Easter
Matthew 28:1-10; Jeremiah 31:1-6; Colossians 3:1-4
A Minnesota memory. For the 6 six years I was in Junior and Senior High school most days I walking two miles or so home each day after school. The best part of the walk, which took me through the downtown area of the town, was that I had to pass Merrill’s popcorn stand. Merrill was restricted to a wheel chair for some medical reason that we teens never really did know. His popcorn stand was actually a tiny store front with a walk up window built into the corner of a building on the main street of town. ry one of us who had to walk home to the north side of the lake around which the town was built knew Merrill and he knew us. He had the best popcorn , light airy puffs of white with a touch of salt and drenched with butter. There was nothing better to munch while walking home from school. In the fall he also had homemade caramel apples and if you needed extra energy there were candy bars and cherry cokes made with real shots of cherry juice. Obviously these were the days before we discovered healthy eating habits but I also walked two miles plus almost every day fall, winter and spring; sun, rain or snow. Starting the walk home was always filled with the anticipation of what I would get to eat at Merrill’s stand.
Then one day, I think in my Junior year, as I walked up to the corner where his stand was located saw a cluster of classmates milling about. As I got closer to the corner I heard exclamations of “This can’t be happening” and “What are we going to do now?” When I reached the corner I instinctively stepped up to order a bag of popcorn and was greeted by a darkened service window.
The stand was not just closed but empty. The popcorn machine was missing, there were no shelves of candy bars. There was no Merrill. The shop was empty. The rest of the walk home was filled with questions of “what could this mean”, “what is going to happen next?” One girl spoke the words we were all thinking, “How can we go on living without Merrill’s popcorn?” Obviously it was an absurd question. We all survived and probably became healthier walking without the junk food. But for a moment there was the unexpected feeling of emptiness that comes from the loss of an expected experience, the loss of routine. This encounter, however, is far more significant than a missing popcorn stand. At the center of the Easter story is the encounter with the unexpected. The two women named Mary head for the grave where Jesus had been laid after being taken down from the cross. The Easter story from the Gospel of Matthew is the most dramatic of the Gospels in its description of what happens next. There is an earthquake followed by the appearance of an angel who rolls the great stone away from the entrance to the tomb which so terrifies the men guarding the tomb that they faint away like dead men.
And then comes the unexpected announcement that Jesus is not in the grave but has risen and is going before his disciples to Galilee. The women run to tell the disciples the news only to suddenly be met on the way by the risen Christ. They bow down before him grabbing his feet. His words are simply, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
The center of the Easter story is the encounter with the unexpected. The problem we have with Easter
today is that, at least for those of us who have grown up in the faith, there is really little if anything all that unexpected about Easter. Oh, things have changed a bit over the years. The music is a bit different. More brass and fullness to the liturgy but the truth is we expect the worship to be a bit different on Easter.
There is the Easter breakfast, there are the old friends and maybe some new clothes. But if Easter was going to really be an encounter with the unexpected it would probably be the announcement
that this Easter they found the body. This Easter the tomb was not empty. But we know the historic truth. There was nothing normal about the first Easter and that has been the proclamation of the church ever since. But that doesn’t mean that we all know or believe in the same way as we approach this holy day.
Maybe some of you read Garrison Keillor’s editorial in the Chicago Tribune this past Wednesday. He gave some insight to the challenge we face with the familiar forms of Easter.
Keillor wrote: I came to church as a pagan this year, though wearing a Christian suit and white shirt,
and sat in a rear pew with my sandy-haired gap-toothed daughter whom I would like to see grow
up in the love of the Lord, and there I was a skeptic in the henhouse, thinking weaselish thoughts.
Keillor goes on, This often happens around Easter. God in his humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide…and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are , snarfling and grumbling.
Which happened to me this year. God knows all about it so I may as well tell you. Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won’t start on a cold morning, you’ve got friends. (Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, March 19, 2008)
Keillor knows that Easter is more than a shared historical experience that enables us to be nice to
each other. It is the unexpected that makes life interesting and stressful. It is our response to the unexpected that reveals both our faith, our doubts and our willingness to let God be God. For three years Jesus strove to open the world of the unexpected to his disciples and those who would follow him. Each miracle that Jesus performed challenged the disciples to see the world in a new way. An illness was the opportunity for hope to find fulfillment in the wholeness Jesus offered. A multitude in need of food was a true measure of hospitality and God’s promise to provide.
