Audio:  "Now the Green Blade Riseth," 1982 Hymnal #204, followed by Easter Sermon by the Rev. Kristin Schultz.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
            The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

How many of you are back to eating chocolate today –
            did anyone get into the kids’ Easter baskets already this morning
for that first taste of chocolate in forty days?
Or back to drinking coffee?
What else are you going back to this morning?

It is easy for us to think of Easter as getting something back.
In celebration of Jesus coming back from the dead
            we go back to the little luxuries we gave up for Lent –
            we go back to singing “Alleluia” –
In some ways, it feels like going back to “business as usual,”
            after the various ways we’ve observed Lent.

But Easter is not about going back.
When Jesus died,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
saw the life they’d known in the years they followed Jesus disappear.
So what did they think,
when they came to the tomb that first Easter morning and found,
            not a quiet burial place,
            but an angel with amazing news?

And what about the rest of the disciples?
What did they think when Mary and Mary came to tell them the news:
            Jesus is alive! He will meet us in Galilee!
Did they believe that Jesus would be there to meet them?
Or did they just go on to Galilee with some slight hope –
            because they didn’t know what else to do next?

Once they understood that Jesus was alive,
I imagine they looked forward to resuming the life they’d known
            as disciples of Jesus.
But that life was no longer an option. 
What Jesus has in store for the disciples      
            -- the gift of the Holy Spirit,
            living, and for some, dying as apostles telling the story of Jesus –
is nothing they’d ever imagined.

Easter isn’t about going back.
Jesus doesn’t come back to take up where he left off,
returning to his life as a traveling preacher and healer.
With Jesus’ death and resurrection,
God has done something completely new.
Jesus died as a sign of God’s love.
Jesus was raised from the dead as a sign of God’s power
to grant new life in the face of evil and of death itself.

Jesus’ resurrection is not a return to the good old days,
to the way things used to be.
The resurrection we celebrate at Easter is a promise of new life,
beyond our expectations –
but it is not a chance to go back.

Easter is a day of joy and celebration.
But we did not come easily to this day.
This week we heard the story of the Passion of Jesus –
his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.
It is not an easy or comfortable story –
            but it is a part of the story we need to hear.
New life follows loss and grief.
There is no Resurrection without a death.

These past years have been difficult ones at St Michael’s.
We grieve for beloved leaders who have moved on –
            Fr. Christopher, Fr. Brian, and Rev Sue
We wonder what will happen next.
We wonder who we will be without Fr Brian,
            who shaped this congregation with his ministry for 30 years.
Some of us struggle with what it means to be the Church in
            a time of change and turmoil.

Many of us here also struggle with personal loss and change.
I know of grief that has left some of you reeling these past weeks and months,
            and there is so much more pain and heartache carried here today
            than I could possibly know.
Perhaps the celebration of Easter is hard for you today,
            and the cries of Alleluia ring hollow in your ears.
Perhaps you wonder what will be next,
            how you will pick up the pieces and go on.

Some years ago I was at a churchwide gathering,
            and each of us in attendance received one of these lovely glass angels.
The Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land was our speaker that day, and he shared the story of the angels.
During an Israeli military strike in April of 2002,
            tank shelling and air strikes on Bethlehem broke hundreds of windows.
Broken glass became a symbol of the town’s destruction.
More importantly, the broken glass symbolized
            the broken hopes and dreams of so many people.

A group of artisans began to gather the glass shards
            and transform them into these glass angels.
The artisans worked with the International Center of Bethlehem –
            a group that provides vocational training for unemployed Palestinians.
In their arts program, they ‪encourage human productivity and creative skills
            to enable people, through their own work,
            to participate in shaping their future. 

They could not change the horror of war and violence.
But they could move through that horror,
and transform symbols of destruction and war into symbols of hope and peace.

In the words of my mentor, Pastor Melody Eastman:
Resurrection promise isn’t about getting back what we’ve lost.
It is about being offered a new hope and a new joy that is different from anything
            we anticipated or expected or could have hoped for.
Sometimes that makes it hard to reach for.
Sometimes to reach out for a hope that we do not understand is a difficult thing.
It would be much easier to reach back to a hope that we remember,
            to claim something that was,
            but that is not what Jesus offers you today.
Not the chance to go back to what was,
            but to claim a new hope that exceeds your expectations.

My favorite Easter hymn is the one we sang just before the Gospel reading.
The bold Alleluias are fun to sing –
            but what speaks to my heart are the gentler strains of
            Now the Green Blade Rises.

            Now the green blade rises from the buried grain
            Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain
            love lives again, that with the dead has been
            Love is come again like wheat that rises green.

Sometimes, some of us get a bold, bright miracle in our lives -
            new life and revelation with a blast of a trumpet.
But I think Easter comes into our lives most often like this hymn – slowly, gently.
We tend the ground patiently
            in the hope that green shoots will again peek out from the earth.
We gather shards of broken glass that could cut our hands and feet –
            and maybe they do, and we bleed, and we weep.
But we hold the glass out to God, and with God
            we shape it into something new and beautiful and full of hope.

