It is really, really good to see you this morning!
What a difference it is from last Easter! Last year, we were several weeks into the pandemic, and the closing of the church to in-person worship. Only 4 or 5 of us were here, as we were livestream only at that time for worship, and it was such a strange experience. It was as though I had stumbled onto the set of one of the Left Behind movies.
This is our first time in almost 13 months to be back to two Sunday morning worship services. It might take me some time to adjust back to this schedule. It’s been over a year since we’ve had two worship services and I’m a bit out of practice. I asked those in the early service to remind me not to go home at the conclusion of that service, as I was used to leaving after one service. To make sure I had the energy to get through the morning, I had five pounds of marshmallow Peeps for breakfast, and it takes a lot of Peeps to make five pounds! Then, as I drove to church, I followed a Krispy Kreme donut truck. At that point, I had to say, get behind me Satan!
We’ve come a long, long way in a year, and though we have a way yet to go, we have certainly come a long way. We all feel so grateful to be here on this beautiful day, and we feel the sense of life here this morning. Last year we were early in the pandemic, and we were overwhelmed with uncertainty and some measure of fear. I will always remember what it was like to look out at all the empty chairs and to speak to video devices instead of people. I will also remember what an encouragement it was to see the pictures of the congregation fastened to the chair. That was very, very encouraging to me.
In recent weeks, I have been preaching a series of messages titled Rebooting Life. Since the pandemic began just over a year ago, I have presented one series after another about the ways our faith in God and the presence of God can carry us through whatever challenges come our way. And we have indeed faced challenges in the last year. It has been an incredible year of events that have come, one after another, and overwhelmed our world.
Today, on Easter Sunday, the title of my message is Resurrection! That title carries not only the meaning we associate with Easter; it is also one that carries a great deal of meaning when we consider all we have been through over the course of the past year. Life is being resurrected, and we are beginning to see signs of hope that we are turning a corner in relation to the pandemic. We hope that we are returning to normal, although there were plenty of things that were not at all normal about the pre-pandemic world, and we hope we can create a new, and better, normal.
And so, we begin to turn the corner, daring to hope that life is indeed returning to normal (although we are still keeping a distance, and this is the first time in my entire ministry that I’ve worried about having too many people in church) it is fitting that are here on this Easter Sunday, to talk about Resurrection!
All four gospels tell the story of the resurrection, and this morning we will use Luke’s telling for our text. I love all the resurrection stories, but Luke’s is my favorite. I always gravitate to his telling of the resurrection so follow along with me, as I read Luke 24:1-12 –
1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.
5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?
6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:
7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’”
8 Then they remembered his words.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.
10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
In framing my message this morning, there are several words in that passage I want to focus on this morning. The first of them is wondering. Luke uses the word wondering twice in this passage, first in verse 4, when the two Marys and Joanna, arriving at the empty tomb, were wondering what had happened to the body of Jesus, and again in verse 12, when Peter went away from the empty tomb, wondering to himself what had happened.
Wondering is an interesting word, isn’t it? We all wonder about many things. I do a lot of wondering. There are many things I don’t understand, and I wonder about them. A lot. Sometimes I wonder about the big questions of life, and sometimes the small questions. I don’t understand, for instance, and I wonder, why the paper towels in the office work room here at the church are on the hanger backwards. That’s actually an important question to me. That’s right up there with the big questions of the universe. It just seems so counter-intuitive to me. Who does that, and more importantly, why? It’s so complicated to have to reach behind the roll of paper towels to find where they begin. I don’t understand it; it’s just not efficient. Sometimes, we need relief from the big questions of life, so that’s one about which I wonder.
