Learning to See

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgvQSof8hRo&feature=youtu.be

John 20:1-18

Last month ABC premiered a new show called Resurrection. “The series follows the residents of Arcadia, Missouri, whose lives are upended when their loved ones return from the dead, unaged since their deaths. Among the returned is Jacob Langston, an eight-year-old boy who drowned 32 years earlier.”[1] In the pilot episode, when his parents see their son for the first time in 32 years, and he is still an 8 year-old-boy, they respond in two vastly different ways. Jacob’s mother, after the initial look of shock, falls to her knees and opens her arms, and her son runs right into them. Jacob’s father, however, is not convinced. He knows that dead children do not come back. He has known this truth all his life, and most vividly and heart-breakingly for the past 32 years.

I only watched the first two episodes before it started getting creepy and I stopped, but what a fabulous concept for a series . . . not to mention huge marketing appeal. Who doesn’t want to believe that their loved ones, long gone, could be alive again?

But it was one review of the show that I found most intriguing. This reviewer, Tim Surette, was frustrated by the fact that the pilot episode spent more time focused on Jacob’s cause of death, and the potential murder mystery around it, than it did on Jacob’s reappearance.

He writes, “Coming out of the pilot, it feels like this possible murder mystery is the big question Resurrection wants us to glom onto, but hello? HELLO? A boy came back from the dead! Shouldn’t the focus be on that and not a cold case from the year that Huey Lewis and the News released Picture This?”[2] (For those of you who are not fans of 1980s pop rock, replace that reference with Ghostbusters, Knight Rider, or Mary Lou Retton.) Anyway, the reviewer has a valid point. Finding out how the child died is not going to help us find out how he came back to life. They’re focused on the wrong things.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not an unusual response. When confronted with an unbelievable event, even the ultimate mystery, perhaps it’s human nature to focus on a mystery that can be solved.

It was early morning, and Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. When she found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, she did not immediately say “Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!” Instead she assumed someone had taken the body. It’s a natural assumption, and also a potentially solvable mystery. We just have to find out who did it so we can find out where Jesus is. She focused on what she could understand.

But that reviewer of the TV show had another really interesting point. He said, “What I would really like to see in a show like this is the existential and emotional crisis that results from seeing everything you thought you knew conflict with everything you hoped for.”[3] Mary knew what death was, or at least she thought she knew this basic law of the universe; and then she was confronted with everything she hoped for, that Jesus was alive.

Now I want to pause here for a moment and acknowledge the diversity of beliefs here today. Our congregation embodies a wide variety of beliefs every Sunday because in the United Church of Christ, we don’t tell you what to believe. We give you options but trust you to come to your own conclusions. But this diversity is even greater on holidays, when relatives may accompany us to worship, or when we have more visitors because hey, it’s Easter! and we should go to church. So I am fully aware that some of you here believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ and others of you believe in the spiritual resurrection of Christ and still others of you are thinking, “Really? She’s trotting out that old resurrection myth again?”

So let me take these one at a time. You may believe that after Jesus died, after his body lay in his tomb, long after his heart stopped beating and his synapses stopped synapsing, that something happened, something that broke the laws of our universe. You don’t know if it happened with a nerve ending or beginning, with an inhale or exhale, a breath or a sigh. You don’t know how but you know, as sure as you know that your heart is beating in your chest, that Jesus’ heart beat again in his. You know. Or, perhaps more accurately, you believe.

Others of you are too scientifically minded for such miracles. Healings? Sure. Miraculous feedings? Maybe. But resurrection? Fortunately for you, resurrection is not an all-or-nothing kind of belief. You believe that after Jesus died, after his body lay in his tomb, the spirit of Christ came back to the people—back into the people—until the people were filled with a sense of Christ’s presence and filled with a sense of Christ’s purpose and filled with the scent of Christ’s perfume that meant both death and life. And you, too, have experienced that presence and that purpose and so you don’t know how but you know where Christ came to life. Christ came to life in the community. Christ came to life in you.

And then there are those who don’t believe in Christ’s resurrection at all, whether physical or spiritual. You don’t believe in miracles and you don’t believe in ghosts and none of it matters . . . not to you. I respect your beliefs, or your disbelief, and will not try to talk you out of it. As a pastor—and even as your pastor—I am less concerned about whether you believe in the bodily resurrection than whether you believe in the power of resurrection in your life today.

