Sermon for Easter Sunday
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8; John 20:11-18; John 11:38-44
I don’t really have the foggiest idea of what you need to hear this morning. I’m going to have to rely on what I need to say rather than trying to guess what you need to hear. I have no conviction about what you may need to hear on this Easter Sunday.
But I confess I’m thinking about it some, because I’m wondering what it is exactly that I need to hear on this Easter Sunday, and whether it’s the same or in any way similar to what you need to hear, and whether what you or I need to hear on this Easter is different in any way from what we need to hear on any other day. And since I’m the one presuming to stand up to speak a sermon this morning, I’m also thinking about things like: “What do I need to say this morning?” Am I under some obligation to try to figure out what I would need to say in order for you to feel like you had heard, or me to feel like I had given, an “Easter” sermon? I am wondering what I need to hear in connection with what I need to say, because I always feel like I am preaching to myself. I am the audience for my sermons, at least the one I know best. But I am also thinking that what I need to hear may not be anything I am able to say, even to myself.
If you haven’t been able to follow all this, don’t worry. I am getting myself all tangled up in these thoughts I think partly because of something I read recently that disturbed me. I was reading something by a rather well-known preacher—Fleming Rutledge is her name—in which she was chiding Christians, ministers especially, whose approach to Easter leaves out the resurrection of Jesus Christ. She said that she had been collecting clippings from newspapers that reported what various ministers had said in their Easter messages and she was going to rename this file: one hundred ways to avoid saying that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
She pointed out that people seem to like to talk about everything but the resurrection on Easter. People will talk about renewal and rebirth and revival but almost never about resurrection. People will talk, she says, about birds singing and flowers blooming and spirits rising, but not about Jesus Christ rising from the dead. People will talk about the hope of an afterlife or about hope springing eternal or about goodness winning out in the end or about the ultimate victory of life over death, or about love being stronger than death—they will find every way they can not to say that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
She even criticized the hymn, “Now the Green Blade Rises”, saying that it is misleading to say, as the hymn does, that Christ came forth at Easter like the risen grain, as though this was something that was as natural and predictable as wheat coming out of the earth. The resurrection, she says, was unnatural, unpredictable, and miraculous, so this is not a good hymn is basically what she was saying. I was already having lots of trouble with what Fleming Rutledge was saying, but when she took on the hymn, that’s when she really lost me. “Now the Green Blade Rises” is one of my favorite hymns, as I know it is for at least some other people among us this morning. It also has some personal meaning for me. So at that point I knew that Fleming Rutledge and I just were not going to get along.
Nevertheless, she asks some questions that are worth thinking about. She talks about a woman she knew who lost her husband of 49 years one night without warning. They had both just retired, were in good health, were looking forward to some travel, and he died in his sleep. Is the return of spring or the blooming of flowers enough of a message for this woman? For Fleming Rutledge the answer is obvious. The answer is no. Another woman she knew had just lost a child. Bird songs, she felt, had mocked her sorrow. The birds should have been mourning too. And her love for her child in this particular, very real case, had not been stronger than death. What words, what phrases of faith will console or speak to someone in such grief? Probably not words about springtime and flowers. But then what? The question is real and sometimes it is urgent. It’s where I began the sermon. I don’t know what you need to hear today, because I don’t know what sorrows, needs, or questions you bring with you today. I don’t know what urgencies are yours. I know pretty well what mine are, but that doesn’t necessarily answer the question of what words will speak to my urgencies, or yours.
Again the answer to Fleming Rutledge seems clear. The words that we need to hear, you and I, and the words she needs to speak are the same, and they are about the resurrection of Jesus, how this man who was truly dead rose up from the grave truly alive, leaving the grave empty and appearing to certain followers whose lives were changed by the encounter. Fleming Rutledge wants to speak about the resurrection of Jesus, not about a general sense of renewal, not about resurrection in some metaphorical or poetic sense, but directly. And she as much as says that she wishes that all other Christian clergy could and would say that too. And I don’t mean to single her out. I have heard this message before from teachers and colleagues and assorted others. Don’t water down the Easter message, these people say. Don’t offer bromides and platitudes when something much more is needed. And in a way I can agree.