            In the grave they laid him, Love by hatred slain
            thinking that never would he wake again           

Sometimes in our lives we reach the end.
And that is where God meets us with the promise of Easter.
A promise of new life.
A promise, not that we will get back what has been lost –
            but that we can have new joy, new peace,
            new life beyond what we have imagined.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
            The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Easter
March 31, 2013
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Here’s a little a story about a turning point in my life that many of you have heard before. When I was 24 years old, one day I was hitchhiking in Vermont. A rumpled old man - probably my age now - pulled over in a rumpled old VW bug. Turns out he was a Baptist minister. We got to talking about religious figures of the past, and I mumbled something about all of them teaching basically the same thing. He looked at me and said “Well, that may be partly so, but Jesus is the one who rose from the dead.”

I said “Well, that’s true...” and the conversation drifted off to other subjects. But when I got out of the car and walked down the street, about halfway down the block I stopped dead in my tracks and asked myself “What do you mean, ‘Well, that’s true?’ How do you know this, Brian? And what difference does it make to you?”

Those questions led me eventually to claim as my own the Christian faith I had grown up with, and more than that, to dedicate myself to living in God. Within 2 years, I was enrolled in seminary.

The resurrection has always been at the very center of the Christian faith. And it should be - unless you dismiss it as a fable - because what happened is phenomenal. Consider this: a human being, a spiritual teacher, was executed and sealed in a tomb, and laid there dead for 2 days. He then somehow, on his own, vacated that tomb.

Over the next 50 days, he appeared to hundreds of eyewitnesses who later spoke and wrote about it. He walked through closed doors and yet ate fish with his friends, showing up here and there without time to get from one place to another.

So this spiritual teacher had transcended the limitations of time, space, and so-called physical laws. He was victorious over death, having become an eternal spiritual being, alive and universally present in a way that is beyond human comprehension. He was one with God.

If we believe that this might have actually happened, what do we do with it?

For many Christians, the resurrection is simply proof that Jesus was God’s man, a kind of demonstration of divine power given in order to convince. It’s a pretty spectacular feat, and so it gives credence to theological claims about Jesus: that he was God in the flesh, the second person of the Trinity, that he was sent by God to be a sacrifice that would cancel the debt of human sin, and that if we believe all these ideas, he will take us to heaven instead of hell in the afterlife.

The problem is, all these ideas came long after the resurrection. They were doctrines staked out afterwards, over a period of 300 years. So I’m not interested in the resurrection as a theological proof. I want to know what impact it has had on real people’s lives, and what difference it might make to me, to you. I’m still considering the question that Baptist minister raised in me 37 years ago. Let’s begin with the impact the resurrection had on the first disciples. But to do that, we have to go back further, to set their experience in context.

During Jesus’ lifetime, that motley gang of fishermen, independent women, the disgraced and the outcast that we call the disciples heard Jesus teach some pretty specific things:

Don’t just love those who love you; love everybody without regard for merit, the good and the bad alike. Live simply and spiritually, for the pursuit of material pleasure and security in itself is a dead end. Open your heart to those who are poor, in prison, sick, rejected by society - they are the salt of the earth and will lead you into the kingdom of God. Don’t be a slave to tradition and religious rules; be a seeker, looking for your own answers. Die to your ego, your need to prove that you are good and right; look instead to God’s goodness and be humble. Be honest about your shortcomings, but then forgive yourself; you’re only human. Wake up; God is fully present everywhere, here and now, in everything and everyone.

So his followers joined the movement, wandered around the Galilee together, doing their best to follow these teachings. And when we read the gospels, we see that they failed pretty spectacularly. All the way through, and especially at the end when things got hairy, they were just as messed-up as any other random group of humans. But as my rumpled Baptist friend pointed out to me years ago, everything changed with the resurrection.

When I was in the first year of seminary, my New Testament professor shook up the class in the first few weeks of the semester by telling us “Look - We know that Jesus of Nazareth had a following, caused trouble, and was executed in the usual horrific manner of his day. Sensibly, his friends and followers fled for their lives. They were scattered, frightened, and confused.”

“We also know that after a short period of time, these same people were transformed, finding courage, passion, and unity as a community of faith, and even the ability to sacrifice their lives when persecuted.”

“We have no idea, however, what happened in between. Here’s the important thing: they attributed their transformation to Christ’s resurrection. They said that Jesus was with them again, not just in memory, but in reality, helping them live into his message with an even greater power than he did as a teacher.”

Here’s the difference: before the resurrection, Jesus was a leader to follow, a man who presented a coherent body of teachings that could be critiqued, ignored, or appreciated from a distance. After the resurrection, Christ entered into the hearts of any who opened themselves to him. He remade them from within. He fulfilled the ancient prophecy of Jeremiah:

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me.

What does this mean for you and me? It means that like Jesus’ disciples during his lifetime, we can listen to the wisdom of this venerable spiritual teacher and try our best to follow it. And like them, we will fail. There’s no shame in this. But as St. Paul pointed out so clearly, it can become a vicious circle - trying harder, failing again, feeling guilty, never measuring up.

The way out of this trap is what the early Christians discovered with the resurrected Christ: We cannot become like Christ by imitating him. We become like him by embodying him. We do this by listening deeply to his teachings, yes, but also opening our hearts to his presence within; receiving his very Body and Blood into our body and blood in communion; praying with an icon of his image or using his holy Name, like a mantra; hanging around with others who also look to him as their center, their guide; and otherwise letting his companionship seep into us as a transformative influence.

