Happy Easter, church.
Christ Is Risen.
He Is Risen Indeed.
The resurrection of Jesus is God's final word spoken in the face of sin, suffering, evil and death. Thanks Be to God.
Easter egg hunts have been in the news all week, both because of the controversy in the White House over the invitations that went out warning that the one on the White House lawn might need to be cancelled, as well as the refusal of some school districts to refer to “Easter eggs,” only “Spring eggs.”
Come on. Easter egg hunts? They are part of our most beloved childhood memories, even though they have very little to do with the real Easter. Or do they?
Coloring eggs; that sweet smell of vinegar; getting those same six colors all over fingers, clothes, and countertops year after year. Then getting up early enough to compete against brothers and sisters to find the most baskets of eggs and goodies.
As parents we have different memories of the same event. Easter egg hunts mean bleaching out those Easter egg-colored clothes and counter tops; getting up even earlier than the kids; making lots of egg salad sandwiches (with strange colors staining the bread); and finding Easter grass still lurking in corners of the house on the Fourth of July.
But while some of the traditions behind Easter egg hunts have remained the same, there has been one big change that has transformed large community-wide egg hunts, Sunday school class quests, and our own living room look-fors.
Let’s get real: we might still color and decorate real eggs. But how many of those actual hard-boiled eggs get taken out of the fridge and hidden in nooks and crannies anymore? Real eggs have been replaced with plastic eggs. The realities of lurking bacteria and potential lawsuits have banished actual eggs from almost every “egg hunt.” Instead, plastic eggs filled with store-bought candies have, for the sake of sanity and sanitation, replaced the hand-colored hard-boiled real egg.
In other words rather than searching for an egg, a symbol of new life, we have a petroleum based plastic shell filled with candies made of artificial colors and sweetness. Not a very life-affirming symbol. Not a very Easter-y symbol.
That is what happens not just when we’ve learned that eating eggs that have sat around at room temperature for several hours can lead to bad things. That is what happens when our culture is focused more on things, on collecting objects, than it is on people, celebrating life and connecting subjects. We live in a culture of collections more than connections. At the heart of the culture of death is the reduction of human beings to things which can be collected, bought or sold, used or not used, broken and then thrown away.
In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke, when the women set out at first light, they are on a death mission. Having witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion from afar, having shadowed Joseph of Arimathea to the site of Jesus’ tomb, and having spent their last hours before the Sabbath collecting the spices and concocting the ointments for anointing the dead, the only thing on the minds of these women on Easter morning is death, and on the things death requires. They are focused on the tomb. They fixate on the grave clothes. They savor the scents they are bringing to mask the stench of death.
These women are immersed in the culture of death. They are concerned only with “things” of death. They are preoccupied with those objects they can lay their hands on. They do not have any expectation of encountering a “someone,” of bumping up against a subject to connect to. They certainly do not anticipate encountering a completely new life and connection to the divine.
Easter morning is the moment when everything changes. A culture of death becomes a culture of life. A culture of collections becomes a culture of connections. Nothing less than the entire way the world was ordered is recreated and birthed anew. The tomb of death becomes the womb of life. Jesus cannot be contained or collected in the cold stone of earth. He is risen, a living connection, and has gone before us.
The expectation of death is unexpectedly replaced with the presence of life. Instead of finding a dead body, the first visitors to what had been designated as Jesus’ tomb, find a living word, and embrace the promise of a living Lord. All that Jesus had preached and promised had come true. Nothing less than angelic messengers were the first to kick-start the memory of Jesus’ followers, helping them to recall all that Jesus had prophesied.
What Jesus had promised was that the power of death would be destroyed and that the life that God intended for humanity at the onset of creation would be restored. The world of destruction and death that had ruled since the days of Adam is now replaced by a world of life and love. The culture of death had been replaced by the culture of life.
A world of objects that were in the way was transformed into a world of subjects who were on the way to hope and heaven.
Jesus Easter morning surprise moved the women who came to the tomb from a culture of death to a culture of life, from a world of objects — tombs and ointments, sadness and loss — to a world of subjects — where Jesus’ self-sacrifice was made a life altering, life atoning, life affirming option for everyone who “remembered” or heard the news of his defeat of death.
