It is still Easter everyone. For a week of Sundays we are celebrating Easter and this sermon series is exploring what the resurrection means, what difference does it make that Christ was raised. What was the profound change in the universe? There was a little boy who heard the phrase “Christ is Risen.” He asked his mom what that meant. She explained that Jesus died on the cross was buried and rose from the dead. And the little boy exclaimed, “Jesus is a Zombie?” Scary huh? What if the meaning of the resurrection is to wake the dead? That doesn’t sound like the Holy Family. That sounds like the Adam’s Family. That’s even scarier. But what if the meaning of the resurrection is waking us up from grip of fear?
Well if the purpose of the resurrection is to free us from fear the bible has a funny way of going about it. It is a toss up which is scarier the crucifixion or the resurrection. But I am laying odds on the resurrection. The Crucifixion is a true horror story, a gruesome death with God forsakenness, darkness at noon, blood and water. This is an agonizing, violent, bloody and dark death. But for sheer shock value, Easter morning has it beat. The Resurrection is completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common. We are all too familiar with the cruelty of humans to humans. But the Resurrection is scary and unique. On Resurrection morning: An earthquake strikes with incredible force.
An angel looking like lightning in snow-white clothes throws away the tombstone. The burly and courageous guards shake violently and faint dead away. Jesus, who was dead, "suddenly" pops up in front of the visiting women, (who evidently were made of sterner stuff than the guards) and says "Boo!" The women who witnessed this were seized with "terror and amazement" (Mark 16:8).
Fear and great joy combine. What an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Fear is personal and it touches us in ways we don’t always expect and in ways that we can’t always rationalize. Who here is afraid of spiders? Who is afraid of heights? Who is afraid of public speaking? Ah you see there is the number one fear. In fact more people are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of death, our second biggest fear. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, that means that more people who rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Fear is so personal. Yet if the purpose to the resurrection was to defeat our old enemies of sin and death, how would that affect us? What if we could be free of night terrors or even better to be free of the day terrors too?
I have a story of fear and hope of my own. As so many of you know my husband Allen died very suddenly in July 2006. And darn it all, he died the first day of a three-week vacation time. The first two weeks we had planned lots of home projects. But the third week we planned a vacation with the boys and my sister and her husband to Myrtle Beach. All of that changed. But after the funeral I decided that going to Myrtle Beach was what we would do any way. It would get us away; break up that time of deepest grief. My nephew, David, came along in Al’s place to help ride herd and distract Nate and March. David, Nate, March and I would fly down. My sister and her husband would drive. We arrived about seven hours earlier than my sister, played in the sand and the ocean then went back up to the condo to shower and eat. But later in the long summer’s twilight I walked down to the beach to walk by myself, while David watched the boys in the condo. The beach was virtually empty. I had it to myself, so I could cry and struggle with God and with Grief. The thing that I yelled at God again and again was the demand to know that Allen was well, that despite death, Allen was well. As I walked I saw the full moon rising on the ocean. It was a golden path from where I stood on the beach to the edge of eternity on the horizon. I thought, “OK God, I get that Allen has just gone ahead. But it is not enough.” I thought of that poem about the distant shores that makes a metaphor of a ship sailing out of sight for death and imagine the joyful greeting at the other shore. That poem has been a great comfort to many and in fact was a comfort to me at other times. But on this twilight of deep grief it was not enough. I wanted to know that Allen was well not some stupid metaphor of ships and shores and shining paths of light. I looked up again and saw a huge tall cumulonimbus cloud like a giant column. But as I looked the cloud looked like a fantastic pointer, an arrow to heaven. Now you have to know that Allen as a fighter pilot had a special fondness for cumulonimbus clouds. Evidently they were great fun to zoom around and in air-to-air combat could be used with great efficiency for hide and seek. But on this twilight, I was not comforted by a big puffy cloud pointing to heaven. It was not enough. I remember angrily telling God that cloud had no significance whatsoever, that in the next minute it would turn into a puffy dragon or a unicorn. I demanded God to spell it out. I wanted to know that Allen was well. I looked up into the twilight and there was a contrail, that is the vapor left behind in the stream of a jet. Allen loved contrails. One never came overhead that Allen didn’t point to it and guess about the type of plane or its destination. But this contrail was in a perfect A for Allen, spelled out above the pointer column of cloud, above the shining path of the moon on the ocean. God had spelled it out for me in a language that was so particular and unique to Allen and my relationship. Allen was well and it was enough. I stood staring at that shining path and that cloud and that giant contrail of an A for about ten minutes. My eyes couldn’t open wide enough to take it in. I was dumbfounded and grateful and comforted. Then my cell phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the sky to rummage through my windbreaker pockets for my cell. It was my sister calling. They had just crossed the line into Myrtle Beach. They would be there in just a few minutes. I ended the call and looked up. There was the moon. There was the shining path. But that huge cloud was gone. The contrail was gone. I scanned the sky looking for wisps of the cloud, smaller clouds that get broken up by the breeze. But there was none. The sky was completely clear. All gone in a one-minute phone call.
What do we make of stories like this? Was it a psychotic break? A hallucination brought on by grief and salt water? I recall Paul having a vision of heaven and not knowing if he was in the body or out of it. Well I knew I was in my own body, standing outside the condo, a few feet from the steps across the dunes. This was a message of comfort and faith. This was a resurrection message to drive out fear.
Christ’s message to the Mary’s was do not be afraid. Meet me in Galilee. This is not a total rejection of fear. I have to say some fear is built into our life for life to continue. Good fear is what keeps us from playing in traffic. But Christ is making a new claim for fearlessness in the resurrection. Don’t be afraid so that you can meet me. You can go tell my brothers that we are reconciled and we will meet. You can be people of joy, even after the horror of the crucifixion. You can let go of fear so that you can embrace life. You are not plodding round the year unknowingly passing up your death date till death takes you. You are living now with the knowledge of resurrection to come. So we don’t live like we are dying. But we live like those who are resurrected.
The great preacher Barbra Brown Taylor said, God "is not in the business of granting wishes. God is in the business of raising the dead, not all of whom are willing." That is us. We are unwilling. Perhaps it is too good to be true, too much to take in, too much to hope for. Those words, “too, much, too good, too much” are words of fear. We try to protect ourselves by hoping little. But this fear doesn’t protect us. It keeps us trapped in disbelief, in the ordinary and prevents us from rushing on in joy to meet God.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he had this profound awareness of God. And it was this awareness that led him to challenge injustice, to live with compassion toward others, to be filled with inner calm and happiness. His life had a “raised up” quality. He was awake. He was truly alive. One can say that Jesus was raised up long before Easter. And what Jesus was about was this: He said, you, too, can be awakened. You, too, can be raised up, resurrected, alive. The reign of God is right under your nose, he said, and you can live in it. You, too, can know true happiness, peace and freedom. The same power that raised Jesus—giving him new life, freedom and joy—is able to raise all people. And so in this sense we are raised with Jesus. In the last verse in Matthew, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We can experience the same life-giving presence of God as Jesus did. His spirit is with us.
Resurrection is a mysterious, ever-unfolding process in the lives of each generation. It is something we experience in the here and now. We experience the here and now when we are not blinded and paralyzed by fear. In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi, “Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody”! Let it be us. Amen.
