Easter Sermon Delivered by the Rev. Rhonda J. Rubinson
Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia! Please be seated.
I’d like to start off our time together on this beautiful Easter Sunday morning with my favorite story about St. Francis of Assisi; I tell it a lot and I’d like to believe that it’s true, but even if it’s legend it has a good deal to say about the resurrection. One winter day, St. Francis was walking in the woods when he came upon an almond tree. He stopped, he stood, he prayed. As he prayed, he spoke to the almond tree:
“Almond tree” he said, “teach me something about God.” And the almond tree immediately burst into blossom. Now this story might not seem that it has much to do with Easter, but I promise you that it does. Please keep it in mind as we travel through this sermon; we’ll return to it a little bit later.
Now we all know that Jesus’ resurrection accomplishes the both the victory over death and the ultimate defeat of Satan and all of the forces that come against God. These are the forces that came against Jesus, and him himself announced that he is about to defeat the. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that the “prince of this world” (Satan) “is about to be cast out.” And we believe that Jesus done that and that all he has promised has already taken place. Yet, despite Jesus’ triumph, we live in a peculiar time, we live in the “between times,” the time of human history between Jesus’ resurrection and his second coming, when creation will be fully redeemed, the defeat of evil will be complete.
Priests, pastors and scholars like to call this time, our time, the time of “already and not yet.” In other words, Jesus has “already” cast out Satan, and death has “already” been defeated, but that triumph is “not yet” fully manifest in creation. We don’t have to go far to know this: all we have to do is look at our lives and at our world.
Although today is Easter Sunday, when we leave here today, the chances are very good that everything is going to look very much the same as it did when we left home this morning, all of the same challenges and sufferings will still be there. It would be delusional for us to claim that our world is already redeemed and evil has been totally defeated. Rather, the Christian view is that although the forces of darkness have already lost the final battle, they are still stalking us, wounded and dying but still kicking and lashing out at us like wounded animals, and still able to cause us tremendous suffering.
We all are or know people who are suffering. We know people who are homeless or hungry or both – the numbers of those who are homeless and hungry are increasing today – and there are many others of us who may have homes and food but who wear the haunted look of those who are wrestling with deep difficulties in our lives – maybe we have lost our job or fear to lose it, perhaps we are deep in debt and see no way out of the financial hole. Maybe we have relationships that are in trouble, or are consumed with worry for a child who has taken off in the wrong direction with the wrong crowd, and who seems well on their way to being lost for good. Maybe we care for someone with a serious health problem or have one ourselves. Perhaps we are dealing with an addiction that seems to have a stranglehold on our life, or live with someone who just can’t seem to kick a dangerous habit. In our world of “already and not yet,” even though it is Easter, what does the resurrection mean to us in the context of the real lives with the real challenges that we are all living?
Then once we get home if we turn on the television, the world seems to be in depressing and worsening shape. Historic tornado outbreaks are ravaging lives and communities (most recently yesterday in Saint Louis), terrible unstoppable fires are raging in Texas, there are horrendous images of natural disasters in Japan, Haiti, New Zealand, as well as war and unrest across the world, and there are daily reports of bizarre and horrific crimes even in our own backyard. If we need final proof that the destructive forces are still out there doing their best to trap us, look no further than the fact that today, Easter Sunday, has lately become the day of choice for gang initiations, complete with violence and terror. Tragic indeed. What does resurrection mean to such a world?
With such seemingly endless challenges awaiting us at every turn, we might very well forget about Easter by the time the sun sets tonight. That is, if we don’t strive to hold on to the lessons of this glorious day. We know what the Bible says Jesus’ resurrection means, mostly from the epistles in the New Testament. We know that it is the proof of the overwhelming, unfathomable love of God who gave his only Son for us, his beloved children but it can be difficult to take that love and apply it to the world as we know it. Since it’s the preacher’s job to offer us opportunities to take Jesus home with us so that our lives can truly change, in that spirit I humbly offer us a simple yet powerful three-step plan that gives us a practical advice on how to live a resurrected Easter life. The first step is given to us by the gospel reading itself. It is mentioned twice in our rather short reading today, so it must be important. Step one is this: do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid. First the angel from heaven says “do not be afraid” to the two Marys by Jesus’ tomb, and with good reason: he had just terrified them by appearing like lightning during an earthquake and rolling back the enormous stone that sealed the tomb. This angel then sits on the stone, and having scared the living daylights out of everyone around – the gospel says that the tomb’s guards “shook and became like dead men” – he says to the two Marys “Do not be afraid.” Then he announces Jesus’ resurrection:
Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.
The women leave the empty tomb “quickly with fear and great joy,” and they run to tell Jesus’ disciples. On the way they meet the risen Jesus himself who greets them and they worship him, but then Jesus repeats that same phrase: do not be afraid:Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me. What is curious is that the women are not afraid for reason you normally might be afraid of someone you thought was dead, which is that you think you see a ghost of the dead person, but rather they are afraid because Jesus is very much alive and not at all dead. The meaning of Jesus’ being alive is terrifying because it totally overthrows what we know to be the natural order: when somebody dies he’s dead, but Jesus is alive.
