be reunited with those returning from exile in Babylon. God’s people will be restored and reunited with all of God’s people.

We too are called to Keep the Covenant is keeping our end of the bargain—the NEW Covenant Jesus spoke about at his Last Supper. The NEW Covenant we proclaim when we break bread each time we come together for Eucharist.

What does it mean to keep the Covenant in a post-modern, post-Enlightenment, pluralistic, global, 21st Century? Clearly the Way to keeping the Covenant is not to look “up” to God. Because, through Jesus God has come among us. He lived, he died and we find an empty tomb. He rose. So we too, like the visitors who find the tomb empty are confronted with a choice: If God’s realm of justice-compassion is to be restored – as the Jeremiah and other prophets promise– do we think it will come about a la the LEFT BEHIND books—with thunder and Jesus riding a horse down from heaven. Or do we experience God with us. God, as the Risen Christ in partnership with humanity?

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never experienced God rolling in with thunder and lightning. But I have experienced the Risen Christ in the love of others who have helped me in Jesus’ name. I have experienced him in stories of lives transformed through him. I have met the Risen Christ as I’ve seen estranged people come together in reconciliation. And yes, I’ve even encountered the Risen Christ in the newspaper—in stories of enemies brought together in peace like what’s happened in Northern Ireland last year.

We all can experience him in the embodiment of his community, in the sharing of love with one another in Jesus’ name. We renew God’s Covenant by becoming living, breathing partners with God who gave himself as a free gift.

WE ARE THE EVIDENCE that Jesus is alive.

Christ has truly risen. The evidence is overwhelming. Just look around you here in this congregation gathered almost two millennia later.

Without Christ’s resurrection there would have been no faithful apostles, no church, no memory kept of his life and teaching, no babies baptized in his name, no hospitals developed by his spirit, no common yet holy Table spread for all who are hungry and need the bread of heaven.

God has designed us for life, and in Christ destined us for life abundant beyond our comprehension! I mean that; literally: Beyond our comprehension!

Christ has risen! Death does not have the last word. Laugh Christian, by indomitable grace, you now have the right!

This Risen Jesus “is the beating heart of the universe and does not need to threaten, to intervene, to punish, or to control” (John Dominic Crosson) in order to bring about God’s kingdom. But God does need us to help bring about the justice and compassion and restoration that Jeremiah spoke of.

“Do not be afraid,” again and again is the gospel message. For the exiled people of Israel, for the disciples gathered at the tomb. And also for us. Do not be afraid but hope. Hope for a transformed world, a renewed, courageous community. So it was for the disciples, so it can be for us.

In these 50 days of Easter, we are invited to recognize the signs of God’s kingdom all around us. We are invited to see Jesus standing right beside us, as he did with Mary. What is he calling us to do? Perhaps we can train our eyes to look in the direction that this Jesus, standing beside us is looking.

Jesus is risen. Death could not hold him.

In the gospel, Mary sees Jesus standing there, but she did not know that itwas Jesus. Jesus speaks to her saying “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" But she does not recognize him.

Jesus is risen. Death could not hold him.

And how about you? Is Jesus speaking to you – but you don’t hear him? Is heasking to be recognized by you as the Jesus who is alive - the Jesus who is risen --- but your heart is slow to believe?

Imagine you are at the tomb, the stone is rolled away, and the linen is
there, but no Jesus. You see two angels where his body had been. What do you feel?

You turn around and a man with a loving voice asks you: “Who are you looking for?” How do you feel?

What does your heart want to answer?

Take a moment now to listen to your heart: “Who are you looking for?”

So it’s not CVS, not Walgreen’s, not Costco that has all our Easter needs. It is the Risen Christ found in peace, found in justice, found in acts of compassion and mercy. The Risen Savior is found in the way he challenges us as individuals and as a community to bring hope to the world.

Who are you looking for? The God among us. He is the one we are looking for. And he is present in the world, ready to be found.

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