SunApr42010
Scripture: John 20:1-18
Now that is some story! For some, I realize, it may seem dull or irrelevant, the sheen worn off by too many hearings of it. For others, it may be deeply exciting or moving. For most of us, though, I’m guessing there’s something at least moderately arresting about it.
But here’s the question: what’s the point? Why tell it? It’s an ancient tale of a time long gone. It’s something that happened eons ago, and now it’s finished and done. In some long-ago moment, two men ran to a grave, one believing and the other perhaps not. A woman followed them to that same tomb and had a puzzling encounter with someone she thought was the gardener, but who turned out to be none other than the very Jesus she had staked her life on. And now, here we are, light years removed from the contours of that episode. It happened, and now it’s done.
As important as this story is as a record of a past event, though, it is so much more than that. It is mostly a story both about what’s going on now, and what is still to come. It’s a story of the present and the future. It’s like the best stories of our own lives. If I tell you a story from my past, it sheds light on who I am now. If I tell you, for example, about the time when I was about five and sat on the floor next to our kitchen table and suddenly figured out how to tie my shoes, I’m really telling you a story about something deeper—about how much it means to me to learn new things and to succeed at challenges. And I’m telling you how important it is that my mother was right there with me to celebrate this new skill. I remember that moment because it says something about who I still am and what’s important to me now. That past moment matters because it’s still being lived out in my life today. I’m still glad for challenges and accomplishments. I’m still glad my mother loves me. The past is present to me.
This is something of what the Easter story is like. Yes, it’s the story of a long-ago series of events at a tomb in the Middle East. But it’s also a tale whose real energy, whose real vitality, is in the present and the future. The story of Jesus, and the story of his passion and death, is, of course, something that happened a long time ago. But it’s mostly a story about that incredible Spirit who lives still—that holy force who accompanies us and transforms us and calls us forth even now. As one careful observer puts it, “the Lord Jesus Christ is always best described in the present tense. [Christ] lives; [Christ] reigns; [Christ] does battle against our deaths and against Death and all Death’s minions. And of [that] rule, there will be no end” (David Bartlett, Journal for Preachers, Easter, 2010, p. 15). That ancient story lives now.
At Christmas time, one of the things people regularly say is, “We should keep Christmas all year long.” And perhaps we should. What nobody ever says is, “We should keep Easter all year long.” But that is, in fact, precisely what we’re invited to do. Easter, for Christians, is like the movie “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray and Andie McDowell. It’s the day that keeps repeating. Every Sunday especially, and indeed every single day, is, for Christians, a mini-Easter. Every day is a reliving of the promises of God that give our lives hope and joy. So today is Easter. And so is tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Because in each day, the resurrected Christ lives and breathes.
Our job is to see it. You know, the only people who see the risen Christ in any of the gospel stories are people who already believe, who are already inclined to see the Christ. Resurrection isn’t some surefire demonstration to all the world that Christ is sitting in this room with us now, or driving to work with us tomorrow. Resurrection isn’t some sort of irrefutable proof to everyone that Christ reigns. It’s simply confirmation, for those inclined to see it, who look for it, of the breath of God swirling in our midst.
So on this Easter day, and tomorrow’s Easter, and the next day’s Easter, where will we see the Christ who is present? Martha Beck, who wrote a great book about life with her son Adam, a boy with Down syndrome, said “The meaning of life isn’t what happens to people . . . [It’s] what happens between people” (Expecting Adam, p. 186). It’s in that space between you and me, and between God and us, that the good news of God bears its richest fruit. It’s in that space that Christ is present.
These little spaces are everywhere. Several months ago, at the movie theater, I ran into a Federated family. One of the sons, a boy of thirteen or so, had just won a stuffed animal from a machine there, and in one of those simple and beautiful gestures, with a kind of gallant kindness, he gave the animal to his little sister. There they stood, she beaming because of the gift she had received, he beaming because of the gift he had given. In that space between them, the risen Christ was present.
This past Friday, I watched out my study window as a man I know walked through the church parking lot with his little daughter. She, in her red sun dress, took his hand and walked next to him, animatedly gesticulating with her free hand and regaling him with the stories of her day as he remained rapt in attention at every word. In that space between them, the risen Christ was present.
That same day, on our Good Friday walk through Chagrin, I watched a woman walking close to her aging mother-in-law, holding her hand, guiding her along the streets in that solemn ritual. I saw a mother of young children come out of her house as we passed, bringing her children so they could see the Good Friday parade. As a friend of hers approached, and for reasons I cannot guess, this young mother had tears in her eyes and could barely speak. Something in that moment touched her deeply. In that charged space between her and those Good Friday pilgrims, the risen Christ was present.
In a column in Friday’s Plain Dealer, Michael Gerson wrote about slavery in South Sudan, and about an organization called Christian Solidarity International that has freed and re-settled thousands of captives in the last fifteen years. Those they have freed come through a camp there and, “the background of each man, woman and child . . . is recorded” because it’s crucial that “none of the crimes they have experienced be forgotten.” Gerson is struck by one fifteen-year-old freed slave in particular. “It would be difficult to experience greater cultural distance without leaving the planet. But my main impression of Majok was his profound resemblance to my sons of similar age. It is a hopeful thing about humanity. In a timid smile, in a turn of the head, we see similarity, we see family. We should also see responsibility” (April 2, 2010, p. A9). In the work of Christian Solidarity International and in Gerson’s recognition of Majok as family—there is the risen Christ present.
And there’s yet one more dimension of this presence of Christ in our lives. What marks us as Christians, first and foremost, is our conviction that there is nothing that can get in the way of God’s care for us. That’s bottom line Christian faith: nothing can stop God from loving us. Not the less-than-stellar things we’ve done. Not the apparently unforgivable errors we’ve made. Not our own feelings of emptiness and unworthiness. Not even death. Those familiar words of the apostle Paul’s ring with stunning clarity and truth: “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” (Rom. 8:38-39).
I felt beckoned, one day this week, by a picture of my father that sits in my study. It’s a picture of him sitting in a chair in his study at the seminary where he taught. In that photo I see so much that I loved in him. His hand is raised in a familiar gesture, he’s surrounded by the commentaries and treatises and novels and poety that lined his shelves, there’s a book open in his lap, he’s dressed in the tie and coat he so often wore, and he’s laughing animatedly at someone sitting to his right. Still now, more than a year after his death, there’s a palpable grief that he’s no longer here. But in that picture I see something else. I see the man I loved. I see his joy. I see the tools of the trade he loved. And I see the man who fathered me and taught me and loved me. And there, in that space between the living and the dead, the risen Christ is present.
The risen Christ is present all over. What we need, on this Easter Sunday, and on tomorrow’s Easter Monday and on the next day’s Easter Tuesday, is simply eyes to see—to see the tenderness and forgiveness and delicious energy of the Holy One all around us, an energy and a fabulous love richly present in the meal we’re about to receive. Is the resurrection some long-ago story without any real currency any more? Far from it. That story is our story. It’s one being lived out even now, right here, in the spaces between us. Christ is risen! And let the people say: Alleluia!