St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for Easter Sunday (March 23, 2008)
Liturgical Color: Gold
Reverend Dr. Lyle E. McKee
Raised with Christ
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Lent is a time set aside by the church for reflection and contemplation on the hard matters of suffering and death, especially in the shape of our Lord's passion and death. For forty days, we have worshipped and prayed with a view to our life in Christ, recognizing that we are the walking wounded healed by the wounds of our Lord. This, along with global mission, has been the theme for Lent.
But this morning everything shifts in worship and in our lives. We rise from death to life with our Lord. Our considerations of suffering fade, and new life begins. We are, as noted in Colossians, "raised with Christ."
Christ is risen. Alleluia! And so are we.
A columnist writes about the struggles associated with Lent, and even a bit at Easter, as he relates experiences of his trip to Naples, Italy. One "morning, we were walking across the large Navy base here when a recorded trumpet sounded. Our guide stopped immediately and snapped to attention. So did everyone else who was outdoors. Those in uniform saluted... While the Stars and Stripes rose in the clear Mediterranean air, the American national anthem played...Its emotional tug runs deep....
"Hearing one's familiar anthem 4,500 miles from home is an emotional experience. I won't even try to explain it, because it doesn't happen at the rational level. It's visceral.
"I'm also filled with a visceral longing for my family...Tonight, as I take a brisk walk beside the sea, I spot a large ship pulling slowly into harbor. I turn to my wife to say, 'Look at that,' but of course she isn't beside me...
"But as Easter approaches, the mood turns to farewells. In a short time, the disciples would walk the roads of Palestine, turn to Jesus for guidance, and he wouldn't be there. They would long for his voice. They would try to remember his words. They would remember stray images, as we often do in grief. They probably weren't even the most important images, but scenes that sprang to mind and served to remind them of one they missed.
"In a deep sense, the Christian community is still adjusting to the absence of one for whom we long. We don't always adjust well. We get distracted. We cling to the trivial. We fight over memories. Like a grieving family who wage family warfare by referring to the supposed desires of one who has died, we put words, images and ideas into Jesus' mind that probably never entered it. We fuss about the will and who gets what.
"You'd think we would be over it by now. After all, it has been more than a few years since Jesus departed. But our longing is always fresh and always deep. It's visceral, not rational, an aching of the soul, a reaching out for something that always seems elusive.
"I know I can't explain this longing, and I have spent many an hour in pulpit, classroom and study trying to do so. I'm at the point of not wanting to pursue any more rational explanations. It's like my feelings this morning at the playing of the national anthem. I know my country is crazy in some ways, and we have hurt many peoples in our youthful search for greatness. We have paved over land that could be feeding the hungry and turned deep human needs into entertainment, exploitation and commerce.
"But it is my country, and it stands for something noble, something worth caring about.
"In the same way, the Lord whom I long for has been the excuse for more human abuse and misery than perhaps any other force in history. In a sense, humanity has had to be rescued from Christianity's lust for power and willingness to be violent.
"Even so, I long for the One who stands at the center of life. No matter how much hatred is shouted in his Name, no matter how much gold is stolen and hopes are squashed by a controlling institution, he is Lord, he stands for the very essence of life, and I long to know him better." (Tom Ehrich, Indianapolis Star)
In Lent, we easily identify with such longings. Denial and contemplation are difficult for us. We seek better times, easier ways of sustaining life, renewal, and refreshment. We too long to know our Lord and the comfort he provides more fully.
At Easter, thanks be to God, we do get to know Jesus better. With the resurrection, Christ lives. The empty tomb is witness to us that our longings are past; our desires fulfilled. The struggles of Lenten living, fraught with the uncertainties of temporal existence, have yielded to the full glory of the promise of eternal life. The yearning to know our Lord intimately has been satisfied through the eternal presence of our risen Lord.
Therefore, as Paul realizes:
you have been raised with Christ, (and you) seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Part of the motivation for Paul's letter to the Colossian church was to correct some of the wrong thinking that had crept its way into their life together. Some believers were apparently practicing strange rituals, extreme asceticism, or participating in a cult of angel worship
The corrective Paul offers is one of perspective. He encourages the Colossians to celebrate now, however incompletely, what is still in many ways a future event. The empty tomb found by those faithful women long ago testifies to the fact that salvation is a present reality. Every believer's new and redeemed life already exists, even if incompletely.
Paul urges his Colossian friends to rise above the materialism of the false rewards this world has to offer. Dying with Christ, entering into that tomb with Jesus on Good Friday, is the way we Christians annually remind ourselves of the transforming power of the risen Christ.
Some of you may have had the opportunity I had several years ago of visiting Yad Vashem. It is the name of the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem.
The first thing visitors see at Yad Vashem is the Street of Righteous Gentiles, a long boulevard of trees, each planted to honor a Gentile who risked her or his life to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Next is the Children's Memorial. Over the entrance, there are large stone candles of varying lengths, each snuffed out prematurely. We walked though a tunnel representing the entrance to the gas chambers through which one and a half million children passed to their executions.
Inside, in a large, dark room, candles flickered, reflected over and over in mirrors; soft recorded voices quietly recited names, ages and towns of the little ones—Janina Kuzma, age 14, Warsaw, Madia Novak, age 3...
But even in these death camps, the soul would not be squashed. Some drew pictures, others wrote poetry, others sculpted, and still others expressed their creativity in inventive ways. Even on the walls of the camp, where many of the children were executed, liberating allied forces found children's drawings of flowers and butterflies.
Thirst and refreshment. Longing and fulfillment. Death and life. These are the profound themes of this great day of celebration.
Paul suggests to us this morning that we enter wholeheartedly into the life of the resurrection by seeking things above. And he cautions that only those who willingly die with Christ will find that Christ is, indeed, their "life." The paradox of a Christian way of living is that a life of seeking is a life fulfilled, a life of dying to self is a life of rising to self and others, a wilderness longing is intimately connected with the joyful spirit that can celebrate the fullness of life and proclaim, "He is risen indeed. Alleluia."
I'd like you to listen to a very brief poem.
No planet knows that this,
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave... (Alice Meynell)
Hear too the final words of our Lord in Matthew's gospel: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Our planet's chief treasure is a forsaken grave from which rose One who proclaimed his eternal presence with us. We need search no further than the empty tomb. Our deep and visceral longings are fulfilled this day. We are being raised with Christ, the one who is our ever-constant companion.
Christ is risen! Alleluia! Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.
