Easter Day
Reformation, Media
Larry V. Smoose
Wow – Don’t you love Easter! The organ, brass, timpani and choirs, the inspiring music, the beautiful flowers – the bright clothes – the excited children.
Easter! It exudes LIFE!
But I wonder . . . I wonder if it is possible to get our arms around the reality of Easter? I wonder if it is possible to wrap our minds – our amazing human brain – around the truth of Easter?
I don’t want all the trappings to camouflage the difficulty of believing the Easter proclamation – Christ is risen! Rather I want us to grapple with our struggles and embrace the wonder of this mystery called resurrection, which is sort of like quarks, those virtually invisible particles of an atom that are evidenced by the trail they leave.
Easter is a mystery as profound as and perhaps more profound than creation – At creation, God said, “Let there be Light” and with a Word, darkness and chaos were pierced by a ray of light that would be the beginning and essence of life. For centuries, human beings have been trying to understand and grasp the wonder of this mystery – how life began, how this world was created, and how the diversity of creation was developed. Theories abound, knowledge has increased and yet the mystery remains. Creationists may be pooh-poohed by scientists, but even the Big Bang and evolution theories leave huge gaps of knowledge and plenty of room for the mystery and wonder of creation.
And if we still can have a sense of wonder and awe at creation, which is all around us; what about the reality of Easter? That somehow, in the utter darkness of the cave, over the utterly dead body of Jesus, God said, “Let there be Life!” And with a word, the darkness of death was pierced by a ray of light that would merge with the dawn of Easter’s sun into a dazzling brightness that would be the beginning and essence of new life.
From that moment on, human beings have been trying to grasp and understand the wonder of this mystery – resurrection! But the mystery may be even more profound than we imagine. Typically we focus on the other-worldly promise of resurrection - heaven – like that great recitative in Messiah “Behold, I tell you a mystery . . . We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, . . . The trumpet will sound (Ta tat a TA, Ta ta TA, Ta ta TAAA, TA ta ta TAAAA) and the Dead shall be raised” But do we have to wait until heaven to experience our Lord’s resurrection?
Here is the deeper wonder of this mystery – this love of God evident in Easter, the new life empowered by the Word of God on Easter, need not be relegated only to the other worldly promise of heaven. That certainly is an assurance of Easter, but resurrection is also the power of the Risen Jesus unleashed for the here and now – in your life and in the life of our world. We proclaim that Jesus is alive and still present with us in this life as an ever-living Lord.
I began to reflect on the depth and breadth of Easter’s mystery when Duncan had our staff devotions two weeks ago and shared thoughts written by Pastor Russell Atkinson of Swarthmore Methodist Church. Pastor Atkinson said, “here is the deep mystery: death and the many little deaths of our lives become the doorway to growth and new life.”
That’s when I began to think about Easter as a present phenomenon, which like the famous quarks leave trails to evidence their reality. I began to look for the trail. It begins, of course, with Jesus whose own sufferings and crucifixion are transformed into loving energy as Jesus prays for the forgiveness of his killers. The power of his love is affirmed in the resurrection – death cannot defeat such love! Life is restored.
Next we see the trail of new life extend to his disciples, who are fearful, frightened, hiding – victims of a dead Lord and a dead movement. Their lives are transformed when Jesus appears to them and they become witnesses of his resurrection. We say, “How is that possible?” But we can see the clear trail of their dramatically changed lives. Of course that was 2000 years ago. Now I don’t have time to take this trail through the past 2000 years, but I will never forget when the trail intersected my life. A Lutheran pastor from Namibia came to talk to the Lutheran seminary when I was a student there.
In that era of apartheid’s power, he had been imprisoned and tortured by South African police. Electrical connections were attached to various parts of his body, he would scream as the charges went through his body. He was beaten unconscious. One day, he said, “I was in my cell, weeping and praying to God to let me die, and Jesus came to me. I saw him – and he said, ‘look at my wounds’ they are your wounds. He told me he would be with me and I would live again.” Two months later, with pressure from Lutheran churches around the world, he was released. I never doubted that he had seen the risen Lord.
Then, a few years ago, I was at my ninth grade reunion and a classmate, Dave Marks, said to me, I have a story to share with you. Dave had been living under a bridge in Los Angeles and was a drug addict. One day he woke up and walked groggily to a nearby park and found a fellow drug addict dead. Dave said, as I looked at my friend, I heard the voice of Jesus say to me, “Dave, if you don’t change your life, you’re next.” It was the risen Lord who got him into recovery and gave him new life.
A Word, when it is God’s Word, can create reality – where there was only darkness, Light appears. When there was death, life begins anew. How else can we explain phenomena like the life-renewing power of God at Nickle Mines, where out of the tragic deaths of Amish children we saw life and forgiveness emerge? It astonished the world – how could they show such love? It was the power of a risen Lord that gave new life to that community of believers.
Easter is not about preserving the memory of a dead person. It that’s all it is, then there are a lot of better things we could be doing. You don’t need trumpets and timpani, an organ and festival choir for that – We’re here to proclaim resurrection – new life. We’re here to proclaim that Christ is risen! Jesus lives! Our faith does not say “What would Jesus Do?” It’s about what Jesus is doing.
Behold, I tell you a mystery – we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. The tombs we need to be concerned about today are the tombs of dead beliefs, of destroyed faith, of lifeless hearts and vanquished hopes. The stones that need to be rolled away today are the stones that block our open minds and hearts and hands.
Easter proclaims that God has rolled away the stone, Jesus lives, and because he lives, we can live also – unleash the power of the resurrection in your life. The Lord who gave Dave Marks the new life of recovery can breathe new life into your troubled marriage or give you new life when your marriage fails. The God who brought healing to the community at Nickle Mines can heal the wounds of fractured relationships with children, parents or friends.
The trail of our Risen Lord is evident all around us, for those with eyes to see – and this same Lord wants you to know his power in your life. Behold, I tell you a mystery – Jesus lives! Open your heart and ask God to roll away the stone so that he may live in you.
Amen.