Believing in Easter

An Easter sermon, 2009

Well, Alleluia! Welcome happy morning! Good Christians all rejoice and sing! Now is the triumph of our King! This joyful Easter-tide, away with sin and sorrow! My Love, the Crucified, hath sprung to life this morrow. The words of our Easter hymns say it all. They retell and celebrate the story of the Easter miracle. Jesus who was dead is alive. The tomb is empty, he is not there. We should not look for him among the dead, but among the living. This story needs no more to be the greatest story ever told. And yet…to be merely amazed by something that happened to a Galilean preacher and healer two thousand years ago, albeit something marvelous that happened for us, is to sidestep the immense truth of this day.
I want you to consider the difference between believing that a miracle happened in a tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem and believing in Easter. That difference has been extraordinarily liberating for me because I confess that I don’t know what happened in the tomb. I know too much about how the Gospel texts were written and how the story of Jesus grew as the years passed. I don’t know that I believe, or that I need to believe, that Jesus’ corpse was resuscitated by some divine defibrillator but I know that I believe in Easter. Here’s what believing in Easter looks like…

It looks like hope. Easter means that there is no situation that is beyond God’s redeeming grace. In every broken relationship, Easter lurks as the possibility of reconciliation. Fear drove powerful people to kill Jesus. In any other story that would be the end. But the Easter story says no to fear and despair and yes to eternal possibilities. A bad ending may be the end of a chapter but it is not the end of the story. It may be frustrating for us to have to wait more than three days for God’s saving action to be seen, but Easter says that God will find a way to redeem tragedy, God will find a way to redeem injustice, and God will find a way to set right what once went wrong. It was on Easter Sunday 60 years ago that Marian Anderson sang a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She was already a world renowned performer – an extraordinary voice with three octaves at her command. The concert was arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt because Marian Anderson had been denied the opportunity to sing at Constitution Hall. The Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the Hall, had turned her down because she was black. This was not just an attempt to keep black performers off the stage but a move to keep black audiences out of the seats. The First Lady was outraged and she became an instrument of Easter. 75,000 people stood in the cold as Ms Anderson opened her concert with “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.” Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Marian Anderson became a accidental evangelist for the dignity of every human being. That concert gave hope to many.

Believing in Easter looks like comfort. In the post-resurrection stories in the gospels, we see the redemption of many kinds of human pain and failings. Mary, grieving and frantic at finding the tomb empty could not consider the possibility that what Jesus had told them had actually come to be. Life had not given her much reason to be optimistic. She could not allow that kind of hope lest she be hurt again. Isn’t it sad when we carry disappointment with us and it keeps our view dark and gloomy. It is a kind of pessimism about what is possible – we don’t dare hope. But when you believe in Easter, you have a different outlook – even the deepest grief can be redeemed, defeat can become triumph, pain can become bliss.

Believing in Easter looks like compassion. During his earthly life, Jesus gave sight to the blind. As two of his disciples were walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, the resurrected Jesus walked along with them but they couldn’t recognize him. They could not see him in the face of the stranger. But then he broke bread with them and they could see. In this story, we are given the gift of Easter sight so that we might be true to the promise we make in our baptismal covenant to seek and serve Christ in all persons. When we don’t look for him in others and when we fail to serve him in the lives of others, we are as blind as the disciples walking to Emmaus. And yet, we are not left in our blindness. There is no one we meet in whom we cannot seek Christ, even if that image of Christ is greatly obscured in them, hidden by hard-heartedness, warped by arrogance, beat down by disappointment and fear, if you believe in Easter, you will find it and you will have redemption.

Believing in Easter looks like confidence. Another familiar story is that of Thomas and his doubt. And who among us cannot identify with this human condition? And it’s not just doubt, it is feeling that we have to have an answer for everything, as if we might be diminished by something that is beyond our knowing. Thomas’ doubt was standing between him and his ability to believe in Easter. He was not ready to see beyond obstacles, to love without limits. Jesus gently honored Thomas’ doubt and redeemed it. To believe in Easter is to allow doubt and the need to have all of the answers to be overcome faith.

Believing in Easter looks like forgiveness. One of the saddest things of past week was Jesus’ solitude in his suffering. His friends all ran away and Peter, his right hand man, denied that he even knew him. Peter carried the shame, assuming that he would carry it to his grave for he would not have the chance to atone for it, after all, Jesus was dead and no matter how many tears he shed, his cowardice remained. He could not forgive himself for his words of denial. But in the only post-resurrection story in which Jesus speaks to Peter – Peter’s betrayal is redeemed. It happens in Galilee, the disciples have spent the night on their boat but had caught nothing. Jesus appears on the shore and when someone shouts “It is the Lord!” Peter jumps overboard. Now it is important to remember that Galilean fishermen did not swim, they did not know how to swim. So we wonder if Peter’s shame caused him to attempt to drown himself. Apparently he does not drown because after they all share their communion breakfast of bread and fish, Jesus asks Peter, three times, “Simon Peter, do you love me?” Three times, as many times as he had denied knowing him, Peter is given the gift of redemption and the chance to say, “Yes, I love you.” By the third time, he is even ready to receive Jesus’ charge to him “If you love me, then feed my sheep.” Peter’s shame and guilt are redeemed and if Peter’s shame and guilt are then so are mine, so are yours.

I believe that Easter is God’s primary mode of being. What ever we do, God’s response is some kind of Easter. Even if what you do looks like a mistake, God will respond with a way to bring you and your choices to redemption. Imagine if people really believed that – how free we would be and how courageous. It would be the greatest step toward collective mental, emotional and spiritual health that we could imagine. If we truly accept that wounds inflicted by life and the people with whom we share it are redeemable, that we can hope and trust in the power of grace and reconciliation, and then no situation is without hope.
Christ is Risen! Alleluia! I believe in Easter!