Before Us!

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015 (Mark 16:1-8a) with Isaiah 25:6-9 and Acts 10:34-43 in b.g.

 

How precious life is. This morning I was privileged to gather with Christians from many different denominations at Garry Point Park. The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon. The full moon was still high in the sky. Ducks were taking off and squawking. Our eclectic mix of Jesus' followers, young and old, people of many different cultures and histories boldly proclaimed, "Hallelujah Jesus is risen", even as we sang, "Jesus Christ is risen today."

 

Please take a moment to reflect upon the blessings in your life: friends – family, faith – personal and collective capacities to read, to pray, to laugh, to travel. How blessed we are! How we sometimes coast – taking it all, all of these blessings from God, for granted: the air, the water, our ability to think, to remember – God's love and forgiveness. How precious life is!

 

But in the midst of such life– are you ever afraid, even terrified?

 

Only a few days ago persons we refer to as terrorists, took over a school in Kenya and murdered 148 students. A majority of the students so targeted were Christians.

 

Only a few days earlier a co-pilot deliberately crashed a passenger plane into the French Alps, killing himself and everyone aboard.

 

Even closer to our immediate circumstance we may notice a bump, begin to cough, struggle with memory. Any of these realities could be nothing. But they might also be something. As people we have the ability to take wonderful things and make of them too much of a "good thing". Then, almost before we know it, we are stuck, caught, in webs of addiction – to food, to drink, to gambling – to – well, you name it. Even in our families we can go round and round, seemingly caught in the same script, a script that is less than life-bringing

 

Yes, we know fear, maybe even terrifying fear.  I do. I recall the fright, the terror I experienced as our youngest daughter was being born in the back seat of our 1988 Oldsmobile. It was simultaneously wonderful and frightening.

 

Perhaps fear, even terror is part and parcel of what it is to be a human being – a person of flesh and blood who can appreciate the preciousness of life but is also ever aware at some level of our frailty, our mortality, our propensity to often hurt and damage those whom are also precious  to us.

 

Perhaps ....

 

On that particular day – in some ways a long time ago – and in other ways only this morning - three women are on their way to a place of death. They are trudging to the tomb that held the body of a man whom they literally loved more than life. He had been executed. They know that. They had watched it!

 

Now if you have ever watched a loved one die – been near them, hoped with them through the days and nights, languished as they have languished - you will know a little of what those 3 women are going through. I say a "little" because their loved one didn't die between the starched sheets of a hospital or hospice bed. Nor did he even die in a tragic accident.

 

Instead he died because people – people like you and I, people including you and I couldn't stand him. He reached out to include, to love, a whole variety of people. He would touch and eat with those whom others, particularly the "religious" wouldn't even approach.  He reached out to question the religious authorities who insisted that people must do certain things a certain way to be included in the love and forgiveness of God. He said, no, that's not right. He reprimanded the religious leaders as he told stories. He even overturned tables in their "church". Out of a deep and profound love for them he shows them themselves.

 

The people, common, ordinary people couldn't stand it. They demand that he be executed. And, he was. Early this morning, those 3 women, together and yet alone, heart-broken, consumed with grief, trudge to his tomb. Theirs will not be an easy task. Yet they will do it. They will honor him.

 

Who can blame them for not thinking clearly? The tomb had been sealed with a large stone, a boulder – larger than the 3 of them can move. How can they get inside?

 

Then they dare to look up. Surprisingly, the stone is already rolled back. They enter the tomb. A young man, just to their right, speaks. They are alarmed. Who is he? How is he here? He interrupts their racing minds. "Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified...............He has been raised. He is not here. Look where they laid him".

 

Don't be afraid? Their dead loved one is not there, is no longer dead – but risen. Yah, right- don't be afraid?

 

 These women are not fools. They have lived. They have been around the block. Dead is dead. Jesus was dead. That's why they were spices to his tomb.

 

Then it gets even more absurd. That guy in white, says more. "But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him just as he told you."

 

Now terror and amazement overcome them. They flee from the tomb. I wonder at this point if they weren't Lutheran. They say nothing to anyone. In directly encountering God's messenger and this incredible news of Jesus, THEY ARE AFRAID, FILLED WITH TERROR.

 

They are terrified, not because of ISIS or a mentally ill pilot who could catastrophically end their lives. Nor are they afraid because of their own mortality. Instead they are afraid because God is encountering them right where they are. The things that until that moment were certainties – particularly the horribly powerful and ugly things like death – are being overcome. Now there are  possibilities that merely a moment before were irrefutable impossibilities. Because of Jesus who loved them so even to the point of allowing himself to be murdered but who is now raised – who knows what might be next? It is incredible! So, they are filled with both terror and AMAZEMENT. We see them run off.

 

I like movies. Some people prefer movies that have a definitive ending – either happy or sad, but endings which tie things up in a neat bow. Such movies give you a sense of resolution. At the ending of the movie the tensions are smoothed over or resolved. The movie has ended and that's that. Nothing more is demanded or expected from the audience.  

 

But many movies don't have such neat, tidy endings. Such movies leave the audience with different possibilities and even some ongoing tensions. The audience is left with wrestling with what may happen next and what does any or all of that mean for the lives of the characters, perhaps even for their own lives?

 

For these three women their fear and amazement eventually give way to telling. How do I know that? Well, we wouldn't be here proclaiming, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!", if they and others hadn't become witnesses.  Jesus goes before them to where they will live– with all of its uncertainty, disappointment, joy, hope, celebration and love.

 

This risen living Jesus goes before us too. He goes before us to lead us, to love us, to free us from things that we have somehow been convinced are just the way things are – things of death: hatred, paralyzing fear, insecurity, apathy, selfishness, despair.

 

That man in white speaks to us. To be sure, Jesus was dead! That's what happens to people, even the Son of God, when we refuse to compromise the holy, just and merciful love of God for all. But see - those powers of death, hatred, evil cannot hold him. He is no longer dead. He is alive! And He goes before us wherever he leads us.

 

Do you see Him? Follow Him even through our times of terror and amazement. Because he lives, we too can live- right here, right now, through all death to new life. In him, our endings, whatever they are, lead us and many others to new beginnings. Amen.