What kind of story do you tell in a graveyard? I ought to have some experience at that. We preachers get called upon to speak words in many a graveyard. And it’s all based on what happened in the graveyard on Easter morning. Today is the day that gives us something to say at the time of death.
The story is told about a young preacher who was called upon to do a service for a pauper who had no family. He was new to the area and wasn’t sure where the cemetery was so he got lost along the way. Finally, an hour after the service was supposed to begin, he pulled up to see that the hearse had already left. A backhoe was standing at the ready and there were two men waiting to fill in the hole. The vault lid was already on.
The young preacher felt very guilty and he decided he should say a few appropriate words for the man. So he put on his robe and launched into an impassioned sermon about the resurrection and new life, he read Bible verses and said a wonderful prayer. As he returned to his car one of the workers leaned to the other and said, “I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years and I ain’t never seen anything like that.”
What kind of story do you tell in the graveyard? There has been such a contrast of things going on here at Franktown these last few days. We’ve had a steady stream of services since Thursday night and the consistent theme of them has been darkness and pain and sorrow and confession and the gory details of Jesus’ death on a criminal’s cross two thousand years ago. And in the midst of it all – an Easter Egg Hunt. I know we kind of jump the gun on that, but it almost seems a kind of relief. When we’re talking crucifixion I often wonder whether it’s appropriate for children. When we get into the whipping and the nailing and the piercing and the dying, what does this say to our kids?
I don’t worry too much because I know children are resilient and for centuries we have been telling our kids scary stories to help them come to terms with the terrors of this world. Hansel and Gretel is just one of many tales that remind us that there are dangers around us. The witch in the gingerbread house is a stand-in for all the ways in which evil can lead us astray. Children do need some conditioning to prepare them for living in the world. Much as we try to protect them from it, they will face monstrous things in their lives and best that they should know the character of the world. But we also usually include a happy ending to remind them that the world is more than predators and nightmares. It is also filled with beauty and hope and goodness overcoming evil. That’s more than we can say for the evening news which never gets past the nightmares.
All the same, I wonder what sort of message we are telling about the world when we talk about Jesus and his death and resurrection. In the midst of pastel eggs and iron spikes and empty tombs are we telling a story that helps our children (and us) know the truth about this world? Or are we telling something that seems to the world an idle tale?
I don’t know about you, but I could use a story that is more than an idle tale. We have way too many idle tales. Movies have predictable plot lines that run from revenge fantasies to underdogs overcoming adversity to boy meets girl. But maybe you’re like me and you hunger for something deeper, richer, more. We want a story that is going to not only touch our hearts but transform our lives.
Avatar has been the top movie of the winter and it seems to promise that kind of story. It will take you to a whole new world and immerse you in the story with 3-D effects that are stunning to behold. And it is a beautiful thing to watch. But by the end of the movie I felt let down. All these hundreds of millions of dollars and the story ends up being about a showdown between a rebel on a righteous mission and a thug with a big machine? How many times have I seen that with the same predictable outcome?
I want a story that is going to tell me something about who I am and where I’m headed. I want a story that’s going to deal with the deepest fears and longings in my heart. I want a story that’s going to tell me why I’m here and what it is that I’m supposed to do with my life. I want a story that’s going to tell me who God is and what God is about in this world. Come to think of it, I want more than director James Cameron can give me. I want a savior.
Maybe you want that, too. Maybe that’s why we’re here. Easter is one of those days when people make a special effort to go to church. If you’re one of those folks who have been away for awhile and are back because it’s Easter, welcome back. It is a good day to be here, because this Easter story is the most important thing we have to say as Christians. And it’s a story we should never get tired of telling.
Easter is different from Christmas, too. James Miller wrote a column for Slate magazine a couple of years ago in which he noticed that we don’t commercialize Easter like we do Christmas. The culture has kind of adopted Christmas, but Easter, despite the Cadbury eggs and peeps, is not the culture holiday that Christmas is.
Miller says:
“Even agnostics and atheists who don't accept Christ's divinity can accept the general outlines of the Christmas story with little danger to their worldview. But Easter demands a response. It's hard for a non-Christian believer to say, ‘Yes, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead.’ That's not something you can believe without some serious ramifications: If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, this has profound implications for your spiritual and religious life—really, for your whole life. If you believe the story, then you believe that Jesus is God, or at least God's son. What he says about the world and the way we live in that world then has a real claim on you.
Easter is an event that demands a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ There is no ‘whatever.’”[i]
There is no ‘whatever.’ This is crucial stuff. So if we are here today because of Easter it says something about how we view the world.
The story of the first Easter is simply told. It’s different from action movies or other blockbusters because nothing really happens. At least not much cinematic happens. Especially in the version of the resurrection story that we read today – from Luke. The gospel of Matthew, at least, has an earthquake and a Roman guard falling down in fear. But Luke’s narrative is a quieter sort of thing. But just because there are no explosions that doesn’t mean there isn’t drama.