There are plenty of big questions about which to wonder, and many of them relate to faith. Sometimes, people say that if we do not have all the answers about faith then something is deficient in our faith, and that is simply not true. Actually, we don’t need to have all the answers. In fact, and this might sound odd, faith is like science. In this day and age when so many say that faith and science are at odds (and I do not believe that to be true), I think it is worth pointing out that like science, when we arrive at an answer about faith, we might have ten more questions that come along with the answer, or the new understanding. Sometimes, we have a flash of insight, or a moment of understanding that brings us an answer, and that new understanding opens the door to more questions, so we end up with even more questions than we have answers. In those moments, it is easy to wonder if we will ever have all the answers we seek. The easy answer to that questions is, no, we will not; at least not in this life. People ask me many questions, and I can offer an answer to some of them, but not all. Quite often, I feel as though I have more questions than I do answers. And that’s okay. It’s okay that we don’t have answers to every question. Skeptics often pounce upon our inability to provide an answer to every question, as though our lack of an answer proves that their critiques are on target. They might say, for instance, if you cannot provide an answer to the question of why suffering exists, then there must be something wrong not only with your faith, but with faith in general. My opinion is, who says so? Why is it necessary for us to have the answer to every question? If we waited until we had all the answers before we embraced faith, it would be like waiting until we felt we could afford to get married before we took that step. How many people thought about that before getting married? Did you ask, can we afford to get married, or can we afford to have kids? We didn’t have to have every question answered before taking those steps. We embraced those opportunities, even though we didn’t have every question answered. There is always an element of mystery to faith. Always, and don’t ever think of that as a negative.
The earliest witnesses to the empty tomb did not understand. They wondered, as Luke says. When the women reported the news of the empty tomb to the disciples, the disciples did not believe them. In fact, Luke says the disciples not only refused to believe them, but their words seemed to them like nonsense (verse 11). It’s one thing to have a sense of doubt or disbelief, but to write off their report as nonsense, that is a very strong reaction. Nonsense is a word usually used by skeptics, not by the followers of Jesus, but that was their reaction.
It is easy to forget that the disciples were, initially, unable to process and understand the empty tomb. It did not fit with the way they believed life worked. But how difficult is it for the God who created this vast, unending universe to bring resurrection? That God created life certainly means that restoring life through resurrection is not outside the realm of possibility. It would actually be quite simple for God to do so. The rarity of an event does not increase the improbability or impossibility of an event. Let me repeat that – the rarity of an event does not increase the improbability or impossibility of an event.
I have less answers than I had ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago. And the interesting thing is, I don’t need as many answers as I needed in the past. While I have less answers, I believe I have the answers I need, and chief among those answers are – God exists, God is love, and Jesus came to demonstrate that love. I don’t know how to interpret every verse of the Bible and I don’t always have a good answer – or any answer – to many of the questions people ask me about the Scriptures and faith, but I really don’t worry about it. I believe I know what I need to know. I keep wondering and I keep seeking answers, but my wondering does not at all get in the way of my faith. If I only knew those three answers, I believe that would be sufficient.
The second word is fear. Ah, there’s that word, the word none of us likes, but the word that captures all of us. This is why, after all, the pandemic has been so difficult, because it has been so full of uncertainty. We have struggled with the question of how long it will last, with the question of what might happen to our family and friends. We have struggled with the question of what will happen to our finances, and many more questions. We’ve been uncertain, and that uncertainty has bred much fear. Who has not been awake at night, wondering about questions of our physical health, our financial health, and so many others? Fear is a powerful and destructive force, and fear has been heavily upon us.
All four gospel writers note the presence of fear in the first Easter morning. Why fear? Why was fear such a strong component of the first Easter? It’s an interesting question, and one to which I don’t know that I have an accurate answer. I do think that part of the reason they were fearful is because they had yet to understand that Jesus had risen. Although Jesus told his disciples and followers that he would rise from the tomb (in Mark 8:31, for example), they had no grasp on that as a reality. Even though they had seen Jesus raise others from the dead – the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-42), the widow’s son (Luke 7:11-16), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44) – it still seemed an impossibility. They were left to wonder, then, if the body of Jesus was stolen, which would make them fearful, wondering what the purpose of such a theft would mean. Or, they simply had no idea what might have happened, and where there is uncertainty, there is also fear. For the disciples, much of the fear, I think, rested on the question of what would happen to them. As Jesus was crucified, they might have wondered, what’s going to happen to us? Are we next? If the one who worked miracles, the one who raised others from the dead had been arrested, scourged, and nailed to a cross, what was going to happen to his followers? Peter, who did follow Jesus after his arrest, quickly denied him when he was recognized as one of Jesus’ followers (Luke 22:54-62). It was because of fear, and lest we be too hard on Peter, fear can also cause us to act in ways we would not want to act.
