Easter 1c .07                                                         April 8, 2007

20th Century Russia produced four great lyric poets,
         Marina Tsvetaeva; Osip Mendelstam, and Boris Pasternak
                (whom we all know from his novel, Dr. Zhivago)
But the best one was Anna Akhmatova.
Her family was ashamed of her poetry,
         so she wrote under a pseudonym and was wildly successful.
Russian academic circles made parlor games out
         of her early love poems.
Someone would recite a line and the next person had to recite
         the next line in the poem.

But things went downhill for her from the beginning
         of World War I in 1914.
Of course, the War was devastating for the whole county.
But there was more.
Her marriage disintegrated and she lost custody of her son.
Then, the 1917 Revolution
         turned her world upside down.
Lyric poetry was banned. Her friends were arrested.
She was reduced to poverty, which included hunger and cold.
Still reeling from enormous losses in the World War,
         Russia plunged immediately into a 4-year civil war.

In 1921, the last year of the civil war, her ex-husband,
         still her dear friend, was charged
         with counter-revolution and executed.
In that year, Akhmatova wrote:
         Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
         Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
         Misery gnaws to the bone.
         Why then do we not despair?

         By day from the surrounding woods,
         cherries blow summer into town;
         at night the deep transparent skies
         glitter with new galaxies.

         And the miraculous comes so close
         to the ruined, dirty houses –
         something not known to anyone at all,
         but wild in our breast for centuries.”

“Why then do we not despair? ...
The miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses.”

We have all seen this

         – perhaps in our own lives,
                  perhaps in the lives of others

         – but we have all seen it.
In the face of real disaster

         – the loss of someone we love,
                  the end of a career, or break up of a family –
in those catastrophic moments when the heart truly breaks,
         and we should by all rights roll over and die,
         something raises us up to life.

                 “Why then do we not despair?
                 By day from the surrounding woods,
                 cherries blow summer into town;
                 at night the deep transparent skies
                 glitter with new galaxies.”

When I see people rise from the ashes of ruined lives,
        I have no explanation for it whatsoever.
I marvel at the mystery and remember the words of the hymn,

        “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my life’s in vain,
        But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”
And I realize I don’t understand this miracle,
        because it’s the Holy Spirit at work doing what she does best

                – resurrection – blowing life back into death

                – restoring hope that has no earthly basis.

In Ezekiel, the prophet surveys the Valley of Dry Bones.
The bones represent the despairing people of Israel in exile in Babylon.
Israel says “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost.”
But the Lord says to the hopeless, forsaken exiles,
         taken from their homeland and enslaved,

         “I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live.”

Life and hope springing up from the tomb of death and despair
         is a recurring miracle and mystery.
This miracle and mystery shoot out like rays of light
         from the one central mystery of our faith,
         the miracle of all miracles – the Resurrection.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,”
         St. Peter said,
“For we have been born anew to a living hope
         through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

That means our hope, our inexplicable mysterious hope,

         – the hope which we cannot justify
                  with any earthly circumstance,
         so we don’t know were it comes from –
this miraculous hope comes from the ultimate act of God.
It all goes back to the three broken-hearted women,
        going to perform a kind but despairing act of love,
        going to anoint the already buried body of Jesus
                  with oils to slow down his decay.
It goes back to their finding the tomb – but it was empty.
Then two men dressed like angels appeared and said,

        “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”//

And from that moment on, faith has turned our hearts
        from despair to hope, to seeking the living in God,
                 not the dead in ruin and defeat.

There is a popular debate today
        as to whether the Resurrection was a literal historical event
        or a metaphor of new life that happens naturally in the world.
Novelist and poet John Updike insists on the literal view.

He writes,

       “It was His body;
       if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
       reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
       the church will fail.”

On the other side,
       New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan
       denies the literal, bodily Resurrection of Jesus.
He says it is a story that points to something larger.

I respect both these men,
       but both of them are missing the mark.
I basically agree with Updike.

The Resurrection I believe in
       is the one we read about in Holy Scripture.
I believe the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.

I believe the Risen Christ spoke to Mary Magdalen in the Garden,
       that he walked with Clopas on the road to Emmaus,
       and that he appeared to Peter, the 12,
                then to many others, and to Paul.

But Updike wants to insist on literal, bodily processes
       that St. Paul didn’t believe in.
Paul taught that whatever was raised up
       was of a very different order from the mortal body.
I, for one, don’t want to insist on an orthodoxy
       that wouldn’t leave room for St. Paul.

Crossan is right that the Resurrection isn’t just
       one event that happened to Jesus.
It’s what God does over and over in all times and places.
But if we really believe God does wonders
       in all times and places,
       why would we say God did not do this particular wonder
                for Jesus?
Does Crossan think we can set limits
       on what God can do?

So is the Resurrection a historical event or a metaphor?
Or is it both or neither?
I say it doesn’t fit any of those categories.
The Resurrection of Our Lord is miracle and mystery
       which is for our hope and our joy,
                not our analysis and diagnosis.
A holy mystery is, in Anna Akhmatova’s words,

       “something not known to anyone at all,
       but wild in our breast for centuries.”

All we know is that, as Akhmatova said,

        “the miraculous comes so close
        to the ruined, dirty houses.”
When, grace slips in where it seems most impossible,
        it’s a time for praise, not logic’s poor tunnel vision.

Another story from the Russian Revolution:
Early on the government began its campaign
        to stamp out Christianity.
They held a great rally attended by a thousand
        Russian peasants.

The speaker, Nikkolay Bukharin,
        logically attacked the Christian faith
                for over two hours.
He took the faith apart stone by stone.
When he had left Christianity
        utterly demolished and dead on the floor,
        he asked if anyone had anything to say.

After a few moments, an old, white bearded Russian priest
        came to up to the stage, took the microphone, and said,

        “Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
Then a thousand voices thundered back,

        “He is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

                                                  Amen.