But with all due respect to this woman whom I do not know, and to all the others whose voices she echoes, I have to say that they stand in quite a different and distant place from where I stand. From where I stand, they must stand somewhere over the rainbow, or at the end of the rainbow, someplace that allows them to speak with certainty and in plain language about the resurrection of Jesus. For them, speaking with integrity means speaking with assurance of Jesus being raised from the dead, and I agree that if that is their belief, they should speak it and not try to camouflage it in flowers and springtime. I’m not sure that such people as Fleming Rutledge refers to, caught in the midst of some of life’s devastations, would necessarily find her message any more what they need to hear than some words about flowers or the springtime of the soul.
For myself, I am not in that place where Fleming Rutledge is, and asks me to be. I am not able to speak with an unquestioning heart about the resurrection of Jesus. I doubt that I ever will be in that place. I am not able to speak of it at all without the use of poetry and metaphor. And I have decided, a long time ago, that that’s o.k. I struggled with it, but I decided it’s completely o.k. to be a Christian, o.k. to be a Christian minister, and not be able to speak with absolute certainty, with a full voice and with an unquestioning heart, about the resurrection of Jesus. Furthermore, I am not sure that the word I need to hear, is that Christ is risen, alleluia, no matter how loudly, joyously, or confidently it is said.
I have an occasional habit of meandering through cemeteries. Ava and I have done that some in Charlottesville, as part of our orientation to our new home. Sometimes when we are doing car trips we will stop at a cemetery and just walk through it. When I do that I’m not looking for anyone or anything in particular. We don’t stop at cemeteries because of historical markers. Sometimes I know people stop at cemeteries because they want to see where some famous person has been laid to rest, but that’s not me. I just sort of stare at the stones with the names of people etched in them, people I know nothing about save the little bit of information that is there in front of me. The name. A few dates that will tell me when the person lived and how long. Perhaps some words that speak ever so briefly of who the person was, some sign that the person was a veteran or a mason. A few bare facts. And even if there were a few more, or a lot more, the facts would still be as barren as the stones on which they are written.
Facts, no matter how many we can assemble, don’t tell the truth. What about the joy and love and laughter that was present in this person’s life, or that was missing from it? What about the troubles and the tears? What about the hard feelings that had to be worked through or the hardships that had to be lived through? What about the hopes and dreams that never came true? What about those that did come true but in the end didn’t seem so important after all? What about all those rows and rows of stones? What if those stones could be rolled away and what if all those people could sit up and tell us not the facts, but the truth, not the truth about Jesus but the truth about themselves? What stories, what truths lie hidden under those stones? One can stand in front of a gravestone and be struck by the fleeting nature of our lives, or by their smallness, or by their vanity. Or one can stand in front of that stone in wonder and awe, feeling not the lostness of that life but its holiness.
There’s a novel called Ironweed, by William Kennedy that begins in a graveyard, and because of what I’ve just been talking about, I have always remembered the opening scene of that novel. The main character is Francis Phelan, a man who lives in a world of flop houses and city missions, abandoned cars and vacant houses. He lives there because he has chosen to be in exile from the sort of normal world where people go about their business acting as though they knew what they were doing and believed what they were doing was important. Francis has lost touch with that world.
At the beginning of the novel, Francis is in a cemetery because he has been brought there as a day laborer, hired so he can work off a minor debt to a lawyer who had gotten him out of trouble and so he can have a few drinks that night and a place to sleep. Yet it so happens that this graveyard he’s working in contains the graves of other Phelans, and as Francis passes by them, they begin to come to life. His mother squirms uncomfortably in her grave and picks dandelions, which she weaves into crosses. His father, who was hit and killed by a train in front of Francis’ eyes when he was a young boy, lights up his pipe and raises himself up just far enough to try to see what has become of his wayward son. Two other Phelans, no relations, sit up and begin to tell Francis how 100 years ago they were killed in a robbery, killed for the 48 cents they had in their pockets, a measure of what the world considered their lives to be worth. And then there is Francis’ son, who died when he was 13 days old because Francis had been careless and let him fall while changing his diapers and the child had died. Francis had left, just left. No good-byes. No going to his son’s funeral. He couldn’t face other people, or even himself. But now in this graveyard he sees the grave of his son and he walks toward it and he begins to cry.
