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Peter
goes home amazed. Did you catch that?
Whatever else happens or does not happen for you today
in this liturgy, I hope that all of you will go home today amazed as well. We
will be in good company if we do. This means that the point of this sermon is not
to explain the resurrection to you. It’s to stand with you in awe and wonder
and amazement.
The women (just so we are clear) were the first
to arrive at the tomb to prepare their friend’s body for burial. You don’t need
to be a feminist to notice this but I do think the sin of patriarchy has
sometimes kept us from noticing this detail that the first ones to preach the
good news of Easter were the women. They have not gotten up to put on
their Sunday best to go to church to hear the old, old story about how the Lord
is risen indeed, alleluia. They have come there to face death and Luke takes us
through it in real time.
Imagine heading off to the funeral home for the
calling hours of a friend whose life has violently and tragically been cut
short. To say this is not easy to do is an understatement and many of you know
this, firsthand. We have to mentally and spiritually prepare ourselves and I
imagine those women felt some of the very same emotions we would as they set
off for that tomb: shock, sadness, anger, disbelief, confusion…
But instead of death, they encounter these two men in
dazzling clothes (are they angels?) who ask them a question: why do you look
for the living among the dead? Well, the angel doesn’t give them a chance
to respond but think about that for a moment. We thought we were looking for
the dead among the dead, they might respond! And so they are, of course, confused.
Who wouldn’t be? You show up at the funeral home and are greeted by two
strangers in dazzling clothes and they tell you there is nothing to see here. What
is happening? Is this some sick joke? But then they remembered, and then they run
to tell the disciples, who consider it an “idle tale.” Nonsense from a bunch of
overtired women!
Isn’t it curious, and wonderful, that Luke preserves all
of this initial incredulity? That of the women, that of the men they tell. Maybe
incredulity is always the initial response. He is risen? Say what? Talk of
resurrection is serious stuff and I think if you were setting out to start a
religion this would not be the way to do it. First of all, given the cultural
context of the first century, wouldn’t you be sure to have some reliable and respectable men get to the empty tomb first? And
then, wouldn’t you send in CSI to test the shroud for DNA evidence? That’s how
the History Channel or the Discovery Channel would do it. But that is not how
Luke tells the story: Peter and the others get the good news from the women,
who get it from a couple of well-dressed angels.
So obviously Peter now has to go and check this out
for himself. Luke tells us that “Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and
looking in he saw the linen cloths by themselves.” Notice that he gets no proof
either. He gets no hard and fast evidence. There are plenty of other more
rational explanations for a tomb being empty. Jesus doesn’t even make an
appearance in the gospel reading for today. This is all we have to go on, at
least for today: an empty tomb.
Amazing!
Now this may be the right time to gently remind you
that Easter is not a day but a season that lasts fifty days to the Feast of
Pentecost. There is so much more to come. I’ve often thought the Christmas message is so much
easier to take in because we all know about birth. So twelve days of Christmas
is enough. While we must all face death as well, however, the promise of
resurrected life is a different matter altogether. It requires at least fifty
days and probably a lifetime to unpack the Paschal Mystery.
Next weekend
Jesus will appear to his disciples and we’ll get a case study in how hard it is
to believe when we look at the reaction of Thomas, who was out getting coffee
and donuts when Jesus appeared and so he was still struggling to believe a week
later. Stay-tuned; there is so much more to come. We will get other stories of
resurrection as well.
But for today, that’s all I’ve got for you: a couple
of well-dressed angels with a message to some distraught women and a disciple
who only hours before had denied even knowing Jesus. He now peers into an empty
tomb and sees a shroud and suddenly he is changed for good. Changed forever.
Then
Peter went home, amazed at what had happened. The
dictionary says that to be amazed is: “to be
affected with great wonder, to be astonished.” But there’s another meaning, an
older meaning that is about being bewildered and perplexed; confused. Now here
is my question for you: what if all of those emotions (which above all else
generate questions rather than
providing easy answers) are the beginning of authentic faith? What if we
internalize this Word of the Lord today and mark it and learn it and inwardly
digest it until we make it our own?
To say it
another way, what if it really is ok if Easter leaves us with more questions
than answers, and what if it really is ok if we leave here today feeling
bewildered and perplexed? What if that is where the journey of faith is
supposed to begin: with wonder and amazement? What would a more
mature faith look like if that is where it begins and where it begins again?
Then
Peter went home, amazed at what had happened. The challenge for so many of us as we
get older, I think, is that we feel we already know this story, and it is
harder and harder for us to be amazed by it. And because we think we already
know the story we either believe it or we don’t in a binary way, and then it’s
on to the ham or the lamb or some vegan alternative. But authentic
faith cannot be rushed or forced or reduced to a formula. It comes to each of
us in its own way and in its own time. Someone tells someone who tells someone
who tells us. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but
has risen.
My job today is not to explain the resurrection to you. I’m
sorry if that’s what you came here for today. But you wouldn’t take my word for
it anyway. I’m just a priest with a vested interest in perpetuating the idle
tales of women. My work today is not to provide you with more information or an
explanation. The best I am hoping for is to point you toward that empty tomb
and encourage you to look again, with Peter, so that you go home amazed.
What’s weird is that Peter sees nothing in that empty tomb, literally, except for that linen
shroud. The amazement comes, I think, because deep in his bones he absolutely knows
this is no idle tale. The women have proclaimed good news and as crazy as it
sounds, it must have seemed to him to be the most real thing he’d ever heard. So
real that it will turn a frightened fisherman who denied knowing Jesus into a bold
preacher who is not afraid to shout it out: He is risen!
Peter’s amazement will lead him to finally become the
rock Jesus knew he had it in him to be all along. And let’s be clear, that’s
the case with us also, to become the best version of ourselves that Jesus
already has seen and knows and claims for us. Easter is an invitation to be
changed by becoming the people God calls us to become.
At Holy Baptism we take water and oil,
outward and visible signs that are meant to convey a message about the love of
God. I often tell parents who wish to have their child “done” that baptism isn’t
fire insurance. It’s not about offering some kind of coverage “just in case.”
Nor is it about magic, about trying to convince God to love a child that in
fact God already loves and has loved from before time. The sacraments are for
us, not God. They are meant to remind us of God’s love, and to call us into a
community that will help us never to forget. Whenever we celebrate Holy Baptism we pray for
God’s amazing grace to take hold in the life of the baptized as they are
welcomed into a community that promises to love them as God does—through and
through—always. No exceptions.
When we do that, we pray that they
will respond to that love with inquiring and discerning hearts, and the courage
to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love God, and the gift of joy
and wonder in all God’s works.
What if that gift of joy and wonder (which
I think is just another way of talking about amazement) really is the beginning
of Easter faith? The early Church
thought so, which is why they connected Baptism and Easter. In fact it was the
only time of year the Church even did Baptisms for centuries. If that instinct
is right, then maybe that is what we should be cultivating as a faith community
here at St. Michael’s in the work that lies ahead during this transitional
time. How can we be more and more a community where amazement leads us to joy?
The
table is set and richly laden and all are welcome: those who have kept the fast and those who
have not. That is what a fourth-century Christian preacher named John
Chrysostom told those who gathered one Easter morning. He reminded them that it
was not about who kept Lent perfectly but about God’s graciousness and
generosity and amazing grace, and that all were welcome to “feast royally” and
to enjoy the riches of God’s goodness. Let
no one go away hungry!
So come! Taste and see that the Lord is good! Amazing!
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