Easter Sunday, 2008 Sermon

Isn’t it amazing the built in survival mechanisms in our bodies? I find it incredible that when faced with certain life situations, the body can just go into autopilot. For instance, when one is terrified beyond belief, the fight or flight response kicks into high gear; adrenaline starts pumping, muscles are activated such that we can fight our way out or run like crazy and flee to safety. This response allows human life to survive the dangers of our world.

That might seem to you an odd way to start the sermon on the holiest and most beautiful days of the year. After all, we gathered to hear words of life, words of eternal life as we meditate on the resurrection of our Lord, the story that pulls us in this Sunday each and every year. It’s a story that we are quite happy to hear time and time again. It gives us comfort for it’s a story we know well. The story, indeed this day is intended to go something like this for us: The women go to the tomb, find it empty, the Easter proclamation reverberates with “He is risen!” The familiar hymns are accompanied by brass, the church is crowded with flowers, dinner is a remarkable affair and tomorrow life will return to normal and next week church will be back to an hour.

But I ask you, how can you find comfort in this story? How can you sit there dressed in your finery and not feel chills running up and down your spine? This is not a story of comfort. My friends, this is a story that provokes fear and trembling and the desire to get the heck out of here. It’s a story that provokes a response.

Two women go to a tomb, a grave. Not just any grave, the grave of a dear friend. Their friend died a horrible, hideous death and the vast majority of his friends fled. He was an innocent man who was crucified on a cross between two criminals. With him died all of their hopes and dreams for the future. Two women went to the tomb to do whatever it is that people do at the grave of a loved one. Maybe take flowers. Maybe weep. Maybe to express regret or disappointment. Maybe to shout in anger. They expect quiet and solitude when they come to the place.

Instead, the ground shakes, the lightning flashes, angels descend in blinding light. The stone was rolled away from the entrance to the tomb and the tomb itself was empty, devoid of the body that was laid therein to rest. Out of the surrounding tombs come the dead, still wrapped in their shrouds, to walk among the living.

This is your “Happy story” each year? Friends, I’ve seen this movie (a long, long time ago) and it was pretty gross! This is the stuff that makes our blood pump, the adrenaline rush, the sweat bead on our brows, our hands to tremble with fear. This is a one of a kind event, never before experienced in history, never to be repeated again until judgment. The history of the cosmos is changed in this moment, in the quaking of the earth, the emptiness of the tomb, the voices from heaven.

There are two very different reactions to this event. On one hand we have the women. Oh yes, they’re quaking in fear, they’re trembling in their sandals, but they’re listening to the voice of the angel.

On the other hand we have the guards; big strong Roman guards whose sole purpose in life is to keep the tomb secure. And when the angel speaks, they are so overcome by fear that they become like dead men. Plop! Just fall over in fear without hearing the angels, “Don’t be afraid.” So much for human attempts to keep Christ confined to a box!

But the women listen. They hear the proclamation that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is risen. They are introduced to a new reality and hear the invitation to be part of the inclusive kingdom of God; that women can be messengers, that the dead can be raised, that disciples who abandoned their Lord are still invited into the kingdom, that light and life abound!! Their fight or flight response kicks and they indeed flee, but not to hide; to do obediently what the angel tells them to do. They flee to tell the disciples that Jesus is alive; he’s gone ahead to Galilee. And they are given instructions to keep moving, to stop mourning. They respond with belief and obedience and share the message that the other disciples are to do the same.

For the women reality is shattered and the course of history has changed in ways they could never before comprehend. Their master is no longer dead. Jesus even appears to them and causes them to stop mid flight to fall down and worship him. They do not fall down in fear like our friends the Roman soldiers, but in adoration and worship.

You knew how the story was going to turn out. That’s why you’re here. It comes as no huge shock to you. And yet, we come as a congregation much as the Mary’s did, weighed down with grief this particular year. We come to lay our burdens at the tomb, to weep or yell or wonder. For in this last week we’ve shared some significant losses. And so we seek the empty tomb looking for the promise of new life.

So we’ve heard the story, the magnificent story. Now it’s up to us to respond. Shall we respond like the soldiers? Shall we just sit here not really hearing, not really listening; as if it’s not real, it’s just a story.

Or shall we respond like the women? Shall we hear the invitation into a new way of living, a new way of being? Shall we acknowledge that death, grief and disappointment are real but so too is resurrection and new life real? Shall we take that news and run, run as fast as we can to spread it; to make our mission that proclamation of this phenomenal event? To be witnesses in a world where we are swooning from lack of trust in our own rulers, where hostility and mistrust govern relationships, where hunger and violence and lack of basic necessities claims the lives of millions of children. Is our response to flee from these realities, or do we respond with the new reality given to us in the resurrection of our Christ—that life conquers death, that love conquers fear and hope abounds? It’s really up to you. It’s really up to us together.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Amen

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