ἵνα φανερωθῇ: Ears Awake and Eyes Opened

A resurrection sermon for Easter Sunday given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on April 8, 2012.

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8

Introduce poem.

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by E. E. Cummings

“i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

today's gospel story is a story of expectations reversed

three women come to a tomb to anoint a corpse.

they come expecting great difficulty in accessing the tomb because of the custom of large stones being used for sealing the entrance.

they come expecting to mourn and continue their grieving.

they come with expectation that their hopes were indeed futile.

Was God in this? Did he care?

These women came dejected, trying to move on and give their best to the body of one they loved so much.

these women experienced the trauma of the suffering and crucifixion and slow dying of their teacher, their friend, their savior.

they came expecting to say their last goodbyes.

but they forgot.

they forgot what Jesus had told them over and over: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

the word repent, metanoite, has a literal meaning of change your mind -- change your expectations, change the way of viewing the world, turn from the old way of being where you lived under the shadow of death and a kind of dim defeatism, the enslavement to the way things are.

Metanoite -- Change your minds!

Metanoite -- Change your expectations!

Metanoite -- Believe the good news and let it bring light and hope to the bad news that you are carrying heavy on your hearts and minds.

Metanoite -- God is doing a new thing, jump on board.

Metanoite -- change your mind, AND pisteuete -- believe, come to this new realization, come to this new way of seeing the word: the kingdom of God was breaking into the world and those who found faith were able to see and rejoice that the blind were receiving sight, the lame were walking, those oppressed by the realities of evil in the world were being set free, the hungry were going off well-fed, and the severest of life’s storms were being calmed.

Change your minds! and Realize the new that is intruding into the old.

Believe in the good news.

All throughout Mark’s gospel we see this good news breaking into the lives of the people of Palestine. They expect the inevitability of unclean spirits -- only to see them thrown out, they expect the slow decay of sickness and dying -- only to see the intrusion of life.

They expect scarcity and the hunger of the multitude --- only to see that faith trusts in God’s provision, that God gives us bread in the bleakest of our wildernesses.

Change your mind and believe -- there is good news breaking into this world.

But again and again we read of how the disciples don’t get it. Old habits die hard.

But as Christians we are called to expect the unexpected. To be liberated from the tyranny of the same into the newness of what might be.

And so we join these women as they make their way to anoint the body and let us try for a moment to inhabit their expectation, to live in their grief, to pretend that we don’t know how the story goes on.

We know what it feels like to mourn loss, we know what it feels like to have our hopes crushed.

We know what it feels like to be limp with broken bones and to live in the darkness of despair.

In these times of grief and loss I have found it cathartic to say with Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

We read in Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick...”

And we can feel the sickness of heart with these women who are making their way slowly in the dim light of the early sunrise.

There are some hints here, however, which the reader can pick up on. Hints that foreshadow an upset of expectations. Hints of possibility where there seems to be no possibility.

First -- the women coming bear names of newness and hope: we are told that Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome are the women coming to the tomb.

Mary is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Miriam. Many of us remember that Miriam was one of the three sibling prophets who lead the people of Israel out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery through the Reed Sea and forward into a new existence as those who by faith follow a God who provides in the wilderness.

We have two Miriams here -- perhaps to get us thinking about a new exodus, a new escape from a different kind of slavery, where we may sing with the first Miriam in a new way, “‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’” A new kind of deliverance from a different enslaving reality.

And then we have Salome. The female equivalent of the name Solomon. Solomon as we remember was considered to be one of the wisest humans but we also remember that Solomon was the one who built the first glorious temple to the Lord. We have a new Solomon -- a new temple builder.

Here are names of a new deliverance, a new escape from slavery, and a new temple, a new way to worship and know and experience God’s presence.

A new community will arise out of the old, a community which by faith accesses God in no particular place in no particular way but will worship God in spirit and truth wherever they may be.

So these women are traveling to the tomb, to the place of disappointment, of eternal recurrence of the same, yet we see as readers a hint of something a new, a foreshadowing of a coming act of God.

Second, we are told that it was the first day of the week. We as readers are immediately able to realize that something very significant happened according to the tradition of the scriptures on a first day of the week. The Genesis creation story tells in a rich and poetic way that God spoke, in the face of a chaotic void, a nothing, God spoke: Let there be light and light was.

Here in the face of the death of the savior, we are brought as readers back to the creation story -- where God spoke being in the face of nonbeing, light in the face of darkness, newness in the face of nothingness. And it was good.

Third, we are told that it was early in the morning and that the sun was rising.

When Jesus yelled “my God my God why have you forsaken me?” before he gave up his spirit on the cross, we read that there was a great darkness over the land.

it is the darkness of God’s absence. we killed Jesus and told God to stay away from our affairs.

but here the sun is rising. quite beyond our control a new day begins.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam 3:22-23)

We may try to throw God out of our story, but God relentlessly and faithfully returns with mercy -- as faithfully as the sun rises.