As his influence increases, we become sensitive to the ways that we block his movement within us, and we do what we can to remove those barriers. Over time, we find that we naturally live his teachings, because it is he who is living them through us. Everything about us that is not Christly eventually sloughs off, and what is left is a Brian-flavored, or Elizabeth-flavored, or Don- or Maria-flavored version of Jesus.

It is then that we know what St. Paul meant when he said It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me. And elsewhere, We have the mind of Christ. And as he wrote in a letter to the church in Ephesus, I pray that...Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Alleluia. Christ has risen from the dead. Christ has risen in all those through the centuries who have welcomed his presence. And Christ is risen through us, in our day. Alleluia, Christ is alive, and always will be. 

Sermon: Mark 16:1-8
Easter Sunrise April 8, 2012
St. Michael and All Angels

Some of you may remember the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire with host Regis Philbin. Contestants are asked multiple-choice questions that go from easy to very difficult. They are allowed lifelines to help when things get difficult. They can ask the audience, phone a friend for help, or get half of the four answers removed so they are choosing between two and not four answers. Regis would ask the question, contestants would talk it through out loud and then answer. Regis would always follow with “Is that your final answer?” That isn’t so bad when the question was worth $100, but when it reached the $500,000 mark and the person risked losing everything if they were wrong, it was stressful for those of us watching at home. “Is that your final answer?” I feel the stress even now.

I have always found Mark’s telling of the resurrection compelling. He ends in the middle of a sentence. A literal translation of the Greek would read, “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…” It feels as if Mark got distracted and just never got around to finishing his sentence. The resurrection is so difficult to understand that I appreciate Mark not making it neat and tidy for us. We are left with more questions than answers. If you are the type that prefers closure to this kind of open-ended account, you may want to try another gospel. Mark ends with frightened women fleeing the tomb in silence and preacher Tom Long complains, “That’s no way to run a resurrection.” (Christian Century, 2006)

I disagree. The resurrection is a miracle that doesn’t fit into a paragraph, a box, or apparently, into a tomb. Let’s be with it as complicated as it is rather than seeking an easy answer to this miracle that defies human understanding. Astonishment, trembling, fear and silence aren’t inappropriate for Easter. As one commentator said, “Easter is no time to be glib and chatty about the empty tomb and risen Lord.” (Preaching Through the Christian Year, p. 225)

We are left with awe at what God has done. Sometimes there are no words. This isn’t a story about us. It is about God who is not willing to be contained in human definitions and understandings. It calls us to shift our attention from our human centric world to God’s amazing power to bring life where there is no life. Only God can breathe life into dry bones and make them live. Only God can call Jesus forth from the tomb to walk among us and set us free. Only God can bring hope to the places where humans have given up. It invites us to place our hope in a God that calls forth a staggering belief in what can’t be done nor even conceived by us.

I try to imagine the women making their way to the tomb and I wonder what they were feeling. We talk about their incredible grief. But do you think that perhaps they came with some relief? This One whom they loved and followed got into the most difficult situations and created tension and stress wherever he went. It wasn’t all sweetness and light. Following him was often terrifying and very risky. Perhaps they came to the tomb thinking all that was behind them only to discover that he had risen. Oh no, here we go again!

It is easy to look at the women and say that they blew it! They really should have told people. They had this amazing message and they were too scared to share it. But what if they did exactly what they needed to do because there is another ending that waits to be lived out in us?

Today, we gather to wait for the sunrise and hear the words, “He has been raised; he is not here.” We come bringing all the times we have denied, betrayed or failed Christ and one another. We come confused about our past, bewildered by our present, and scared about our future. Christ walks among us and offers us a new beginning. We are human. Our fears and our failures do not define us. They are redeemed when the risen one reminds us that they are NOT our final answer.

In the summer of 1961, a shopping center came to Thornton, Louisiana. Sidda had just finished second grade. To celebrate this grand opening, Lawanda the Magnificent, a huge elephant came to offer free rides to any kid in the area. The whole community came for this occasion and everyone took turns riding the elephant. Sidda knew this was coming. She had dreamed of this day for weeks. When the day finally came, she was beside herself. Lawanda was the most amazing animal Sidda had ever seen. When it was her turn, she climbed up onto the platform and she froze in fear. The adults tried to coax her onto the elephant, but she couldn’t do it. She climbed down in humiliation.

On the way home, she realized that she had made the gravest mistake of her seven-year-old life. She burst into tears and claimed she didn’t feel good. She cried all the way home and finally confessed to her mother, “I will die if I don’t get to ride Lawanda.” Her mother’s response was, “Okay, time to implement plan 27-B.” When they got back to the parking lot everyone was gone and they were feeding and hosing Lawanda down. Her mother asked sweetly if they would possibly consider one more ride for her daughter, but the man refused. At that point, she went through a herculean effort to get some cash so Sidda could ride Lawanda. She would not be deterred…after all; this was a matter of life or death. She made a deal with Lawanda’s owner and they climbed on together. Her mother helped her imagine that they were in the jungle and the jungle came alive around them. Reflecting on the ride years later, Sidda said, “All we had done was circle that puny shopping-center parking lot, but when that ride was over I was a different little girl.”  Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (Chapter 29)

God can take the worst the world has to offer and turn it into wonder and beauty. Death can’t dim God’s glory. The last word belongs to God. No matter how we have hidden in fear, stopped short of our own goodness, or failed to see Christ in one another, God goes ahead of us to give us a new beginning.

