Easter Year A, April 16, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of new life, grant us the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

I love the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the resurrection of Jesus. But before I get to it, I need to say something briefly about our readings from Jeremiah and Colossians. Many of you know that promoting Biblical literacy is one of my life projects, and so I don’t want to miss the opportunity to draw your attention to the God of Love represented in our First Testament (also known as the Old Testament) reading. In Jeremiah, God is saying to Jeremiah “In the days to come, I will be their God and they will be my people. [Remember] the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness when they were returning homeward.” Then God says to those who are living in exile as captives of the Babylonian Empire, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you…I will build you up again and you’ll make music and dance, you will plant long-term crops and live to enjoy the fruit.”

I want you to contrast the God of Love in the First Testament with the God of wrath in Colossians: the promise of punishment for those who are disobedient. Part of why Christians don’t think of God depicted in the Second or New Testament as a God of wrath, is that verses to that effect typically do not get read in church. Our Colossians reading for today, for example, was scheduled to end at verse 4, before the wrath of God was mentioned. It’s misleading, dishonest. I want to make sure you know that both testaments contain all the feelings, all the experiences, all the understandings of God – the good, the bad, and the ugly and the exquisitely beautiful. Why would I say that on a day like this? Aren’t we supposed to be happy? Well, one of my other life projects is promoting emotional literacy: honoring and feeling all the feelings. Furthermore, we are not coming together in church to forget the world, but to be re-energized and re-equipped to get back out there.

So part of what I love about Matthew’s account of Jesus’ resurrection has to do with the questions it raises – the answers to which are all matters of opinion, matters of church lore – matters which cannot be substantiated with “the facts.” As I said last Sunday, resurrection is not science. Resurrection is art. Scripture is art. The practice of religion is an art. Scientific interrogation makes no sense whatsoever when encountering art. Rather, the interrogation is about what we notice, what speaks to us or moves us, and what difference the encounter makes with how we live and love. Alyssa Rosenberg, writer for the Washington Post, says, “One of the tasks of art is to help us manage pain, not simply to chronicle temporary euphoria.” [1] Matthew’s Easter story is doing just that: helping his audience manage suffering from pain, from poverty, from persecution, from fear, despair and grief. Matthew’s art is, at the same time, tender, fierce, and provocative.

The questions I think of when I hear Matthew’s Easter story are: Who was “the other Mary”? Did this Gospel writer not know or not care which Mary? Did everyone just refer to her as “the other Mary?” What were the Marys going to “see” at the tomb? (In Matthew’s version there was no work for them to do with the body because the tomb was heavily guarded against Jesus’ family and friends.) What is the significance of the angel’s appearance? Why describe his clothing? (We don’t learn what anyone else is wearing.) Why was the military squadron of soldiers more afraid than the women? What does it mean that they “became like dead men”? How could an angel rolling away a stone cause an earthquake? And wait a minute, how did Jesus get out before the stone was rolled away? In Matthew’s story, the Marys drop and grab the feet of the Risen Lord and are not scolded; instead they are reassured that there is no reason to fear. The longer I live with this story, the more fantastic and funny I think it is – the more full of joy in the midst of chaos and grief and despair it seems to be. And I’ve been thinking lately, given what’s going on in the world right now, that the expression of joy in the midst of disaster is a most subversive act that proclaims that Love reigns supreme and that money, power, and military might will never have the last word. That is an essential message of Easter.

There is a poem by contemporary philosopher, Mark Nepo, that is called “Accepting This,” that captures for me the tension of holding disparate feelings, of paradox. He writes:

Yes, it is true. I confess,
I have thought great thoughts,
and sung great songs—all of it
rehearsal for the majesty
of being held.

The dream is awakened
when thinking I love you
and life begins
when saying I love you
and joy moves like blood
when embracing others with love.

My efforts now turn
from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever
I can find it.

Stripped of causes and plans
and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere. [2]

I wonder, where in your life have you been trying to outrun suffering? Where have you been striving for perfect abundance when flawed abundance is all around you, an abundance that can provide more than you need. What meaning might you make in the life that moves through the gill of your heart? “We cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness, but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion. That’s what resurrected life is about after all. Matthew is telling the Easter story so that his hearers might have fullness of love and life before death, as free as possible from fear. “Do not be afraid,” the angels of God and Jesus say again and again. It’s especially clear in the Gospel of Matthew that resurrection is a communal event. [3] For Matthew, it’s clearly not just about Jesus; it’s about resurrection for all of God’s children, “small living things awakened in the stream, not gods who carve out rivers.” According to Matthew, on that first Easter, it was Jesus and people all over the city of Jerusalem who came out of their tombs. Again, remember this is art, not science.

When you listen to the cantata this morning, notice all the feelings – each stanza of the ancient Easter hymn evokes a different feeling in Bach’s arrangement. I experience them as frantic, then mournful, then brave (but even the brave voice is caught with emotion, brought up short by the “nothing” that remains of death’s sting), then astonishment, then reverence, then joy (a German sort of joy, my wife whose name is Joy reminds me), and in the final stanza, a sense of deep assurance that we will receive the nourishment that our souls so desperately need. The art of resurrection asserts that God will not be held down or buried by our solemnity, our guilt, our piety, our complacency, not by our regrets or forgetfulness, our denial or betrayal, our fear, or our sorrow.

For Matthew, the news hardly matters if the women don’t go and tell. It’s not news that they can keep to themselves. It hardly matters today if we don’t get on our feet, if we don’t go and tell. What does the resurrection mean to you? What does it mean that Jesus lives and that Jesus is Lord (which is another way of saying that Love is disarming and always has the last word, that God is faithful to people and longs for people to be faithful in return)? What difference does that make in your life as you swim along, awakened in the stream? Whatever it is for you, go and proclaim it. Live as if resurrection is happening. Live as if it is true and it will become true. May you find grace in the wilderness as you return homeward, today and always.

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