First United Methodist Church of Reno

¹Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and

eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. ² Why do you spend your

money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen

carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. ³Incline your ear, and

⁶Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; ⁷let the wicked

forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may

¹²For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you

shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. ¹³Instead of the thorn

shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the

¹When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Easter Sunday is to go – along with the women – to the tomb and weep at the place where the one whom we love has been shut up in a crypt behind an immovable stone. It’s to go in search for some meaning in the crushing memory of his awful suffering and death. On this very Sunday we go back again to the tomb.

But once we get there we find that, not only is the tomb empty, but Jesus isn’t there. If we’re ever to find him again it won’t be in a place for the dead, but in the same places where we’d experienced him in life. To celebrate Easter Sunday is to turn away from the tomb and discover Jesus – maybe without even recognizing him – in the welcome embrace of this sanctuary, in the reunions of family, in familiar hymns and their messages of life renewed in the face of death.

Easter faith is fragile. It takes us into the area where God is not confined or safely contained, always asking us to step out into the unimaginable.^¹

As strong as our convictions might be about the Resurrection, none of us can prove that it ever took place. There was no body. There were no news releases at the time that ever reported such an extraordinary event; and never mind the discoveries of those “holy” relics: of a Jesus ossuary,^² the “shroud of Turin” that underwent Carbon 14 dating,^³ and all the rest, there isn’t a shred of evidence – in the scientific sense – that will assure us that what our clear and unequivocal Christian tradition claims is true.

As Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have pointed out to us (and I wholeheartedly agree with them):

…an emphasis on the historical factuality of the Easter stories, as if they were reporting events that could have been photographed, gets in the way of understanding them.^⁴ ….

Seeing the Easter stories as parable does not involve a denial of their factuality. …the importance of these stories lies in their meanings….

Seeing the Easter stories as parable, as parabolic narratives, affirms, “Believe whatever you want about whether the stories happened this way – now let’s talk about what they mean.” If you believe the tomb was empty, fine; now, what does this story mean? If you believe that Jesus’s appearances could have been videotaped, fine; now, what do these stories mean? And if you’re not sure about that, or even if you are quite sure it didn’t happen this way, fine; now, what do these stories mean?^⁵

All of these stories are about hope. We kindle a new fire and light a candle in the darkness, and so join with centuries of human beings for whom fire represents a mysterious and powerful force. We’ve come to call that force love, and we believe that it’s stronger than death. By ourselves we have no proof at all for believing such a thing, but right here, in this community and in the extended family that we call the church, we experience the proof – no more so than we did when we celebrated the life of Margaret Emma Whitmer right here a week ago. Our families and this community are our witnesses to the truth of our hope, because it’s in those circles that we’ve experienced that love in all of its strength.

Fools, we may be, to cling to this hope in such a broken and violent world; and our fire seems so fragile in the face of reports of wars and “ethnic cleansings.”^⁶ And yet, together, we sometimes experience and are transformed by the strength of love. We pass that hope, like the flame of a candle, to each other and understand now the meaning of that traditional phrase “the communion of saints.”^⁷ That flame is us, with all of our ancestors on whose shoulders we stand, and the long line of future generations, all kindled with love. We celebrate what we see here, as well as what we do not yet see, in the light of Easter.

Mark’s story of the empty tomb is expanded in the other gospels, all of which have “appearance stories,” narratives in which the risen Jesus appears to his followers. These stories are the product of the experience and reflection of Jesus’s followers in the days, months, years, and decades after his death. Strikingly, none is found in more than one gospel…. Each evangelist has his own, suggesting that this is the way the story of Easter was told in the community for whom each wrote.^⁸ …. People who have had a vision report that something important and meaningful, often life-changing, has happened to them….^⁹

It’s important for us to notice that in many ways the situation at the tomb in which these women find themselves hasn’t changed a whole lot. We’re still standing in front of an empty tomb. Like them, we still have to find ways to cope with the physical death of someone we love – someone who was more than just a teacher, mentor and friend. Like the women, we’ve still got to stumble through our days, months and years, reorienting ourselves to a world in which Jesus really does not walk alongside of us, and talk, laugh and party with us.^¹⁰

For those who are suffering the loss of their center – whether it’s due to the death of a loved one, the rejection by the larger community, or in the loss of one’s health – the message of the resurrection is not about the end of suffering. Instead it’s an invitation to us to understand our losses and to find there, not the finality of death, but a spring at which we’re offered a drink of renewed life.

I know how hard it is to proclaim such a message as this with any degree of authenticity – especially if you’re unable to empathize with others who are in pain. But the message of the church is not, “Suffer – it’s good for you.” It comes closer to something like, “Embrace life – no matter how much it hurts!” The difference between these two messages is that the first one leaves us at the mercy of the disintegrating power of suffering, while the second offers us a new center from which to bear our suffering while still remaining human.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a vision of some guy dressed in dazzling white giving me messages of hope and resurrection. But it doesn’t mean that the same invitation is not being offered! In Luke’s account of this same story at the tomb, the one angel has now become two, and they say to the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here.”^¹¹ To look for the center of love and life among the dead is to focus our attention on those parts of ourselves and our surroundings that are discouraging, distorted, oppressive, paralyzing. To look in the place of resurrection is to focus on the overwhelming power of life and love that is at the deepest reality of everything that is – even in the midst of things that are discouraging, distorted, oppressive or paralyzing.

