Easter Sunday, April 17th, 2022
Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Every Easter, and any large family gathering when I was a kid, we gathered at my dad’s parent’s house. And no meal was complete without the special prayer we dubbed “The Posselt Prayer.” It has 3 parts - first is the very familiar “Come lord Jesus” prayer. The second and third parts are from Psalm 118 - “Oh give thanks unto the Lord for he is good for his mercy endures forever” followed by “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” To this day, whenever there are 2 or more Posselts gathered for a meal, no matter WHERE we are, we look at one another and ask “are we praying the Posselt Prayer?”
But eventually the family meals became smaller and more sporadic. Both my dad’s parents died years ago. But this special prayer lives on, appropriately today on Easter Sunday- “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” was my grandpa’s favorite verse.
This is the day that the Lord has made, but do we really feel like rejoicing? Today, this Easter morning 2022, what were you expecting to find or to feel?
Were you expecting that, after wandering around in the wilderness of Lent, you would come out on the other side, to rise this Easter morning completely refreshed, restored, and renewed and in an ”Easter Mood”? But life doesn’t exactly work out in the way we expect it to, does it? If anything, the year 2020 taught us that.
Like many of you, and like the women followers of Jesus, I woke up in the darkness of this morning to the very real, very present realities of pain, brokenness, and suffering in our world and in our lives. Our lives are still in the same mess that they were in yesterday. We’re still two years into a pandemic that really won’t actually end, there is still violence around the world and in Ukraine, our weather has been off kilter around the country all week. We still find ourselves buried in all sorts of dark tombs - illness, broken relationships, loss, mental health struggles, and an unknown future.
And yet…. here we are, on Easter morning,..... I’m here. You’re here. Life is poking out of the ground all around us here. And Easter morning has arrived here, and it DOES change things - just not in the ways we expect.
Really, this whole week tells the story of the unexpected: How Jesus was welcomed into town with a parade on Sunday, and being nailed to cross on Frida.
How on Thursday Jesus washed his disciples feet, even Judas’s feet, and shared his last meal with all his disciples, the very ones who would betray him, deny him, and stand silently by as Jesus was arrested, tried, mocked, and beaten before being nailed to a cross.
These women had seen him be buried that day, so naturally they expected to find death that morning as well. They expected to find the body of their beloved Jesus, so that they could care for him one last time by anointing his body with spices. They expected to find death in a place OF death, as we all would.
Instead, the women found the stone covering his tomb had been rolled away, and the shock of an empty tomb with no body. The women found two dazzling dudes, with a laser pointer question for them: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
These women expected to find death in a place of death, but instead became the first witnesses to the resurrection of our Lord. They were the first to share the GOOD WORD, that death no longer has the LAST WORD.
All this past week, we followed in the disciples footsteps by remembering too. We remembered Jesus’ welcome into Jerusalem, we remember the night Jesus was betrayed, and how he washed the feet of ALL of his disciples, even Judas. We remembered Jesus’ command to love one another, and to be sustained by his body and blood in the Eucharist in remembrance of him. Then we remembered his death and burial on Good Friday. But that is not the end of the story.
We who have been buried in the darkness of tombs for - buried under things such as, divorce, fear, depression, numbness, stress - for one season, or maybe for years…. we have also been buried with Jesus in our baptisms, as Paul wrote and we profess in our baptism liturgy.
And so, being baptized, we will be united with Jesus in his resurrection. New life sprouts up out of death. As my favorite Easter hymn reminds us: “Now, the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been. Love is come again like wheat arising green.”
Like when I visit the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, and I see their gravestone etched with a gorgeous picture of the family farm, I know it lives on in my dad, my brother, and will hopefully continue for future generations of Posselts, just as the “Posselt Family Prayer” lives on.
Why do we look for the living among the dead? Because we may have forgotten what we already knew. We expect to find death in a place of death, but Jesus has done the unexpected. He has risen from the dead. He IS NOT HERE. He WAS here, but he is not here any longer.
Instead, Jesus has vacated the tomb and allowed some women to be his spokespeople. And, unexpectedly, he is actually nowhere to be found - at least by the women and later by Peter. Instead, today we rely on remembering what we have been told by Jesus and by the followers of Jesus - that Jesus WILL show up… even in the throes of a ham and chocolate bunny hangover, when we have to go back to work or school or our regularly scheduled lives.
In fact, Jesus has already gone on ahead of us, to meet up with us out there on the roads we travel. On this day, which the Lord has made, and tomorrow too. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia! Amen.
