Easter Morning
St. Paul's, Monroe
April 4, 2021
It's been a year
What a year it's been! When we gathered last year for Easter, we gathered virtually. Oh the times we've had! How our lives have shifted from what we knew and was familiar to us! My guess would be that your lives have been a little like mine and I've kind of -- lurched through the year.
What have you talked about this past year? What are the stories you shared and told? We know you haven’t traveled a great deal but what is the story of your life this past few months? This past year of pandemic and quarantine? A year of growing older?
And here we are. Gathered again. You gathered outside last fall, gathered in the garden. I know I’ve heard from some of you good that felt. Today the message that, "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" brings us together again. It has brought us together as the body of Christ. In the garden, so to speak. Brought us together where for too long we have been separated.
Many years ago John Michael Talbot recorded a song titled, "No longer strangers." Link It is based on the passage from the letter to the Ephesians:
^Ephesians 2:13^ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
Those words seem written about us today.
Listening to your life.
In our first reading, Peter gives an account of the message about Jesus that he has received and that he is delivering to the people of Corinth -- I think it's the case he is also delivering the message to us. It was a message of God delivered first, "sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all.""
- God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power
- Jesus went about doing good and healing
- Jesus was betrayed and executed
- Jesus was Raised on the 3rd day
What a straightforward and simple statement of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of Easter. Delivered to the people of Corinth. Delivered to us, today.
How have our lives illustrated, foreshadowed, anticipated, or been a sign of the Gospel we have received? What does our life tell us about what God has done?
If I were to ask each of us in this room, "What does Easter mean to you," the responses would vary -- perhaps vary a lot. And yet Easter comes down to a fairly simple thing -- Peter said it.
The passage from Mark’s gospel, coming at the end, is vivid and poignant. I can identify with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome. What they expected to find at that rock tomb was not what they found. A young man in a white robe. Wait! What? And that young man has a story – I’m not going to go into it now. People who are signs of the Resurrection come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. ”He has been raised; he is not here.” That’s the message given to the women, and from them down through the generations until it comes to us. “He has been raised.”
The narrative is so vivid that sometimes I feel like I could walk into the scene. In fact I am in need of walking into that scene, for it turns out that I need what the Risen Lord has to offer.
One of the things I learned in the past year is that even when I feel lost, that can be a place where the risen Lord, perhaps appearing as a gardener, accompanies us. For us to enter into the Gospel Message, to receive the message that has been handed down to us, it is to receive it as we were there in the garden with Mary.
Redemption center
[[deliverance]] From the collect today we hear the words "To deliver us from the power of our enemy". Surely if we are to know the power of being in the garden, found by the Risen Lord, we must surely know something of that deliverance. To be delivered is to be redeemed. What seemed lost is found. What seemed to be blindness is true sight. What seemed illness is deeper health. What seemed death is true life. Jesus was a living, breathing sacrament of the Easter message: out of death is life.
To be delivered means to be free. As Easter people we can be adamant and firm in our claims that we will be liberated, we will be free someday. And that can be a hope. And hope can keep us going when all else is lost.
But Easter is more than hope. It is Deliverance and Redemption. Easter is to proclaim with our lives that the redemption is accomplished.
When I was growing up my mother would occasionally go to the green stamp redemption center. That was where I learned that word, redemption, and although there may have been other kinds of redemption centers that’s the one I remember.
I was young, to be sure, but I was excited and fascinated by it. We got these little green pieces of gummed paper. We got them every time we went grocery shopping. If we got enough of them we could trade for something. They were usually pretty simple. But I remember occasionally getting something that was useful or nice to have around.
Today, gathered in this sacred place, we are a redemption center. We are a gathering of the redeemed.
We may have only meagre green stamps to offer. We may ourselves be only green stamps. But Easter is a Redemption Center. We are the Redeemed.
[[extravagance]] # Sign of extravagance
What is true is that even the least amount is enough.
There’s a song that I learned during the many years of leading Passover Seder s. It’s an experience that has enriched my life as a Christian as I have learned little piece by little piece to incorporate our Jewish heritage into our Christian life. As I’ve said over and over again to folks who ask me, "We say every time we celebrate the Eucharist that 'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.'" Celebrating a Seder is one of the ways I’ve learned something about what that phrase means.
So one of the things that is utterly delightful about the Seder is that children have a prominent role to play, laughter and song are almost an essential part -- it doesn't hurt that I love to eat lamb. Now one of the most ancient songs associated with the Passover celebration is over 1000 years old. It is called Dayenu in Hebrew.
It’s a simple song, as a children’s song needs to be. But as it is so often the case there is a great deal of wisdom to be learned from children. This song has a refrain made up of just one word and it’s the title of the song. Dayenu. The Hebrew means something like, “it’s enough”, “it’s sufficient”.
It starts off like this, "If God had brought us out of Egypt but not fed us in the desert, it would’ve been enough. Then it repeats, listing all the things that God has done for the Jewish people over the centuries, culminating in the gift of the Torah and deliverance.
One by one the song says if God had only done this and nothing more, we would be grateful. It’s about gratitude. It’s about paying attention to the gifts. And it maintains steadfastly that what feels like devastation, or slavery, or sickness, or imprisonment, or loneliness, or the weakness of getting old, ... any of these and more when compared to what God has done for us -- it’s just a slight thing.
It seems to me that that is what Easter means.
Even if God revealed himself and nothing else happened it would be enough. If God had revealed himself and led us out of Egypt but not given us the Torah it would’ve been enough.
If God walked through a year of pandemic with each of us, and did nothing more, it would be enough -- Dayenu. If God gave us the strength to persevere to the present day -- and had done nothing more, -- Dayenu.
We may only green stamps to offer -- but it is enough, Dayenu. This lurching life I have to offer may be meagre by any measure -- but it is enough, Dayenu.
To get to the end of life and to be able to see that it was enough. That is God's delivery and God's redemption. Dayenu.
The resurrection is a promise that there is a fulfillment over every little thing. There is a great canopy of love love if all.
