Good morning, everyone. It is a delight to worship with you on this glorious Easter morning. Let’s join together in the traditional greeting of the church for this day: Christ is Risen. HE IS RISEN INDEED!
Easter is such a fun day at church. We’ve got trumpets and tympani, lilies and lovely outfits. I recently read one of those “Children’s Letters to God” that went: “Dear God, Are you going to be in church on Easter? If you see me there, I’ll show you my new shoes.”
Well, I’m glad to see you here and I’m quite sure God is, too. And whether you’ve got new shoes or old shoes or no shoes at all, it’s a wonderful day to worship, to give thanks, and to take our place in the great story of God’s resurrecting love.
The Gospel of Matthew tells the Easter story in such a dramatic way, doesn’t it? Worthy of Hollywood. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to the tomb as the first day of the week was dawning and suddenly there was a great earthquake! Earthquake?!? Perfect for us here in Southern California, isn’t it? We know earthquakes. Last Thursday morning when that little quake rolled through Yorba Linda early in the morning, I thought, “well, maybe Easter is coming a few days early this year!”
Easter was already really early this year. Unless you’re 95 years old or older, and I know there are a few of you out there even if you won’t admit it, you’ve never experienced an Easter as early as March 23rd. Our florist, Mike Eskridge, told me that even our lilies weren’t ready for Easter this year. It’s too early and they’re just not ready to be fully opened up.
Ready or not, it’s Easter anyway. It’s always the first Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox. And the equinox was on Maundy Thursday last week, the full moon appeared on Good Friday and here we are. The first Sunday. At the dawning of the day. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb, the place of death where the body had lain. “And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” (TYPMPANI)
Christ is Risen! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
Get’s your attention, doesn’t it? Matthew is like that. There are big cosmic special effects all through his Gospel story. Like the Star of Bethlehem that lit up the whole of the sky during the night when Jesus was born. And the way the whole sky was darkened while he was dying on the cross. And another earthquake that occurred when he breathed his last. “The earth shook,” the story says, “and the rocks were split” and “tombs were opened” and “many who saw it were terrified.”
What happened that day as Matthew tells it is quite astonishing. In fact, it defies credulity, really. An earthquake. An angel coming down from heaven to roll back the stone and then sit right down on it, as if that’s the most natural thing in the world. The angel’s appearance was like lightening, Matthew says, his clothing white as snow. The Roman guards, you know, the big tough guys, were literally paralyzed with fear as if dead themselves. And the angel has the audacity to say to those women: “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”
At this point in the story, before they can get away to go and tell the other disciples, I like to imagine Detective Joe Friday showing up to question the women about what has happened. Any of you remember him from the old “Dragnet” TV show? The iconic LA cop show. Joe Friday, taking their testimony, listening as they appeared to embellish the story with all that stuff about the earthquake and the lightening and the angel and the guards lying on the ground as if they had become the missing corpse. In the midst of it all, can’t you just see Joe Friday’s eyes narrowing as he hones in on them and says in that dry, clipped voice: “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”
Well, that’s the big challenge of our great Easter story, isn’t it? On the surface, the facts are pretty unbelievable. I think that the women, and we, might best find our defense in the words of the inimitable great baseball legend, Yogi Berra, who once said: “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it.”
So there’s the question. Do we believe it? God was doing everything to get our attention. But like the two women disciples, faithful, yes, but still not comprehending what has been told to us, what has been shown to us, from generation to generation, we still find it hard to believe that it’s really true. Not the facts of the story, but the truth in the story.
We have to believe in order to see. There’s the key to the whole thing about Easter. And not just this one day alone, great as it is, but going forward now, living as Easter people. We have to believe that God is always working for good in this world. We have to believe that God insists on the triumph of life over death. We have to believe that God chooses life, that God chooses us. We have to believe that God chooses Easter and makes it happen, so that we might have life and have it abundantly.
Christ is Risen. HE IS RISEN INDEED.
I’m really getting to the critical point in this sermon, folks. If you’ve been following me at all up ‘til now, you may be thinking “so far, so good.” But if you want to talk about facts, preacher, let’s talk about the facts of life as we know it. The facts we hear and read daily about our world and our community, the facts of what we often experience right in our own lives, seem to tell a very different story, don’t they? Pretty grim. I know.
The war, the economy. A world of violence, suffering and indifference. The report that came out just last week about rising homelessness among the elderly. Two murders here in Santa Monica. The facts are not good. And in our own lives--Illness, the decline of a loved one, the loss of a job, the searing grief of death. The facts are not good. Is that what Detective Friday really wants to know?
A few weeks ago, many of us were shocked and saddened by the shooting death of Los Angeles High football star, Jamiel Shaw. His mother is serving a second tour of duty in Iraq, never dreaming that her wonderful son, so full of promise, regular church-goer, serious student, sought-after by Stanford and Rutgers, such an inspiration to others, would be caught up in the violence of our city streets. A few days after Jamiel’s senseless death, I attended the annual meeting of the Every Child Foundation as a member of its Advisory Board. This year’s recipient of its million-dollar grant is the Mar Vista Family Center, a grass roots agency that serves a low-income, densely populated, gang-ridden urban neighborhood adjacent to the only federal housing project in West Los Angeles.
At the luncheon, its Director spoke, and no Easter sermon could be more profound than his words that day. He said: “we work with these kids, in these streets, day in and day out. And some of us knew Jamiel personally and the kids he had inspired and mentored. They are feeling his death keenly.
But we cannot focus on his death. The way to honor Jamiel is to do all in our power to provide kids with hope and purpose and love and support. To hold them accountable for their choices and to see to it that they are given every chance and every skill they need to make the most their lives, to rise up. To rise up,” he said, “beyond the limitations and the dangers and all the forces that would pull them down. To rise up and become those who make the most of their lives and who will then help make this city and this world a better place.”
You see, we can look at the daily news and see senseless violence and give in to cynical indifference. But we can also look at another set of facts and see how God is working through faithful and dedicated people to make a difference and to choose life. You see, there is choice in all of this, a choice at the foundation of it all. God lays down the foundations of our hope in the resurrection of Christ Jesus. God demonstrates the power of that hope in the earthquake that rolls away the stone. And God renews in us that living hope each and every day.
We should have been ready for the awesome power of this dawning, but we never are, are we? By now, had we been paying attention, we might have realized that God would not let death prevail. We might have grasped God’s intent for the creation and for our lives. We might have trusted that God would yet again choose life, for our sake, for our salvation and for the triumph of righteousness and peace.
For as Phillips Brooks wrote in his “Easter Carol:”
“Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong; the right.
Faith and hope triumphant say:
Christ will rise on Easter Day.”
God puts before each one of us today, on this glorious Easter Day, the choice of deciding which set of facts will determine how we live, how we think, how we will do all in our power to make a difference in this world. The choice of rising up, the choice of life over death. It’s a choice we must make daily, sometimes several times a day and through the night. As the writer, Barbara Kingsolver said, this “hope is something we put on with our shoes every morning. “
Our choice, now, is to belong to the life-giver, who, in the dawning of every day, creates a new beginning, a new humanity, a new creation. With God, let us choose life, and put it on every morning with our old shoes, our new shoes. God will see them, and smile. And then, with Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, and all the disciples from generation to generation and generations yet to come, partners now with our Risen Lord, let us take up our place in the never-ending story, God’s ever-resurrecting story of love. Choose hope! Choose new life! Choose Easter!
Christ is Risen. HE IS RISEN INDEED!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"Easter is a Choice"