Mark wrote this gospel to stir people to action. He believed that there was no time to wallow in our failures and disappointments. It was his hope that people would carry the message of hope and resurrection to a world that desperately needed it…and still does. The resurrection becomes real to people as they see the risen Christ in us.

Clarence Jordan was a farmer and New Testament scholar who lived in Georgia and founded Koinonia Farms.  Clarence was instrumental in the creation of Habitat for Humanity. He took Jesus words seriously and often found himself in trouble for that, but he was clear about what it meant to follow Jesus. He said, “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.”

Mark ends the story of the resurrection with silence. We look at ourselves and ask when have we been silent? Now we face the million-dollar question. Christ is risen…what will we do with this message?

Is that your final answer???

Easter Sunday
April 8, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

What a mysterious, richly textured story: Three women in a cemetery at dawn, the smell of burial spices in the air, a calm young stranger in a white robe, and the inexplicably empty tomb. The women were struck with amazement, terror, and silence.

The Easter mystery continues. Jesus appeared in a locked room, seemingly having passed through the wall. He ate fish by the lakeside. He walked along a road, talking to friends who didn’t recognize him until he broke bread with them, and then suddenly disappeared.

The stories are nuanced with symbolism and suggestion. As was the custom in religious storytelling back then, details and even events were added to bring depth and urgency to the meaning they were trying to convey. This was before the time when fact and fiction were neatly separated.

As a seminary professor said to our startled class in the first week of our first year, “All we really know is that Jesus attracted a following during his lifetime; was executed as a criminal by the Romans in the usual manner; and that something happened after his death that transformed his followers from a small, confused, fearful band into an electric and unstoppable movement. All the rest - well, there is just no way of knowing for sure.”

I have never doubted that supernatural things do happen in this world. And so I have no problem with believing that that “something” that happened after Jesus’ death could have been very much like what is described in the gospels. But my seminary professor’s point was that the specifics of that “something” are less important than its effect. What matters is that Jesus’ followers experienced him as still alive, within and among them, even more powerfully than during his physical life. And this presence transformed them.

After Easter, there was a supernatural, divine force at work that was beyond the human capacity of the disciples. In the same way, Jesus did not raise himself from the dead inside the tomb. He was raised up by God. The disciples were raised up spiritually as well, by a force both within and beyond them. They didn’t self-actualize. They God-actualized. We call this “grace.”

God’s grace is a force that flows throughout everything, all the time, birthing, dying, renewing, guiding everything towards new forms, new possibilities. This is why there is such a strong link between Easter and springtime, when the earth bursts out of its winter hibernation into color and bugs and green succulence. God’s amazing grace, or the life-force of nature, if you prefer, is a force working invisibly within the dirt and the dry twigs, bubbling up into fresh and tender life.  

The whole earth, the whole cosmos pulses with this divine energy of resurrection, and we are an integral part of it. And so we join the whole creation in singing God’s praises, standing in worship before the Source of all. As it says in the great Song of Creation in our Prayer Book,
<em>Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew, all winds and fire and heat.
Winter and summer, give to God your thanks and praise!
O nights and days, O shining light and enfolding dark,
O springs of water, seas, and streams,
O whales and all that move in the waters,
All birds of the air and beasts of the wild,
O women and men everywhere, glorify the Lord!</em>

Jesus’ resurrection is but one occurrence of what is taking place everywhere, all the time. As the entire creation births and dies and renews and evolves, it is a living song of praise to our Creator. And we humans, gifted with self-awareness, are privileged to see this, to know it, and to marvel in this energy of life, this grace, that infuses and directs the whole show.

But don’t stop here. There is more to resurrection than worship and praise. It becomes personal, if we let it, if we seek it out. For this same force of life, this transforming grace, is available to us. When we are at our lowest - when we can do no more, like Jesus lying in the tomb, unable to resurrect himself - when we surrender and open our hearts to some other possibility within and beyond us, it creeps in. When we’re not looking, we find ourselves affected.

In the midst of a serious illness, a spaciousness and trust can appear, and we know that no matter what happens, we shall be well. An empty, blank time of gestation gives birth to new interest and vigor. After the disappointment of a closed door, we turn and see another one open to a vista we had never considered before. A failed marriage can make one like the winter earth - cold, hard, and lifeless; but then spring comes, making life fruitful again. Parts of oneself sprout up that were long-forgotten, or never even known before.

The point of a life of prayer, the point of faith, is to face intentionally into this renewing grace in trust and hope, waiting like a cat in front of a mouse-hole. God will appear, and we will be ready. Without specific expectations, we are nevertheless expectant. When grace stirs within our tomb, we do what we can to cooperate with it, and in its power, we rise and become new people.

But don’t stop here, either. There is yet even more to resurrection than personal transformation. We are empowered by this same life-force of grace to be resurrectors with God. We are invited into God’s glorious work of raising up the world around us. We are co-creators of the kingdom of God on earth.

