“Easter People in a Good Friday World”
A sermon by
The Rev. Robert M. Hardies
All Souls Church, Unitarian
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Our first reading this Easter morn is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24, Verses 1 through 12:
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.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of Jesus. While they were
wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood before them. 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?
He is not here. He has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee, “The son of man must be delivered
into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and, on the third day, be raised again.” Then they remembered his words. When the
women came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to the others, but they did not believe the women
because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips
of linen lying by themselves and then he went away, wondering what had happened.
And our second reading is from the poet, e e cummings:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Well, every year, there is always a handful of people in every church who come to church on Easter Sunday spoiling for a fight. They practically dare the preacher to claim that the bodily resurrection actually took place because they’re having none of it. As the preacher steps into the pulpit for the Easter sermon, you can almost see this look in their eyes that kind of says, “Bring it on.” And they grab their notepads and sharpen their pencils and begin to deconstruct his arguments. After the service in the receiving line, instead of an Easter hug, they pummel the poor preacher with their own evidence and arguments. Some of these folks really do hope to one day convince their pastor of his errant ways; others, I think, harbor the secret desire that one day their pastor will find the words that convince them to believe.
Now, while I know for a fact that some version of this exchange takes place in churches of every denomination, anecdotal evidence does suggest that a high percentage of Easter skeptics go to Easter service at the Unitarian church. So, let me just take this moment, right at the outset, to welcome any Easter doubters who may be among us this morning as well as all the Easter believers and all of you – and this may be most of us – who still aren’t quite sure what to make of the mystery of Easter morning but who, nonetheless, wouldn’t miss it for the world. How good it is that we can worship together with one another in this church that both welcomes our doubts and that affirms our faith. So Happy Easter, one and all.
But let me add that anyone who did come eager for an Easter debate this morning will, I am afraid, be disappointed by my sermon. Because I have to tell you that I just don’t buy into this whole back and forth about the so-called truth of Easter. You see, for me, Easter is not a debate. Easter is an experience, the experience of resurrection. And as I see it, my job on Easter Sunday is not to convince you that the resurrection happened, but to remind you that it happens. It’s not to muster arguments to bolster the resurrection claims of the New Testament but rather to point out the abundant evidence for resurrection contained in what Thoreau called “the newest testament,” the freshest and most contemporary revelation of God, which is our lives. The way I look at it, each and every one of us in this room this morning is proof positive of the resurrection. For who among us doesn’t have a story to tell, a very personal story, of rebirth, of emerging from the tomb of depression or despair, pain or addiction? Who among us can’t point to a time in our lives when all seemed lost, and then suddenly hope returned? We woke up one morning and we wanted to sing with the poet, “I who have died am alive again today and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birthday of life and of love and wings and of the gay, great happening illimitably earth?” You, you, are witnesses to your very own resurrections. What other proof do you need?
I know that I can say as your pastor, as one who knows many of the resurrection stories contained in this room this morning, that you all are all the evidence I’ve ever needed to believe in Easter. We are, all of us, Easter people, Easter people who can testify to a resurrecting power at work in our lives. Easter people. How does it feel when I call you Easter people? Does it feel like a fit for you? Some of you may resist that name. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, “Well you know, I’m not exactly feeling that Easter blood coursing through my veins this morning.” In fact some of you might want to say to me, “Rob, I’m feeling more like Good Friday today than Easter Sunday.” And I’ve got to say that I understand that sentiment too. Someone, I don’t remember who it was, once said that we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world, people who contain within us proof of resurrection yet who walk through a world that is undeniably filled with death and suffering. Easter people in a Good Friday world.
That line has especially haunted me this year as the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war falls right in the middle of Holy Week. Tens of thousands of lives lost, an untold number of wounded whose lives will never be the same. Fifty billion dollars spent, and counting. Add to that Afghanistan, Darfur, Tibet. Add to that the suffering that we will find when we walk out the front door of this church every morning in our city and our neighborhood where poverty and violence prevent the flourishing of life. Add it all up and it sounds a lot to me like a Good Friday world.
That’s why I think we’re all here today, and why Easter Sunday is, every year, the biggest Sunday of the year. I think that we come to be reminded that we are an Easter people. We come to be reminded that we have been witnesses to the resurrection and we come to find whatever it’s going to take, whatever it is we need to live as Easter people in a Good Friday world.
