A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, March 23, 2008
John 20:1-23
Acts 10:34-43
I find myself having a little trouble this morning with my Easter “Alleluia.” Maybe I’m just weary…
• Weary of high-profile public figures confessing their sins, and those who act “holier than thou” but who aren’t;
• Weary of the debate of whether we really are in a Recession, when all you have to do is look at the cost of gas and oil and food and clothing, and see that ordinary folks are deeply discouraged;
• Weary of war, not only because of the tragic loss of life but because of the erosion of our national soul and the burden its debts have already place on our children and grandchildren;
• Weary of the drivel that passes for television entertainment, interspersed with ads from pharmaceutical companies, followed by the disclaimers that their product will work miracles if you mind the dreadful list of side-effects;
• Weary of politics and political campaigning and how it turns the most hopeful among us into cynics;
• And winter? Yes, I’m weary of winter as today, Easter Sunday, falls on March 23 for the only time in a span of 315 years. But “TGWDLIAC” – thank God we don’t live in Aroostook County – where they’ve had 200 inches of snow this winter including a blizzard on Good Friday.
Are you weary too… or worse? I heard a British stock broker on BBC News who summed it up well last Monday (March 17) when he said: “There’s nothing so toxic as anxiety and fear.”
Our fears are contagious; our anxieties overshadow our sense of the world’s beauty. Our disappointments can easily overshadow our victories. We can echo the lines of Shakespeare’s MacBeth who said:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.(MacBeth, Act V, Scene 5)
That’s why the suffering and tragedy of our Good Friday can appear to be the final word. But God does not let it. Whatever the litany of sorrows, we proclaim today that Easter is God’s answer to our despair and anxiety. Today we lift high the truth that the first Easter was God’s response to the worst that humankind could manage. And today God offers the same gift and assurance to each of us who opens our heart in faith.
If you come reluctantly to worship at Easter and Christmas; if you’ve been wounded by religious people; or deeply disappointed by the failures of the Christian Church in general or this church in particular; if you’re feeling abandoned by God, you may not be able to imagine how anyone can stake his or her life on something that seems so preposterous.
How can any of us center our spiritual journey in the ancient claim that this one called Jesus of Nazareth was executed, dead, and buried in a sealed tomb, and then just hours later encountered once again by his best friends? Try that as a story line on CSI-Miami and the forensics experts would tear it apart before the first commercial break.
To put it another way your own experience with the claims of Easter Truth might better be called the claims of “Easter Truthiness.” That may not be a familiar word, but it was popularized a couple of years ago on the Colbert Report, a satirical news show on the Comedy Central television channel.
The American Dialect Society defines it this way: “truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.” (www.americandialect.org)
One good example: “That Fox News report didn’t have all of the facts, but it had a certain truthiness to it.” (www.urbandictionary.com)
You get the idea and can generate your own list. Isn’t this the Age of “truthiness,” when the plain, unvarnished truth gets dressed up and layered over? We’re bombarded with claims we wish were true, or that others swear are true while there’s little evidence to bear them out.
Maybe that’s your take on Easter: it would be great if it were true, but how could it be – especially given the condition of the world? God knows there are many who’ve wandered away, drifted away, because they’ve found nothing life-changing in the way we within the Church live the Good News. Why bother?
So, if you struggle with the Easter proclamation; if you think this great Festival is rooted not so much in Truth as in truthiness, wishful thinking, I want to talk with you for a few minutes.
And those of you who’ve never struggled with your Resurrection faith are welcome to listen in!
You may have been raised to think Christians only have two choices: either accept everything in the Bible as literal fact, or reject it all as too much to consider. You’re either a believer or a heathen and there’s nothing in between. I don’t believe that’s so. I want to talk about another way to encounter the scriptural story.
We know faith comes from experience, not evidence. No one can ever prove what happened at that particular grave some 2,000 years ago. When you read the four Gospels you’ll see immediately that:
• No witness was there to record what happened in the garden.
• No one saw God roll the stone away.
• No one saw God raise Jesus from the dead, and
• the four different accounts tell the story differently. Each one tried to convey the indescribable mystery with a unique account.
I somehow imagine God intended it that way. It leaves the Easter story open to our search for its meaning. The Truth of Easter doesn’t beg for more witnesses or some undiscovered Gospel to surface that will make it all believable. Instead we need to recognize this amazing event wasn’t even written down until the first Gospel was recorded some 35 years later. So getting at the Truth means peeling back many layers.
I think we find the heart of it in the way Easter changed lives: whatever the witnesses did see, it changed them completely. It transformed them from frightened followers hiding in the shadows into a powerful band of witnesses who were absolutely convinced that Jesus was alive again and that death was not the end or the victor.
We can’t ever prove the details but we can witness the Truth of what happened because we can see its effect. Each of the eleven disciples staked his life on the Truth of Easter faith that Jesus lived again, freed from death. They couldn’t keep their mouths shut and every one but Judas died either as a martyr to the faith or in exile.
They discovered that there’s something worse than death. It’s choosing not to live. What the disciples experienced that first Easter day stripped away their fear of death and freed them to live fully and abundantly.
Scripture tells us another Truth of Easter: we don’t have to roll the stone way from the tomb because God does that for us. In Mark 16 we read that the three women who were heading to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for burial were worried about who would roll away the great stone. It was more than they could manage. But when they got there the stone was no obstacle.
If by faith we believe God can do such things, then God will do them in our lives as well. Easter points us to the prime example, the first fruits, the test case. It shouts to the cynical, fretful world: “Wake up; pay attention; see what God can do. Do not fear; do not run; do not hide in the shadows. But see this and believe!”
And then it points us further: not only did God raise Jesus in triumph over death, God does the same for us.
No matter how lonely you are, God stands beside you.
No matter how dark the night, God will pierce it with light.
No matter how daunting the task, God will give you strength.
No matter how huge the death, God will lead you past it to new life.
I know this is Easter Truth, not just “truthiness,” but Truth. It’s a waste of time to dwell on what can’t know:
• how many angels were there in the garden.
• why the disciples failed to recognize the risen Lord.
• if Jesus appeared more like a ghost than a man.
• which of the four Gospel accounts is more accurate.
Even if we could answer these questions it wouldn’t equip us to live with faith and hope in a world such as ours. These are the wrong questions that too easily obscure the real Easter Truth:
Today we proclaim that death does not have the final word;
God does. We can’t erase the pain of death, but God does.
God rolls away the stones and calls us to break out of our tombs of fear and anxiety, and prejudice and habit. God calls us to join the rising tide of faithful people of all ages, tongues and races, in building toward a world that is healed and redeemed.
To be an Easter witness today doesn’t ask you to set aside rational thinking or reasonable doubt. Faith, ultimately, hinges on our readiness to recognize that most of our questions aren’t about the Truth but about the Truthiness.
In Jesus Christ, in you and in me, God shows us that Good Friday will not have the final word; we can live unfettered by fear. As Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, philosopher and poet wrote some 35 years ago:
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed…
Practice resurrection.
[“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry]
Amen.