And while we are grateful to be here this morning, in worship, let us remember we can come here without fear. There are places in this world where followers of Jesus must take into account the risk to their lives because of their faith. They must think about, and consider, the very real possibility of an attack on their church. They have to wonder if someone has placed a bomb in their church. They have to wonder if they will be arrested, simply because they believe. There are places in this world where these fears are very real possibilities.
There was also, possibly, the fear that Jesus was a buffer, if that’s the correct word. What I mean by a buffer is this – Jesus was the one who dealt with the skepticism and hostility of the religious leaders, he was the one who fed the hungry, and he was the one who healed the sick. Now, his work would be the responsibility of his followers. The time had come for them to step up, and step away from a preoccupation with comfort or personal gain and do the hard, heart-breaking work of changing the world. This did, no doubt, bring a measure of fear to their lives, because the responsibility was now theirs to become the hands and feet of Jesus in his physical absence, and that prospect must have been troubling to them, as it is to us. How do meet all the needs in our community? How do we comfort all the people who need to be comforted? How do we feed all the hungry people? It is overwhelming at times to think about all the need.
The third word is life. The word life doesn’t actually appear in this passage, although it does say why do you look for the living among the dead? The entire passage is about life.
One of the difficulties of this year, to me, has been the funerals, which have served as a reminder that the pandemic has not only changed so much of life, but has changed how we deal with death as well. I can remember, for instance, the first funeral I officiated, shortly after the pandemic began. It was so different from any other funeral I had ever officiated. Ten people were in attendance, which included myself. I had been asked to officiate the service because one of the children of the deceased, who is also a minister, lives on the west coast and was unable to travel to be here. How tragic it was for the family not to be together in such a moment. And how many people could not be with a loved one when their loved one left this life and entered into eternity, because the pandemic had closed the hospitals to visitors, even to family members. Last May, my stepfather passed away. My mom found him that morning, in medical distress and called the ambulance. She was not able to go with him or even to enter the hospital. Some hours later, wondering what was happening, she received a call from the hospital to tell her, he’s gone. What a jolt that was. And how many families experienced similar circumstances? Such an experience is one of many during the pandemic that make us feel vulnerable. We expressed that vulnerability in a joke that was often made over the months. When we sneezed or sniffled, we wondered if it was only a cold or if we were going to end up in the hospital ICU.
Yet, in spite of everything, life triumphs. That is the message of the resurrection. We see that life is getting better, in terms of the pandemic, and for this we are very grateful. But let us also remember that it is not getting better in many countries, so we must pray for the rest of the world, and advocate for the distribution of resources that can help people who are suffering in other parts of the world.
One of the statements I often make at a committal service, as we stand in the cemetery, especially in the winter, is to note that life will soon burst forth. We don’t think of cemeteries as places of life, but at this time of year, when we drive or walk through a cemetery, we see life bursting forth. The grass, dormant and brown for months, is green and growing. The trees, which remained bare throughout the winter, are filling with leaves. Flowers are popping up everywhere. Life is returning, because life always triumphs! Life cannot be stopped, even when death comes! This is the message of Easter, and the message of the resurrection. Even though life seems to conclude, it does not. Life does two things – it pauses momentarily, and then it transforms. What Easter tells us is that we have a moment of transition, where the final breath in this life becomes the first breath in eternity, and the closing of eyes in this life becomes the opening of eyes in eternity. It is the moment, as the book of Revelation says, he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away (Revelation 21:4).
Today, on Easter, I am greatly comforted and reassured by the promise of eternity. We know that resurrection has come to those we so greatly miss. We know they are not gone from us forever. We know we will one day see them again. We know that because of the resurrection of Jesus death has been defeated and broken and because it has, those who have gone on before have been resurrected and we too, one day, will receive resurrection!
Life cannot be stopped! That is a wonderful message of hope! That is a necessary message of hope! That is a sustaining message of hope! Yes, we wonder. We wonder about many questions. But remember, we have the answers that are sufficient. Yes, there is much that we fear, but we are comforted by the power of God’s presence in our lives. And, most of all, life continues. Life cannot be stopped, and that is the message – the beautiful message – of Easter.
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