I think our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke provides us with a clue as to how we might do this, how we might live as Easter people in this Good Friday world. The story, as you know, begins very much in a Good Friday place. It is early on Sunday morning and the women are preparing the spices and the ointments so that they can get ready to bury their friend, Jesus. Filled with grief, they walk to the tomb to prepare his body for burial, only to discover that the stone has been rolled away. And just as they arrive, two angels appear to the women in a sudden flash of light to tell them that Jesus is no longer here, that he has arisen from the tomb and is alive. And then the angels ask the women a question which, in the context of the story is really just a rhetorical question, but which I think for us carries a lot of import. The angels ask the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why do you look for the living among the dead? Every time I read that question, I imagine that the women are us. And I imagine them kind of putting their hands on their hips and saying to the angels, “Well, what would you have us do otherwise? How else do you expect us to find the living in a Good Friday world except by looking among the dead? How else are we supposed to find hope in the midst of despair? How else are we supposed to find joy in the midst of our suffering? We have no choice but to search for the living among the dead. This stuff doesn’t get served to us on a silver platter.”
Friends, this I believe is exactly what a Good Friday world demands of an Easter people. It demands that we do what the women at the tomb did; it demands that we become adept at finding the living among the dead. For me, this is perhaps the greatest spiritual challenge of our lives, to discover hope in precisely those places where hope is hardest to find.
I know I’ve shared with you before my definition of religion. It’s a simple definition and perhaps it’s not a complete one. But for me it cuts to the heart of the matter. For me, religion is people telling stories of hope. Not false stories, not tall tales, but true stories of hope. Now, sometimes we need to dig a little deeper for those stories. In a Good Friday world, the headlines are not usually about hope. Hope is usually buried somewhere deep in the story, if you will. And so, yes, Wednesday was the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. And no, I don’t see any end in sight. But on Wednesday, at one end of 16th Street, a handful of demonstrators gathered to bear witness for peace. They gathered in front of the White House and held up a prayer for peace in a time of war. And on the other end of 16th Street, at Walter Reed Hospital, wounded soldiers on prosthetic legs and their caretakers and their doctors worked to piece back together lives broken by that war. Easter people in a Good Friday world.
The headlines last week told about the fire on Mt. Pleasant Street and how 200 of our neighbors were displaced from their homes in the worst fire that D.C. has seen in 30 years. Not as many people, though, went to a press conference on Wednesday, where Jasmine Romero, the tenant organizer of those residents spoke about her tenants’ ongoing commitment to return to their home on Mt. Pleasant Street and of the Mayor’s commitment to provide the funding to make that possible. And not all of you were there when we turned over the check that we collected here last Sunday, close to $20,000 from All Souls and a handful of other churches [Applause] to help those people, to help Jasmine Romero and her neighbors, return to their home. Easter people in a Good Friday world.
Tomorrow I’m going to get on a plane with about 40 other members of this congregation, of all ages, and we’re going to fly to New Orleans to work alongside the people of that city. Talk about an Easter people in a Good Friday world. The people of New Orleans who had worked against so many odds, against racism and economic injustice and the incompetent response of our government and who have, nonetheless, worked to rebuild their lives, one home at a time. We’re going down there and we have not only a physical task of rebuilding, but I have set for us a spiritual task, which is to learn something from the people of New Orleans about what it means to be an Easter people in a Good Friday world. And to go down there and to identify what it is that are the resurrecting powers in our world and which are the crucifying powers in our world. For those of you who aren’t going with us, I invite you to pray for us next week and to also engage in that reflection, to ask yourselves which are the resurrecting powers in this world and which the crucifying.
Friends, Easter is not up for debate. It is not a debate. It is an experience. And it is not only an experience; it is a spiritual practice. So practice resurrection. Be instruments of resurrection in a Good Friday world. And as you do so, I promise that you will come to discover that to call our world a Good Friday world is only part of the story. It is just as true to say that we are Easter people living in an Easter world. For everywhere around us we see signs of resurrection. All of our senses can testify. Our noses smell the freshness of earth and the sweet blossoms. Our eyes see the return of color and brightness. Our ears hear the songs of lovers and birds and little children. Our hearts swell at the blessing of a child.
“I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday. This is the birthday of life and of love and of wings and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.” Go forth now into that good earth, and be instruments of resurrection. Amen. [Applause]