by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given April 8, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

On the third day after Jesus was crucified, the disciples were feeling pretty devastated. In the last few days they had said goodbye to their beloved teacher and leader. They saw him be tried and convicted. They watched him hung up on the cross and die a brutal, awful, death.

After the crucifixion, the disciples had run away in fear that they, too, would be killed. They hid from the authorities. They talked about the good old days when Jesus was alive, and they bemoaned the loss of their dream—their dream of a time when the world would be a whole different place. The disciples were devastated. They did not know what they were going to do.

Then, according to the Gospel of Matthew, “Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to see the tomb. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, because an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled aside the stone and sat on it. His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint.

“Then the angel spoke to the women. ‘Don't be afraid!’ he said. ‘I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He has been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying. And now go quickly and tell his disciples he has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there. Remember, I have told you.’”

And with that, everything changed for the disciples. They became bold preachers, risking their lives telling others about the man they had come to know—this man who had been killed by the authorities, and yet who was with them still. They saw him again and in that seeing, they found purpose in their own lives. They, too, had found new life. The parts of them that were dead now were alive and they were ready to proclaim it to the world.

The story of Easter may not be so much what happened to Jesus as what happened to his followers. His death, and his continued presence among them, rocked their world and put them on a whole new track. It is as if they had been resurrected not from death so much as resurrected from deadness. Somehow, some part of them had been dead and now was alive.

And with their new-found life they preached the words of Jesus: “You must lose your life to find it. Unless you die to yourself, your life cannot be saved.”

The Easter story is about transformation—being in the world in some wholly different way. It asks us how our lives might be different. It asks us what might be holding us back from life and what we need to do to find that life again. It asks us what we might need to let go of. Writer Anne Lamott tells the story this way:

“Jesus said from the cross (OK, so I’m paraphrasing), ‘Look, you’re a human, you’re badly wired, you’re in desperate need of grace. And you will die, as I am dying up here. But we can surrender: We can commend our spirit into my father’s hands. We need to forgive everyone first, though, because we don’t want to die angry, like other people I could mention ...’ (I love that He didn’t name names. I love that Scripture does not read: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, except for that awful Annie Lamott, who in 2,000 years will usually know exactly what she was doing wrong. But We’ll forgive her anyway, because You said to.’)”

She continues, “Jesus opened himself up entirely to the fear and suffering even though he would have preferred a little something from Column B. He said, ‘If it is possible, let this cup pass from me,’ but he kept his eye on the prize, which was feeling loved by God, which is new life. And he let people he loved keep him company in his suffering, which is about as radical a concept as I can imagine. I don’t want people’s company when I have the flu or PMS. But when friends of mine have opened up to this willingness to have companionship at the end of their lives, or when they were losing a child, at some point they found themselves involved with material that enabled them to hook onto something bigger than the grasping, crying ‘I.’ They plugged in to all of life that surrounds us, that shimmers with loss and light and movement, the very broth of creation, the salty, the sweet, what’s real, the light and the shadows, the blackness, the cold, the streams of warmth, the plankton.

“Being at the end of your rope is usually what it takes to convince your ego—your little armed Brinks guard—to say, ‘Hey! We can throw all this s--- off the side of the boat! We’ll be fine.’ And nothing in you is going to believe this for a second, which is why it can be a gift to be in crisis. The stuff gets thrown overboard, and you come to with that having happened. You come to. This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all.”[1]

There are plenty of things that can keep us from life these days. We find ourselves going from one thing to the next. We are busy but our lives may not really feel like they have meaning. Or we may just feel overwhelmed. Reading the newspaper or listening to the radio we find ourselves feeling pretty powerless. We quickly realize that there is not much in the world that we have control over. It is hard, sometimes, to find hope. We may not know where to turn.

A man was crossing the Commons on a cold, sunny morning in Boston. He was on his way to the Arlington Street Subway Station. The man had decided that that morning he would buy a token, enter the station, and throw himself on the third rail of the subway track. Life didn’t seem to have a purpose anymore.

He was just about to head down the steps of the subway stop when a man called out to him, “Welcome.” It was Sunday morning, and the ushers of the Arlington Street Church—the historic Unitarian church just five feet from the subway stop—were out on the front step welcoming members. Even though it was freezing outside, they were out there on the steps with a handshake and a smile, and one of them mistook this man for a parishioner.

The confusion was enough to cause the man to postpone his suicide attempt just long enough to pray in the church. So he went inside and then he stayed for the Sunday service, and something that was said that morning gave him the strength to keep on going. Something gave him hope on that cold Sunday morning.

