Sunday, April 1, 2018

Easter Sunday: Resurrection and the Tree of Life

John 20:1-18
            This year I’ve focused on the three trees through the triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess not all of you made it to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so for a quick recap there is the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruit Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. That tree invited sin into the world because we began to imagine that we are like God. So, we needed a second tree, the tree of the cross, which is the tree that stands tall on Good Friday—the tree on which Jesus died. It is the tree that bridges our pursuit of sin and death and sends Jesus through death on our behalf. The cross stands in-between this life and the next.
            Then there is today. No tree, you might think—not in the Easter story—except there is a garden and, in the end, this is taking us inexorably toward the third tree, which is the tree that has been there since the beginning. In the book of Revelation, the 22nd chapter, it says, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
            In the end, we have the tree of life. You don’t see the cross there because the cross has done its job. You don’t see the tree of knowledge there because knowledge is no longer necessary. In the presence of God we will know all we need. The tree of life is the end of the story because it encompasses all that is leading up to it. The trees are a progression and they offer a promise of returning to what was once created good and holy before sin entered this picture.
            I love that story of the three trees that we read today for the Children’s Sermon today; for me it resonates on several levels. For one, we are like those trees—thinking we are going to be used in one way when God is going to use us however God pleases and it may have little or nothing to do with what we expect. On another level, the trees are themselves transformed through a painful process. None of them remain trees. All of them are chopped down! They all have to die in order to achieve their purpose. Finally, the trees find their redemption through work that they could not achieve on their own. No tree can become a manger without being shaped, nor a boat, nor a cross. The trees have character all their own—they have wants and desires—they are more than raw material, but yet it is only through the hands of another that they are shaped into what they were destined to be.
            Those trees bridge that gap between death and new life in the same way that the cross leads to the empty tomb and begins the dominos tumbling toward the tree of life, which was the same tree we were destined for from the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden. From the beginning of time until that first Easter morning we-human-beings were walking eastward through history, further and further from the Garden. Today we celebrate the moment where Christ broke through death, went to hell and defeated the power of death even there, and turned us around to walk back in the right direction. Among many other things, today is about setting us back on track to the Garden. For too long we have wandered further and further east of Eden; with the empty tomb Jesus turns us around and starts us marching back. The tree is waiting; the cross has done its work. We are saved, not by virtue of what we do, but because of what Christ has done for us, and the empty tomb is all proof we need.
            Today is about resurrection. I saw a comic last week where a church member greets the pastor after the service and says, “Pastor, you’ve gotten in a rut lately. All you ever preach on is resurrection.”
            That’s really the goal I aspire to: Resurrection, resurrection, resurrection. That’s all we’re doing here, every Sunday. There’s nothing new beside it; there’s no creative new way of approaching it. If it’s boring, then we’re either failing to convey it, or else I’m sorry that the most astonishing thing in the history of the world is boring to you. Everything else that today is about—Easter bunnies and flowers and trumpets and candy and family and April Fool’s jokes—all of it is so far secondary from the resurrection as to be like a hangnail after giving birth. Today is only about resurrection, and if the fact that we celebrate that every single Sunday is monotonous then I think you don’t get it.
Christ is risen! And that means you will, too. Everything else is secondary. The three trees are just another cute way to get you there. The trees are the vehicle; the empty tomb is the destination. Every Sunday is Easter Sunday. Every Sunday is a resurrection Sunday. And I’m not going to change. And we’re not going to try to be cute and say anything special or different. If it’s the same as ever that is strange because resurrection is the most new, most not-how-the-world-works thing that I can imagine. And because it is a promise that life is never-ending it is a promise that things are never the same; it is life in all its varieties—the tree of life with its many fruits for each season. The greatest work of the devil is to make resurrection mundane. Today we celebrate the most astonishing thing above all other things. It is Easter. There is nothing like it and there never will be and it’s done. It’s over. We just keep walking back to the garden.
Christ is Risen!
He is risen, indeed. Alleluia!

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