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Easter Evening
St. Edwards King and Martyr
April 8, 2012
Easter is the height of all Christian
celebrations. It is the supreme
festival for the church. Our
houses of worship are decorated we ring the bells with vigor, our songs are
ones of triumph and gladness and we shout, preach sing and proclaim that Christ
is risen. It is a proclamation
that has cosmic repercussions; it is not just about human kind it is about the
entire world – the whole of the created order. All that heals, unites and creates has overcome all that
separates, all that injures, all that would destroy. Death has been swallowed up by life.
And as Harry Williams says, ‘It is a magnificently
compelling vision – while it lasts’ – while we can hang on to it. Some people can seemingly hang on to it
all the time. Other people feel deeply moved while the hope of God’s power is
being proclaimed. But once they
get back in their cars, once on the way home – well life recedes into what
Robin Green calls “the stinking darkness of everyday life.”
In the Southern Culture that I grew up in there was
the blackness of Good Friday and then the Joy, the ruckus celebration that
almost turned Easter into a Basketball half-time show – it felt like a pep
rally where the passions were wound out and the production value was through
the roof. But sometimes the
narrative can be so triupmphalistic, the jubilant celebration so loud that it
leaves little room for actual people who were dealing with persistent problems
in life.
We have the tendency to place the resurrection into
the past 2000 years ago or into the future after physical death. And when we do that, Christ can easily
become a cult-idol – and the thing about idols is that they are powerless. “Eyes,
but they see not, mouths but they speak not.” They are impotent, powerless and ineffective to
transform.
You and I come here tonight in need of more
than religious idols and relics. We need more than – the title of the Tom
Wait song that we heard at On the Edge this week called “chocolate Jesus” -
something that is easy to unwrap, tastes sweet in the moment but cannot
sustain, cannot reach into the depths of us. We need more than the
vacuous jubilance that turns Easter into a basketball celebration.
And the question that often emerges and persistently
sits within us, the question that meets us as we wake tomorrow within the jaggedness
of our own lives is “what on earth does this
event mean for people like you and me?” What does this
event hold for we who struggle with anxiety, fear and depression, we who travel
the inside road of grief, who live many days within the black veil of the
limits of life. Wanting to find
places that expand, needing and desperately hungry for new life, but are unable
to manufacture it on our own.
What does the resurrection hold for us ?
The hope for me is that the story that we read
tonight seems much closer to actual life - it tells our story. I was reminded on
Good Friday that Jesus hung in total solidarity with the pain of the world and
the far too many lives on this planet that have been "nasty, lonely,
brutish, and short.” It is the reality that God is not aloof watching
human pain, nor apparently always stopping human pain, as much as God is found
hanging with us alongside all human pain. Jesus forever tells us that God is
found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in
sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with
the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the
beginning of time. Jesus was not, as Malcolm and Fraser continue to teach
us, some kind of heavenly transaction, or "paying a price" to God, as
much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered.
If he was paying any price, as Richard Rohr says, it was for the hard and
resistant skin around our souls.
That is why when we turn back to the gospel on
Easter evening we notice that it connects much better with people in pain than
the Pep Rally Easter, the Basketball , Half-time show Easter. When we turn back to the gospel it
reveals itself as a story of human trauma. Each of those we encounter in these
resurrections stories are traumatized in their own particular way. Mary weeps uncontrollably in a graveyard
the- love that had begun to restore her ripped violently away; Jesus’ friends
are hidden away in a locked room devastated. The bottom of their lives had dropped out. And they are in a state of despair,
grief and panic. Judas has
committed suicide; Peter in a run from the authorities has cursed his name and denied
him, all of them fled as it all came down on them. Joanna Calicut suggests that
what is central this kind of pain is the threat it poses to the person’s core beliefs
about the way the world is. It
shatters comfortable personal assumptions relating to love, security, meaning
and self-worth. It forces us into
altered states where we see the world altered - the world as dangerous, chaotic, set against us and that
we lack the resources to cope with it.
And this is the place that we meet the disciples
that we encounter Mary. Each of
them locked away in their own rooms of fear, lacking the resources to move past
– traumatized, disoriented and paralyzed.
This is where we live our lives many times.
On Thursday Michele and I visited Coventry
Cathedral. Over the past 6 months
the story of this community has taken up an important place within my own life.
