A Sermon for Easter Day 2012

I heard it three times last week ... on three separate occasions ... from three different people:  “I’m not doing Easter this year” they each explained.  These were not people who were taking advantage of the long weekend to have a last-gasp search for sunshine before the long months of cold set in; no, they were people making a deliberate choice not to attend worship services for this weekend’s rehearsal of arguably the central story of the Christian tradition.  And those were the ones, who felt strongly enough – and safe enough – to tell me of their decision.  Although the reasons for ‘not doing Easter’ were vastly different, underlying each was deep pain – personal, theological or institutional – pain that they could only assume would be heightened by attending Easter services.  I imagine there might be many others, unable to articulate their concerns, but who also wouldn’t dream of coming to Church when life was tough.

In no way do I want to judge these decisions.  I think they come out of the deepest part (some would call it the spiritual part – or the soul) of  those who are yearning for ‘something more’ in their lives – that universal innermost longing we all have for the ultimate horizon and ground of our being, that which some of us call God.  And yet, somehow, for many people, coming to church does not guarantee one will be given a space and a place in which that longing might be helpfully addressed.

I find myself deeply grieved by this – deeply disturbed that the church (and here I mean not just Knox or the PCANZ, but the church universal) – has become so actively unhelpful, so passively irrelevant that its central message, instead of bringing hope, peace, justice and mercy into peoples’ lives is, for some at least, betraying, deserting and denying the transforming Gospel experience of Love. 

So, I want to begin by being rather provocative; by suggesting how the church has failed – and then, hopefully, constructive as we probe the Easter message for today.

I believe the church has failed when its people think that Good Friday is about a so-called loving God deciding the only way to fix ‘his’ wayward people is to kill ‘his’ only beloved child.  (One might wonder if God had been perceived as mother, would such a theory ever have been entertained?) “Jesus died for the sins of the world” does not mean that God decided a brutal death was a great way of teaching us how we have strayed. Jesus, who taught us the way of Love through forgiveness, non-violence and reconciliation, points to a vulnerable, loving God with outstretched, compassionate and welcoming arms.   “Jesus died for the sins of the world” is Christian shorthand, reminding us of our human shortcomings – how we can get caught up with the crowds shouting crucify – how we can betray others – or collude with forces of evil.  Jesus’ death reminds us: our thoughtless behaviour has consequences – sometimes even the death of innocent people.

I believe the church has failed, when its people think that Easter Sunday is about a well and truly dead (but not truly human) god-person miraculously resuscitated. “Christ is risen” does not mean that a cold, already decomposing body, somehow was kick-started back to life. The gospel story is about being born anew in God – about Love waking again, when hate and sorrow seem to overwhelm everything. “Christ is risen” is Christian shorthand affirming the ongoing resurrection moments in our lives – reminding us that “there is never a time for hope to die” – asserting that we continue to meet the risen Christ through miracles of love, wonder and justice in our daily lives.  When we say “Christ is risen”, the church announces that even in our most hopeless times – even when all seems to be destroyed – the sun will break through again, for in God, all things can be transformed.

As Marcus Borg puts it: “At the heart of Christianity is... a path that transforms us at the deepest level of our being. At the heart of Christianity is the heart of God – a passion for our transformation and the transformation of the world.  At the heart of Christianity is participating in the passion of God.”[1] 

The church has failed – and will continue to fail, if it does not invite people to bring their tortuous, joyful and sorrow-filled lives in all their complexity and completeness into God’s passion, which we know through the living, dying and new life of Jesus.

I find the gospel of Mark’s story about that first Easter Day the most engaging, because of its simplicity and ambiguity.  The women come to the tomb to perform the traditional task of anointing. They come grieving, expecting no miracle – just wondering how they will manage the heavy stone that blocks the entrance to the tomb.  “Something’s dead inside them – some yesterday’s been slain ... their thoughts are dull with pain.”[2] The message given to them at the empty tomb fills them with terror and amazement.  Mark tells us “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them: and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8)  And that’s how the Gospel ended (...until a few centuries later[3], when interpreters found it all too unsatisfactory ... and so wrote other alternative endings.... wanting to tie up the loose ends – rather than remain within the ambiguity).

And yet, for me anyway, there’s something very hopeful about this ending, with its challenge to look elsewhere (away from the tomb) for meaning – beyond pain and death.  The picture painted with its juxtaposition of terror and wonder as two sides of the same coin resonates with my own life journey with its muddly mix of chaos and order, sickness and health, pleasure and anguish. Like all of you, I imagine, I find fear, pain and hurt rubbing shoulders with delight, joy and amazement.  And what keeps me going – through the good times and the hard patches, the uncertainties and the securities, is the knowledge that we are all held – in and through it all – by the encompassing Love which never ends; Love which casts out fear; Love which is God. 