We are all part of that story. We are the person who is lost, the person who is in despair. We are that person looking for hope. But we are also the person outside the church welcoming people in. We might be the person bringing the good news that day. We might be the person sitting in the pew, listening and praying.

Today we celebrate the story of Easter. We are all part of that story, too. It is a story grounded in something we know in someplace deep inside us. That in those places where we might be lost, in those places where we might be dead inside, there is hope that we might know life once again.

For the apostles, it is what changed everything. It is what allows them move into the world and spread their good news.  They are no longer afraid, but buoyed on by what they have seen. They are renewed in their passion. They reclaimed the parts of themselves that had died.

And what about our lives? What are those things that we need to give up? What are the attachments we have that take life instead of giving life? What are those things that keep us from being who we are? What are those things that hold us back? How are we numb to life in the midst of so much violence and loss in the world?

To live is to experience the inevitable losses of life. It is to come to know just how cruel the world can be. And in this world we put parts of ourselves away, never to be seen again. We learn not to take a chance like we once did out of fear that we will fail. We may simply find ourselves resigned to thinking that what we have is good enough, no matter what our dreams might be. And we find that there is comfort in the status quo because at least it feels safe and secure. 

Today we celebrate the story of Easter. This is not a story of logic or safety or comfort. It is a story about a whole different thing. It is a story of the radically improbable. And that may be fitting for the times we live in. They ask us to have faith in what might be radically improbable.

The world needs us to be fully alive these days. These are times that ask us to play roles we may not be used to playing. We need to change our story—from a narrative of how we are what we have to something more about how we are in the world. How we are to be in right relationship with ourselves, with others and with this good green earth we walk upon.  How we are to see ourselves as part of a vast and interconnected web of life.

In May, 1992, during the siege of Sarajevo, a mortar shell exploded at 4 p.m. outside a bakery in the city where a long line of people had come to buy bread. Twenty-two people were killed and hundreds wounded in the explosion.

But despite the danger, the next day hungry people once again lined up to get bread, so desperate were their lives. Yet this day was different, for at 4 p.m. Vedran Smailovic, the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera, arrived in front of the bakery carrying a chair and his cello. Dressed in a formal black suit and white tie, he sat down and played the mournful Adagio by Albinoni. And for the next twenty-one days, Smailovic came to the street in front of the bakery and played the Adagio.[2]

His act of courage brought hope to the besieged city and to the world. And it might offer an example for us today. Despite the odds we hold out hope for and witness for peace in our world.

Today we celebrate the story of Easter. We celebrate things that are radically improbable. We celebrate the fact that an amazing flower comes up out of the ground, a product of a little bulb that doesn’t look like much of anything at all—something that you put in the ground months and months ago and now it comes to life in the form of this amazing flower.

It is the story that reminds us that what happens to one happens to us all. It reminds us that we are all connected, that we are not alone, no matter how much we are in despair. It is a story that reminds us that love is something that holds us even in the midst of death.

The disciples, on that amazing day when Jesus was among them, didn’t recognize him at first. They were not able to see. He was there with them, they just didn’t recognize his form.

This might be true for our times as well. We may not recognize what it is we have to pay attention to. We may have to shift our ways of thinking if we are to find new life. We have to see the other as ourselves and see how our lives might be different.

Words of Denise Levertov.

These days—these years—

when the powers and principalities of death
weigh down the world, deeper, deeper
than we ever thought it could fall and still
keep slowly spinning,
Hope, caught under the jar’s rim, crawls
like a golden fly
round and around, a sentinel:
it can’t get out, it can’t fly free
among our heavy hearts—

but does not die, keeps up its pace, pausing only as if to meditate
a saving strategy . . .

There’s a reason why we come to church on Easter Sunday. It might be that we come because we want to be reminded in story and in song that there is hope in the world. It might be that we want to be reminded of something that we already know—that new life really does come out of death, that hope does show its face in the midst of despair, that we are part of an amazing creation, called to have courage to use our gifts well, called to use our gifts, in all our days, to bless the world and to give life.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.

Prayer

God of this Easter day, we give thanks for all that is our life. Call us to give thanks for the beauty of this day. Call us to use our gifts well always know that we are connected, in mystery and wonder, to the universe.  May the ears of our ears awake and may the eyes of our eyes be open. May this be so today and in all of our days. Amen.

Benediction

On this Easter day, give yourself to love. Give yourself to life. Go in love and hope this day. Amen.

[1] http://www.salon.com/columnists/lamott.html, Breaking the Surface by Anne Lamott. April 1, 1999.

[2] Richard Deats, Prayers for a Thousand Years, ed. Roberts and Amidon, Harper San Francisco, 1999, pp 304.

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Copyright 2007, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.