It’s tempting to think of the world as going to hell in a hand-basket. In a world of nearly 7 billion    souls, we hear the endlessly repeated story of one murderous soldier, one paranoid vigilante, and we shake our heads saying “What is this world coming to?” The most pressing problems seem unsolvable - global warming, population growth, healthcare, economic crises, deadlock between political parties. And we despair, becoming cynical.

And yet, here’s an interesting thing that doesn’t sell air time on the nightly news. Compared to 50 years ago, far more countries are democracies, now free from oppressive dictatorships. In the same period of time, the rate of poverty has dramatically lowered around the globe, with a huge rise in the middle class. The number of women who are now educated is much higher than any time in history. And the number of deaths from the violence of war is far lower than generations before.

How did all this happen? And how have we moved beyond slavery, segregation, and inevitably, homophobia? It has happened because people like you and me have participated with God in the resurrection of the world. We can’t help it. We are made in the image of our Creator, stamped with God’s own character. And so we, too, are resurrectors, never ceasing to breathe life into those places where there seems to be only death.

You give to a charity and people are fed and vaccines distributed. You work in a profession that searches out effective ways of improving the lives of the most vulnerable among us. You vote, and occasionally help people get elected who inch this resistant state and country forward into new life. You may be creative, bringing beauty and truth that enlivens those who see or hear what you do.

All of us are made in the image of God. We are filled with the same life-force that fills the universe, the same grace that enters your own dark places. And it is our responsibility to use this power. We are gifted with this precious life in order to give life to others. We are born to resurrect the world where it lies dormant, broken, or lifeless.

We are vehicles of God’s grace - of that power that is within and beyond us, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the same power that transforms our personal lives, the power of springtime. When we open our hearts to the needs of the world around us, when we call upon this grace, and when we join together and act, this grace multiplies exponentially. And the world is made new.

Today is a special feast day, obviously. But it is like any other day. Every day is filled with grace and glory. So take Easter forth from this place. Allow yourself to be made new, and help God to resurrect the world.

St. Michael and All Angels
Easter Sunday April 24, 2011
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: Matthew: 28: 1-10
Theme: Paschal Joke
I wish to acknowledge my debt for the concept and flow of this sermon to Brother Martin Smith whose writing and theology has enriched my life for years.

Historians of the Church inform us that as late as the 18th Century in Germany, preaching on Easter Day held out a peculiar requirement.  Lutheran preachers still felt bound by an ancient custom on this day.  Custom prescribed that the sermon should begin with a joke, known as the risus pachalis, “the paschal joke.”  It is not hard to imagine the solemn pastor fiddling with his preaching tabs nervously in the pulpit, cracking a rare smile and beginning his Easter homily with “Have you heard the one about…? Or, “A funny thing happened on my way to the pub…”

Botanists have managed to grow plants from seeds found wrapped in mummies of Pharaohs, and perhaps this ancient and forgotten custom of the paschal joke still has some life in it as well.  Why a joke on Easter morning?  Why an attempt at humor on this joyous festival day?  For those who have ears to hear, the joke tells us that what follows – the news of the empty tomb and proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus – is a joke God plays on us.  In one way it is impossible to take the resurrection seriously.  It really is laughable, isn’t it?  Or is it?  The question remains, what is the joke and do we get it?

Death is no laughing matter and never has been.  When a human dies and goes into the ground that is that.  We don’t generally wait around for the person to reappear and take up where we left off – not on this side of the grave anyway.  But even so, there is this persistent dream of life beyond the grave.  Our forebears who invented agriculture found that the rhythm of their life as farmers brought them to the edge of solemn mysteries.  If the dry seed could be buried and then burst forth with tender green life and bear fruit, what about a human being, what about the corpses of men and women buried in the earth?  So, they buried their dead with all manner of ceremony and preparations sometimes burying them in boats for the journey through the netherworld or including things they might need on the other side like food, flowers, trinkets of all kinds and weapons.  All of this was done with the blind hope that perhaps the dying and rising of the corn or the new grain was a hint, a clue to the mystery of the universe that there was indeed life beyond the grave and what the eye could see.

The symbol of resurrection found expression in myths of gods who died and came to life, myths and rituals the encompassed the cycles of life and death around the harvest, the funeral rites that mourned short human lives and wove around them dreams of paradise beyond.  By Jesus’ day the lines were already drawn, much as we find them today, between those who condemn the symbol as illusory and deceptive and those who find it compelling and full of hope.  In Jesus’ day it was the Sadducees who were the conservatives about this, expressing their pessimism about it openly and encouraging others to mistrust the whole prospect of life beyond the grave.  The Pharisees on the other hand, held out hope for the resurrection of the dead as a remote prospect happening far into the future at the end of time.  Above all, resurrection was for the more liberal minded Pharisees a requirement for the last judgment – God would have to raise the dead if everyone was going to be present for the Great Trial at the end of time.

Resurrection is a disputed question and has been for ages.  It is for some an ambiguous symbol expressing human ambivalence about the finality of death.  However much we human say we accept death, it seem that we cannot help projecting into some distant, mythic future the possibility of restoration to life, in the symbol of the rising of the body from the grave.  