After Easter morning, none of us are objects waiting for death. After Easter morning, all of us are subjects, children of God, invited to join in new life and to start eternal life now. The Resurrection of Jesus is the sudden declaration by God that we are someone and never just something. You are a subject, not an object. And you are called to live in a culture of life, even amidst a culture of death. With meaning to life coming from connections, not collections.
Christ Is Risen! We are a risen people. We are a rising people. Rise up and LIVE!
[You can either end your sermon here, or if you have time, end your sermon with this “rise-up” story.]
Jon Tevlin is a reporter for the Minneapolis/St. Paul “Star Tribune.” On 17 March, he told the 2012 story of Sally Packard. It is the story of a culture of life raising its head amidst a culture of death.
Sally Packard had waited seven months to get the chance to talk to the teenager who stole her car, and with it some of her independence.
The car, a 1989 Dodge, wasn't worth much. But it was important to Packard, 76, because she needed it to drive to mass at the Church of St. Peter in Richfield every morning. It also got her to doctor’s appointments at Hennepin County Medical Center three times a week.
When Packard finally got to meet the boy, 17, in Hennepin County Juvenile Court recently, she started with a quote:
"When we forgive, we don't deny the hurt that we have received. We don't deny that it was wrong, but we acknowledge that there is more to the offender than the offense."
Already, Packard had the boy's attention. But she also had the attention of Judge Kathryn Quaintance and the lawyers and court staff in the room.
Packard went on to tell how she was called to the impound lot several days after the car was stolen and found it totaled and filled with garbage. Her driver's license was gone, along with religious books and a rosary given to Packard by her mother.
Then Packard talked about being a foster mom for about 50 kids, many of them who had been abused and neglected, and how much she empathized with the young man standing before her in court.
"I personally know most of these kids have not been parented, and maybe their parents haven't either, or maybe they got into the wrong crowd, or got into drugs," she said.
"I would like [the teen] to know that I pray for him and the other two [boys who were with him] daily, and that it is not too late for them," Packard continued. "I would also like these boys to think of their own families. Would they want their families to experience what I have?"
"Again, please let [the boy] know that I sincerely care about him, and I am praying for his redirection and rehabilitation," she said. "A good life awaits him, if he will just choose a new path. God bless."
Packard then asked the judge if she could give the young man two stones. One said "Hope," the other said, "A special prayer for you."
The young man took the stones, and began to sob.
"The hurt, I never thought of that," said the teen. "I'm really sorry. I regret this decision. I'm sorry for all of the hurt that I caused you."
"I care. Lots of people care about you," said Packard.
Then Packard did something none of the people in the courtroom had seen before, she hugged the person who had upset her life. He squeezed her hard and sobbed.
By now, everyone in the courtroom was crying. For years, many of them had watched hardened, defiant kids and angry, vindictive victims.
But nothing like this.
Judge Quaintance, known to be stern and no-nonsense, finally spoke from the bench.
"I think many of us have been doing this work for a very, very long time, and I have never seen such a powerful moment in my career," Quaintance said.
"The [teen's] recognition that you had an impact on somebody, that this is not an anonymous hurt, this is a personal hurt," said the judge. "[It] just so happened that you by chance chose as a victim somebody who can change your life."
Packard did not want the teen to pay restitution for her car because he'd lost his job. He did have to pay $500 for another charge, something that worried Packard.
A few days after the court hearing, Packard sat in her small Minneapolis home and talked about the experience. "When the police told me [the car thieves] were underage, I just kept praying for them," she said.
She recalled the hurt in the teen's eyes as she spoke in court. "He was hugging me so hard I couldn't believe it," Packard said. "I felt everybody in that room was affected. I'm not sure what happened, but I call it a spiritual moment. That was God."
Packard said she knows judges and lawyers toil away without praise, and often get jaded because they deal daily with violence and sorrow.
"There is often so much disillusionment," she said. "I found myself thinking that everybody there needed this. Everybody needed the kind of attention that boy got. We all need some source of value in our lives."