Novelist Fiona Farrell knows all about that holding of terror and wonder together.  She had planned to write a book about walking.  It was to be a “travel book, following the random habits of thought associated with a walk through a landscape.  It would ramble.  It would detour. [But] then [the Christchurch] earthquake shook [her] from bed and ripped up the map entirely.  The quake” she wrote, “sent a jagged tear right through my text.  The resulting book [aptly named, “The Broken Book”] shows how an earthquake can change everything in a flash: the words you were writing, the house you were living in, the thoughts that preoccupied you, the faith you relied in.”[4]

“Writing about walking is not so straightforward any more.”[5]  Now, “we have fear folded like a handkerchief in a handbag.”[6]

In the midst of (and possibly even because of) that jagged, broken, quaking fear, Farrell recognised resurrection moments of wonder and delight in her walks.  At the edge of the Alps in the French Riviera, she encountered limestone cliffs made up of “Billions of sea creatures like the bryozoa, each of which lived with its own little box with a hinged lid that could be flipped up for feeding.... Each tiny being... liv[ing] for a few weeks before performing their clever trick.” She wrote. “They appear to die.  Within their little box they rot to brown sludge.  For a spell they remain inert.  Then, miraculously, they stir to life once more.  They begin to take on their former shape: gut, bum, nerves.  The creature is reborn.  Three times they do this..., before they die for good.  The shelly box dissolves.  Some particles go to form a new box for the young who have budded from their parent’s body.  The remainder filter down through the tidal waters to settle and form a reef like the one that has risen from beneath a primeval sea...  The town is overlooked by the remains of creatures who acquired the knack of resurrection.”[7]

The gospel story reminds us that our lives are over-looked by the story of Jesus, who also “acquired the knack of resurrection.”

Human living is not easy ...

Sometimes, earthquakes happen – and our lives are shattered

Sometimes we face incredible odds – which are almost impossible to overcome

Sometimes our children get sick – and even die

Sometimes our friends or partners let us down, betray us – desert us in our time of need

Sometimes the government – or the church – oppresses, destroys or crucifies

Today, we do not ignore the pain of our lives; today we do not use familiar phrases tritely; today we place our feet squarely before the cross, celebrating that even in the midst of our fears – in the midst of our deaths – in the midst of our sorrows, Love comes to us in many shapes and forms – coming again and again, to embrace and hold us.  We can say: “Christ is risen” ... ‘for in the darkness, we can see God dancing in the rain’[8]....

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[1] Marcus Borg The Heart of Christianity, 2003, p.225.

[2] Reference to the hymn “Something’s dead inside me” by Joy Cowley, Hope is our Song New Zealand Hymn Book Trust, 2009, #123.

[3] The Shorter Ending of Mark: “This one verse ending was added to a manuscript of Mark sometime after the 3^rd century CE.  In one manuscript where it appears, it directly follows 16:8 as the ending of the Gospel; in some manuscripts, the ‘shorter ending’ is followed by the ‘longer ending’ (16:9-20), and in a few manuscripts, the ‘longer ending’ is followed by this ‘shorter ending.’  Like the ‘longer ending’, it changes failure into success to end the Gospel on a positive note.  It uses language found nowhere else in the Gospel of Mark.”

The Longer Ending: “was probably added to a copy of Mark sometime in the late 2^nd or early 3^rd century CE.  It is not found in the earliest or most dependable Greek manuscripts, and while it appears in many others, it is often marked with asterisks or crucial notes indicating its secondary status.  It appears to be composed of a mixture of elements from the other three Gospels and Acts.  In two manuscripts, the ‘longer ending’ contains an addition after v.14 about the rule of Satan, which comes from a considerably later date... On a number of manuscripts it is combined with the ‘shorter ending’.”  Mary Ann Tolbert, “The Gospel According to Mark”, The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, Abingdon Press, 2003, p.1844.

[4] Fiona Farrell, The Broken Book, Auckland University Press, 2011 – back cover blurb.

[5] Fiona Farrell, 2011, p.9.

[6] “The teacups” in Fiona Farrell, 2011, p.196.

[7] Fiona Farrell 2011, p.46.

[8] Joy Cowley, “Something’s dead inside me”