And on a particular Sunday morning, God did something absurd in the face of all the controversy and solemnity about death.  God took our symbol literally.  God did something scandalous and for some offensive to their sense of propriety and their understanding of the spiritual.  God decided to enter the debate about resurrection in a whole new way, as if to say, “having trouble with that rascally symbol of resurrection?  Well how about this, look at my beloved Jesus.  Now you see him, now you don’t.  One grave empty, the rest to follow, stay tuned.  

The joke is that human beings like their symbols to stay symbolic.  Undoubtedly that is why every year several books are published that endeavor to return the concept of resurrection to the realm of the symbolic and away from this tomfoolery of empty tombs and grave clothes lying about.  The resurrection they say, and have been for years is a “legend.”  The writers of these learned theological books all adopt a rather injured tone.   The resurrection should symbolize the enduring and uplifting effect of Jesus’ teaching in the hearts of believers, or express dramatically that Jesus is now an exalted spiritual leader for many.  These scholars are embarrassed or infuriated its hard to tell which sometimes at the naiveté and stubbornness of those ordinary preachers and faithful Christians who keep celebrating the emptiness of the tomb with rest of the disciples, and the women, especially Mary.  They are incredulous about why we don’t embrace their message – the resurrection is such a beautiful metaphor in and of itself, there is really no reason why we must insist on anything special or unnatural happening to the corpse of Jesus.  

But perhaps they have missed something; perhaps they just don’t get the joke?  Maybe we who believe in the empty tomb are simply captivated by the audacity and boldness of God’s sense of humor.  Who but the God of Jesus would think of such a wild joke to take humanity up on its fascination with resurrection, blowing a hole in the middle of human history and human thought? Resurrection not as a tame and distant symbol but rather as powerful reality, a tear in the fabric of the universe that exposes God’s hidden purposes for all that he has made.  

The story of Christ’s passion, his crucifixion and burial are all about human power over God.  We, yes our sinful humanity took God’s expression of God’s very self, nailed it down, killed it, and buried it.  We took the Son of God and tried to push him out of the world.  But the funny this is, just when we thought we had him contained, entombed and out of the way for good, suddenly the stone was rolled away and …. Nothing, nada, Gone! As Martin Smith says the whole thing is in terribly bad taste, as if God were to play Houdini.  God get free.  He escapes.  His mission impossible is accomplished.  The grave is empty, and the shroud and head cloth are folded neatly.  Martha Stewart would be proud.  The Lord of all creation seems to wink at us, behaving like a thoughtful houseguest who doesn’t leave the bedclothes scattered about the room when he leaves.  

Jesus is free to leave the tomb, and that means that we lost.  We failed to keep God contained or shut him up even by dragging him into our death.  But this is a very strange game after all.  By losing, we win.  The result of it all is that the rules have changed.  The universe is different.  God is free to punch a hole in the fabric of reality with resurrection and what is more he intends for us all to follow Jesus through this opening into his arms open arms.  The hole in the universe has a tremendous gravitational pull drawing us all into the life and being of God.  Jesus says, “I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, to my God and your God.”

By losing we win.  The joke of the resurrection is on us.  God plays this masterful joke on us by taking us up on our dream of resurrection just once for Jesus his beloved.  And you either get the joke or you don’t.   If you get the joke you realize that life can be full of holy laughter.  You begin to realize that those who want to insist that resurrection is merely symbolic and that “Of course the tomb wasn’t actually empty” really are rather humorless and unimaginative sorts.  

Realizing that the joke of the resurrection is on us, makes the Gospel’s playful accounts of the disciples varied encounters with the Risen Lord full of humor and sense of comedy.  In John, Mary mistakes Jesus for the Gardener?  Was he sporting a large floppy sun hat and a pair of pruning sheers strapped to his side?  And what about Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach for his tired disciples, offering the first breakfast of a new creation in the light of the resurrection? Or Jesus as the mystery traveler on the road to Emmaus, and then performing a disappearing act at the dinner table? These are strange and comical stories.  They are stories of people who are lighthearted and feel the wonderful freedom to make the joke they have heard from the mouth of God even funnier in the retelling.  

So laugh this day, don’t be afraid to laugh down in your soul in your very bones.  Feel the laughter of the universe, the hilarity of the hole God has punched in the fabric of time and space with the joke of Jesus resurrection.  Laugh out loud if you want, laugh for joy, laugh at Jesus wearing a funny floppy gardener’s hat, laugh at Jesus minding the BBQ on the beach and eating fish, laugh because you have hope, a wild hope that death is not the end of the story.  Laugh because you get the joke, God’s love is stronger than death.  Laugh as you bath in the hilarious light of the Risen One.  Laugh and dance for the story that seemed a tragedy has become a comedy, for Christ is Alive.  That is the joke and a joke we can keep telling until we find ourselves dancing and laughing will all the saints at the end of time.

I wish to acknowledge my debt for the concept and flow of this Easter sermon which I borrowed liberally from Brother Martin Smith, SSJE whose writing and theology has enriched my life for years. May we all know the Holy Laughter of Christ’s resurrection deep in our bones.

Easter Sunday
April 4, 2010
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

One of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 19th-century British Jesuit, was “The Wreck of the Deutchland.” It includes the verse “Let him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” Here, the word Easter is not a noun; it is a verb. “Let him Easter in us.” 

