Let me repeat my Easter message for the sixth time here at McDougall. I have a resurrection faith, but I do NOT have faith in the facts of the resurrection story. The facts of Jesus resurrection are different in the four gospels. There are different perspectives, different purposes of the four gospels and different emphases on what is important in the Easter story.
One thing is certain. In the Biblical narratives there are no chocolates, no colored eggs and no bunny rabbits hopping around. The original Easter is a long weekend, but not a vacation time. For 2.5 million spiritual pilgrims in Jerusalem it was a required ritual similar to going to Church on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday.
So, if Easter is deeper than superficial; more nitrous than candies; and deeper and more meaningful than a long weekend, what is it that makes Easter the center point of our faith and life?
To me, Easter is about a man who is fully human and fully alive, knowing the purpose of his life, embracing that purpose head-on, and surrendering to a power, a life-energy much greater than his own. For all Jesus’ good efforts, he is executed in a most cruel and inhuman manner, put into a tomb—borrowed from someone else, and then in some miraculous, logically and rationally unexplainable way, is broken out of his tomb and reveals God’s presence to this disciples and friends.
Easter 2008 you can celebrate the resurrection at one of three levels of understanding. Level One: to explore the Biblical stories and evidence about Jesus historical resurrection. That would be similar to a history lesson.Level Two is to explore how his followers understood the resurrection. That would be theological reflection and study—what they believed.And, Level Three—here’s where it becomes powerful for us is to embrace Easter in our own lives. That’s how we live and die, how we suffer and have joy, how we are contained in our own tombs—those places and attitudes and behaviors that damage, inhibit or kill our human spirits. And then, in Level Three, embracing how we can experience our own resurrection.
Because we are here in 2008, let’s concentrate on Level 3 faith—our own Easters. If we are Easter people we have to identify the tombs that hold us back. To make it easy to remember, think of a coffin having 5 sides: a cover and bottom, two sides, and two ends. I suggest that there are 5 sides to the tombs we exist within today:
1. A SUPERFICIAL awareness and attention. The passage we heard from Colossians 3:1-4 reflects the old 3-storied universe world-view, which meant Paul could literally call his readers to look up to the heavens beyond the firmament. Beyond the literal physicality of the old-world view, Paul is calling us to focus on the ideals of life, the higher and best values—things like integrity, character, compassion, selfless-service to others, appreciating beauty in the creation. Paul is calling us to pay attention to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Ask yourself: how much of my time and effort and energy do I spend on incorporating the higher values and virtues into my character?
2. A LACK OF INTERIORITY: How many of us give up chocolates, or coffee, or meat for Lent and think no more about it? How much time each week to you stop, look and listen to your inner wisdom and the Spirit speaking to you? It’s challenging looking inside and much easier to surrender to distractions of sounds, movies, video-games, sports, business and busyness.
3. A LOSS OF COMMUNITY—DEEP AND MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS. We have more means of communication than ever before, but so much is either “c or c”—cute or commercial. A Worshiping community is an experience of being shoulder to shoulder and over coffee or juice maybe a start of getting acquainted, But Deep and meaningful community means face to face and heart to heart.
4. A MISDIRECTION OF POWER. We’ve got lots of potential personal power, but sadly much of it is used solely for our own personal satisfaction and rewards. It is unbelievable how much potential power for good is residing in the people of McDougallChurch.
5. The 5th side of the contemporary coffin or tomb, I believe,IS AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF HOPELESSNESS, FEAR AND DESPAIR. We complain, “Woe is me, poor me…” And the powers of darkness pushing down on the cover of our coffins seem so complex, so wide-ranging, so moneyed, that too many throw up their hands in surrender, waiting for the dirt to be shoveled in their grave.
So, if that somewhat describes the human condition today, where’s the hope of Easter.I believe it is in following Jesus paradigm. He felt loss of community—scripture says ALL his disciples deserted him and one sold him out to his enemies. He experienced some of our loss of community, our aloneness.
I believe he faced his own despair in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed, “If it’s possible let this cup pass from me.” In other words I don’t want to die like this. But, then Jesus did what was and what is required to experience resurrection—he surrendered his will to the Will of God. That’s the path that leads to resurrection. Going down through the valley of death through surrender to God in the garden of our spiritual agony. In short-form, we need to pray, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
Jesus embraced all of life, the joys of a wedding and getting down to the children’s level and letting them into his heart. And he embraced his own suffering. And it was through tears that Mary was the first to see the risen Christ. For many of us, our tears of grief and joy, help us to see clearly how special a person or a situation is to us.
Another way out of our tombs/coffins is admitting how we are up against it and we can only embrace the way life really is for us. . On Friday afternoon a friend and I sat together here in the sanctuary in silence and then over coffee sharing our emotions about how overwhelming suffering is today, and in sharing together the Spirit of Christ revealed itself to each of us and both of us. Resurrection can come in the sharing of our struggles, our fears, and our pain.
The philosopher Descartes wrote, “ I think, therefore I am.” It might be better still to say, “I feel, therefore I am,”or, “I hurt therefore I am.”There was a guy who had too much to drink one night, and in his stupor wandered into a funeral home and passed out in a coffin. When he woke up the next morning he looked around and thought, “I’m in a coffin, therefore I must be dead. But, if I am dead, why do I have a pounding headache and why do I have to go to the bathroom so bad?”
“I feel, I hurt, therefore I am.”
The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet: “They shall laugh, but not all of their laughter. They shall cry, but not all of their tears.” If we really want to live and be resurrected out of our coffins or tombs, jump into the deep end of the pool. Love people and love them passionately and deeply and then you will both laugh and cry, and your laughter and your tears will both come from the same place in your soul.
There was a Hi and Lois Cartoon strip that highlights this resurrection truth. In frame 1 the eldest son is wailing away on his guitar. Frame 2 the younger brother asks, “How can I become a singer like you?” Older brother answers, “You can onlybecome a singer if you’ve really suffered.” Frame 4. Little brother is walking aroundlooking desperately miserable. Lois says to Hi, “I don’t know, he was quite cheerful this morning.”
Easter brings us HOPE ON A RAMPAGE. Jesus models the kind of radical love that turns the world and people right side up. Easter is calling us to come out of our tombs, to come alive and be fully alive. Jesus changed the relationship between God and humanity. There was a reconciliation. For me, the glory and the proof of Easter was in the glory acted out by his followers. They were to be Jesus hands, feet, heart and voice serving people everywhere.
On Easter we are called to be Jesus!. Yes, you heard me correctly. The key to being Jesus is to simply be ourselves, be our best selves. That’s radical stuff, because mostly we think Jesus brought some super-natural powers to his life that we can never have. But the reality is that most of the Jesus things we are called to do and be are quite mundane.
You don’t need to be God Incarnate to give a thirsty person a cup of water. You don’t have to be an arc-angel to listen compassionately to another’s struggles. If someone needs forgiveness, then say, “I forgive you.”It’s not rocket science, it’s NOT superhuman.
Let the Good News of resurrection be about you this year. While you are celebrating being freed from your coffin, your tomb, give thanks to God that Jesus paved the way, and Jesus is with you on your way.
