A Sermon Preached on the Feast of the Resurrection

Sunday, April 23, 2000

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, San Rafael, California

by The Rev. Bruce R. Bramlett, Rector

I want to welcome each and every one of you here on this beautiful Easter morning. Today is the most special day of the Christian calendar, a day of great festivity and joy and I'm happy that you've chosen to join us here. For those of you visiting among us, I can only hope that you will feel welcome and among friends this day. We hope you'll return and worship with us again.

Who will roll the stone away for us? That's the only question left for those first women disciples who arrived early on that Sunday morning at the tomb of their friend and master, Jesus, following those terrible events of Friday. They had come to do what women have done since time immemorial; they had come to bring a bit of dignity to their beloved dead in the wake of the fury of the powers and principalities. After they had endured the trauma of watching the indignity, cruelty and injustice of Jesus' crucifixion, they arrived early to weep and mourn while they tenderly ministered to his dead body and said their good-byes. Death for them was not just an idea, a philosophical construct to play with and resurrection while perhaps a wonderful philosophical idea to come only at the end of time and which would bring justice to this unjust world, was not something they had considered as a present possibility.

You know, graves are somber and stark realities. There's nothing philosophical or detached about them. Any of you who have ever stood beside a grave with a casket suspended over it or watched as it is slowly lowered into the ground will know what I mean. It's an experience that I never quite get used to.

In Jesus' day, burial was usually done by placing the body in a rock hewn cave where it was sealed with a large round stone until it decomposed, whereupon the bones would be removed to a specially made box and kept and the tomb reused. The women disciples had every right to have no expectation of what they would find when they arrived at Jesus' tomb. All they wanted to do was to carry out those last rites of burial for him- that was all that was left to them.

But our text tells us that when they arrived, they found the tomb opened-the stone moved aside and a young man dressed in white who gave them terrifying news. The one for whom they were looking-the dead man Jesus of Nazareth was not there. He told them that God had raised him from death and, he was going before the disciples to Galilee- to commission the disciples in their new task of proclamation; the proclamation that in Jesus' resurrection the first signs of the dawning of the final reign of God had begun. What is strange about our text from Mark, this earliest of the Gospel texts, is that Mark's story ends right there after telling us that the women fled in fear and terror, saying nothing to anyone-No joy, no Alleluias, no relief-just fear and terror. We are invited to ponder what all this might mean, even now.

You see, the empty tomb is an elusive symbol, isn't it? All they could know was that their dead Jesus wasn't there. Yet, they had been at the cross that Friday. They had watched him die that horrible death with their own eyes. They were ready for death but what could be the meaning of this. There were no witnesses, no proof that our rational minds could get our logic around. The New Testament doesn't even attempt to explain it. We and they are thrown into the realm of trust-trust in the Lord's promises and trust in our awareness of Christ's risen presence. So it was then. So it is today for us. Those promises and that awareness is the hidden persuasion that makes Christian life possible. Were it not so, the church would have ceased to exist a long time ago. The resurrection simply cannot make sense as an abstract idea. St. Paul tells us that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but the power of God to those who are being saved-made whole. Resurrection could only makes sense to those who had known the disaster of failure and the grief of loss. It can only resonate in the analogous experiences of deep forgiveness and the renewal of life in the constant experiences of rebirth that those disciples knew with Jesus and that we can know as well. Mary and the others who knew the risen One had eyes with which to see resurrection, not as idea but as power, glory and transformative love.

Just as Jesus' resurrection cannot be reduced to the resuscitation of a dead corpse- a return to life as it was before, so also resurrection faith cannot focus upon some physical fact so much as it refocuses our entire lives upon new possibilities for all of life as we enter a new world transformed by Christ's victory over death. Easter is not the triumph over the idea of death but the discovery that life is more powerful and eternal than death. It is the realization that God's presence in our lives makes all the difference in how we live our lives, how we deal with losses and failure and how we celebrate the power of life even when surrounded by death. Jesus said to his disciples, "I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance." Today is about the irrepressibility of life!

But back to our text. So why the terror and the fear of those first women disciples? Henri Nouwen, one of the late great Christian spiritual teachers of our time, once wrote that he hesitated to write about the resurrection because it is such a hidden event. He notes that, "Jesus did not rise from the dead to prove to those who had crucified him that they had made a mistake or to confound his opponents. Nor did he rise from the dead to impress the rulers of his time or to force anyone to believe in him." He goes on to say that Jesus' resurrection was the full affirmation of the Father's love. He showed himself to those who knew about and had experienced this love. He made himself known as the risen Lord only to a handful of his close friends. Only they who knew that love in the rest of their lives could be united with their Lord. So it is with us.

The resurrection of Jesus was and remains a possibility and a reality only when we are able to lift our eyes, to change our focus from the tomb of death and regret, from yesterday's failures and grief to see the risen One standing before us. Yet, we all know the difficulty we have in doing exactly that. How hard it is to disentangle ourselves from the strangling web of death that the world weaves around each of us each day. This web of death gets woven tighter and tighter and often makes us feel as if we were more dead than alive. It could be the web of our own personal bitterness, losses, griefs, disappointments or failures. Or it might be the web of violence, injustice and human misery that assaults us at every level of our community and societal life that slowly drains us of our humanity making us fearful, anxious and alienated. We're almost afraid to read the newspaper each day. Or it might be the anguish of our deep alienation and sense of brokenness at all levels of our relationships that most of us know only too well, brokenness that fills us with regret and loss. Yes, each of us, at least those of us who have been around long enough is much more prepared for Good Friday than Easter. We are much more content to keep trying to mount one more heroic struggle to bring a bit of dignity to death in all its faces. We are much more willing to hold Jesus' dead body in mourning and grief than we are to look up and see that the stone of the tomb has already been rolled away. How drawn are we to the image of Michaelangelo's Pieta-how human it feels to us. Death in all its many forms cuts us off from experiencing new life even when it stands before us. But, resurrection forces us to confront a possibility beyond the possibilities that our world allows us to embrace.

The empty tomb is a powerful symbol of metamorphosis, it is the crucible of human transformation where the paradox of our human existence- of trust in the unseen and the presence of that which is physically absent- can begin to bring forth new life in us. Because of the empty tomb, we are introduced to the impossible possibility of joy in the midst of sorrow, life in the midst of death, light in the center of our darkest moments and freedom even as we feel ourselves held captive. The empty tomb is the ambiguous yet powerful sign of a profound source of hope that cannot disappoint nor fail us. There can be no greater insult to the dignity of a human being than the grave; there is no more powerful message about the ultimate meaning and victory of life grounded in the life of God than that of resurrection.

Easter happens for us when the stones of our own lives that keep us more dead than alive are rolled away. And, it is about our lives here and now, not somewhere out there and then. Today we celebrate that God's life is eternally present in our lives to roll away the stones from the tombs of our lives, lives besieged by death in all its many forms and masks. God has promised on this day that we can begin to have the courage to confront those forces of death in the name of the One who has conquered death. The real demand made upon us on this Easter is not just that we sympathize with the crucified One but that we pledge ourselves to follow the Risen One. The ending of the Gospel of Mark is not really an ending but a new beginning; the beginning of lives transformed for discipleship and witness to God's power to bring new life to us.

Easter demands of us that we embrace the power of love which outstrips the forces of death that assault us-- and, having embraced that power of love in trust that its promise of life will win out-- we must put all those forces of death, all those powers and principalities that rebel against God's beautiful creation on notice. In the name of the Risen One, we must not tolerate them and we will not be silent in their presence. Easter demands that we give up all loyalties to anyone, to any institution, whether sacred, or secular, whether private, corporate or governmental that is complicitous with the suffering and crucifixion of human beings, no matter where or how. Easter demands that the Church, the Body of the Risen Christ, be the vehicle that places the powers and principalities on notice that God's reign has broken into our darkened world. Easter doesn't deny death's reality. Easter challenges death's durability in all its forms by showing us the power of life's eternality. The stone has been rolled away and the voice we hear is clear. Why do you seek Jesus who was crucified? He is not here. He is risen and he goes before you. Come. Follow! "Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!"

ALLELUIA!