The agnostic in us would just dismiss the story of the Resurrection as a myth. And yet, as many of us have learned, “a myth is a way of making sense in [an often] senseless world.”^¹² So the women go to the tomb just at sunrise to try and make sense out of the terrible tragedy that’s just happened. Myths are the reason we get up in the morning. They help give support for our being and doing – for our just “getting through the day.” They give strength and hope to whatever faith we’ve chosen to live by.

For us Jesus is alive to the degree that the values that he left us come to transcend our fears, failures, and materialistic aspirations of “living the good life.” We’re here because for us something’s happened and we see what it means. Fear of ridicule as well as the scorn of cynics will not keep us from proclaiming and trying to re-present those values – the values that we’ve seen in Jesus – in our own lives. Our faults and differences will not keep us from trying to discover the truth and to work together for the common good. For us who claim the name “Christian,” Jesus lives and keeps showing up – often in unlikely people and in the strangest places.

“There is only one river, there is only one sea. And it flows through you, and it flows through me.”^¹³ While Peter Yarrow wrote those words of his song as a plea for unity in the midst of creation, it could just as well have been a testimony to the flow of life that we celebrate at Easter. It has no face because it contains all faces. It’s our union with our neighbor and with creation itself. We’ve all been invited to drink deeply of this water of life.

It’s no accident that we celebrate Easter at springtime. Truly marvelous celebrations of life are happening all around us – particularly at this time of year – and we don’t even notice them. You and I may experience Easter in very different ways, but the medium will probably be very ordinary, and so we may have to listen and look very closely for it all around us. In the 19^th century George Eliot told her readers a lot about that kind of perception when she wrote:

If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat. And we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence.^¹⁴

Easter is our triumphant, holy day, a day for rejoicing, not just in a distant “Holy Land,” but here in our own community and among family and friends. This day isn’t just ours. We hold in our hearts and give part of our thanks for those who cannot be here. We are one with all of those who are confined to home or hospital, war front or peace vigil, and with relatives who are far away. We raise our voices in support of those who’ve been unjustly deprived of their right to be here, with those who gather in silence or in secret – just because they’re gay or are in this country “illegally.” The whole world should celebrate this festival of new life!

Good Friday and Easter, death and resurrection together, are a central image in the New Testament for the path to a transformed self. The path involves dying to an old way of being and being reborn into a new way of being. Good Friday and Easter are about this path, the path of dying and rising, of being born again.^¹⁵

When Jesus was thought to have spoken about “the way, the truth, and the life,” this is what he was talking about. And as our authors of The Last Week clearly point out, it’s not meant to just be a personal thing – of getting your heart right with Jesus – it’s not only about “personal transformation,” but “political transformation.”^¹⁶ You and I are called upon to undo the systems of oppression and injustice, wherever we find them, and replace them with the kinds of systems that will truly lead us on the path of peace with justice.^¹⁷

…loyalty, allegiance, and commitment to God as disclosed in Jesus… is the opposite of idolatry, of giving one’s loyalty to a lesser good. It also involves loyalty and commitment to God’s passion as disclosed in Jesus, a passion for compassion, justice, and nonviolence.^¹⁸

Today stands as a testimony, then, to the fact that life cannot be suppressed! It’s here to stay. No matter what we do to life, it will come back to us. If we load it down with all of the troubles of the world, taunt and spit on it, beat it and crown it with thorns, condemn it to death and march it up to a hill called Golgotha and nail it to a cross, it will rise again! Life is here to stay.

What are you looking for this Easter? In our story from Mark, the women are looking for Jesus’ body. They’re shocked and then frightened to find the tomb empty. They don’t find the dead body that they came looking for, but they begin to discover the living “body of Christ” that they are becoming. May the very same thing happen to you.

6 Sadly, it didn’t begin with the defeat of the Canaanites by the Jews (Ethnic cleansing is exactly what’s being recorded, you must know, in the biblical accounts like Exodus 33: 1-3, et al.); but it did continue with the Nazi’s extermination of Jews in the shoah. And it goes on, as we saw recently in Yugoslavia (note the website: http://balkansnet.org/ethnicl.html) and are seeing today in Darfur (see http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/).

13 This line is from the song, “River of Jordan,” by that prophetic bard of the Civil Rights era, Peter Yarrow (of “Peter, Paul & Mary” fame) – even in 1972 (when this song was written) he was still raising his voice on behalf of human rights and for peace with justice for all. The full text is:

I traveled the banks of the River of Jordan
to find where it flows to the sea.
I looked in the eyes of the cold and the hungry
and I saw I was looking at me.

I wanted to know if life had a purpose
and what it all means in the end.
In the silence I listened to voices inside me
and they told me again and again.

There is only one river. There is only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me.
There is only one people. We are one and the same.
We are all one spirit. We are all one name.

We are the father, mother, daughter and son.
From the dawn of creation, we are one.
We are one.

Every blade of grass on the mountain,
every drop in the sea,
every cry of a newborn baby,
every prayer to be free,
every hope at the end of a rainbow,
every song ever sung
is a part of the family of woman and man.
And that means everyone.

We are only one river. We are only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me.
We are only one people. We are one and the same.
We are all one spirit. We are all one name.
We are the father, mother, daughter and son
From the dawn of creation, we are one.
We are one.

The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA

April 8, 2007