St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for Easter Sunday (April 8, 2007)
Liturgical Color: Gold
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
"The Passion of Christ"
Grace to you and peace from and loving God, and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the joyous presence of the Holy Spirit. Alleluia! Amen.
If it were not for Easter day, we would never have heard of Jesus. Without the experience of his presence among the disciples following the apparent defeat of his crucifixion, the faith of Jesus would not have survived the disappointment of his followers. Nor would we have had the blessings of knowing Good Friday or any other of the important days of Holy Week. No community would have endured to endow these holy days with religious significance.
But what is the meaning of this day?
As some of us who are here today will discover together in the coming seven weeks of Easter, there are two primary messages of Easter.
First "Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way. He is no longer a figure of flesh and blood, confined to time and space, but a reality who can enter locked rooms, journey with followers without being recognized, be experienced in both Galilee and Jerusalem, vanish in the moment of recognition, and abide with his followers always, 'to the end of the age.'" (p. 204)
And second, "God has vindicated Jesus. God has said "yes" to Jesus and "no" to the powers who killed him. The stories underline this in different ways. In Luke and John, the risen Jesus continues to bear the wounds of the empire that executed him. In Matthew, the risen Jesus has been given authority over all the authorities of this world. Mark, writing most concisely among the authors of the gospels, says simply, 'You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified; he has been raised.'" (p. 205)
"Easter completes the...pattern at the center of the Christian life: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. Both parts of the pattern are essential: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. When one is emphasized over the other, distortion is the result. The two must be affirmed equally.
"Without an emphasis on Easter as God's decisive reversal of the authorities' verdict on Jesus, the cross is simply pain, agony, and horror...
"Without God's reversal at Easter, Good Friday also leads to a cynical politics. This is the way the world is, the powers are and always will be in control, and those who think it can be otherwise are utopian dreamers. Christianity is about the next world, not this one, and this one belongs to the wealthy and powerful...
"Easter without Good Friday risks sentimentality...It becomes an affirmation that spring follows winter, life follows death, flowers will bloom again, and it is time for bonnets and bunnies. But Easter as the reversal of Good Friday means God's vindication of Jesus's passion for the kingdom of God, for God's justice, and God's "no" to the powers who killed him, powers still very much active in our world...(209-210)
"We Christians have most often overlooked the political meaning of Holy Week...See, the political meaning of Good Friday and Easter can help us to recover the political meaning of Jesus and the Bible as a whole, a meaning muted in much of Christian preaching and teaching. Barbara Ehrenreich, in her best-selling book about the working class in the United States, provides a striking example. She goes to a revival meeting attended primarily by poor people...She comments:
It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.
She concludes: "I get up to leave, timing my exit for when the preacher's metronomic head movements have him looking the other way, and walk out to search for my car, half expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole." (p. 211-212)
Even as we celebrate Easter—this glorious celebration of new life—there are many who would leave Jesus on the cross, continually suffering or dead. But Jesus, my dear friends in Christ, is alive and present in our hearts and in our world still aching for the justice and for the kingdom of God that it was his passion both to proclaim and to set into motion. He has come through death to life. Now it is our turn, so that Christ may life in and through us.
The story of Holy Week...us to hear the passion of Jesus—what he was passionate about—that led to his execution. His passion was the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth if God were king, and the rulers, domination systems, and empires of this world were not. It is the world that the prophets dreamed of—a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough and systems are fair. And it is not simply a political dream. It is God's dream, a dream that can only be realized by being grounded ever more deeply in the reality of God, whose heart is justice." (p. 213)
At Easter, we get the rare opportunity to look deeply into the heart of God revealed in the passion of Christ. We find there love and justice—and a calling out to us for engagement with them in bringing the kingdom of God to bear upon the world.
In his Easter letter to the Church, our national bishop, Rev. Mark Hanson writes:
On the first Easter morning, the women entered an empty tomb expecting
to find Jesus. They were looking for the body of Jesus, but were
disappointed and perplexed.
Today, when we look for peace and there is no peace, we, too, may
wonder where Jesus is. When violence and wars escalate, we may wonder
where Jesus is. When hunger and poverty continue to have a stronghold
in neighborhoods here and around the world, we may wonder where Jesus
is. When we experience the emptiness of the divisions among races,
religions, and classes, our fear and confusion can cause us to wonder
where Jesus is. When we struggle with guilt or shame, we may wonder
where Jesus is. Like the disciples of old, we miss the signs of God's
presence in our world.
In the dark days of perplexity and despair for the troubles of this world, let us remember the hope of Easter morning. In the dawn of Christ's resurrection, we rejoice that death and evil did not have the last word: the tomb is empty! Christ is with us, living among us and through us, announcing "good news to the poor...release to the captives...recovery of sight to the blind," freedom to the oppressed, and "the year of the Lord's favor." (NRSV, Luke 4:18-19)
The letter ends, but the point is well taken.
The risen Christ is with us wherever his passions are shared—wherever forgiveness is spoken, wherever the blessed goodness of earth's abundance is shared, wherever the powers of domination and oppression are challenged, where the poor are given opportunity, where violence is replaced with peace and understanding, where wealth is more equitably distributed, and where just and loving behavior prevails.
Easter proclaims this morning that despite all appearances, death does not hold the final card. God in Christ trumps death with life and rakes in the eternal jackpot. We pass from sinful living through death with Christ and on into a life that is of a different kind—marked with the cross of Christ and imbued with the passion of Christ for a different and more beautiful way of living together.
Over the weeks of Lent, we have been looking carefully at each of the days of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through this Easter Day, from the perspective of Mark's gospel. Today, we complete that journey along with our Lord at the mouth of an empty tomb. At both ends, a challenge stands before us. On Palm Sunday, two processions entered the city—one from the east, involving a humble band and a so-called king riding a donkey. The other approached from the west, with Pilate at the head of a regal parade demonstrating Roman military and imperial might. The choice set for us last week was that of which procession we might choose to join-the one representing wealth and power or the one calling for humility, peace, and love?
Today we stand with women at an empty tomb. And a similar choice is offered. Are we able to share the passion of Christ? Can we move through a death to old ways and rise to the ways of God? Or will we cast our lot with the status quo?
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress includes a well-known passage: "Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from his shoulders, and fell off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, 'He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by His death.'"
Bunyan concludes, "Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on his way singing."
Easter ushers in a new reality that permits joyful leaps and singing hearts, even for such as us. It is all about the rising new life that is made possible for us solely by virtue of what God has done for us through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This new life enters into us in unexpected but and very real ways. "Every time I see someone put down his bottle or drug, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time I see someone go back to school, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time I see a man hug his son, there's a resurrection goin' on." (Youngblood, St. Paul's Community Baptist Church, Brooklyn)
Every time I witness someone perform an act of care for another, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time I see a member of St. Thomas grab hold of ministry, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time someone writes a letter to help stop a war or support the rights of our Guatemalan friends, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time someone stands on a street corner to call for justice, or appeals to our leaders to feed the hungry, there's a resurrection goin' on. And the passion of Christ has begun to seep more fully into a soul.
The simple truth is that the empty tomb is a sign of the new life that comes from being connected to the beloved—to God in Christ. Having heard this word, we trust in the Spirit to bring about this unexpected, joyful, and passionate rebirth in us, in our congregation, and in our world. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts
and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our risen Lord unto eternal
life. Amen.
