The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
April 24, 2011
Easter Sunday

Scripture Readings:

Psalter – Psalm 118: 14-29¹

¹⁴The Lord is my strength and my might; the Lord has become my salvation.

¹⁵There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous:

“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly;

¹⁶the right hand of the Lord is exalted;

the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.”

¹⁷I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

¹⁸The Lord has punished me severely, but has not given me over to death.

¹⁹Open to me the gates of righteousness,

that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

²⁰This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

²¹I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

²²The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

²³This is the Lord’s doing;

it is marvelous in our eyes.

²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made;

let us rejoice and be glad in it.

²⁵Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!

O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!

²⁶Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

We bless you from the house of the Lord.

²⁷The Lord is God, who has given us light.

Bind the festal procession with branches,

up to the horns of the altar.

²⁸You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;

you are my God, I will extol you.

²⁹O give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good,

whose steadfast love endures forever.

Gospel – John 20: 1-18²

¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

“Resurrections Are Always Taking Place.”

Today is whose day of resurrection? Does that sound just a little bit like a weird question for anybody to ask on Easter Sunday – especially from a pastor? Who is risen? Well, if you really haven’t been paying attention, it is Jesus, right – also known as the Christ? Our music, rituals and liturgy for the past six weeks have been talking about those final events leading up to his execution, and today the church proclaims the other side of this awesome mystery: the one who died did not stay dead. Our celebration is not only a reenactment of a chronology of events, our worship services proclaim a deeply mysterious truth, because Jesus will stay dead until the end of time, and yet this same Jesus is the one who lives and moves among us now, here, today.

That’s the mystery held before us on this Sunday of all Sundays: it is no less than the death and resurrection of one Jesus of Nazareth taking on flesh in you and me – the community of the baptized, the new Body of Christ. Jesus died and rose to become a people. Our hope, as we learn to accept death, lies in this One who is alive still in us, whose work, mission and ministry continues to this day, at this time, and in this place. If it doesn’t, then you and I are more dead than alive.

In many ways and in a number of different guises, Jesus was reported to have appeared to his disciples after his death. In one of his more dramatic appearances (which we’ll tackle in greater depth, hopefully, next Sunday), the author of John’s Gospel says that he appears to them from behind locked doors and says, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”³ Much of the past twenty-one centuries seems to show that his message has been resisted far more than it’s been accepted – wouldn’t you say? The church’s feeble (and often misguided) attempts to make disciples of this man hasn’t brought an end to war, famine, slavery, disease, nor any other kind of human crisis – from family breakups, to murder, thievery, deceit and slander. Tell me, where is the evidence that the nature of human relationships has changed all that much?

So what’s left of the meaning of resurrection? What can Easter say to the nations of Japan or Afghanistan, Haiti or Libya, let alone these United States (the latest oxymoron if there ever was one)? What can the resurrection say to a people in turmoil and fear, doubting their own ability and any hope for a better tomorrow? It could be that the resurrection is profound in its simplicity – as Jesus’ most teachable moments always were most profound in humble and the most commonplace of events. Easter may simply be the ultimate affirmation of life here on earth from a Creator who wants us all to be sons and daughters in much the same way that Jesus was. The resurrection says that to breathe air, eat food, have a body, to yearn for release from fear, to hope, dream and trust are important. To be fully alive on this earth is every bit as important as to be alive in some mythical place called heaven. We can only bring such a message of hope to others here. The teaching of good news, of love and compassion, of hope to those in need and in pain, ought to take place in this life, or it shouldn’t happen anywhere. Easter is the simple but radical affirmation of this life as the place where the next life becomes real.

Easter celebrates, then, not only the reported resurrection of Jesus, but maybe more importantly, the possibilities of our own. So if you and I are content to simply sing a few songs and rejoice in the new life of Jesus this morning, and then go home for the usual family lunch and a Giants baseball game (They’re playing the Braves again at 1:05 this afternoon, by the way.) – if that’s all the meaning that we will have taken in of this day, we will have missed something incredibly compelling about its deeper meaning for us. The resurrection of Jesus is a paradigm, a prime example, that is speaking to each of us of the need for our own death and rising. When we celebrate Easter we ought to be saying that we’re aware of the need for something to die in ourselves. And yet, all too often, we cover over such a conclusion with far too much emphasis on literalizing and therefore trivializing this story to the neglect of our own role in death and resurrection. In every life some kind of progression from less to more, from fetus to fully formed human being, from darkness to light, from death to life, should always be there. This kind of movement could be the deepest significance of Easter in and for our lives. Who couldn’t use at least a little conversion such as this – a death that leads toward a rising?⁴

The poet E. E. Cummings wrote those marvelous lines that begin,

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes⁵

In this and in many other of Cummings’ poems we’re invited to consider that nothing should be taken for granted or approached as if it were fixed and routine. That’s how I’ve come to understand today. The essence of Easter, for me, is that resurrections are always taking place, never ceasing to raise life to new heights and new possibilities. Trusting in that reality, however, becomes the challenge of our lives. In the end, maybe the best way to approach Easter is to acknowledge that there is something pervasive and ongoing about rising to new life every single day. It deserves our very best efforts and asks that we bring out our finest vintage to celebrate what it is.

The whole purpose of celebrating Easter on a specific day, then, is to challenge ourselves to start over again, to rekindle our spirits with the meaning that new life is here for the taking – always was and always will be – and then to say a joyous and affirmative “Yes!” to it.

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