Sermon of the Week
Dawn Breaks on a Weary World
An Easter sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 21, 2019.
#pcusa
Keywords: Easter, Dawn, Look for the Living, Tone, Laughter, Resurrection
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Isaiah 65: 17-25
and Luke 24: 1-12
The best parts of these holy days are told in song.
We preachers know who truly draws a good crowd.
Way back at Christmas, we sang O Holy Night
a song about the gift of the birth of Jesus.
Do you remember?
“A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn….”
God seems to prefer the dawn to do the momentous things.
The bible contains four different stories about the life of Jesus
each gospel unique in its own way.
A couple share stories of his birth,
they all tell about his life and about his death,
but each one also talks about his resurrection,
how death could not contain him.
And in each story, each gospel,
the resurrection happens at dawn
Easter morning: a new and glorious morn unlike any other.
Here is how Luke tells this story.
Listen for how dawn breaks on a weary world…
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn,
the women came to the tomb,
taking the spices that they had prepared.
2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
3but when they went in, they did not find the body.
4While they were perplexed about this,
suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.
5The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground,
but the men said to them,
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.
6Remember how he told you,
while he was still in Galilee,
7that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners,
and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’
8Then they remembered his words,
9and returning from the tomb,
they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.
10Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them
who told this to the apostles.
11But these words seemed to them an idle tale,
and they did not believe them.
12But Peter got up and ran to the tomb;
stooping and looking in,
he saw the linen cloths by themselves;
then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
And may God bless to us our reading,
and our understanding,
and our applying of this word
to how we live our lives. Amen.
///
There’s so much that these stories say,
and, at the same time, so much that goes unsaid.
I wish that we had video to accompany the narrative,
so we could see with, our own eyes, what was going on.
When the two messengers in dazzling clothes
asked Mary, Joanna, and the other women:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
…What was their TONE of voice, do you think?
Was it SCORN…or TESTING…or maybe BLUSTER…
…how did that question sound to the women there, at the tomb?
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
On the face of it—I can understand WHY
they went looking for the living among the dead.
Sometimes I am just as guilty of a fruitless search.
Sometimes I can be found carefully tending dead ideas or commitments
I sometimes cling to former visions of myself, or of people I love.
Can you relate?
Sometimes we choose to stay with what
we know in our hearts to be dead,
because it is safe.[1]
My friend Mark once told me about
growing up watching the “Twilight Zone”[2]
which was before my time, but I remember seeing reruns of it myself as a kid.
It was a somewhat hokey horror show…
Alfred Hitchcock in profile, the fascinating audio track…
Jordan Peele is taking a crack at remaking the show for a modern age.
Back in the original series, they once told a story about a town in the Old West,
where a stranger happened to visit.
He was a snake-oil salesman type—
–only in this horror story,
the salesman was selling something much more intriguing than tinctures and colas.
For ten dollars, he would raise someone from the dead.
Of course, the stranger became the talk of the town.
SOME were curious enough to risk the money, to have someone raised.
ONLY THEN, as the story goes on, there’s a curious twist….
…people start secretly coming to the stranger at night—
people snuck up to him, when they knew of his powers,
offering TWICE the money
if only he would NOT raise certain people from the dead!
///
Easter is many things—but it is always disruptive.
We often DON’T WANT any more disruption…
I was reading this week about a celebrated preacher named Edmund
who was working on a sermon for the day before Easter.
We call that Holy Saturday, and he was working with a reading
from the book of Lamentations, that read:
“God’s mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.”
As he explored this passage, Edmund quipped:
“At my age, this promise of newness every morning
is at best a mixed blessing.
I have come to the point in life
when I really don’t want ANYTHING new in the morning.
I want my slippers right beneath my bed
where I left them the night before,
I want my orange juice and bran flakes for breakfast, as normal.
In my advanced years,
I can do without a lot of newness,
especially in the morning.”[3]
///
The announcement of Easter’s reversal—LIFE, not DEATH—
–includes this startling, disquieting proclamation:
that whatever you are clinging to…
…you have to let go of
if you want to experience God’s Easter.
You have to open yourselves up for the dawn.
And so the women are confronted with the question:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
Again: What was the TONE to that question?
What that question asked to SCOLD?
To TEST?
Was it a word of DREAD or FEAR?
Well, it wasn’t SCOLDING. I know that.
…Because God does NOT scold.