The sun is rising and we hear an echo of the prophet Malachi who wrote:

“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

The new day will bring the sun: “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

Perhaps we feel like a new day will only bring suffering, will only bring more tyranny of the business or brokenness, the anxiety or shame, but friends we live under the care of the GOd who rises like the sun in our new days and there is healing in his wings, he will bring a newness as we turn our hearts and minds anew to him and put our faith in his love.

Fourth, these women were bringing oil to anoint the dead. But we as readers expect that a different kind of anointing is in order. The anointing of a new king, a new kingdom, a new reality.

We are called to expect differently, to live with a changed mind, a new expectation. We are called into a new community, to live in light of the daily new mercies of God, to be forgiven and to forgive. For despite us God will bring the new. We may embrace our selfish isolated worlds, but God stands at the door and knocks asking us to open up to a new life of a liberation on par with exodus of the Israelites from slavery, a liberation and a new access to the eternal on par with the new temple of King Solomon.

But we are still with the women on the road to the tomb. And none of this means anything because our minds still expect the same, still expect death, still expect broken frameworks of meaning, they still expect the “no of all nothing” in the words of E. E. Cummings.

but they get the tomb and suddenly they are confronted with the new reality. it doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t make sense, it defies expectation and the only response we can sometimes muster in such circumstances is fear and anxiety. It’s easier to live in the reality of the crucifixion than it is in the reality of the empty tomb. There is certainty in the crucifixion, there is a sense that we are not in control in the empty tomb.

The young man tells them, echoing Jesus’ many reassuring statements to his disciples earlier in the gospel:

“ ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”

You may have come here expecting nothing, you may have come here expecting death and expecting grief and expecting defeat and nothingness. But here is where you’ve missed the point all along.

The kingdom, the reign of God, has broken into the world and by faith it is upsetting the expectations of those who live enslaved to the “no of all nothing.”

Here is a Yes of God that we can’t hear because we are so used to hearing No and so used to accepting the death of hope, the dream deferred. The Proverb says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” but goes on to say, “but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

What a tree of life has been revealed in the reign of God. Change your mind and let your eyes be opened by God’s grace to the new reality of faith.

The sun has risen in the sky with healing, and the Son of Man has risen to begin the new healing of God’s grace for all people. The grace that is a gift, the gift that defeats our defeatism, that liberates us from the tyranny of what has always been, into the newness of the possibility that comes with forgiveness and connection with the God who is the source of our being, and the one who is closer to us than our own breath.

The young man says “Do not be alarmed” but go and tell the others of the good news-- so how do the women respond?

We read that “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Of course. Old habits die hard.

We are these women. We live everyday unable to live into the new way that God has shown us. The way of love, the way of giving, the way of hope in God’s power to change the world, to change our souls, to change our society, to bring healing out of our individual and collective brokenness. We forget that this the God who raised Jesus from the dead. This is the God of new creation, of exodus liberation, who is universally present to be worshipped and enjoyed. This is the God who comes to us new each day in the rising of the sun, who longs to upset our expectations, to open our eyes and ears to the grace of existence in light of his care and guidance.

These women are us. We see the new possibilities of God and in response we muster our strength not to praise God or accept the light of grace, rather we put all our strength into preserving our perceptions of ourselves, of others, and of the world that we live in. We muster up our strength and we nurse our hurts, our disappointments, our dreams deferred by strongly resisting the possibility of God’s resurrection of life from the broken bones of our hurts. We muster up our strength and pour it into cynical sarcasm at the goodness around us. Or worse we escape reality altogether and return to our business or hide in the world of entertainment and amusement.

The biggest obstacle we face as humans is the obstacle of unbelief. We have become comfortable with disappointment, we have become comfortable with the inevitability of failure, we’ve become comfortable with a kind of sarcastic distance from the realities of life.

But let us look at the death of Christ and realize that this the worst of disappointments, the worst of failures, the worst of meaninglessness and hurt.

But our word from God is that in the worst of these our life circumstances God can bring restoration, God can forge a new path, and make our broken bones rejoice. The night of weeping will pass into the morning of laughter and joy.

The kingdom of God is near, change your minds concerning your life and allow God to bring in the reality of resurrection hope as your heart becomes flooded with the love of God by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith.

Let us be honest. We are the women, afraid of the possibilities of grace and new life. Afraid of leaving behind the comfort of skepticism. But may we here read the resurrection as a call to us that the brokenness in our hearts, the brokenness in our relationships, the brokenness in our life stories and our communities is not the final word. Suffering and death, the no of all nothing is not the final word. He is risen, risen indeed and with the resurrection of Christ by faith we realize that no darkness can escape the power of the light and no brokenness will not one day be made whole. Let us enter into God’s wholeness now. May we pray with the Psalmist with the earnest desire of faith: “Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” (Psalm 51:8 KJV)

And then sing with E. E. Cummings in celebration of the resurrected life, the reign of God in our midst, the upsetting of our expectations, the denial of the “no of all nothing”: