Good morning! Happy Easter. Today is the easiest day during the entire year to preach. There is a lot going on here but it can be distilled down to a few basics: a cross, a crucifixion, a death, all of creation holding its breath and finally, this morning, an empty tomb. But as Brian Zahnd has written: “it would be a mistake to think we could sum up the significance of the crucifixion in a tidy sentence or two. That kind of thinking only insulates us from the magnificence of what God has done. In our ongoing quest to make meaning of the cross, we need to recognize that this conversation will never conclude—that there is always something more to be said.” For which this preacher is grateful.
Did you notice how discombobulated people are in the Gospel this morning? Jesus’ disciples had to be more than slightly dazed and confused on that first Easter morning. I mean, they had gone through so much and seen things that would take the rest of their lives trying to understand the full meaning.
It’s not a stretch to say that the disciples are not the only ones who struggled to make sense of what Jesus had spoken, done, and taught. Even though the events of that first Easter took place over two thousand years ago, we are still working through it. The resurrection was unexpected and challenged everyone to come to terms with what it meant.
If we struggle making sense of Easter, we’ve got some pretty good company. I think we get stuck in the whole miracle of it.
Rachel Held Evans reminds us of the challenge of miracles, especially when it comes to resurrections that follow crucifixions. She writes that “some will argue that the Bible’s miracle stories render the whole thing intellectually untenable, proving only the gullible and uneducated believe the Bible to be true. Others attempt to rationalize the miracle stories by developing elaborate, scientifically plausible explanations for them, whereby Lazarus suffers a cataleptic fit, the wise men spot a rare triple planetary conjunction, and Peter walks a conveniently located sandbank in the Sea of Galilee. Still others spiritualize every apparent miracle as strictly metaphorical, from the virgin birth to the healing of the blind and deaf to the resurrection of Jesus. And of course, many insist that only a literal interpretation of all these events will do.”
Is there another way to move forward? Faith seems to be in rare supply these days. As one author has written Easter is more than just something that happened once upon a time. There are many things that work against us, as 21st century people, that cause us to wander in circles in the wilderness of the promise of Easter. We live in a world that is not a happy place. Many of us, or our children or grandchildren, grow up inside a world that seems so empty that so many are drawn to easy and glib fundamentalism. Anything, even silliness it seems, is better than meaninglessness.
All of this leads to a loss of hope. And what is left? Probably just possessions, perks, and power. The real threat that we face is that greed and violence might just destroy us. If it weren’t for Easter.
We don’t have to figure it all out or get it all right to show up on this morning. We just have to stay on the journey. All we can do is stay connected. We don’t know how to be perfect, but we can stay in community. When we are connected, emptiness starts to disappear and meaning emerges.
Easter wasn’t a coincidence. In the fullness of time, it all happened. But be careful lest we make it into something magical and available only to a handful of people. When Jesus emerged from the empty tomb he didn’t say, “there, now you can go to heaven.” He didn’t say, “go on with your lives as you always have. The only thing that has changed is that you’re now forgiven.” To make Easter into that is to make it a sort of celestial, divine quid pro quo. Just believe and you get a crown, sort of thing.
No Easter is so much more than that. It was violence that killed Jesus. And the violence didn’t come from God. It came from us…. From humanity. It had always been that way. Humanity, left to its own devices, always destroys truth. Humanity attempts to eliminate love. Control and power are the two values that are always pursued and never deliver what they promise. So Jesus subverted the whole thing. As an embodiment truth and love, humanity couldn’t stand to allow Jesus to continue. So he took the violence, humiliation and ridicule that always accompanies love, and bore the sin of it so that we could be released from the power of it.
We may still be seduced by such, but its emptiness has been revealed in an empty tomb, a resurrected Jesus and the birth of the most spectacular revelation of all time: God is love and in God there is no darkness, no violence, only humility, enduring love and a hope that cannot be silenced.
Bradley Jerzak reminds us that the prodigal son is the essence of all scripture. He urges us to look for Jesus every where. “Jesus is that moment of clarity when the prodigal son finds himself in a pigpen and asks himself: What am I doing out here in this pigpen? Jesus is the impulse to return, and he is the road home Christ is the Father’s embrace. Christ is the open door into the Father’s houser. Christ is the erring, the robe, and the banquet table. And surely, if Christ can be the Lamb of Passover, he can also be the delicious, fattened calf offered at the great feast of God Christ is even there in the Father’s plea to the elder son: “Please son, come inside. Join the party.”
This, my friends, is why we celebrate. Happy Easter. It’s time to join the party. Jesus Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Everything, absolutely everything has changed. Alleluia.