We preacher types have to read a lot of theology
and I had to, also. And I enjoyed some of it.
But I also got to know about the people behind it, the things in their lives
that animated their imagination about God.
One of those people was Karl Barth,
who was an important Swiss theologian from the 20th century.
When Karl Barth was young,
he and fellow theologian Emil Brunner
were deeply engaged in a scholarly debate
around the topic of how we know God.
At one point, Brunner published an essay on the subject
that provoked Barth to issue a sharply worded blast against Brunner.
His response became famous in the world of theology
and it carried a severe, one word title: “NO!”
This was before social media sent things viral,
but this exchange went as viral as things went in the 1900s.
Brunner was deeply wounded by the harshness of Barth’s rejection
and the rift between the two old friends lasted a lifetime.
Sometime near the end of Brunner’s life,
Barth sent him an urgent message:
“If he is still alive and it is possible, tell him ‘YES.’
Tell him that the time when I thought I had to say
‘No’ to him is now long past,
since we ALL live only by virtue of the fact that
a great and loving God says a gracious YES to all of us.”[4]
It’s NOT scolding—if someone in your life
has told you about a scolding God,
there were mistaken—God does NOT scold.
///
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
If it’s NOT scolding, is it TESTING?
Is it trying to edge us toward PROOF?
…Easter, as it we receive it in the pages of the Bible,
could care less about PROOF.
Our culture loves to look for proof in so called spiritual things.
The Shroud of Turin…
A book by a physician come back from the dead to tell
of what he encountered…
does that prove it?
Well, Luke’s Easter account does NOT shove PROOF at us—
–it seeks to restore our forgetfulness.
Luke asks us to remember who we are, and whose we are.
The dazzling messengers say:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.
Remember how he told you,
while he was still in Galilee,
that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners,
and be crucified,
and on the third day rise again.
Then they remembered his words…”
Lillian Daniel tells of the time that one of her former churches
was gearing up to celebrate their 75th anniversary.
It was a church that had had its share of hard times, splits, conflicts…
but this was an occasion to REJOICE,
and they wanted to get it right!
So they took two years to prepare.
A special worship service was planned—over the course of two years.
The choir rehearsed multiple anthems—over the course of two years.
All sorts of committees were at work—for two years!
Everyone was excited…everyone was ready.
Then, Daniel writes,
“…about a month before the big day,
it came one member’s attention that there had been a mistake.
In calculating the date, we had the wrong year.
Our 75th anniversary had been the year before.”[5]
In the second century church, the definition for being LOST…was having amnesia.
We don’t need more PROOF…we need more remembering.
///
If it wasn’t SCOLDING,
if it wasn’t a challenge of PROOF…
…was the TONE of voice when they asked
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”—
–a sort of DESPERATION?
Look: MAYBE the messengers don’t know why Jesus is missing either,
but, you know, the best defense is sometimes a good offense.
Bluster…sometimes can cover over desperation.
But here’s what I think:
while these messengers from God didn’t come with PROOF…
…they DID come carrying the knowledge of
the ABUNDANT LOVE of God,
the God who is at the heart of the universe.
I don’t believe the messengers were bluffing—
–they may NOT have known exactly what happened at that empty tomb,
but they knew not to look for the living among the dead—
–and they knew Christ was alive
because they knew the infinite, abundant heart of God!
///
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”—
…I think if there had been a camera rolling at the empty tomb that first Easter—
we would not hear SCORN,
or TESTING,
or DESPERATION.
–I think we would hear…LAUGHTER!
NOT a defensive, nervous laughter,
NOT the laughter of derision,
NOT the laughter of frivolous entertainment—
–but the LAUGHTER of amazement, the laughter of confidence.
///
While he was best known for his tragic works,
playwright Eugene O’Neill also wrote a play called Lazarus Laughed.
If you don’t know who Lazarus is,
Lazarus is an important figure in the bible.
According to John, Jesus resuscitates him. Jesus brings his friend back to life.
And in this play, after Lazarus is raised from the dead by Jesus,
he laughs at everything–even death.
All he does…day after day after day…is laugh—
–it’s ALL he can do with his life.
He goes up to EVERY person he has ever known and says:
“Laugh! Laugh with me at death!
Death is dead! Fear is gone!
There is only life!
…There is only laughter!”
The home of Lazarus in Bethany even comes to be called,
“The House of Laughter.”
