Sunday Easter morning 1

Sunday / Easter morning

Wearing new clothes

There is a tradition that Easter is the day show up at church in new clothes. I haven’t really been with you long enough to be sure – but I’m guessing not a few of you are wearing new clothes. Some of you might even be wearing white clothes – white clothes for the white of baptism. Baptism as it was practiced for many centuries entailed being stripped of your own clothes before entering the baptismal font and as you emerged being clothed in new white robes. New clothes for the new life given in the Risen Lord.

This morning

I am drawn with power, tenderness, attraction, interest, awe, wonder, not a little bit of trepidation to the figure of Mary (in John’s gospel) – in Mark’s gospel it’s Mary & Mary & Salome. I am drawn to Mary who heard the Lord call her by name. And with that was ready to run to pass on the news that she had seen the Lord.

I am in awe of the power of one person’s testimony, be it a story or just the look in their eye, that the world has just changed. That God has spoken. That in the empty tomb & Resurrection, life was transformed.

The scripture readings today are primarily about those who, having been touched variously by the sacred encounter with Jesus, were able to pass on their account in such a way that one person after another, stretching now into the billions, believed and followed him to become his students and friends.

That is powerful story-telling.

Paul said: The Lord has appeared last of all to me.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred

Tell it for healing

How one tells the story. To tell it with power. It has moved men and women, young and old, for thousands of years.

… reading Gates of the Forest, for Wiesel, an almost hopeful and, therefore, unrepresentative novel in his mournful body of work. In the preface he tells the story of the revered Hasidic Rabbi Baal Shem Tov.

The story goes, “When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.”

In succeeding generations, when their people were threatened, rabbis would return to the forest seeking salvation for them. But in the next generation, a rabbi had forgotten how to light the fire. In another, the rabbi forgot the prayer. In the third generation, the rabbi does not even know the place.

This last rabbi prays to God, ‘‘I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is ask You to redeem us, and this must be sufficient.’’

The narrator reports, “And it was sufficient.” citation

Acts 10:34–43

In the reading from Acts (2nd service) we hear Peter, in effect, preaching one of the first Easter sermons.

Peter began to speak to Cornelius and the other Gentiles: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ–he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

The whole point of the book of Acts is that as the followers of Jesus began to tell the story, their lives and the world around them began to change. As they tell us again and again, “The reason we do this is for all those who come after.”

Tell it for power: the monk

There is a story that speaks to the power that disciples tapped into, the power of Resurrection, the power of God in a world intent on wielding power – in the world of politics and national intrigue, in the boardroom where hiring and firing people is the epitome of becoming the king of the mountain. The story we are a part of is a completely different kind of story. It flows from a tomb – an empty one. citation

… It was during one of these invasions, [the story goes] as the samurai returned with the captured holy men, that the army’s General was informed of a monk, one of the highest ranking, who refused capture.

“He would not come? Even under threat to his brethren?” the General asked.

The lead samurai shook his head. “We murdered numerous lower ranks in front of him, from the Samanera to the Majjhima. All his contemporaries surrendered, yet he remains. We did not harm him, however, as we knew you would want such a dissident fully intact.”

The General thought on this for a while. In all his years as an enforcer he had never encountered such a situation. The audacity! He decided to meet this monk face to face. Rounding up a select group of samurai, they rode off to the monastery.

Passing through the gates, he saw him there, a man of no special stature, standing stalwart in front of his holy house, face to the sun, arms clasped behind his back. The General dismounted and started towards him, the samurai remaining behind on horseback.

As he drew closer, the military man unsheathed his sword, walking directly into the monk’s midst and pushing the tip into his navel. For the first time, the monk made eye contact, looking down from the sky and into the face of his attacker.

“Don’t you know who I am, monk?” the General hissed. “I could take this sword and run it through your belly without blinking an eye.”

The monk remained stolid, his expression unchanged. “And don’t you know who I am?” he replied. “I could have your sword run through my belly without blinking an eye.”

Recognizing that he was in the presence of a power far greater than his own, at that moment he took off his sword and became the monk’s student.

Those who heard the disciples knew they were in the presence of a power far greater than the Roman Empire that stood so proudly around them. And so it is to this day.

A whoop throughout the city: the Brewers

The sensation in Wauwatosa as the Brewers won the pennant 1982, going outside to hear a whoop going up across the whole city.

I once experienced the delight of a community coming together and hearing powerful good news in one sudden moment. I was the associate at a parish in a suburb of Wauwatosa, WI. The baseball team – the Milwaukee Brewers was having a tremendous season. They made it to the series that would determine the winner of the American League. For that series I rented a television. We had not had one in our home for many years.

Well, shortened story, the Brewers won that series. “The 1982 ALCS was marked by a dramatic comeback by the Brewers, who lost the first two games of the series and were trailing late in the final game.” (Wikipedia) As the final out came with ground out to the short stop Robin Yount, my son Owen – age 5 at the time – and I jumped up and gave yell. We ran outside to the street in front of our house, Wisconsin Avenue, one of the main roads leading into downtown Milwaukee Ave. There was not a car on it. And then we heard it. A whoop began to grow out of the asphalt of Wisconsin Avenue until it was like a mighty storm. The city of Milwaukee was celebrating their first pennant.

The Easter good news that went up that day in Jerusalem, has grown and grown up to the present day. God has won a great victory.

From fear to confidence: riding a bicycle

The Easter message has the ability to bring hope and confidence to the weakest and most fearful. I have watched my own children learn to ride bicycles. At first there is great fear. Shaking. Caution. Then finally they’re up. My youngest, Emma, was so excited the moment she got up on her own she completely forgot that she had no idea how to stop the bicycle. She rode around the circle in front of our house until she finally crashed the bike into a large bush.

I had my own slow starts, but eventually rode century rides around the mountains of Colorado and took my brother to college in Santa Fe, 300 + miles away, by bicycle. That’s like the craziness of the Resurrection message.

Open to Serendipity: The women at the tomb

Breathless from running – from Jerusalem to Galilee? (synoptics) or across the city (John) these women knew that they had a brand new story to tell and it needed to be known now. Spreading the good news with power.

They were open to a new way of living, a new way of seeing, they were prepared to change. Serendipity is the way I think of it. They were open to the wow of God doing the totally unexpected.

From Jesus .. superstar: “I don’t know what to do …”

I have to tell you that I often feel real fear and trepidation at the task of finding the right words on Easter morning. I feel a little like Mary Magdalene in her song from *Jesus Christ Superstar*:

I don’t know how to love him
What to do, how to move him
I’ve been changed, yes really changed
In these past few days
When I’ve seen myself
I seem like someone else …

In order to express her own sense of inadequacy and falling short, but all she can do is begin to tell the story of what’s happened. In the end I know that my task is simply to get out of the way and let the story speak. In the end I don’t know how to do it. How to say how I’ve been moved, how I’ve been changed, by this one who is no longer found in the tomb. It is empty. And he is risen. Alleluia.