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April 4, 2010 Sermon

Easter as Spiritual Practice (Isaiah 65: 17-25; Luke 24: 1-12)

Rev. Sally Harris

Surprising God like the women, we come to the tomb
expecting death, despair and darkness.
May the light of Your new day surprise us, like it did the women.
May Easter become our spiritual practice. Amen

And so it is, with the disciples, we run toward the tomb, the dust from our wilderness journey is shaken loose. The startling words echo in our hearts: He is not here but has risen. For a moment, the ancient words of Isaiah become a reality: Behold I create new heavens and a new earth" The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. And with the women we hear the question which challenges us to consider Easter as a spiritual practice: Why are you seeking the living among the dead? But it was not so just a few hours earlier… listen to the not so idle tale of one of the three:

Yesterday morning came:
I put the leash on Sadness
and took him for a walk in the rain;
I turned the kettle on and watched my hopes steam away;
I stirred my life and gorged on its bitterness. [T. Shuman]

Overwhelmed by sadness… I just wanted to sit in the darkness of my bedroom and weep… Weep at the loss of one so kind… so strong… so bold… so loving…. so needed in a world full of … death and the predictable…

Somehow Jesus brought light into all this darkness… somehow he breathed life into dead traditions connecting… reconnecting… healing… bringing wholeness offering a balance, a clarity, an honesty

Our world needed someone like Jesus…. Doesn’t yours? You know… one fully alive …. living authentically, walking humbly with their God saying what they mean and meaning what they say…. Alas… perhaps the mold was broken when this One died…. And now I sit in darkness…. Looking out the window… at a still dark Jerusalem…. I note the scattered stars in the sky, the fires that dot the hills betraying the shepherds’ whereabouts, and vaguely I hear or maybe I feel the cool breeze rustling the trees… and indeed there remain a few sporadic orders shouted from a nearby Roman garrison….

Nothing of course like the chaos of the other day… the shouts and cries of crucify…. the wild wind tearing at the trees; the earth shaking…. I turn away, hoping to stop those hideous sounds and sights from entering into the quiet tomb I have created for myself. Quietly in the mist arising from the cooling earth I recount my losses… not only of the person but now of all the relationships this person helped define… the community in the throes of treachery and rejection …. the rift that separates some of us from others… those we once trusted and believed in… their faithful acts now tainted by betrayal and denial.

My heart is not strong enough for this; I plead to an… absent God… a God that forsook the one bright star of redemption all the other rifts of community, of friendship, of religious authority that sought to destroy such beauty are mere gashes compared to the gaping wound… the abyss created by this unknown, unrecognizable, silent, non-existent God The sun will soon rise, and I must pull myself out of this mourning malaise… It must become my spiritual practice rising to meet a sad new day where all hope has been drained out and I am left with only a vague sense of what to do now…. I know I must be faithful to a promise I have made…. I must see this through to the end… It must become my spiritual practice I will myself to walk with the others to the shrine of death… violence and death… the gods we worship … the gods that we most offer to one another… threaten each other with…. I will annihilate you with my power, my sword, my words, withholding life

And oh for shame, the one who saw such actions clearly - who spoke against the sword; claiming the power of love, of creating love… was outdone by the powers of hate and fear… violence and death rule the world… that is my Sabbath lesson…. numbed by the learning of it. Oh… perhaps my senses are not as numb as my spirit for suddenly I catch a whiff of a fragrance of lavender… perhaps still lingering on my garments from another anointing. Oh…perhaps my mind is more greatly disturbed than I know… am I seeing things…. Are daffodils spreading their petals? Are the trees fully clothed in blossoms? Is the stone missing?

The stone… the stone IS missing! The body IS missing…. Do the other women see what I see? We go now into the darkness of the tomb… it is empty but… I am so perplexed…. I am still caught in my tomb… full… full of grief… weeping, death defining me… not life… My eyes are blurred with the pouring out of them… I do not believe what I now see… I wander out, we all did… dazed, disorientated by the emptiness… what can this mean? and then we are shocked… shocked into wakefulness… two beings appear in dazzling clothes…

We seek to bury ourselves in the ground – to get away from the light… we are terrified… And through the fog of our fear we hear these words; words that have become my spiritual practice, words that guide my every thought and action now….

"Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. For these words define my real fear… found in the fearful light of Easter. The fear of living. Fear of life in a different world, God’s world, where even stones are moved. Yes even stones are moved, blocks to new life removed, lost hope reborn all in the light of Easter morn.

Resurrection… means there are no more excuses to not believe in the rebirth of Love in the garden of the world. No more excuses not to seek new life… the stones are moved – are we? Can this become our spiritual practice? Believing in Easter?

An Easter: where angels laugh as death
is kicked out of the tomb;
and Jesus does cartwheels
through the graveyard,
splashing through the puddles of our tears
and into our hearts. [T. Shuman]

Yes, yes! Why seek the living among the dead?

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