Sermon: The Subtlety of Easter
… and returning from the tomb, the women told
all this to the eleven
and to all the rest…But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and
they did not believe them.
John Sumwalt, a retired United
Methodist pastor, has written this for his Easter column this weekend in the newspapers
of Madison, Wisconsin:
Author,
Philip Yancey,[he says,] tells of some history he learned while visiting
“...the
tip of Argentina, the region named Tierra del Fuego, (‘land of fire’)
discovered by
Magellan's sailors in 1528. They noticed
fires burning on the shore.
The natives tending
the fires however, paid no attention to the great ships as they
sailed through the
straits. Later they explained that they
had considered the ships
an apparition, so different
were they from anything seen before. They
lacked the
experience, even the imagination,
to decode evidence passing right before their
eyes.”
Yancey
asks, "What are we missing? What do we not see?"
[And Sumwalt
himself then goes on to ask,] What can we not see? What is it that
God
is doing right in front of us that we cannot or will not see, that our cultural
assumptions,
and our basic understanding of reality in this age of science, does not
allow
us to see?
Fredrick
Buechner suggests that “We have seen more than we let on, even to
ourselves.
Through some moment of beauty or pain, some subtle turning of our
lives, we
catch glimmers at least of what saints are blinded by; only then, unlike
the
saints, we go
on as if nothing has happened...”
In the Gospel story of the disciples’
first encounter with the resurrection of Jesus, I wonder if the difference
between the women (who “remembered his words” and believed), and all the rest
(who thought it was “an idle tale, and … did not believe”) is that the women
saw and heard the two bright men – two angels, presumably, who explained to
them what had happened, and helped them see what was in front of them with
opened eyes.
The stone was rolled away, and with
the help of the angels, the women were able to see that something even bigger
than that had shifted in the world, and in what was possible and real. The tomb was empty, and more than just
deepening disappointment and even greater distance from the one they loved, the
women were enabled to see the tomb as a womb from which new life and new
beginnings had come to birth.
For the others, though, there was no
such immediate and supernatural help. A
rolled-away stone is not a clear sign; it can mean a number of things. An empty tomb by itself is not proof of
anything; a tomb can be emptied in any number of ways. Even the women’s story at first did not seem believable.
To the others, the good news of
resurrection comes in bits and pieces, in glimpses and hints, like a series of nudges and clues of something new
and holy overturning the world and touching their lives. And what they have to do is to notice the
signs, connect the dots, fill in the gaps, and from them figure out the promise
of new life as faithfully as they can.
I
wonder if that’s where we still are today a lot of the time.
In
the Gospels no one sees Jesus rise and emerge from the tomb. The resurrection happens at night and in
darkness. It’s not something anyone
causes or makes happen – not something we can schedule or control. It’s a holy miracle and mystery that happens
in secret, in the hidden parts of Earth, in God’s own time and way. All of which make it hard for us sometime to
believe in it, to trust it, and to continue to live towards it. As John Sumwalt writes, it goes against “our
cultural assumptions, and our basic understanding of reality in this age of
science,” of mechanics, of mathematical planning and psychosocial engineering.
It’s
a difficulty we face on a global scale.
I heard David Suzuki interviewed this week and he and the interviewer
talked about the tragedy of some scientists and ecological advocates today
beginning to give up the fight for Earth’s life – of not believing that
anything can change or be raised to new life, especially within humanity, just
because they cannot see how to make it happen.
And
it’s a difficulty as well on the most personal level as we wonder sometimes
whether anything good can come of what we see and where we and our loved ones
are. Can anything change? Can anything be made new? Begun again and in a new way?
And
what am I to say? What can any of us
say, to prove the resurrection? To
convince others, or even ourselves, to believe that God still works in the dark
and in secret, under the surface of life and history as we know it, to bring
new life out of death, and turn tombs into wombs of new life?
Maybe
like the first women, all we can do is tell stories – simple stories that maybe
provide a few clues, convey a few signs, offer a few dots that maybe we or
others can start to connect – as long as people are willing to do that and fill
in the gaps as faithfully as they can.
Years ago up in Bruce County I heard a story
third-hand of a woman who was badly abused by her husband. She loved him, and didn’t really want to
leave him, but finally for her own survival and well-being, she did. Even as she left, though, she carried a lot
of baggage. She hurt a lot, and hated her
ex-husband for it. She didn’t like
hating him so she tried forgiving, but every time she saw him all the hurt and hate
were just there. She felt trapped and
closed within it. So she prayed to be
able to forgive. She prayed a long
time. It didn’t seem to make any
difference. Until one day she phoned up
her minister to say she had seen her ex-husband that day, they had talked, and
even though there was still no way they would ever be together again, she
realized as she talked to him that she had forgiven him. The hurt was still there – always would be,
but not the hate. Without her realizing
it, or knowing how or even when it had happened, a miracle of forgiveness had come
and inside herself she was free.
More recently I was talking with a man
struggling with addiction. Addictions,
he says, never go away. Once addicted,
always an addict – even if a recovering one.
But then he said something about the power of acting “as if.” What happens, he said, is you sort out what
life would be like if you were free, if you had the virtues you long to have,
if you had the freedom you are really meant to enjoy. And you start to live and structure your day
and plan your time “as if” it were true.
You do it over and over again, one day at a time. And somewhere, at some point along the line,
without your really even being aware of when it happens, without any fanfare
announcing it, at some point it’s no longer “as if” – it’s actually “what is.” And how does it happen, he says? I don’t know.
When and how does it start? All I
know is that at some point along the way it has, and I can see that it has.
Are
these stories of resurrection? Of God
working in the dark and in secret, under the surface and in the inner parts of
our life as we know it to bring something new to be? Of God bringing new life out of death in ways
we cannot control or make happen, but only pray for and live towards in faith?
And in the absence of bright young men – angels in our midst to announce things to us,
are we able today to hear the story of God and the power of God turning tombs
into wombs of new life, and believe it?
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