Sermon for Easter Sunday
Bishop James Mathes
Sermon for Easter Sunday
St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego
Sunday, March 27, 2005
John 20: 1-10
Come Holy Spirit: Touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. AMEN.
I.
In the days leading up to my ordination and consecration, I was interviewed
by the San Diego Union Tribune and asked if I believed in the physical
resurrection of Jesus. I was accurately quoted in the paper as stating that
"I have to believe in it because it is the core of my faith. If you take
that away from me, I might as well be a used-car salesman". And in one
sentence, I irreparably damaged the Episcopal Church's evangelical efforts to
the used-car salesmen of our diocese. But seriously, that is what everything
hangs on isn't it, that the cold, dead, and broken body of Jesus was raised
from the dead:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone head been removed from the tomb…the other disciple, who reached the tomb first also, went in, and he saw and believed…
Today across the planet, preachers will struggle mightily with what they have not seen and cannot logically explain. Some will suggest that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a metaphor or a myth. Others will consider that Jesus' teaching had such a tremendous impact that he lived on in the life of the disciples. The resurrection of Jesus will be made accessible and comfortable. The resurrection of Jesus will be so carefully contained that we can go on with our lives as if nothing had happened. If that is how we come to accept Easter, well, there really isn't much reason to go any further with this business of proclaiming good news, because we will have ripped out the very Gospel that Jesus bought with his passion, his body and blood.
II.
To fully understand the resurrection, we must come to grips with our need for
new life. We must recognize that we begin this Easter just as the disciples,
"while it is still dark". We must understand that Jesus, our hope
is gone…dead and buried. All accounts go to great pains to belabor this.
Jesus is crucified dead and buried. And we should hasten to connect his death
and burial with our own. As Karl Barth wrote in his book, Credo, "By
a man's being buried it is evidently confirmed and sealed. - seeming in his
presence, actually already in his absence - that he has no longer a present,
any more than a future. He has become past…And the future toward which
all human present is running is just this: to be buried." (1) Mary Magdalene,
Peter, the disciple who followed had buried Jesus. Those early rising disciples
thought they were running to the dead and buried. Jesus was gone with no present
and no future. And they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, at that moment, that
they had no future, no hope. If Jesus was to end in this death and burial, we
then that would be the end of our story too.
III.
And now they stand before an empty tomb and wonder what to make of it. So, they
do the only thing they can do. They go in deep denial and go home. This is where
we seem to leave them in this gospel…in wonder and if we were to read between
the lines, in fear. They were fearful of the authorities who had committed this
tragic end. They were now fearful of what to make of a tomb so neatly abandoned.
From this point, all the evangelists go to great pains to give "resurrection
appearance" stories. These stories are evidentiary in their format. For
some, these stories are the basis for claiming a literal resurrection, yet others
see them as mere propaganda and thus the reason to doubt the same. I think it
is a grace that our lectionary invites us to stop here on Easter morning. We
are spared from more proofs, and we are encouraged to recognize that by the
time Mary and the others arrived that the main event had already happened. Jesus
was not there. As Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, "the resurrection
is the one and only event in Jesus' life that was entirely between him and God….He
had outgrown his tomb, which was too small a focus for the resurrection."
(2)
IV.
Jesus didn't wait around to conveniently prove a resurrection that doubters
and skeptics would still find a way to dispute. Rather he got on with the business
of being the risen Christ.
And it is this risen Christ that must be our focus, real death conquering,
new life giving Christ. It is this Christ that the disciples encountered on
roads out of town, like Emmaus, in fearful upper rooms, and by a charcoal fire.
It is Christ promising them a whole new world.
V.
And now here is where I trust that I will make you very uncomfortable. I want
you to know that it is a discomfort that I share, even as I say it. Jesus rose
from the dead…he really did. Frederick Buechner speaks my heart and says
it better when he wrote,
…what I believe happened and what in faith and with great joy I proclaim, is that he somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him. And I want to speak it plainly here, very unfancifully. He got up. He said, "Don't be afraid." Rich man, poor man, child; sick man, dying; man who cannot believe, scared sick man, lost one. Young man with your life ahead of you. "Don't be afraid." (3)
That is what today is about believing and proclaiming with great joy that he
got up. And because he did, everything is being made new, including you and
me. Burial is no longer an end to the past, present and future of Jesus. It
is no longer an end to the past, present and future of you and me.
VI.
In our age, anxiety and fear have conspired with a desire for certainty and
absolutes to make debate about faith and resurrection almost a raison d`être.
We replace following the Risen Christ with debating the raising of Jesus. Is
it no wonder that our churches seem to be institutions of the past, a dead past
at that? If we really believe what we say that we believe, then the past is
simply a prologue to a world being reborn in Christ. Change and transformation
are a given. When we follow the Risen Christ we can expect to live life off
balance and on the edge of an explosive new reality - pregnant with newness
and alive with passion for life.
So where do we go from here? I am aware that in this cathedral, at this moment,
there are those who believe in the resurrection and those who do not. Marianne
Sawicki, in an article published in Theology Today, correctly observed
that "action on behalf of the needy is not an implication of resurrection,
but a precondition for it. Talk about resurrection is literally meaningless
in the absence of such action. And so belief and action are good friends who
play well together. And the action of the seeker of faith in the risen Christ
and the believer in the Risen Christ is to find Jesus is in those who are on
the edges of human existence: the poor, the hungry, the naked, the mentally
ill, the aged, the prisoner, the sufferer and the dying. ." (4) So if you
believe, go look for Jesus. If you don't believe, go look for Jesus.
When you do this the resurrection will become real because you will find Jesus,
not as a concept but as a companion. Resurrection will not be a doctrinal debate
but a foundational reality.
VII.
We are called to be a people who follow the resurrected Christ. Believe in Him
who was crucified, dead, and buried. Believe in Him who rose from the Dead.
By caring for those who cannot find life on their own, you will find Jesus.
I must tell you I think the world of used car salesmen. Like all professions it can be a noble one. Really, it doesn't matter what I do or what you do, we can be used car salesmen or used car saleswomen. What matters is that we believe that Jesus is the Risen Christ and find the reality of the resurrection in a life of compassion and caring. And I close by again quoting Buechner,
Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in hi. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord is risen. (5)
Alleluia. AMEN.
(1) Barth, Karl. Credo. Scribner, 1962.
(2) Taylor, Barbara Brown. "Escape from the Tomb" from Christian
Century, April 1, 1998.
(3) Buechner, Frederick. "The End is Life" from The Magnificent
Defeat. Harper Collins Publishers, Inc. 1966, 1994.
(4) Sawacki, Marianne. "Recognizing the Risen Lord" from Theology Today, 1988.
(5) Buechner, Frederick. "The End is Life" from The Magnificent
Defeat. Harper Collins Publishers, Inc. 1966, 1994.