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April 16, 2006

Anne Jensen - Easter Morning, 2006

Easter Year B 2006 Acts 10:34-43 Mark 16:1-8

Welcome! Part of the good news this morning is that you are here! People come to church on Easter for many reasons. Perhaps you are here with friends; perhaps you are new in town and haven’t found a church yet; perhaps this is a difficult time in your life and you yearn for some word of comfort. Perhaps you came to hear glorious music and have your spirits lifted. And maybe you came because you come every Sunday! Whatever brought you here, I’m glad to see you. We welcome you with joyful music and the best story ever told. Christ is alive! The church is filled with the fragrance of spring flowers, signs of new life which the gospel proclaims. We come with hope and expectation that we will meet the risen Christ and be filled with joy. We’re all dressed up and we have some place to go! The place is here…and Jesus Christ is here. How do we meet him?

We meet him in the words of Peter in today’s lesson from Acts. You remember Peter...he denied knowing Jesus three times that awful night after Jesus was arrested. What changed him from a frightened liar to a great preacher? Two things: the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Peter was witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. As fascinated as he was by Jesus, he didn’t get what God was doing until after the resurrection. Jesus didn’t come just to a small group of people in the Eastern Mediterranean as a moral teacher, although he surely was that. Jesus. Jesus came for all people. “God shows no partiality…” Peter’s message about Jesus is for everyone. Jesus was anointed by God; he healed the sick and relieved the oppressed. He was crucified, “but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and rank with him after he rose from the dead.” From his own experience he has confidence to say, “...everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

In fact Peter himself is evidence. He’s an example of Jesus’ transformative power. Peter has been forgiven for his outbursts and even more for his denial of Jesus. He personally knows the power of being forgiven….and the gift of the Holy Spirit. That, my friends, is an unbeatable combination! And it is a combination open to everyone of us. How that happens exactly is as big a mystery as the resurrection itself is.

What happened? Maybe w should call today’s story the Case of the Empty Tomb or Rendezvous in Galilee. Then we would know we were dealing with a mystery. The problem with a mystery is that we want to solve the puzzle, and this mystery remains just that. Mark’s gospel narrative invites us into the mystery. The setting has its own kind of romance…the women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, came to the tomb just after sunrise, carrying spices. They are practical women, and they are caring women. They want to give Jesus, even in death, what they can…a proper burial. They are worried about how to enter the tomb. “Who will roll away the stone?”

The stone is already rolled back! The women enter cautiously. A young man dressed in a white robe is sitting on the right side, and they are alarmed. The young man says what all messengers from God say, “Do not be afraid.” “Do not be alarmed.” Of course they are alarmed! “…you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He as been raised; he is not here. Look. There is the place they laid him.” There is the heart of the mystery: the empty tomb. “He has been raised.” Go, tell the disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is God’s action! Violence, sin and death do not have the last word. God has acted even when human beings have done their worst.

The women saw the empty tomb. Surely one of the great ironies in Mark’s gospel is that after all the times Jesus tells those who have experienced his healing power, “Tell no one,” the angel says to the women, “Go tell!” They are so frightened that they run from the tomb, too frightened and too amazed to speak. They are dumbfounded. How long before they find their voices and tell the disciples? I don’t know, but we know they did tell others.

Peter testifies to the resurrection because he sees the risen Lord; the resurrection changes everything—or from another perspective, makes everything clear. It solves a lot of other mysterious prophecies, but the resurrection is God’s mystery.

Peter the preacher is a man fully alive. He is an Easter person. The apostles became Easter people, people who even if they didn’t see the empty tomb experienced the presence of the living Christ. And that made them feel alive. Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers, wrote, “The glory of God is the human persona fully alive.”

How would the people around us know that we are Easter people? What is the sign of our being a witness to the resurrection? It is this characteristic of being fully alive—of being people alive in our faith in a way that gives us energy for enjoying and appreciating the gifts of creation—of being people alive in our faith so that we live with awareness of the conditions of others and live lives of compassion. There was a son that floated around the church in the late sixties and early seventies that had a refrain “They will know we are Christians by our love.” Love in this case is not cheap sentiment, but love that compels us to action for the sake of others. Easter People are alive in their faith because they have been forgiven and made whole; they are alive in their faith because they have seen the mystery of the resurrection and know that with God anything is possible. Easter people have hope, and it all comes back to the resurrection. God can do what we cannot.

The best example of an Easter person I can think of is Bishop Desmond Tutu. He’s 75 years old now and has had a bout with cancer, but he’s still full of life. He’s alive in his prayer. He does Morning and Evening Prayer no matter where he is! He is fervent in his prayer. He can be tough too. At the time when the apartheid laws were at their worst and he was under death threats, he said he did not worry whether he would be killed, because if he were, God would raise up someone else to finish the work. He spoke on behalf of people who had no voice, calling for equality and inclusion at his own peril.

He’s alive in his work of reconciliation, which he still does. After the laws of South Africa were changed, he headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which undoubtedly kept South Africa from civil war. During the hearings he would break down and weep at the stories people told. He is a man of great compassion.

And he is a man of great joy. He is filled with joy…he laughs, his smile is a mile wide, and he dances. He embraces a vision of inclusiveness that has room for everyone. All these characteristics are signs of what it means to live as a witness to the power of the resurrection.

We can’t all be Desmond Tutu, but we can recognize within ourselves and in others the aliveness that reveals the love of God and celebrate it. Howard Thurman, a powerful spiritual writer of the mid twentieth century, wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” We can live as Easter people, witnesses to the resurrection. It is a joyful and loving way to live, and it has a ripple effect. God’s love is contagious!

Christ is alive and brings light to our lives. The tomb cannot contain him, no can we. Finally the Living Christ is also the Good Shepherd. The staff he carries is not to punish the flock, but to bring them back to him. Come to the Resurrection Celebration! Come, eat and drink new life!

May the joy and power of the resurrection live in you and through you.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!

And your line is: “The Lord is risen, indeed!”