Is this an Easter story? Not if we need to proclaim that Christ is risen in order for it to be Easter. But what if being called to regain some part of your humanity that has been lost along the way, as Francis Phelan was in the story, what if that is Easter. What if that is Easter even though he’s not ready for joy yet. What if that’s Easter even if the voice that calls him out of his tomb is not very loud and not very clear and he doesn’t know where it’s coming from. What if that’s Easter for him.
What if that’s Easter for us. To hear a voice calling us to regain and reclaim some part of our humanity that has been dead. To hear a voice calling us out of whatever tomb some part of us has been buried in. What if, as the hymn will say, what if when our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain, we are touched and called back to life. By Christ’s warm touch? Maybe for some. Or maybe not, maybe by something we cannot name. Maybe all we know is that the fields of our hearts which were once dead and bare have been filled once again with love. What if, with or without the name of Jesus, that is a holy miraculous gift of new life?
And what if Easter is a communal event? What if the whole scene at the beginning of the novel is a kind of Easter scene? People pushing those stones aside, sitting up and beginning to talk, rising up out of the isolation of their graves and beginning to tell their stories to each other, beginning to tell the truth that is theirs to tell. What if, for us, Easter takes place as we roll aside the stones of our seclusion and tell one another the stories we have to tell, and find in one another ears and hearts ready to listen?
My favorite version of the Easter story has always been the one in the gospel of John, at least the part of that version where Mary has this conversation with the person she presumes is the gardener. For me, the Easter moment is not the discovery of the empty tomb, or the angel saying to the women or the disciples, “He is not here. He is risen.” The Easter moment is when Jesus, the gardener, speaks to Mary, calls her by name, and she responds: “teacher!” It is the moment of recognition, when the isolation, the loneliness is shattered, and she is no longer alone.
For me, Easter does not have to be fancy or theological. It is what I am supposed to be about all the time. It is what we are supposed to be about all the time. It is what we are about as we continue to share our stories with one another, as we continue to discover each other, and recognize ourselves in each other, and refuse to be bound by the seclusion we too often take for granted as the way things are supposed to be.
It is also about knowing that our lives are touched by God. For me, it is not so much a proclamation about Jesus, nor about a happy ending to that story, but about a belief that the story—Christ’s story, your story, my story—is a holy one.
And so if we are given the gift of seeing with some new clarity or freshness or intensity the touch of God in a blooming flower, let that be Easter too. May we not scorn that gift of new life but rather know that we are blessed and have cause to rejoice and give thanks.
And if we are given the gift of being able to discern the hand of God in the journeys that have brought us to where we are, and if that discernment is able to bring us some comfort, some peace of mind, or some sense of direction for the future, then let that be Easter too. And may we not scorn that gift but rather know that we are blessed, and have cause to rejoice, and give thanks.
And if, in some darkness we now inhabit, we are able to discern that God is present with us in that place of darkness, waiting with us for some stone to be rolled away, then may that too be Easter. And may we not scorn that gift but rather know that we are blessed and have cause to rejoice and give thanks.
New life may not come to us in a spectacular way accompanied by fanfare. New life may come to us as a quiet voice calling us by name, calling us to uncurl ourselves in some new way, to speak our truths and listen to the truths of others, to discover again that we do not have to make our journeys alone. New life may come as some returning piece of our humanity taking root in us. New life may come as a fresh opening of our eyes or ears or hearts, some deeper awareness of the holiness of our journeys. I pray that new life may come to each person in the varied ways that each of us may need it. And I pray that the faith we continue to try to live out day by day here at Sojourners be, in this sense, an Easter faith. And I wish you a Happy Easter! Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 31,2002