The earliest Christians understood this. On the one hand, they knew that Easter was a noun, an event, an historical thing that had happened to their friend Jesus. You could paint a picture of it. But much more importantly, they also knew that Easter was happening in them, in the here and now. Easter was a verb. And that’s how they portrayed themselves when they wrote the New Testament. 

Bishop N.T. Wright once said that the resurrection stories in the gospels do not say Jesus is raised; therefore we’re going to heaven. They say Jesus is raised; therefore, God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do. 

During his brief 3 years of ministry, Jesus tried to teach his friends about one thing more than anything else: the kingdom of God. Jesus not only talked about it; he showed it to them by how he lived, all the time. 

For Jesus, the kingdom of God was an alternate, parallel reality, which anyone can step into at any time. In this reality, the God of love is close at hand, ready to understand and guide, ready to give peace to anyone who turns to him in faith. It is a reality where we are all equal as God’s children, and we treat each other that way; the last become first and the first become last. It is a reality where there is no shame about the past and no fear of the future, for God fills both with love. 

Most people think that because everyone doesn’t behave this way, that they cannot live in this way in the world. It’s unrealistic. They relegate it to the paradise of heaven. In the sweet by-and-by, we might live in harmony, peace, and love, but in this world, we slog through the mud with blood, sweat, and tears. 

But all along, Jesus said that the kingdom of God begins now, if you want it to, and it extends into the next life. It’s a matter of how we choose to live, how we choose to view things. And he not only talked about it: he showed people what he was talking about; he gave them an experience of it by creating this kind of community around him. He reached from earth into heaven, attempting to tear down the barrier between them. 

But Jesus’ disciples still didn’t get it. They said “yes, but…” and held themselves back from the invitation, choosing to trust more in the kingdom of this world than the kingdom of God. In the end they denied, betrayed, and deserted him. 

But then the end came, which turned out to be a beginning. That’s when the lid blew off. On Good Friday, Jesus was killed and buried, and was dead for 3 days. He then came back again from the afterlife, crossing the boundary again. But because he crossed it from the other direction, this time he really got their attention. 

It finally dawned on them: this is what he’s been talking about! There is no barrier between this world and the next. Paradise is not limited to heaven. The kingdom of God is a hidden dimension of this life, extending into the next. It begins now, if we want it. 

He had Eastered in them. They said Jesus is raised; therefore, God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do. The resurrection turbo-charged the movement. These new citizens of God’s kingdom began to change how they lived, and they began to change the world around them. 

They stopped worrying about money and security and status and power, and paid a lot more attention to the God of love, healing, and wonder who they now knew to be so close at hand. They shared freely with those in need, holding on to nothing in this life. They worshiped and partied with clean and unclean, rich and poor, slave and free. They lived without shame or fear, and refused to judge others. And ever since, those who have allowed Christ to Easter in them have done the same. 

What might it be like for Christ to Easter in you, and how might you let it happen? 

It begins, I believe, with a genuine need to look for the kingdom of God in our midst, for a different perspective. We may be caught up in the kingdom of this world; we may feel trapped by our preoccupation with it; and yet we know there must be more. 

Some of you have been deeply affected by the economic recession. There have been real consequences to your sense of security. It has caused you no small amount of anxiety. You have little control over your future, and that is disturbing. 

Some others of you, no doubt, are carrying a worry about someone you love. Will they get well, will they figure out how to stop being so self-defeating, will they overcome their avoidance of deep relationships? 

For still others, the stress of your work and your lifestyle is just getting to be too much. How can you change the sense that you’re wasting your life on a treadmill? 

And all of us, watching the news – the spectacle of immature politics, violent tribalism, and the impenetrable resistance to change – we sometimes despair that this world is beyond hope. 

This, we tell ourselves, is the world we live in: insecurity, friends in trouble, life under pressure, and a world that may be on a path of self-destruction. This is reality. 

But we also live in another world, at the same time. There is another reality, and it is the kingdom of God. And if we look for it, if we seek, we will find it. Right here. There is no need to wait for heaven. It begins now, if you want it to. 

The sun always comes up in the morning and makes the leaves on the bush outside your window sparkle. Your breath goes in and out, and with it, the Spirit of God. You and all of your loved ones are held in the palm of God, no matter what happens. You can always love others for no reason at all, whether or not they deserve it or return it. The world is filled with much more kindness and beauty than it is with ugliness and pain. None of this can be taken away from you.

It is in our power to choose which reality we will live in. It is in our power to let heaven break into earth, even now. 

You’ve probably heard the Native American story of the boy talking to his grandfather about two wolves living inside him. One was good, harmless, in harmony with others; the other was angry, fearful, aggressive. The two wolves fought for the soul of the boy. In great consternation, he asked “Which one will win?” His grandfather replied “The one that you feed.” 

If we want to live in the kingdom of God, we must feed it. We must place our trust in it, by believing what we believe. We must live as if it is true. 

This is what the earliest Christians did after the resurrection. In the risen Christ they glimpsed the power and love of God that cannot be stopped by anything that this world dishes out. But they did more than glimpse it in a transcendent moment of glory that happened to Jesus. They placed their trust in it and began to live as if it were the truest, the most real thing for them, and this changed everything. 