And as I stood among the ruins of that church I was deeply moved and in my own
tears began to see that this structure in it’s hollowed rubble represents so
much of our own personal history and the history of humankind. We will all stand in the middle of
dreams and hopes that fall apart, that are taken from us - like fire falling
from enemies above and below which reduce our lives in so many ways.
And then John says the most inconceivable thing -
that Jesus “Came and stood within their midst”. That the resurrected Jesus stood among them, around them,
next to them – in their midst. Still smelling like hell – because that is where
he had been. And from the place of
utter human anguish and misery he spoke freedom to those at the farthest
distance. And God raised him up, put
breath in his lungs. And now he
stands in their midst resurrected, alive. With the power to do the same for them. This one who was
himself who was traumatized is now a survivor, this one who was dead is now
living and among them. And the
emerging wisdom Joanna Cullicut says brings this insight, “that if the trauma of Jesus has been transformed then there is no
situation that is irredeemable.”
There is no situation that is irredeemable. Your situation is not irredeemable– Paul was so taken with
this so convinced of this that he said: neither
death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to
come, nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able
to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The very presence of God as
resurrection stands among us, finds us, comes to us in our alienation and
isolation – he walks through walls to get to us and he stands among us alive –
to give life.
And
Jesus is among them with his wounds.
The resurrection does not displace his wounds – He does not show up with
baby fresh skin, as if it did not happen – as if it had all been a bad dream –
as if the credits could roll and the story could end happily ever after. No far from it. No he stands among them with his
wounds, showing them – they are now central to who he is, central to the way of
life - incorporating his painful
reality within the promise and possibility of growth. And so it is with us.
The resurrection does not take away the dark memories and painful experiences. It does not act as a force field
against the pain that is to come. But the very presence of life is now among us, even amid our
wounds, amid these rooms of fear. Life is here- Jesus is here. And his very presence begins to tell us
that things will be different, things can change, that our own failings and
fear will not have the last word.
Part
of the way that the resurrection unfolds in this community is when we allow the
painful, traumatic and unspeakable to assume a central place, when we incorporate
it into the life of the community, when we are able to incorporate it into our
life story and not to camouflage it or to burry it in the back yards of our
life. But to let it occupy the
relationships that constitute this place.
And when we do this – when we share these experiences with each other,
when we open our mouths and our lives – the very mystery of God Stands in our
midst and begins to unravel the darkness of the dead-end. And it is here that
we can find that a bomb out Cathedral with it’s shattered structure and scared edifice
can in fact become a place of reconciliation, a place where anger is given to
peace, where revenge is given to friendship, where despair is given to hope,
where fear is given to joy. And
surely this will take time – surely it will take a lifetime – surly these
things are bound up together - but the very life of God is in our midst – among
us to led us.
And
then the resurrected One speaks a word – and of the infinite number of words
that could have been spoken – he speaks a word that begins to disrupt all of
the striving, all of the fear, all of terror and trauma and depression. It is a small word – but like bacteria
it will begin to eat away at the darkness –showing His disciples another way. He utters the word Peace – Shalom. This is a word that does not mean the absence of conflict
and pain, but the peace of God that emerges in the midst of trauma and pain,
the shalom of God that grows amid life’s unalterable experiences. It is a word that Jesus spoke when the
storm raged on the Sea of Galilee and they were all but lost – he stood amid
the hollowing, amid the furry and spoke peace. Peace came to the Sea – to this symbol of the primordial
chaos, the deep where the sea creatures dwell, the deep - where the chaos lives
and builds its strength. And he
speaks peace - Peace,
I leave with you, my peace I give unto you not as the worlds gives do I give,
let not your heart be troubled nor be afraid. This
peace that God gives does not relieve us from the unevenness, the turmoil of
out life - . In fact this is where
the resurrection meets us – in the everyday, in the routine, in the aftermath.
And finally he says receive the Holy Spirit and he
breaths on them. This second Adam
who receives the Spirit and breath of God in his own lungs now breaths on those
gathered there. Malcolm on Friday
suggested that his was a new creation story. This is the God who takes humanity in his arms breathing
life into their very being, the very life that has come through death into
their lives now. Into those
lives who have been isolated, into the lungs of those who live
constricted. Breath- the very
breath of God. God is now as close
as the air that you breath.
May we gathered here find him unexplainably among
us, Resurrected - and may his wounds heal our wounds and may you hear him say
“peace” receive the Holy Spirit. And
may this very next breath begin to bring you into his resurrected life.
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