Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022.
I have a confession to make. I’m not sure that I’m quite ready for Easter. A part of me is, a part wants to say hurrah! and jump for joy. But a larger part of me is hesitant, isn’t sure, feels like this shift toward joy and gladness may be moving a little too fast. And maybe I’m not alone?
Imagine with me, if you will, that first Easter morning. These three women, who were close to Jesus get up their nerve to go to the grave and anoint his body. Let’s notice that the men who were Jesus’ companions are nowhere to be found. They’ve scattered, and are probably in hiding. Neither were they around on the day he was killed. But the text says the women were there too.
These three women, on the way to anoint Jesus’ body, wonder who will move the stone covering the entrance to the tomb. But when they arrive, they discover it has already been rolled away, and the body of their friend and leader is gone. “He is risen,” they are told. “He is going before you to Galilee…” (Mark 16:6-7).
This first and oldest version of the story ends here, with the women running away, because, as the text says, they were trembling and amazed and afraid. And who wouldn’t be? What has happened here? Can you imagine yourself at the grave of one you love, finding it empty? Would you be be saying “Alleluia, She is risen!”? Would you be able to pivot that fast from grief and despair to joy and celebration? Wouldn’t most of us be saying, “What in the world has happened? What do we do now?”
Who among us hasn’t felt this way, now and then, over the past two years of so much uncertainty and disorientation? There must be a part of each of us that is more than ready to bust out of whatever has been holding us back. So if you’re ready to rejoice with your whole heart, don’t let me stop you! We need all the joy and celebrating we can get!
But for me, I’ve still got some work to do. And Gretchen Haley’s call keeps ringing in my ears:
“Roll way the stone of your hesitant heart,
Let the light shine on all the sleeping shadows.
Awaken to this day…”
Roll away the stone of your hesitant heart. I need this, because my heart is hesitant, these days. I’ve gotten used to lowering my expectations. I’m wary of hoping, and having those hopes disappointed. I’m weary of all the changes and adaptations we’ve been through on this journey. I want to awaken to a new day, and embrace a new season, and even feel some unadulterated joy for a change, but it’s kind of a lot to have it all at once, isn’t it? It may take a little time.
Like those women on their way to the tomb, I am asking, these days, “Who will roll away the stone?” Who will roll away the stone from this hesitant heart? How is that going to happen?
And this is why we are here, my friends. To hear the old story, to picture ourselves in it, to seek what it has to say to us in these days, in the particular places of our lives. And through this, to open our selves to a wider, more expansive, and more hopeful view.
One of my critiques of some strands of contemporary Christianity is how individual it can be, and how dependent on right belief; when the early followers of Jesus were not like that at all. They were all about community, and they weren’t of one mind—how could they be? They had been through so much with him, and it ended so suddenly and so badly. How long does it take to mourn one you have loved and lost? How long does it take to make meaning from an event that has forever changed you? More than two or three days, don’t you think?
Something happened to these friends and followers of Jesus after his torture and death. They remembered what it had been like when he was in their midst, how they felt the Spirit more vividly when he was near. And in some moments, it was like he was there with them still! Walking down a dusty road, or fishing on the Sea of Galilee, “Wait, could that have been him?”
We don’t know what happened, but something happened and the stories of this teacher and healer, whom death could not contain, spread across the world. We have religion because of this human problem we have; being alive and knowing we and everyone we love are going to die. Different religions have addressed this problem in different ways. But none of us know for sure, on this side of the grave, what awaits us after this life.
I don’t believe in magic. I don’t think there are forces that work outside the natural laws of the universe. But I do believe there is a Spirit world, that I can’t explain, but have caught glimpses of from time to time. That we are part of a great and abiding Love, whose energy is so vast and great, and so subtle and elusive. And that in this energetic field of Love we are connected across time and space to those we have loved and lost. I believe Jesus was a person particularly full of this Love, and gifted at sharing it. Which is why he is called Christ, the anointed one; which is why he lives on in these stories and in the lives of his followers.
The invitation that Easter throws at us every year is this: how are we going to live, in the face of the empty tomb? In a world that knows so much of sadness and despair, will we open ourselves to the possibility and the promise of resurrection, of new life in the midst of death? Here these lines of testimony from the UU theologian Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker:
…in the midst of a broken world
Unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.
There is an embrace of kindness,
That encompasses all life,
Even yours.
And while there is injustice, anesthetization, or evil
There moves
A holy disturbance,
A benevolent rage,
A revolutionary love
Protesting, urging, insisting
That which is sacred will not be defiled.
Easter asks us, “Are you going to resign yourself to decay, destruction, and death? Or are you going to choose life? Are you going to choose to bless the world?”
As our Buddhist friends remind us, suffering is a part of life. We are mortal, each of us, and those we love, we are all going to die. Who knows what comes after that? What matters is how we live in these days, here and now.
I am as prone to fear and worry and hesitancy as any of you. Which is why I need Easter, and its call to live a braver, more wholehearted and more daring life. We know enough about traveling the way of pain and loss and death. Easter doesn’t deny any of those things! It just says, “Suffering and death are not the end of the story.” The empty tomb is like a sentence without a period; a story that hasn’t ended, that we are still enacting and adding to, with the testimony of our lives. These hearts, these souls, these precious bodies.
Today begins a season of imagining and embodying a life in which we have enough and are enough. It make take some time, but today is a good day to start. And I am ready for that! What about you? Hear again David Whyte’s questions about living a more wholehearted and daring life:
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
This is Easter’s invitation and call—in the light and in the shadows, to live as fully as we can these lives we have been given. To be wholehearted and daring, seeing your own life as a resurrection story. Healing and blessing one another and our world, singing as we go:
Made like him, like him we rise,
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies,
Alleluia! and Amen!