Isaiah 25:6-9
1 Corinthians 5:6b-8 Luke 24:1-12
The women
were first. Peter was amazed. Paul called out pride and the Prophet Isaiah
spoke the truth of God’s love: God invites us to a life-giving feast where God
will swallow up death. What does that all mean to us, though?
For starters
it means that we are being invited into the story. In this story, our amazement
in the resurrection calls us to become truth and sincerity. That’s the butterfly
moment that God has in mind for us. On the other side of our Lenten cocoon is a
life where we embody truth and sincerity.
We’ve been
to the cross, and now we must go to the tomb and be amazed by the fact that he isn’t
there. We have to wrestle with the reality that we have been looking for the
living among the dead. Today, we must be confronted with the resurrection of Jesus,
and what it means to us.
All week
long I have been struggling with the proclamation of these three women and the amazement of
Peter at the resurrection! Even last night I was asking others on social media
what it means to them to hear the phrase, “Jesus Christ is risen! Admittedly I
was prepared for skepticism about the metaphysics of it all. I was prepared for
others to tell me—as I have been told before—that the resurrection of Jesus was
the hardest part of the whole Jesus
story to swallow.
What I go
was a barrage of words and phrases expressing hope and love and gratitude! What
I got was the recognition that belief is not about the incredulity of the science
behind it or reconciling the mythology behind it. Belief is about asking what
does it matter, what do I do now, and what are we hoping will come of all of
this?
As far as
what it matters goes, proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus is pretty much the
one thing that unites all of those that follow Jesus. Unfortunately, it is responding
to that proclamation that tends to divide us, even from the very beginning. I’m
reminded here of the first conversation I had with a Pastor about going to
seminary. He told me that once you get into theological studies, most people fall
into two categories: preaching salvation or preaching social justice.
While that may
be true, it is also wrong. It’s true that we divide ourselves between those who
care about nothing but the eternal salvation of souls and those that care about
little besides the removal of oppression, but it’s wrong to think that the Gospel
was only concerned about one or the other.
It’s true to
believe that the empty tomb proves to us that we will have eternal life in the
embrace of God, but it is false to believe that such faith places no demands on
us to care about and for one another. It’s true that our faith in the resurrection of Jesus offers us salvation from our sins and eternal life in God’s
kingdom, but it’s false to think of faith as nothing but a “get out of hell free”
card.
Our understanding
of the resurrection is this: we were not only saved from sin and a meaningless death;
we were also saved for a meaningful life. Which by God’s grace will continue long
after our earthly forms have faded away. Yes, the God of the universe has
looked upon you and called you beloved! The God on infinite possibility has
stepped into time and space in a way that has altered time and space for you.
It’s kind of
like the idea called the butterfly effect. That is the idea that the cosmos is
so intricately interwoven that the movement of a butterfly’s wings impacts changes
that are eventually felt throughout the world. So it is with the lives we lead
in response to the resurrection of Christ. So it is that you and I have been
loved, accepted, corrected, and trusted with this message: “He is not here. He
is risen!”
If you don’t
believe me, look at your own proclamation. Listen to the sermons you preach to
me. Just yesterday we had a small battalion of members working to beautify God’s
church and take care of what we’ve been given. You may say that it is self-serving,
but the conversations we had were everything but that. Members told me about
how important it was that we communicate what God has called us to do through
our space. They talked about ways to use our space more creatively to foster community
and relationships with those outside the church. Ultimately, they spoke of how
they wanted even those who drive by to see this place and think of God’s presence
in their lives!
Meanwhile there
are those in Paris, France, and Opelousas, La recovering from church buildings burnt
by neglect and bad intent. Members from this congregation have reached out
locally and internationally in response. We’ve raised awareness of need, called
out the sin of building steeples versus providing sanctuary, and even shared
some old hymnals so that those who love to tell the story cannot be stopped by
the fires of hell that have been unleashed through sins of omission and commission.
Oh y’all are
preachin’ all right! Y’all are doing so much more than recovering from fires!
You’re putting them out! While our government tightens restrictions on our
impoverished brothers and sisters in Cuba, our partners in Cuba are getting
ready to celebrate the Living Waters of grace and mercy that happen to be
expressed through real, clean, drinkable water!
There is so much more we are doing, and so much more we can do, by God’s grace and with God’s help. It all begins with listening to three women. It begins with recognizing that God often speaks to and through the ones we don’t expect. It begins with being able to hear that God has swallowed up death for us and provided a life-giving feast so that we can do the same for others.
This
life-giving feast is not just bread and wine. It is the very presence of
God. It is the recognition that God has been imperfectly expressed through you
and me and the person of means and the person with nothing. God is being
expressed through the mentally ill and the infirm as well as the caregiver and the person of vision and purpose. God is being expressed in and through all of these, but even more so in the invitation to be amazed by the resurrection and become sincerity and truth.
My friend,
John Newman, of the New Hope Community Center, said it this way: “Saying that
Jesus Christ is risen is a promise of another life, which means I can risk
loving others in this life.”
Let’s keep
doing that. For we have been saved from sin and death for the opportunity of
life in all its fullness. That doesn’t mean lavish self-indulgence. It doesn’t
mean living in constant agitation over things we cannot fix and people who disagree.
It means simply this: We do not look for the living among the dead.
We look to
Christ, who invites us again and again and again to the font of grace and the
table of mercy, so that we can have the confidence to risk loving others—here
and now. Amen
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