It is normal to be afraid when we are confronted by something so shockingly outside the normal, because we think that anything outside of the natural course of nature will cause us harm. Jesus is not telling us not to feel fear; that is impossible. Rather he is telling us not to let fear stop us or the action of God in our lives. Once we feel fear, our instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and we freeze. Quite often we stay afraid long after danger is past, and God knows that fears can invade every aspect of our lives, poisoning the choices that we make, paralyzing us in the present, and diminishing our future. That’s why Jesus, immediately upon his rising from the grave – the place that most of us are the most of afraid of, the place of death, the grave – immediately says “do not be afraid.”
Now it’s one thing to say “do not be afraid” but in order for us to truly neutralize the power of fear, it needs to be replaced with something else, and that’s step number two: trust in God. In order for us to live a resurrected life, we must replace fear with trust in God. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross are really all the proof we should ever need that we can trust in him – the late Canon Edward West once wrote that “the hand that made all things is the hand that will end all things, and you can trust that hand, because it has nail holes in it.”The same Jesus who is telling us not to be afraid is the same Jesus has already suffered and died for us and our world; not only do we not need to be afraid of anything that comes against us, but we need not be afraid of trusting him either. And yet we may not be aware of how afraid we to let go and take his hand. There is nothing that we cannot trust Jesus with, no situation so dire that he is not in it, no place so remote where Jesus cannot find us and love us. Remember the words of Paul in his Letter to the Romans:
We know that all things work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. . . If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? . . .
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. What more do we need to hear?
Step two: trust Jesus, the suffering, dead and now risen Jesus.
This brings us to the third and final step in our plan - and this might be the hardest step for many of us. Step three: ask Jesus to resurrect something in your life. Do not be afraid to ask the risen Lord to show you life in the midst of death. If we have the faith and courage to approach Jesus and say:
Lord, show me life from where all I can see is death, then be still, wait, and expect to be surprised. Jesus will do something for you that you may not ever have imagined.
This brings us back to where we began, our story about St. Francis story. Just as there was no reason in the natural world for Jesus to be alive after he died, there would be no reason in the natural world for an almond tree to burst into blossom in the dead of winter. But St. Francis intimately knew Jesus, both crucified and risen. Remember he had the stigmata, bleeding wounds in his hands and feet, the reward for his sacrifices and his deep faith. Francis knew that God is the God of life and that this God could take the tiniest potential for life in the most unlikely situation and charge it with such a jolt of life-giving spirit that it would immediately flower and thrives. So St. Francis could stand in front of an almond tree in winter and ask for a lesson in God’s life-giving power, and be instantly rewarded with an undeniable demonstration of resurrection.
Would any of us dare do that? I wonder. I don’t know if I could. How many of us would talk to a stick-dead almond tree perhaps covered with ice and snow and ask it to speak to us of God? I think most of us would be afraid to try something like that. We’d make excuses and say, Oh, no, we shouldn’t do that, that would be tempting God, but the truth is that we’re afraid, afraid that God won’t answer, or maybe that he will. God wants us to ask difficult things, he wants us to trust him with the hardest situations, the ones that look the most unlikely. Don’t be afraid to pray to God to teach you something about the risen Lord. That’s the final step: ask God to show you resurrection.
We don’t need to limit those prayers to our own private lives, we can use those three steps in prayers for our world and for our parish too. Right now we of St. Philip’s have several tasks that will choose the direction our future: we are in the midst of a clergy search, and we are trying to buy property. Some of us are afraid of change because we can’t imagine a future that is different from our past or our present. But if we have learned our Easter lessons we know that we don’t need to be afraid of anything or anyone. We know that if we pray and remain faithful, God will make all things work for good, to us who love God, to us who are called according to his purpose. God has proven again and again that he loves St. Philip’s as he kept us alive through bad times and good, because we have remained faithful to him.
We’re ready to burst into blossom again, we’re ready to grow and become active in our community again. After a fallow time we are now poised to become a powerful light of the gospel here in Harlem and beyond. As we take on these big decisions, I ask each one of us who loves this parish to resolve not to be afraid, to trust in God, and to pray and say to Jesus – show us, your beloved St. Philip’s, something about yourself, show St. Philip’s resurrection. I have no doubt that God will respond, in ways that we cannot even imagine.
There is resurrection all around us, even as we live in this time between “already and not yet.” Look at our neighborhood, look at the young people among us, look at those who are here today who are being healed and restored. New life comes all the time, from ashes, from disappointments, from hurt, even from tragedy. Today on this Easter Sunday, remember that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that we who believe in him should not perish, but have the light of life. Do not be afraid, trust God, ask for – and expect – resurrection!
Alleluia. Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.