O’Neill seems to think Laughter is to be found there, at dawn
On Easter morning.
Look…I know this sounds incredulous.
We all know the pain, the heartbreak, the loss
endured in every corner of this world,
and in every soul present this morning…
we woke up to the news of bombings in Sri Lanka
of government turmoil
of our friends sick or receiving chemo or nursing a wounded relationship
…and we should—knowing ALL THAT—
–greet Easter with laughter?
Well, Lazarus may be our most instructive voice in all of this.
When Lazarus died, Jesus didn’t show up for days,
and everyone became IMPATIENT.
WE want Jesus to show up and come in and make a home in our grief.
WE want Jesus to come in and make life slightly less somber.
WE want Jesus to settle in with us and accommodate our pain.
But Jesus does not do that.
Jesus is the great HEALER—but Jesus does NOT settle in!
Jesus does NOT go into the tomb and redecorate.
He calls Lazarus OUT…
He refuses to stay in the tomb. He is not there. The tomb is empty.
Part of the LAUGHTER of Easter
is the life-giving instruction to us:
DON’T get good at coping with a broken life.[6]
God wants you to live for so much more!
///
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that God gets the last laugh?
That’s hard to believe many, many days.
I mentioned theologian Karl Barth earlier.
Barth was not immune to the ravages of chaos and death.
His own son, Matthias, was killed as a 20-year-old
in a mountain-hiking accident.
And yet, even the death of his beloved child
did not keep Barth from trusting in a vision
of God’s power over death.
How could Barth do this?
“It is..” he said, ”because the crucified and Risen Christ
is the Lord of our lives,
because we belong to God,
because we belonged to God before we existed
and will always belong to God—
to no one else, and certainly not to ourselves.”
///
Laugh through bitter tears at that, if you must.
God will understand. I believe God cries with us. Alongside us.
God will embrace you.
Laugh at the utter impossibility of it all.
God will continue to bring Easter to you each day.
Laugh at the stark juxtaposition of our broken world and these BOLD claims—
–but God WILL have the LAST LAUGH—
–because we belong to God—
–always have, always will, come what may…
No matter what.
///
A couple months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti back in 2010,
Brian Williams of NBC did a story on some of the children in Haiti,
who had been separated from their families.[7]
Reuniting the smallest ones with their family
was particularly difficult for aid workers,
because those kids didn’t always know
their own street address,
and the landscape of Port-a-Prince was actually changed by the earthquake.
Things that once were there, just weren’t any longer.
But one UNICEF worker suggested that the kids take a crayon,
and draw a map of their home.
Sterling, who was 6 years old, drew a small building—
–that was her home—
and then a church—
and then a bunch of small bumps,
with crosses on them.
“What’s this,” asked the aid worker?
It’s where they bury dead people, Sterling replied.
The aid worker sprang up, popped Sterling in her vehicle,
and took off for a nearby cemetery,
one she had passed countless times before.
As they got closer, Sterling got more and more animated.
Finally, Sterling pointed to a path in the rubble.
This path led to a clearing of sorts, and just beyond were people.
The aid worker entered this area with Sterling in tow,
and was greeted with shouts of joy all around.
There was Sterling’s aunt!
There were neighbors!
A phone call was made, and before long,
Sterling’s father came running up to greet his daughter.
“I’ve been walking everywhere, looking for you!” he cried.
He CRIED…and he LAUGHED.
He CRIED some more…then LAUGHED some more.
He laughed at the improbability of it all.
He laughed…in JOY
at what he had LOST…and FOUND…
Can you picture the look on that father’s face,
when he sees his daughter—reunited at last?
THAT LOOK…is what Easter is about.
Can you hear that LAUGHTER that followed days and weeks of tears?
THAT SOUND…
…that’s EASTER!
That’s dawn for our weary world.
That’s today, and everyday, because of God in Christ Jesus.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
——-
[1] Nancy Claire Pittman, Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide.
[2] Mark Ramsey’s sermon “Seriously…,” to which much of this sermon is indebted
[3] “Growing Old and Wise on Easter” by Thomas G. Long, Journal for Preachers, Easter 2001
[4] Ibid.
[5] Recounted at the Mid-Winters Lectures of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, February 2012
[6] From a lecture by Craig Barnes, Festival of Homiletics, May, 2011
[7] https://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/flatview?cuecard=48405
photo credit: Wouter de Bruijn Misty sunrise via photopin (license)
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