I know a woman named Janine who is a musician with a wonderful niche market. She visits preschools and kindergarten classes with her purple guitar, teaching the children music and sign language. Last March she sang for a class where about half of the children had special needs. One little boy in the front row sat with his hands covering half his face. When Janine took out her purple guitar, the little boy looked up from his hands and said, “Purple! I love colors!” Janine smiled and said, “I love colors, too!” Suddenly teachers were descending on her from around the room. “Who said that?” they asked. “Whose voice was that?” Janine pointed out her new friend and repeated what he had said. She didn’t know why the teachers were so surprised . . . until she learned that in the six months he’d been in their class, these were the first words he had spoken. In fact, they had been told that the boy was mute. Later, the whole class was singing and dancing around him, and he sat on the floor not moving, his hands again on his face. But then he looked up at Janine and smiled. It was the first smile his teachers had ever seen on his face.[4]

I know Janine and I know that this story is true. I don’t know if this was a miracle. I also don’t know what happened to the boy after that day, so I’m making no claims that he suddenly was “cured” or needed to be. But I do know that at least for his teachers, there was a resurrection of hope that day. And sometimes hope is enough.

I once heard an African-American preacher say that every sermon in the black church is some version of “It’s Friday but Sunday’s comin’!” Yes, life is sometimes marked by bigotry and hatred, but we can hold on because we know it doesn’t end here. Yes, today all seems hopeless; but hope will be reborn. Yes, we are surrounded by death; but resurrection will come.

I often encourage people to attend one of our services during Holy Week because otherwise we go from the “Yay Jesus” of Palm Sunday to the “Yay Jesus” of Easter, without any of the struggle in-between. And most of us live in the in-between. Most of us don’t live in a constant stream of hosannas and hallelujahs. Instead we live in the fear of Thursday, in the grief of Friday, or in the waiting unknown of Saturday. Or at least we pass through them rather frequently.

It has been said that the two most important prayers we can speak are “help me!” and “thank you!”[5] The root meaning of the word Hosanna is pretty close to “help me.” Literally it means save me or save us. The root meaning of the word Hallelujah is praise the Lord, which isn’t exactly “thanks” but is pretty close.

The thing about hallelujah is that it doesn’t have to be reserved for the good times . . . for the times when we got the job, when the cancer was defeated, when our children were in good health and our loved ones could remember our names. Hallelujah, praise the Lord, is for all times, the good and the bad, the heart-lifting, the heart-wrenching, and the heart-breaking. We still can praise God because we know . . . because we know it gets better; because we know the story isn’t finished; because we know we worship the God of resurrection.

Pop singer Sara Bareilles recorded a song written by Ben Hales, called “Eden.” It begins: “Let me paint a picture for you; then I’ll have to teach you to see it.” That’s what God did in Jesus. God painted a picture for us—a picture of a life well-lived, a life given in compassionate service; a picture of one who was fully human and yet so filled with the love of God that the divine flowed through him and from him in a way we’d never seen before; a picture of one who could say “This isn’t what I want, God, but if this is the consequence of living the way you call me to live, then I will bear it.”

God painted a picture for us—of praise that comes even in despair, and hope that is born through death. But we didn’t recognize it then. Maybe we can learn to recognize it now.

Today in worship across the country, across the world, people are singing and shouting “Hallelujah!” But it can be whispered, too . . . in nursing homes and in Neo-Natal Intensive Care Units; while kneeling by the tub giving our toddler a bath or serving food to adults who haven’t bathed in a week; while sitting at the therapist’s office asking if our pain will ever end, or trying to comfort ourselves with the knowledge that our loved one’s pain finally has.

Hallelujah can be whispered or shouted, sung or croaked. It can be whole and full of praise or it can be broken and full of pain. The important thing is that we find it, that we believe it.

Hallelujah.

[sung:]

When Jesus walked the way of love,
in a world that valued push and shove,
the penalty for justice he foresaw.
When the end was near, he knelt to pray,
pleading “God, is there another way?
But if not I’ll cry a fearful hallelujah.”

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

It’s true there is a price to pay
For love that cannot stay away
She knew her heart would break at what she saw.
But still she watched his dying breath,
Watched love get swallowed up in death,
Throat clenched around a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Three days went by, again they came
to move the stone, to bless the slain
with oil and spice anointing, hallelujah.
But as they want to move the stone,
they saw that they were not alone,
for Jesus Christ has risen, Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

For the hundredth time we’ve heard the word
That Love is mightier than the sword
But it still has trouble going through you
That’s okay in this Good Friday world
‘Cause Heaven has the final word
Now there’s nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelu—
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.[6]