An Everlasting Love

Jeremiah 31:1-6
Matthew 28:1-20

The crucifixion was a horrific thing.
The disciples were traumatized at seeing their good and loving leader forced into Roman custody, beaten, mocked, slandered, and humiliated, made to carry the cross.  Nailed up there for public shame.

People who have seen such things would likely experience post-traumatic stress.  Would likely be very anxious.  Would likely be very afraid.  The world is against them.

Everything they thought good and everything that made sense
Was nailed up to that cross with their friend, their teacher, their Lord.

Can you imagine for a moment, going through the first Maundy Thursday into Good Friday?

It is truly remarkable that we read in Matthew’s gospel that “after the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.”

Can you imagine how much anxiety these women had to overcome to approach a tomb of a publicly executed criminal, a man who was so recently made an outlaw of the Roman empire.

How much fear they would have if they weren’t also reeling from post-traumatic stress.
These women loved Jesus and with brave hearts set themselves on the road towards his tomb.
To show their love, to remember him and give him the respect and honor so violently taken from him.

 And when they arrive at the tomb, an earthquake.

I’m not sure how common earthquakes were in Ancient Palestine,
But I can imagine this would be one more worry to an anxious mind.

How’s my house?  How’s my family.

But they are not able to linger long on those thoughts before they encountered the heavenly being,
The angel sitting on the rolled away stone.

The guards who felt the earthquake, who saw the angel.  Fall down, faint and collapse from fear.

But Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”
(I wonder how she felt about being referred to all the time as “the other Mary”?)

Mary and Mary stand there facing the angel.
I can imagine they were afraid.
Not only were human powers conspiring against them and what they thought was good and true.
But here cosmic and heavenly powers were preventing them from seeing Jesus.
And destroying his resting place.

When will something go right for a change?

In the midst of these women’s fear and anxiety about the future,
In the midst of their despairing about the goodness of life and about the justice of the universe.

The angel, this terrifying spiritual being appearing before them with power and strength
And brightness.  I imagine these women like Scrooge before the Ghost of Christmas present, shielding their eyes from the lightning before them.

But in the midst of the world gone wrong:
These words.  These resurrection words.

Do not be afraid.
The words of Easter are the words of the angel, sitting on the rolled-away stone.

“Do not be afraid”

The words of Easter are the words on the mouth of the risen Jesus meeting his hurried and bewildered and fearful disciples on the dusty road.

“Do not be afraid”

The words of that Easter are the words of this Easter
when we face similar questions about the goodness of human society,

The words of that Easter are the words of this Easter 
when we see a thousand golgothas on the news,
When we hear about lives destroyed by drugs,
drugs sought ought because life felt too empty in the first place.

The words of that Easter are the words of this Easter
when we are filled with doubts and worries about raising children and grandchildren in a world which seems so bent on greed and violence.

The words of that Easter are the words of this Easter.

“Do not be afraid.”

And upon what grounds should we not be afraid?

The prophet Jeremiah lived almost 600 years before Jesus.
IN a time of anxiety, a time of tragedy.
The prophet Jeremiah, unlike Ezekiel who we read from a few weeks ago,
Did not go with the people of Israel into exile.

Instead Jeremiah stayed back in Jerusalem a long time after Ezekiel and others had been carted off to Babylon.

The prophet watched as tragedy gave way to more tragedy.
As the temple was destroyed, the city burned,
The people starved, doing horrific things to stay alive and to feed their children.

More than that Jeremiah lived to see the whole confidence and spirit of a people crushed under the weight of imperial conquest and domination.

Jeremiah lived in fearful and uncertain times.

But there is a beautiful section in the book of Jeremiah, chapters 30-33
Where the prophet writes about the hope he sees even in the midst of devastation.

And today we read from that book of comfort.

The angel said, “Do not be afraid.”  Jesus said, “Do not be afraid.”

And what reason do we have to not be afraid?

Speaking the word of God to the people, the prophet wrote,

“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
    therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

“Do not be afraid.”  Why?  “You are loved with an everlasting love,” an undying unquenchable love, a love that creates and redeems and brings to fullness and never lets go.

A love that would never think otherwise than to continue in faithfulness,
Continue to be there to walk with you, to hold you, to comfort you.

“Do not be afraid.”  “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

And the prophet goes on, writing in the midst of cindered remains of houses and broken bricks and scattered thatch.

“Again I will build you, and you shall be built,
    O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take your tambourines,
    and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards
    on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant,
    and shall enjoy the fruit.”

The everlasting love of God
is the love that will grow again what has been destroyed.
The everlasting love of God
is the power that renews what the world has given up on.
The everlasting love of God does not say no and does not abandon us in our pursuit of wholeness and life.

“Do not be afraid.”  “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

The words of this Easter are the words of that Easter and of that prophet in his time of death and visions of rebirth.

And at the heart of those words “Do not be afraid.”
At the heart of that reassurance is the cosmic power
of the love of God which sustains and renews

And in the darkest hour of our lives God is able to bring hope again.

Again I will build you,
Again you’ll make music
Again you will dance
Again you will plant.

There are winters in our lives.  Winters that feel as long as this past winter.
The promise of God is that God will not abandon us to those winters.

God will not abandon us to the forces predicted by sociologists.
God will not abandon us to the forces diagnosed by psychologists.
God will not abandon us even to the forces described by biologists.

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

“Do not be afraid.”  “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

and this is the message that we have received.

In John’s letter to the churches he writes,
“God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.”

Cling to love of God, hope in the love of God.
Pray earnestly that you might better know and hear and feel the love of God.

There is no greater pursuit in life than to know the love of God and to be held by that awesome power which bids us, “Do not be afraid.”

And we are the disciples back in Galilee, back in the neglected part of the empire,
Back where healthcare is hard to come by,
When people are living from paycheck to paycheck,
Wondering if God has forgotten them.

And the risen Jesus speaks to us on that mountain saying, “Go and make disciples of all people.”

Go and share the promise of the everlasting love of God.
The love that is not intimidated by the powers of politics or economics, even of the grave.

Do not be afraid.
Because God’s not afraid
Of economic hard times and uncertain future.
God’s not afraid
Of the rise in depression and anxiety and other mental illness
God’s not afraid
Of the rise in drug abuse and overdose,
God’s not afraid
of oppressive religious authorities.
God’s not afraid
of the power and intimidating tactics of politicians.
God’s not afraid
When the world works itself up into an anxious frenzy

Go and tell them that God’s not afraid.
The angel of God wrestles to the ground the stone that covers the tomb
and sits on it like it’s a bully that just needs to stop.

Go and tell them that God has not given up.  God will never give up,
Until the whole earth resounds with Doxology again
like it did in the beginning.

The farmer poet and prophet Wendell Berry tells us to not give in
to a culture of consumptive materialism

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.”

Instead he writes,

every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

“Do not be afraid.”  “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

“Practice resurrection.”

God will build when we build.
God will sing when we sing.
God will dance when we dance.
God will plant when we plant.

Live into this resurrection promise.
Let it shape everything you hope to be and everything you hope to do.

Don’t let go of God because God will never let go of you.

God has loved you with an everlasting love.

Don’t be afraid to live into that love, to give yourself to that love,
To build and sing and dance and plant that love.

That love is the foundation of my hope
That in the midst of forces of global political and economic and ecological destruction,
Wars and rumors of war.

God can renew us as individuals, us as a community, us as this land, this place.
May we practice that resurrection.

“Do not be afraid.”

And Jesus said, “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Amen.