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COMMENTARY
Although we now experience Easter morning as a time of joyous celebration, on that very first Easter Sunday the initial experience of the day was one of complete confusion. Despite having been with Jesus in Galilee, despite hearing all of Jesus’ teachings about his suffering, death, and resurrection, the reality of Golgotha had left the disciples with nothing but despair.
In Luke’s gospel Jesus’ closest companions, his disciples and those others who had traveled with him from Galilee, watched the crucifixion from “a distance” (23:49). The implication is that this was a “safe” distance. The disciples were sequestered away from the hostile crowd that had demanded Barabbas be freed and Jesus be crucified. Those gathered close enough to hear Jesus’ final words and watch his final breaths are a crowd of strangers. When Joseph of Arimathea claims Jesus’ body none of Jesus’ disciples step forward to help. Luke notes that only “the women who had come with him from Galilee”(23:55) cautiously followed — getting just close enough to see in which tomb Jesus’ body was laid. The final act of these women, before the Sabbath arrived and all work must halt, is not to prepare food and drink for that holy day, but to prepare “spices and ointments,” the trappings and wrappings of death.
Just as their last act of the previous week had been focused on death, so is these women’s first act after the Sabbath. At the crack of dawn, the earliest hour possible, the women set out to attend to death rituals, especially the anointing of Jesus’ dead, entombed body. Although Luke had not specified that a stone had been placed over the entrance to the tomb, he now highlights the surprising detail that the stone had been “rolled away” (v.2). Entering the open tomb the women are perplexed (“aporeo”) to find no body. The tomb is no longer a tomb. The tomb is not a place of death. The tomb is now something else — but these women will need help to discover what that “something else” is.
The sudden appearance of “two men in dazzling clothes” provides that assistance. Although here Luke describes the two individuals as “men” (“andres”), it is clear from the detail of their “dazzling” (“exastrapto”) clothing that these are supernatural visitors. Later in 24:23 they are described as “angels.” The women themselves immediately sense the otherworldly nature of these entities for they respond with appropriate fear (they are “terrified”) and worshipful respect (they “bow” before them) at their presence.
These angelic messengers first pose a question to the women: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (v.5). The women are in the wrong place (a tomb) and are looking for the wrong thing (a dead body). Jesus is not there. Jesus is among the living. Jesus is “risen.”
The messengers then insist the women themselves know why Jesus is not in the tomb. They have but to “remember” (“mimneskomai”) Jesus’ own words in order to understand. The words they heard when they were with him in Galilee described this new reality — that after Jesus was crucified he would “on the third day rise again” (v.7).
In response to this angelic prompting, the women do indeed “remember.” This act of remembrance is not just a recollection of Jesus’ teaching. It is an active embracing of the fulfillment of those words. Remembering brings the women to faith in the risen Lord. It is because of that sudden faith, not any angelic directive, that the women race out of the tomb and back to the disciples and “all the rest” who had heard Jesus’ passion predictions. The women tell them also to “remember.”
But having not seen the empty tomb or encountered the angelic visitors, the rest of Jesus’ community discounts the women’s words as “an idle tale” (NRSV). That is a deceptively kind translation. The term “levos” was a medical diagnosis describing delusions experienced while suffering from a very high fever. In other words Jesus’ disciples and other followers did not just think these women were talking silly nonsense. They thought these first witnesses to the empty tomb were loco, berserk, “out of their minds.”
Despite the general consensus of the community; despite the impossibility of the news; despite the fact that first century Jewish women were not qualified to stand as “witnesses:” something gnaws at Peter. In Luke’s gospel, even as Peter alone had followed Jesus to the high priest’s house after his arrest, Peter now sets out alone to see the tomb for himself.
Yet while Peter arrives at the tomb, he does not, apparently, yet arrive at faith. Unlike the women who “remembered” Jesus’ words and so grasped the truth of his resurrection, Peter gazes upon the empty tomb and all those left behind burial linens and is “amazed” (“thaumazo”). This is a term Luke often employs to describe the human response to a wondrous or inexplicable event. But amazement is not full faithfulness. Luke states simply that after seeing the tomb for himself Peter “went home.” There is no indication that he shared his own witness of the empty tomb with anyone. Peter’s fixation is still on a death scene, not on its transformation into a vision for new life.