Today Christ wants to Easter in you. God’s new creation has begun, and you’ve got a job to do. 

Christians began long ago with a very simple message. Something inconceivable had happened. A dead man – their friend and teacher Jesus - came alive again, speaking, eating and drinking with them, walking through locked doors. He was somehow changed so that he was physical but no longer subject to what we think of as the laws of nature. He walked through locked doors and appeared almost instantaneously in different places, many miles apart. 

This wasn’t just a mythic story, a metaphor about new life. They claimed to have seen it happen with their own eyes. As reported in the book of Acts, We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did…they put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear…to those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. St. Paul said [Christ] appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive... 

That’s quite a claim, and I wonder how you respond to it. I remember the first time it really hit me. I had lived with this story since childhood, but it had always been one of those astounding things off in the background I accepted but didn’t pay much attention to, like the infinity of space or the way a flock of birds can all swoop in a new direction, precisely together. 

Then one day in my mid-twenties I was having a conversation with a stranger about various religious figures in history, and he reminded me that Jesus was the only one we know of who came back from the dead. Well, it just floored me. But what hit me was not so much this basic statement. It was the fact that deep down inside me I knew this. What changed my life forever was that I knew that I believed, and still do, that anything is possible in God: Jesus coming back physically from death, walking on water, casting out disease, turning bread into his body. I accept it all. Why? 

Because I have seen that the physical world is infused with Spirit. I have seen people inexplicably, miraculously healed. Out of the blue, a person hears a distinct voice in their heart tell them something that changes their life. Shamans, lamas, Native American medicine men consistently say that they levitate or shape-shift. Ordinary people see visions. A physicist discovers that when he splits a subatomic particle in two and separates the parts by a long distance, what he does to one half affects the other.  They are connected non-materially, spiritually if you will. 

This is no different than your prayer somehow affecting me. One person in Albuquerque prays for another person across the country and something passes instantaneously through time and space and affects that person’s mind or body. The material world is more spiritually-infused than we can imagine. Anything is possible in God. Jesus rose physically from the dead. 

What difference does this make to us? Well, if anything is possible with God, then we may not be as limited as we think. Every instant is filled with unlimited divine potential. As Thomas Merton said At any moment you can break through into the underlying unity which is God's gift in Christ. At any time a door can open, a surprising and creative solution can appear, a new pathway of renewal can rise up to meet us. Resurrection can happen any moment, if we are available to it, if we have eyes to see. 

The other day I was visiting a 95-year-old parishioner in a nursing home, and I asked her what was meaningful to her about Easter. She paused, looked up, and said “I don’t know, there’s something that always happens to me on that day, where my life is opened up and made light and glorious.” It was a beautiful thing to see. Because this is an old, frustrated, and weary woman, and as she said this I watched her become fresh and alive again. The veil was pulled away. At any moment you can break through into the underlying unity which is God's gift in Christ, because everything is filled with unlimited divine potential. 

But this potential is not reserved just for the fulfillment of individuals. It is intended to renew the world, too. Jesus showed this during his lifetime. He created around him a community that was an alternative to society where anything was possible, where unity was the norm. He called it the Kingdom of God. He publicly and scandalously lived it out. 

In this kingdom there was no respect for hierarchy: Gentile or Jew, clean or unclean, rich or poor, women or men – he helped them belong to one another, revealing how sometimes the highest among them were really the lowest and the lowest were the highest. He asked people to return hatred with love, to turn the world upside down. Jesus promoted ultimate loyalty to God’s ways, not to those of the state or religion, or even the family. 

This kingdom was way too direct a challenge to both Roman and religious powers, and so they executed him.

But he resurrected into his disciples. They experienced the Risen Christ as truly within and among them, and they broke through to the underlying unity that is God’s gift in the Risen Christ. Through his friends, Jesus continued to live out his scandalous social vision of mercy and justice. The Kingdom of God now spread throughout the Roman Empire, and they became known as crazy people who shared their resources in common, gathered together all levels of society, showed mercy to the poor, and were willing to die, if need be, if in living according to God’s ways they threatened social norms. 

The resurrection has been the energy that has driven forward this Kingdom of God through the ages. We Christians have rightly earned a bad reputation for things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, but we also have a long and glorious history of showing mercy and building justice. We have started countless hospitals, fed the hungry, visited prisoners, raised up prophets against slavery and racism, and through martyrdom have fueled liberation movements in places like Poland, Latin America, and South Africa. 

The resurrection continues to drive people of faith. We will never create a paradise on earth any more than we will ever get completely beyond our personal issues and problems. Sin and brokenness are far too persistent for that to happen. 

But the energy of resurrection is also persistent, both within the hearts of believers and among the citizens of the Kingdom of God. As it proclaims in the beginning of John’s gospel, The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it. Or as Gandhi said "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."

Today the veil is pulled away. We see, in front of our very eyes, the Paschal Mystery, the astonishing truth that lies inside our own heart, in the midst of all creation, throughout human history. Today we remember that anything is possible with God, that the material world is infused with spirit, that each moment is filled with unlimited divine potential, and that at any time we can break through to the underlying unity that is God’s gift in Christ. Our lives are opened up, and once again, we are made light and glorious.