4-12-20
Easter
Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our
Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Ten “Holy Weeks” ago, while I was on internship in
southern Minnesota, I found myself on Holy Saturday in the empty sanctuary of
the church, helping to set up a giant paper mache empty tomb with the stone
rolled away. As the intern pastor, I had underestimated the importance of
this…. Thing… as part of the Holy Week observance of this congregation. Or at
least, I had underestimated how important it was to my internship supervisor. So,
I did as I was told, and in ten minutes time helped him set up this plywood
monstrosity that seemed to necessary to his Holy Week experience.
Today, Easter 2020, it’s hard to feel like celebrating. The
joyful “alleluias” can easily feel bitter in our mouths as we think about the
families for whom this Easter will be full of death rather than life. Instead
of stripping the altar on Maundy Thursday, we have been stripped of all the
trappings and traditions we have added to this day.
This experience rattles us to the very marrow of our
trust in God; it penetrates to the very core of who we believe our God to be.
It causes us to ask ourselves, how could a truly good God allow this to happen?
There are no easy answers to be found, not even on Easter.
During the very first Holy Week, the disciples had been
through a lot in the previous few days and had no answers either. Their beloved
leader, teacher, and friend had been arrested and cruelly killed while they had
all fled. Now they were hiding – at home - in fear, waiting, watching,
praying….. Waiting for discovery perhaps? Watching for whatever might happen
next? Praying for a miracle?
And then there was this thing, about an empty tomb and
some folded up grave linens. Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early in the
morning and got the shock of her life – she discovered the stone had been
rolled away. While Peter and the other disciple went back home puzzled, she
stuck around. So she was the first person to encounter the risen Jesus – even
though she didn’t recognize him (was he wearing a mask?) and he didn’t let her
touch him – apparently he was practicing social distancing.
These years later, we may wonder at how long it takes for
them to “get it” – Jesus is raised! Empty grave! Tada! Party time! But we have the luxury of knowing the end of
this story. Throughout these three days, as we commemorate the last days of
Jesus’ earthly ministry, we do so knowing the ending. We know that the end of
this story is a triumphant one – Jesus rises from the dead and the power of
death is defeated for all time. The good guys win. So why aren’t the disciples
living like it?
We know that through Christ’s death and resurrection, our
sins have been forgiven and we are new people. But we don’t always live like
this. We know that death has been defeated. But we still live in fear of it. We
know that Jesus has conquered evil for all time. But there is still so much
suffering and sadness in this world.
It is so hard to live as Easter People, because we don’t
know the end of our own story. We are living in the in-between, now more than
ever, remaining in our homes behind closed doors, waiting for a miracle. We are
the characters in the middle of God’s story, overwhelmed by our circumstances,
consumed by conflicts, and persecuted by adversaries. In every chapter and in every paragraph, we
cry out to God, “Is there a plot here?” In this way, we are no different from
the disciples. We thought God had come to fix everything. Make our lives
better. To end the suffering. To make sure that no one ever had to die again.
During the first Holy Week, the people still prayed that
their messiah would come and deliver them from their bitter existence, to
mightily kick the Romans out of their land and establish a great kingdom of
their own. But I imagine that they were getting very tired of waiting. God had
seemed to be silent for so long, they must have begun to wonder if God had
indeed forgotten them.
Fast forward two thousand years, and how much has really
changed? For all of our modern marvels of technology, our breakthroughs in
science, our fast travel and even faster means of communication, are we better
off now? In many ways, yes, our lives have vastly improved compared to those in
the past. With all our technological prowess, there are so many ways that we
can remain connected during this time. But it also means that we have found
more efficient and elaborate ways to hurt one another, and make the vulnerable
even more at risk. In all this time, we have not really changed.
But in all this time, God has not changed either. And
that’s a good thing. The faithfulness, the love, and the goodness of the Lord
toward God’s people have remained the same, today, tomorrow, and always – and
nowhere is it more apparent than in Jesus’s rising from the dead.
Truth
be told, will we really feel like saying – Alleluia- when our lives seem like
on long Good Friday that never ends. We are in uncharted
territory, which feels both uncomfortable and scary. But, for over two thousand
years, Good Friday has always been followed by Easter.
The church may be empty today, on Easter 2020. The church
is empty, but so is the tomb. Easter arrives, even when we are hidden away in
our homes. Not unlike how Christmas arrived in Whoville, despite the Grinch’s
theft of all the precious "who-trappings." This year there will be no Easter
lilies, or gimmicky children’s sermon, or plywood paper mache tombs…. And yet,
even so, Easter morning has arrived. It’s here. We made it. We’re still
standing.
While at the same time we celebrate Easter 2020, we look
to another Easter – and Easter when this pandemic is over, the dust settling,
and we can attempt to find a new normal. And we long for the final Easter, when
we are welcomed into the arms of Jesus, when illness, suffering, and death will
be no more.
In the meantime, we Lutherans do what we do best – live
into the nuance of living somewhere between “once upon a time” and “happily
ever after,” somewhere between the first Easter and the Last Easter. And in
between those two points in time are still a million possibilities to be lived.
Some good, some bad, all holy.
Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson wrote a book of poems and
meditations called “Ordinary Blessings.” And in her poem called “False Choices,”
she writes, “Draw me to the mysteries of an ever-expanding universe, a
redemption that is already and not yet, a God who is bending time and space …
we are resuscitated wild and holy, wherever death and life blur… Surely, we are
made for more than two dimensions and the simple chronology of life!” (70-1)
Though songs of praise and alleluias may stick in our
throats today…… that’s ok. Disasters can
and will still come, but we do not need to fear them. Jesus is the plot. Jesus
is the meaning. Jesus is there, in the prayer, in the waiting, in the watching
for what is to come. We may not know what the end of this next chapter might
bring for us, but GOD IS THE ONE WHO WROTE THE BOOK. And God loves us so much
that God just HAD to “spoil” the ending for us:
Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed, ALLELUIA! Amen.
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| Our Good Friday Zoom Tenebrae worship |
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