Easter 1b.03                                                       April 16, 2006

The Resurrection of Jesus was a crisis,
        a radical turning point, in the way things are.
The three women’s discovery of the Resurrection was,
        for them, another crisis, a radical turning point
                in their lives.

Bishop Alexander says in this year’s Easter Message,

        “These (first) faith communities were trying
                to figure out the implications of this incredible reality. . .
        (T)heir world had changed.
        The(ir) . . . task was to reorder their lives in joyful response
                to what God had done.
        The way life used to be had changed,
                and they knew it.”

So the discovery of the Resurrection
        was a personal crisis for the two Marys and Salome.
It is hardly any wonder that, as Mark says,

        “Terror and amazement . . . seized them,
        and they fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone
                for they were afraid.”

Discovering the Resurrection would be a crisis,
        a radical turning point, for everyone who met the Risen Lord.
Some of them like Peter had been his followers before death.
Others like James of Jerusalem and Saul of Tarsus were not.

There were several roads leading to this point in the story.
The Scriptures all agree Jesus was crucified by Rome.
But after that the interpretations vary.

In Mark, Jesus walked this path compassionately
        taking on all the very worst
        of the human experience, including even despair.

In Luke, Jesus’ way was through forgiveness and healing.
He healed and forgave right from the cross,

        “Father forgive them. They know not what they do.”
In John, Jesus walked a way of serenity.
He knew he was in God’s hands,
        so all would be well even if he died.

Paul and the author of Hebrews see Jesus
        as having endured the cross as an act of obedience,
        accepting life’s suffering
                rather than running away from it.

There are at least four spiritualities here,
        each of which is a Way of the Cross.
And they converge like streets at a single point,
        at the Holy Sepulcher.
These spiritualities are ways to live and ways to die.
But none of them, in themselves, change the order of things.

Any of these ways of the cross can be adopted as philosophies
        and lived out within the limits of life as we know it,
        within the borders of despair, death,
                 disappointment, and futility.

But that’s when God steps in to make this story
        something worth telling.
God changes everything
        in a way so wonderful and mysterious
                 that we can, at best, stammer about it.

In the Resurrection, God breaks open our familiar world,
        and infuses it with a new kind of reality.
He doesn’t destroy the boundaries of disappointment, death,
        and despair – but he deprives them of finality.
They don’t get the final word.
They are relegated to the plot-thickening next to last chapter.
Something has mysteriously but powerfully changed.

There are two great questions about the Resurrection

       – what is it and how do we prove it?
We ask these questions out of our ordinary world view,
       out of our assumptions about death and disappointment.
As the philosopher Martin Heidegger taught us,
       our minds are caught up in a hermeneutical circle

– meaning we can only ask questions out of our existing framework,
       and we can only hear answers that fit in that existing framework.

But the Resurrection breaks open that framework

       – so we cannot answer either question directly.
We cannot speak.
We have to sing instead about an experience
       that seems trustworthy, first in our hearts,
                and then in the way it plays out in our lives.
This is a different kind of reality – a spiritual and moral truth.
It is a truth that has to be experienced spiritually, then proven morally.

Peter said,

        “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
                for by his great mercy we have been born anew
                to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
                        from the dead.”
When we experience the Resurrection, it is a living hope.
“A living hope.”
Not so long ago we laid to rest one of our members,
        Gibson Riley – a colorful, cantankerous, opinionated Georgian.
Several decades earlier, Gibson was in despair.

His daughter was dead, his life was a shambles,
        and he was hopelessly – the operative word is hopelessly –
                  addicted to alcohol.
In a motel room in Atlanta, Gibson’s despair drove him to his knees,
       and, to his utter surprise – for he had no faith –
                 he felt the presence of someone with him in that room.
He felt the presence and knew it was Jesus.
The proof of the Resurrection Gibson gave us
       is that he never took another drink.

And Gibson didn’t just stop drinking.
Another of our members, Virginia Palmer,
       had a hard time making it up the aisle for Communion
                 because of her MS.
So Gibson along with her husband Ron helped her to the rail
       every Sunday, week after week for years.
And every Sunday Gibson was the first one here,
       to open the church and light the candles.

Just so, the Apostles who met the Resurrected Christ
                left their homes and traveled a dangerous world
                to spread that good news, “He is risen,”.
That’s how they proved the Resurrection

       – by reordering their lives in a way that no longer fit the world

       – in a way that refused to acknowledge the finality
                of disappointment, death, and despair.

What is the Resurrection?
We don’t know.
How is it possible?
That’s a little easier.
If God is the Creator “in the beginning,” God can create again,
       create anew what we have destroyed.
If the Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life,
       the Spirit can give that life to anyone, anytime.
God doesn’t have to conform or our expectations
       or play by any particular set of rules.

What does the Resurrection mean?
We can can’t define the Resurrection,
      and we can prove the Resurrection
              only by how we live out of it.
But we can say what it means.

      “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
              for by his great mercy we have been born anew
              to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
                     from the dead.”

The challenge is: now how do we prove the Resurrection?
How do we live in a world where disappointment, death, and despair
        do not get the final word?
        How do we become an Easter people?
What kind of a church shall we be in light of the Resurrection?
Will we, too, “say nothing to anyone because we are afraid,”
        or will we welcome people here to tell them
               that death has lost its sting, that there is hope for them,
               that healing is at hand.
What does the Resurrection mean about whether we can
        heal the divisions in our city
               and make this a place where children flourish
               instead of a leader in all the ways that young lives
                        fall into despair?
What does the Resurrection mean for the Millennium Development Goals
        of eradicating poverty, providing universal education,
               and stopping the silent holocaust in which a child dies
               every three seconds of poverty and neglect?
What does the Resurrection mean for our lives with each other,
        our family relationships stuck in old patterns
                of frustration and futility?

What does the Resurrection mean?
And how shall we live in its light?
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
        for by his great mercy we have been born anew
        to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
                from the dead.”

                                                              Amen.