Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
This is our premier Festal Day of the entire Christian calendar. This is the Day in which all of our other days derive their foundation, their hope, their purpose. This is the Day in which we loudly, proudly proclaim that Love Wins.
There is no power on heaven or on earth or under the earth that can compete with the power of Love, with the power of Resurrection to establish new life and finally the Reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.
I’m the Rev. Linda McConnell, one of your lovely supply priests. I stand here only by the grace of God and welcome you into worship of the High and Holy One.
The Sermon
Happy Easter! He is risen! The Lord is risen indeed.
The Lord is our strength and our song. On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Isaiah said this about the strength and the song of the Lord, about God’s power and promise:
17 I, God, am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
I know – if you pay attention at all – that is a more than challenging invitation – legal residents scooped up off the streets of our cities and disappeared into foreign prisons run by brutal dictators. Lifesaving food and medical supplies cut off for millions of children. Grants for medical Research and trials for lifesaving cancer drugs ended without notice. Universities – bastions of our constitutional freedom of speech, prosecuted and persecuted and punished. Recently a Republican senator bravely spoke out to say that they are almost all very afraid. And I could go on as to why Easter rejoicing is challenging –
But here’s what happens when we commit to taking hold of Isaiah’s promise of God’s power, proven at the empty tomb of Jesus, and lift up our hearts in gladness:
We get into the Spirit of God’s creating. God’s vitality and fertility flow in us – and we ourselves contribute to ongoing resurrection. When we lift up our hearts, we are immersed in the deep river of saints, known and unknown, throughout the generations who nullify the conditions of death and create the conditions of life. We join the great cloud of witnesses who surround this planet with life, and light and hope and power and peace.
We lift up our hearts in thanksgiving and praise we enter the reality of resurrection and we live boldly – not shrinking down our light and our power and our voices, but we live out loud, big and proud. We live free from the paralyzing nature of fear.
And whether our current circumstances are pleasurable or painful, we remain confident that God’s will is unfolding and that we don’t have to spend ourselves in worries over what will be or will not be or regrets over what we have done or what we have not done.
When we lift up our hearts in gladness and rejoicing trusting in the reality of life over death, love over hate, we forgive ourselves, we forgive others, and we live in a fullness of peace that cannot help but spill over into the world.
But how do we get there?
How do we get from the shock and displacement and horror of Good Friday to the shock and the oh my god can this be of Easter morning?
Because even as we lean into God’s kingdom of justice and righteousness and peace, we remain painfully cognizant of the fires and the floods of climate change, the streams of refugees fleeing for their lives, the destruction of our economy and our democracy.
So how? How do we get to joy even as, Wendell Berry writes, even as we consider all the facts?
Here’s the first thing to remember – God’s people, according to Zephaniah (chapter 9, verse12) – another Jewish prophet of the Old Testament, God’s people are prisoners of hope – and here’s the thing – hope is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism believes in the inevitability of progress, in a sentimental kind of way.
But Hope – hope is entirely different. Hope is rooted in redemptive realism. What we call Easter. For the people of God, hope is rooted in the promise of the ultimate victory of God. Hope is rooted in the ultimate victory of life and love and peace over all the forces of death and hate and chaos.
Hope is rooted in the empty tomb that Mary and the women ran to tell the men about.
Hope is rooted in the women’s confidence in the truth of their experience – even when they were ridiculed.
Hope is rooted in Peter’s curiosity as he rushed out to see what was going on.
And sometime after Easter morning, with some resurrection experiences under his belt, Peter said “I now understand that God shows no partiality…: Peter was curious. He was willing to learn. And he courageously stepped into unfamiliar territory, he went where God led him – even if it went against the grain of his training and his prejudices. In the resurrection life he lived after Easter, he made friends with folks he had previously had nothing to do with. He extended himself in service to others, even others whom he had previously dismissed as unworthy – he changed rather than holding onto his ego and his pride and his former way of life.
We want to be like that. Even as we age. We want to stay curious, and willing to learn, and willing to change. We want to stand confident in the truth of our own experiences. We want to live in the reality that in Christ, no power on heaven or on earth can shake our inmost assurance of God’s love and victory. We want to approach death confident that what we say on Sunday mornings is true and that there really and truly is nothing to fear.
Friends, may we have confidence in the truth of our own experiences. May we remain curious and willing to learn and willing to step into unfamiliar territory as God leads. Whether we are 12 or 92 – may we stay curious and moving forward into whatever new thing God is bringing about.
Now it is true that at the human level we need time to grieve what has been, grieve what we have lost, grieve what we had hoped for that hasn’t yet happened,
but we dare not get stuck in that grief or those resentments or the regrets.
because that’s not where God is. “Why do you look for him here?” the angel asks. He’s not in this tomb – he is risen and is already going on ahead.
So this Easter Sunday, if you have fallen into a grave of despair or of despondency or of anxiety or of fear or of loneliness or of helplessness or any other state of dryness – first of all, know that you are not alone. We all have aspects of these forms of death lurking within us – every single one of us. You are not alone.
So here’s what we are going to do to move us towards the reality of resurrection, towards rejoicing and gladness.
First of all, I’m going to invite you to hold someone’s hand – literally reach out and hold someone’s hand. And I know in post-COVID times, this is risky, and so we are going to have hand gel before you take communion. But I want you to feel the solid touch of other people whom God created and loved and brought here this morning.
If you are online this morning and are alone in your living room, clasp your hands together. Hold your own hand.
I know this sounds like a crazy preacher, but honestly, God gave us each other and we are meant for comfort and companionship and courage.
And beyond Sundays, I encourage you to join in protests and gatherings out on the streets. I encourage you to join neighborhood community gatherings. I encourage you to be on the lookout for anything that brings folks together and joins them in common purpose for the common good. This is the power of life and peace and freedom, it is resurrection power even if it is not called that in the secular world.
OK – so we got each other. OK. You can let go hands now. If you want – if not, keep holding on.
Secondly, as we pray the great thanksgiving of the Eucharist, beginning with Lift up your hearts, we lift them to the Lord – I invite you to be bold and actually lift up your arms to encourage your heart – up, up, up, take courage, take heart – our Lord is risen. No power in heaven or on earth, no power can keep him or us in the grave. And if you are online – you can do this too!
We are a people of freedom. We are a people of Love. We are a people of Hope. We are a people moving forward trusting that God is already there – always one step ahead of us.
This is our heritage, borne to us through the blood of the saints, and it is our future, as we bear these blessings into the world.
He is risen friends. And in him, we are risen as well. In God’s power and might, no fear, no ungodly power, no grave can keep us down. Let us be glad and rejoice in what God is creating, and let us daily hold hands and lift up our hearts in praise and thanksgiving.
