Sunday, April 20, 2014

Grace-filled insanity: Easter and the way of the cross

Scripture: John 20:1-18

             So, I have the thankless task of figuring out what to say on another Easter Sunday, and, like many who do this, it sometimes feels like the Holy Spirit just says, “Shut up and let the service speak for itself today.” And I probably should do just that, because I’m not sure I’ll really add much—sleep-deprived and hopelessly caffeinated as I am; like the kid who chases his ritalin with an energy drink. But, knowing the tradition as I do, I'm guessing there are some reading this who did not follow through Thursday and Friday of this week, and it strikes me that maybe my role is to tell you about where we’ve been, so you can fully appreciate where we are today.
            As such, I’m going to let you in on something crazy: Jesus died. On Friday. And not just operation table flat-lining but like bleeding out and embalmed and utterly stone-cold gone. So, that’s crazy.
            Also, if you haven’t been along for the whole ride you might have missed that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own, turned over to the Roman authorities by the chief priests, and sentenced to death by a largely apathetic Pontius Pilate. This is all good background info for today, because resurrection without death is nothing—absolutely nothing. Yes, we rightly lift up Easter as the seminal moment in the history of the Christian faith, and let’s be clear: Jesus rising from the dead is the most important thing in scripture. But I worry every Easter because I look out and I wonder, “Do you know what led up to today?” And not just Good Friday and the passion narratives but also everything that happens between the birth of Christ and his death, and everything the preceded that. And then I start to wonder about those who I see often, and again I wonder, “Have you been listening? Do you even know what led up today?” And then I look in the mirror at three in the morning after changing a diaper, bleary-eyed, wearing clothes inside-out, and still smelling like fire from coming a little too close to re-enacting the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego last night, and I think, “Do I even know what led up to today?”
            We are Easter Sunday people, which is great, but there is no Easter without the cross and no cross without the long history of our fall from grace and our desperate need for redemption. I worry because when all hell breaks loose in our lives it is not enough to know that there is such a thing as resurrection, because you need to know that that resurrection is for you and it is grace-filled insanity that looks nothing like the rest of our lives. The empty tomb requires a cross, which means that our redemption requires walking through loneliness and despair. We are Easter people living in a Holy Saturday, in-between kind of world, and we’re not always aware of how we got there.
            I worry about this every year because I know some of you are hurting and you come to church just once or twice or a few times a year, and you get the impression that church is a place of clean-cut appearances, orchestrated musical interludes, and well-rehearsed words—that it’s a big party with trumpets and hymns for people who dress up and look nice. But my goodness that is a terrible representation of the church! On Easter we break out all the big guns and sing “Alleluia! Jesus is Risen!” because we know from where we’ve come. We’ve been walking that despairing road, and it is only one who has walked that road of pain and regret and loneliness who can stand on Easter morning and say, “Alleluia!” because it is only a person who knows they were sick who celebrates on the day their cancer is gone.
            The tomb is empty, but that means nothing if there was nobody in there in the first place. You need the whole story. You need it if you worship every week or hardly at all. You need it if you’re the pastor, or in the choir, or completely anonymous and happy to keep it that way. You need the whole story, because the whole story is brutally honest: it tells you that you were and are dead in sin; you are capable of terrible things—things you will never admit—and some of which you have even done. That’s the whole story, and if you can’t connect that with what happens here then there will forever be a disconnect between what it means to be Christian and the adversity you face in life. Without a wider picture you will find yourself dead in sin without realizing that that’s where all of us stand—I am not more holy or less sinful than you, but the only way to know that is to follow along the whole way; to watch me just about set myself on fire and stumble through words; and then notice the brokenness in everyone else around you. We are dead in sin and that’s how it should have remained—it’s what you and I deserve after all—but then all heaven broke loose on earth: Jesus came to earth for you and me, showing us how to live.
And that way he lived was the way of the cross. Unlike most things you get to decide in life, the road of the cross is one you walk whether you like it or not. You will pick up so many crosses in your life. Your friends will feel like a cross. Your marriage will feel like a cross. Your children will feel like a cross. Your work will feel like a cross. Your Minnesota sports teams are always great examples of cross-bearing. Your parents and in-laws will feel like crosses. Your health will feel like a cross. Even, maybe especially, your religion will feel like a cross. And that’s because it is, and they are—all of those things are crosses that we gladly or not-so-gladly bear through life. It does not matter if you are religious or not; if you seek out relationships or not; if you are healthy or not; you will find a cross to bear, or, lacking one, you will create one for yourself.
            And that’s where we stand this morning, carrying all our crosses, hunched over by life, when Mary comes to us, just as she came to the disciples, and says, “I have seen the Lord!” This is the most absurd statement in the history of history, but its worth can only be grasped by somebody doubled over from the weight of cross-bearing. That moment of realization that cross-bearing is not all there is? That’s Easter—not trumpets and nice dresses, but our faces covered in manure, dragging burdens uphill toward the inevitability of death only to find that through death the road continues and there is something more great and wonderful than we could have dared ever hope—through death we walk, finally free from the burdens we’ve been carrying, into new life, resurrected and whole.
            We sing “Alleluia!” for the empty tomb because we know what we are without it. We dress up because, in our small way, we are showing a little of how Christ has changed us. This is the most important day in the church year, and it is the day to celebrate and to sing and to pray and to praise and to enjoy the freedom of life-resurrected, and it matters most of all because of the journey. We were dead in sin—stone-cold dead, just the same as Jesus—but the empty tomb means something extraordinary: Death is dead. The crosses we bear lead through death into eternal life, which is astounding, absurd, and absolutely crazy. That’s the journey we’ve been on; the journey that continues from here as we go forward as resurrection-people, carrying our crosses but knowing that this too shall pass. And what lies ahead is a stone rolled away; the death of death; and the resurrection of us all.
            Thanks be to God. Amen.

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