Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon: Easter Sunday
April 8, 2007
“Difficult, Yet So Wonderful”
1 Corinthians 15: 19-26 and Luke 24: 1-12

Let us pray.

Halleluiah, Christ is risen! That is the wonderful news of Easter. And yet it is not always news that we find easy to accept or to understand. We are, of course, not alone in that hesitation. “But these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.” (Luke 24: 11) The stone rolled away, the dazzling angels, the empty tomb, and the risen Christ -- all seemed farfetched to the disciples. That reaction doesn’t surprise us, does it? Might even resemble thoughts we have had at times. That is why we sometimes focus -- not on the events at the tomb and beyond -- but on the other aspects of Easter, the joys of an awakening spring -- the arriving crocuses and the new tree buds -- the gathering of families, the fun of Easter egg baskets and hunts, and the pleasure of new Easter outfits. They are to be sure all wonderful and worth enjoying, and celebrating.

We do at times, however, distance ourselves from the details of this amazing event -- at least I have ---- because they just don’t make sense. How could the stone have rolled away? Did someone come in the night and move it? Who would do that? And what of the absent body -- the discarded shrouds -- did the disciples come for their beloved Messiah? Then again maybe it’s better simply to move on -- lest we really begin to believe the Da Vinci Code and all those other stories of Jesus’ hypothesized “other” life. Yet, we can’t and don’t fully move on. As one observer has said, the first verdict on Easter morning – on the resurrection of Jesus -- was “nonsense” – it’s just an “idle tale.”[1] And yet, what does Peter do after that early verdict? He immediately gets up and runs, not walks, to the tomb. On Easter morning Peter had an unquenchable hope that what Jesus had said, “That the Son of God – the Messiah -- would rise after three days and defeat death” – was true. And that hope still lurks in many of us, I believe. But it was more than simple hope that lurked within Peter. On Easter morning Peter was propelled by a realization that there is an unsolvable mystery that surrounds this event; proof of Easter is not found in logic and analysis. Rather it is found in the inescapable loving power of faith. As William Sloane Coffin wrote

[T]he resurrection cannot be proved, [but] it can be known, experienced, and it can be trusted. Faith … is not believing without proof; it’s trusting without reservation. The resurrection faith is a willingness – on the basis of all we have heard, all that we have observed, all that we have thought deeply about and experienced at a level far deeper than the mind ever comprehends – faith is the willingness to risk our lives on the conviction that while we human beings kill God’s love we can never keep it dead and buried.[2]

Peter understood that and, I believe, we can and do as well. After 9-11 the places of worship in this country were crowded as they had not been for many, many years. Why? Was it the power of fear as some have suggested. No, it was, I believe, because in our innermost cores, we did not and do not believe that we live in a “Good Friday” world -- a world in which love and goodness died on the Cross -- but rather we live in a world in which Easter rescues love and goodness from death. In those days and weeks after 9-11, we needed to get in touch with that belief. But as the subsequent diminishing attendance numbers reveal we have a tendency to let go of or of at least to place that Easter belief behind the veneer of a seemingly successful and untroubled life. It is appropriate on this Easter morning to take a look at what it means to believe in Easter -- the empty tomb and the Risen Lord.

The first people to get it -- to appreciate what had happened on Easter -- were the women at the tomb (three of whom Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary (the mother of James) are identified in our text from Luke.) Now it is important to understand why they got it. It was not because the two angels in dazzlingly clothes appeared before them. But rather because the women were reminded – indeed, realized that what had happened was what Jesus predicted. It was not because they had tangible proof. It was not because they knew who rolled the stone away. Rather it was because they remembered what Jesus had said about his death and resurrection and now believed him.

The earliest reports of Jesus’ death – those found in Paul’s letters focus on Jesus’ reappearances and on his continuing presence in the hearts and minds of his disciples. The details of the empty tomb do not appear until the writing of the gospels some decades after Paul died and many decades after Jesus’ crucifixion. That is not to suggest that the reports of the empty tomb are not true, but rather that for the early church the empty tomb was not critical. What was critical after the crucifixion was the presence of Jesus in the lives of those who followed him. He did not die and disappear from their lives.

I submit that for us too the details of the rolled away stone, the empty tomb, and the absent body may be of less importance. Their implausibility is certainly not a reason to reject Easter. It is a mystery to be sure. We cannot figure it out logically for it does not comport with our experience. As we know truth resides in fiction. Think of the truths of Hamlet and Macbeth. Is it surprising that there should be truth in a mystery -- let alone in the resurrection story? We often know without proof or full understanding. These helium balloons attached to the pulpit are wonderful metaphors for Easter. If I let this balloon go it will rise up. Now not many of us here fully understand the physics of that process. At best we know that the space inside the balloon made up of helium molecules is lighter than a comparable amount of air and so some how the helium balloon floats up. How high will it rise? Will it float up all the way to the edge of the atmosphere; that’s when things get more complicated. But we trust our eyes and our experience -- we have seen other balloons rise up, we don’t need to understand the details – how it all works.

What is the essential truth of Easter? This is an extraordinary event. Think of it in personal terms. A loving parent permits the death of a child to save humanity: a sacrifice beyond measure. And a sacrifice undertaken for the same people that were capable in hate and in fear of bringing about the death of that beloved child. And what is the outcome? On Good Friday the people are not consumed in fire, drowned by floods or destroyed by earthquakes. No, Good Friday is followed by the dawn of Easter. God forgives and grants us all a new start this day and every day. The message of Easter is that “there is more mercy in God than [there] is sin in us.”[3] One of the gifts of Easter is that we live life always as forgiven sinners – with each dawn we are -- through the grace revealed this Easter morning -- given a new start.

The proof of this is neither in the empty tomb nor in the fulfillment of Jesus’ persistent predictions. But it is most powerfully known -- note I said known not proven -- in the power of the Easter event to transform. A wise commentator once said, “Easter, begins in mystery and it ends, like all high things, in a great courage.”[4] Peter discovered the mystery when he courageously ran to the tomb. But it was revealed even more through a courageously transformed life devoted to and ultimately given in service to the Risen One.

Certainly, religion has been misused and has lead to oppression and destruction. But think about our world -- about our history -- without Easter. If the story of Holy Week had stopped on Good Friday, Peter and the disciples – having denied Jesus and fled into the night at the arrest -- would have disappeared from history. Peter and the other followers were transformed by Easter. In the resurrection – in the continued light of Christ shining in our world victorious over death -- lives have been transformed. It is that eternal, living light which kept alive learning in the Christian monasteries during the dark ages. It is that living light that led St. Francis of Assisi to challenge the power, wealth and tyranny of the Middle Ages. It is that living light that led a woman, Mother Teresa, to love and care for the poorest, sickest and most shunned in India. It is that living light which gave strength to a man, Martin Luther King, Jr., who ignored police dogs and rubber truncheons to demand that all of God’s children white and black be treated equally and with dignity. It is that living light which empowers the unseen saints to feed and care for the homeless, to seek to eliminate genocide, to preserve this God-given environment and empowers so many other known and unknown acts of love. Because the light did not die on Good Friday but was resurrected and continues to burn -- our lives have been changed.

The proof of the resurrection is all around us. God’s love of us through Jesus Christ is alive. Death did not and does not stop that love. How can that be? The holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, wrote this while in one of the death camps:

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were alive. I knew only one thing – which I have learned well by now; love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know if my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out …. But at the moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. [5]

Some of you who have lost a loved one may share Frankl’s experience. The message of the resurrection for all of us -- no matter how fully we understand or completely we accept it -- is that love did not die on Good Friday. The love of God continues and death is overcome. That promise of Easter is not only true for the Risen Christ but so too for us.

There are moments in life when I think the truth of the resurrection shines through. I want to share one of those moments that I was privileged to glimpse. Some years ago my minister, Gordon Forbes, and I went to visit a fellow church member at Westmoreland Church in Washington. He was an economics professor at American University who was also studying at Wesley Seminary. We were meeting with him as a formality prior to recommending that the church take him in care as a candidate for the ministry. This fellow had suffered a massive heart attack some months before. He was so weakened by congestive heart failure that he did not meet us at the door or even get up when we came in. As we sat having coffee and tea, he gripped his teacup with both hands to steady it. It was quite clear that he did not have long to live. He was never going to complete divinity school or enter the ministry. He was to be sure on a list to receive a heart transplant, but his prospects for receiving a new heart did not look good. Several weeks later I learned that miraculously he had received a new heart. In the inner city of Baltimore, a 22 year old African-American man had been killed -- the victim of a drive by shooting.[6] He was the heart donor.

Why do I tell this story? Because it seems to me to reflect two fundamental aspects of Easter. First, in the decision of the young man’s parents to allow his organs to be used by others, I see the continuing presence of the light that overcomes darkness. I see in that act the power of love. Those parents though they experienced the pain of a horrible Good Friday, nevertheless believed in Easter’s victory. But this gift also was transforming for the recipient. Out of death he received new life. A privileged white man – now engaged in ministry--carries within his chest the heart of an African-American child of the ghetto, the son of poverty and the victim of violence.[7] In him is the essence of Easter. Out of death has come new life. In talking with Gordon Forbes some months after the transplant, the recipient said, “For the first time I understand what it means to say, ‘Jesus died for me.’”[8]

We can’t prove Easter happened and we should probably stop trying. But we can know Easter and we can experience it. I, for one, do not believe that we live in a Good Friday world. There are to be sure Good Fridays in all of our lives, but Good Friday is not the last word. Easter is. Powerless love is victorious over loveless power and life is victorious over death. Christ is risen, Hallelujah! The light overcomes the darkness and offers us each day the opportunity, not to change our circumstances, but ourselves -- not simply to improve but to be transformed.[9] Hallelujah, Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Thanks be to God.