But we are never sure what to do with the unexpected, especially when it is the encounter with that which is missing. I go to the hospital to visit a parishioner suffering from a serious accident or illness only to find when I enter the room that the bed is empty. A quick check around the room reveals no name plate, no medical chart, no personal items of any type, no indication that anyone is in this room any longer. There are only two explanations that come immediately to mind. One is too sad to consider and the other too miraculous to believe. So after an emotional moment I turn to the third option—wrong room.
Our human mistakes, fears and anxieties too quickly make a holiday of this holy day. We focus on food and fashion rather than the real issue of an unexpectedly empty tomb. It is not easy for us to fully appreciate the emotion and expectations of those who came to the tomb that first Easter morning. The one thing we can be sure of is that they did not expect to find the tomb empty. And of all the explanations for it being empty the one that ultimately came to be true is the last one they would have considered. The body misplaced; the body stolen; a master plot of deception; but not under any circumstances would they have considered resurrection.
As I wrote in this month’s church newsletter, resurrection was not just resuscitation, jolting someone back to life or reviving them with CPR. Resurrection even in the first century was a future event promised by God. That was what many were waiting for, the coming kingdom of God, a future event promised at the end of all time. That is why no one expected to find the tomb empty that first Easter morning. Resurrection was a future event. In all probability that is also how most of us view resurrection. A past historical event of 2000 years ago, Jesus rising from the dead, that carries with it a future expectation, the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. But for the present, the one thing we are sure of is that if we visit the cemetery we will not find the tomb empty. In saying that we declare ourselves to be in need of our own Easter experience this morning.
This past week I received an unexpected e-mail from the daughter of a good and faithful pastor of the church I knew some 25 years ago now. Some of you have heard me speak of him before.
He was a friend and mentor of mine named Bob Patterson. Bob’s daughter, Rachel is now married with children of her own. She was writing to ask if I could share with her any stories about the father she knew for too short a time. That reminded me again of the evening Bob had called me and said “I need to see you—I have something growing in my brain and it’s going to kill me.” There was no surgical option. Bob lived only nine weeks after his diagnosis
but a few days before he died I visited with him one last time. We talked about the dreams he had for his children the love he had for his wife the hopes he had for the congregation he had served and the peace he felt with God. Then as I was about to leave he asked me, “Do you remember last Easter? What was the weather like? I replied I wasn’t sure I said in my memory most Easters are rather cool and kind of blur together. “I know,” he said, “I have the same problem Which is why this next Easter I want you to remember that the resurrection you are preaching and celebrating is not just recalling the events of the first Easter. You are going to be preaching about my resurrection because you know what St. Paul says, if Christ is risen then I also will be raised.” I nodded in recognition of the scripture he was quoting. Noticing how he had personalized Paul’s words to himself. “I’ll remember,” I assured him. Then as I was leaving he said, “Don’t ever take Easter for granted, especially the weather.”
In light of the weather we have had the last few days I venture to say that many of us will probably remember this Easter, and probably spring break, for the unexpected weather. But Easter is more than the weather. It is the opportunity to consider what every encounter with the unexpected is going to mean in our lives. Each interruption of our plans, each encounter that challenges our comfort level. Each time we sense God’s Spirit inviting us to open ourselves to something or someone new, each time we feel that what we really should have done was other than what we did, each time we knew that the right thing to do was to care a little more, feel more deeply, give a little more. This is what Easter is all about. Entering the tomb once more.
An opportunity to feel all the feelings and experience all the possibilities that life promises in one mysterious moment described to us as the encounter with an empty tomb. Look inside, there is no body. Only remember what my friend Pastor Bob said the missing body is not Christ’s but ours. We rejoice this day not only in Christ’s resurrection but our resurrection. That is the unexpected truth. Our resurrection. Today we enter the kingdom. Today it begins. This is our resurrection day, our Easter. Twenty-five years later and I don’t think I can ever consider taking an Easter for granted, but I’m willing to give up on the weather.
It’s Easter, an empty tomb. What else would you expect?
Amen