When we last left the scene, it was Friday. Jesus was dead and buried. Taken down from the cross. Sealed away in a borrowed tomb. The women who had followed him from Galilee had seen his body, seen where it was laid, but then went off to prepare spices for the day when they could return. The Sabbath began at sundown that Friday night and it would not end until nightfall on Saturday. During that time, the women did not go back to the tomb.
Then early on Sunday morning, at “deepest dawn” according to Luke, they went back to the grave carrying the spices. But by the time they got to the tomb, the resurrection had already happened. This is the part we’d love to see, but none of the gospels gives us an account of how it happened that Jesus’ lifeless body left that tomb. When Mel Gibson tried to depict it in The Passion of the Christ a few years ago, he added this scene with Jesus confidently striding out, fully restored, ready to take on the world. But the gospels leave it out.
All that the women see is the huge stone that sealed the entrance rolled away from the tomb. They look inside and see that there is no body. And then two men are standing there beside them (and, yes, this part is a little cinematic) they are wearing clothes that shine like stars.
“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” they ask. “Weren’t you listening? Didn’t he tell you? He told you this would happen. He told you about the betrayal into the hands of sinful people. He told you about the crucifixion. But on the third day…he told you…he would rise.”
They did remember. The Bible tells us they did. But they hadn’t dared to believe. That Jesus would be betrayed – that was something easy to believe since he was causing conflict with religious authorities wherever he went. That he would be crucified – they prayed that would not be true, but it was a fate for those who ran afoul of the Roman overlords – and any Messiah would do that. They could believe that. But the rising in three days bit? It just seemed ludicrous. Outlandish. Incredible. Only now it made perfect sense.
The women, and there were many – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, many more – they ran to the disciples, the eleven Jesus had chosen (11 because Judas had fallen away), and the rest. They spilled out the story – to no effect. They did not believe them. It seemed to them an idle tale, Luke says.
Peter was the only one who made an effort to check the story out. The only one! He ran to the tomb, stooped and looked in. No body. Not even the two men the women had seen. Just the linen wrapping that had been around his body. And he left wondering what had happened.
At this point it was only the women who had experienced Easter. It would take more appearances by the risen Jesus to convince the others. But the bare facts were now out there. Jesus’ body was gone. And the women who went to the tomb now knew that victory had come in an entirely unexpected way. Jesus had confounded them in death as in life. But he had also defeated death.
An idle tale? Some still think so. But this idle tale has changed the world. Empires have fallen. Slaves have been set free. People have faced down oppressive regimes. People have given their lives in mission to tell this story. People who have been lost have been found. People who were dead in every sense that it matters are now alive. All because of this idle tale.
The early church had an interesting way of dramatizing what was happening at Easter. On the night before Easter they would gather in darkness. During the Easter vigil they would bring in the new Christians, those being baptized after months of preparation. And they would do their liturgy as if it were all still up in the air – as if the outcome was still undetermined. As if Jesus were still lying there dead in the tomb. And they would still go on with the service, expecting that the rising sun might bring the last day of creation. Maybe this year Jesus would come to bring all things to an end.
Then they would welcome the light by blessing a candle. The baptizands would turn the west – the land associated with darkness – and they would renounce the devil and his angels. They would laugh at him and literally spit at the evil forces of this world. Then they would turn to the east – the land of the rising sun – and confess their allegiance to Christ, the coming one, the risen one.
The theologian David Bentley Hart says that “to renounce one’s bonds to these [evil] beings was an act of cosmic rebellion, a declaration that one had been emancipated from…‘the prince of this world’ or…‘the god of this world’…so the life of faith was, for the early church, before all else, spiritual warfare, waged between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the fallen world, and every Christian on the day of his or her baptism had been conscripted into that struggle on the side of Christ.”[ii]
Is that what we signed up for? We want a word of comfort. We want a word of hope for today. And that’s what Easter is – hope and confidence that God has already determined the course and declared where it all ends. But it is also a day that reminds us that it’s not just about us. It’s about God and the great glory of this graveyard story is not just that we as individuals have won a way out of the cycle of death. The greater story is that we are swept up into what God is doing in this world – defeating evil with love, overthrowing the wrong with the right, and making us new creatures through union with Christ. If you say ‘yes’ to this story, you’re conscripted now. The kingdom of God needs every volunteer. What you can’t say is ‘whatever.’
Thanks be to God.
Luke 12:1-12
On the first day of the week at deepest dawn, they came to the grave carrying spices they had prepared. They discovered that the stone had been rolled away from the grave, and upon entering they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were confounded with this, look, two men stood beside them in clothes that shone like stars. They became frightened and bowed their faces to the ground as the men said, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised. Remember what he said to you when you were in Galilee. He said that the Son of Humanity must be given over into the hands of sinful people, and be crucified, and on the third day rise."
They remembered his words. So they returned from the tomb and reported all of this to the Eleven and to the others. These were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and others were with them. They said these things to the apostles. These words seemed to them nonsense and they did not believe them.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. He bent down and saw only a linen cloth and left, wondering to himself what was happening.
[i] James Martin, “Happy Crossmas! How Easter resists commercialization,” Slate magazine, April 2, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2249525/?from=rss.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment