March 27, 2016
Easter Sunday
Luke 24:1-12

Carlyle Marnie was a Baptist preacher of some prominence in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. I came across an interesting story about him related to a resurrection sermon that he preached in some large church in the south. I have no idea what he said, but evidently the message hit home. It was powerful, and compelling, and inspiring. The whole congregation was moved beyond their expectations.
I can imagine it too. What I’ve read from him is brilliant. It’s like his words pour out onto the page in a manic stream of insight and faith and passion. I’m a slow reader, but not when I’ve read him. I found myself caught up in his pacing and clinging to his line of reason, eager for the next thought and the next one after that.
So, I can imagine how the church was moved.
On the way home, his friend said, “But, Carlye, I thought you weren’t so sure about the resurrection.” He replied, “Well, I am today!”
It seems to me there’s a good bit of integrity and honesty to that response. My thinking is that the resurrection is worth our doubt. If we haven’t doubted it, we’ve likely accepted it a little too easily. The resurrection can handle our doubt; what it doesn’t handle well is its relegation to conventionality. When it’s just another bit of information that we assimilate the same way we do the news, or the weather, or the latest fashion trends its influence in our lives will always be of little value. On the other hand, when it is worth our doubt it suddenly has the potential to make a great deal of difference. It can actually mean something to the way we perceive our lives, their meanings, and our roles in this world.
“I’m sure of it today,” he said. Maybe he even moved himself, tilted the scale for himself for the resurrection. Who knows, but God bless him if he did. We need to grasp those moments of faith, we need to celebrate them, claim them, and remember them when they come. Who cares if it’s not there tomorrow?! We don’t have tomorrow now. Now we have Easter and if you can take it, take it!
Take a risen savior who died to show that even death cannot drown the immeasurable love that God has for God’s people. Take an incarnate God whose will to be with us brought him here to the manger as one of us. Take a God who forgives us and refuses to leave us despite our best efforts to push him away. Take a God who calls us into divine and holy union with him, and invites us to find meaning and purpose beyond the small confines of our own little selves. Take a God who makes life sacred, who grants new and renewed life within us. Take a God who is risen while you can, because there’s no shortages to life’s challenges and to the reasons for our doubts.
Isn’t it funny how the empty tomb, at first, means absolutely nothing to the women who come and find the stone rolled away? Or, that is, it means nothing good. This seems true in Luke and it is certainly true in John’s version of the story where Mary, looking right at Jesus mistakes him for the gardener, and says, “Please just tell me where you put my Lord’s body.” In Luke’s version the women are simply “perplexed.” They have no idea what to make of the empty tomb. It takes the intrusion of two angels, glowing bright with the light of heaven, to remind them that Jesus told them this would happen. “Don’t you remember? He said that he would die and on this very day rise again.” It seems to us almost remarkable that the thought of resurrection hadn’t occurred to them. But then, resurrection just wasn’t in the realm of possibility, and when I think about it, I know that I’ve had a harder time with easier scenarios.
All throughout my childhood and into young adulthood – since I was three years old – I had the same man, Dom the barber, cut my hair. So, I spent 30 minutes with this guy just about once a month for my entire life before I went off to college. During college I would see him over the summer. Well, during my first year at seminary I needed to drive through the old neighborhood, so I thought I would stop and see Dom. I arrived a bit early so I sat at the little general store and had a cup of coffee while I waited. After a minute or so this guy comes in who clearly knows me. “Timmy!” he says. “Good to see you again!” “How’s your family?” We talk a bit, but I have no idea who he is.
He leaves, and I finish my cup of coffee and make my way two doors down to the barber shop. I walk in, and there’s Dom, the same guy from the coffee shop, the same guy I had driven down from New Haven to see. But, outside the barber shop I just wasn’t prepared to see him. Without the reminder of the specific context in which I had always known the man, he seemed like a different man to me.
Life can work that way, and it seems to me that a life of faith very often does. Certainly, we see it this morning with the women at the tomb. Then, when the women tell the men, the men are clearly more informed by their chauvinism than by the words that Jesus shared with them. And again it happens: In the very next scene two disciples walk the whole length of the long road to Emmaus with the risen Jesus, but it’s not until they break bread together that their eyes are opened and they see that it’s Jesus who had been with them all along.
My point is that we need reminders. For the resurrection to be real for us we actually require them.
Ruth has been on my mind. We had her funeral here yesterday. I won’t eulogize her again, but I will repeat how she gave me needed reminders. Two hospital visits come to mind. She wasn’t well, and she had plenty of reason for sadness and self-concern. But, our conversations in that area only went so far. She was more interested in hearing about my kids and how my family was doing. I prayed with her and I told her I would pray for her. That was all fine and well received, but twice I asked her if she would also pray for me, and twice it seemed like things in the room changed almost entirely. She became enthusiastic, and driven, and inspired. She smile brightly and said, “I will!” I had no doubt that she would pray for me, but more moving for me was her witness to a life of generous sharing and caring that she had learned to live. There, even in her darkest moments, what brought her joy, and life, and energy, was grabbing hands with God and caring for another person.
The resurrection tells us that the upside down, often counter intuitive, ways of Christ win out over the world’s pervasive ways of dominance, over-riding self-interest, injustice, and apathy. There is great, joyful life in the face even of death when we have the courage to die to self. There is deep and abiding meaning when we are willing to find it by joining hands with God in service beyond our own gain. And there is hope, grace-filled and sustaining hope, when our lives are tied to others who have learned to love the goodness and beauty of God’s ways.
I believe that Easter offers us a great opportunity. Easter is an invitation for us not only to know resurrection life, but actually to give life. Easter is a call for us to become our best and truest selves by serving as reminders for one another, living reminders for all God’s people, of a Good News that becomes more and more real the more we share it in love.