Easter Sunday C, 17 April 2022. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Isaiah 65:17-25. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Luke 24:1-12. Amazed at what had happened.
O God with us, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Good morning! Good job getting here, whether you are here in the sanctuary or here via livestream. I’m so glad that you’re here whether you love this holiday, or you’re just trying to get through it. Maybe you couldn’t wait to celebrate Easter at Emmanuel for the first time in three years, and maybe you’re joining us for the first time ever. Maybe you are here because it matters to someone you love, or you are here for a sadder reason. I love to say, whether you have come for celebration or solace, whether you are energized or exhausted, excited or grumpy, whether you have skipped or stumbled into this Easter celebration, my hope for all of you is that you will leave here today knowing more deeply that you are loved, that even if (and maybe especially if) you don’t feel like you fit in, still you belong with us today. Emmanuel Church is a place where we actively practice belonging to one another no matter what. It’s not always easy, I assure you, but it is always worth it. This is a parish where we focus our efforts and attention not on whether we (or anyone else) will get into heaven, but on whether any heaven will get into us. This is a parish where we focus not so much on implausible ideas, but on fidelity in relationship.
Speaking of fidelity in relationship, some of the leaders of Central Reform Temple are here with us, serving as greeters. Thank you! A few weeks ago, I was talking with Rabbi Michael Shire, the Temple’s rabbi, who will begin his leadership of the synagogue July 1. We were talking about Bible study with congregants. I said I like to start with check-in questions, which connect to the scripture being studied. He nodded and smiled and said, “I like to call that our hineni moment.” Hineni is Hebrew for here I am, which appears more than 300 times in our Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation to John. I don’t know about you, but when I think of that statement, I first think of the human responses to the voice of the Holy One. Maybe the hymn “Here I am, Lord” comes to mind, but throughout the Bible the Holy One also says it to the people.
The beginning verses of Chapter 65 of Isaiah are about the Holy One grieving estrangement from the people, who did not seek the Divine, whose hands were held out day and night in an eternal gesture of invitation, not unlike the statue of Jesus on our altar screen. Isaiah describes the Holy One in a state of eternal readiness, very near, saying over and over, “Here I am! Here I am!” Jesus’ followers must have experienced Jesus in that way after his death. According to Isaiah, why did the people not seek the Divine? Why do Christians not seek the resurrected Jesus? Perhaps they doubt the possibility of a real relationship with the resurrected Jesus, or they are too reluctant to risk it, or too rebellious. Perhaps they are too busy or too self-sufficient, or maybe I’m projecting?
You might know that on the Sunday after Easter, the Church (capital C) always focuses its attention on doubt. Year in and year out in churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary, we hear the reading about the Apostle Thomas (aka Doubting Thomas) doubting the story of the others about their encounter with the Risen Lord. It’s the only portion in the entire Bible that the lectionary prescribes every year no matter what. Why am I talking about next week’s Gospel reading? Well, because it occurs to me that the Church focuses on doubt on a Sunday when there are far fewer people around. It occurs to me that Luke’s Easter story is much more full of doubt, and maybe so are many of you (or maybe I’m projecting). I think maybe the best time to talk about doubt in the entire church year is on Easter Sunday!
Systematic theologian Paul Tillich said it best for me when he taught that doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an essential element of faith. There is no faith without doubt. Tillich wrote that affirming that Jesus is the Christ is an act of daring courage. [1]
It is not an arbitrary leap into darkness but a decision in which elements of immediate participation and therefore certitude are mixed with elements of strangeness and therefore incertitude.
Tillich asserted that there’s a world of difference between faith and historical judgment. [2]
The risk of faith is existential; it concerns the totality of our being, while the risk of historical judgment is theoretical and open to …scientific correction. A wrong faith can destroy the meaning of one’s life; a wrong historical judgment cannot.
I want to emphasize that Christian faith (with all its doubt) is essentially communal, not individual, crossing space and time, even mysteriously outside of time, which is what eternal means.
Whether you feel sure or unsure of what resurrection means, you might know that the dozen or so New Testament stories of what happened after Jesus was laid in the tomb cannot be reconciled in time, location, or detail. They all take place, though, in the midst of chaos, fear, injustice, grief, and despair. The through-line of all the different stories is the power of love; but it’s not a fairy tale where everyone gets the true meaning and lives happily ever after. That’s actually the best news of all as far as I’m concerned, because we often find ourselves in the midst of chaos, fear, injustice, grief, and despair without fairy-tale endings. And that’s why faith in Jesus is a daring act of courage, worthy of our best efforts, worthy of bearing one another’s burdens; because the abiding message in the mess is that Love is more powerful than death. The abiding message is that while we cannot outrun suffering and death, we can choose to live a life of compassion above all else.
Listen again to the particulars of the Easter account from the Gospel of Luke. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee saw Jesus’ torture and death. They saw the tomb and saw how Jesus’ body was laid. They returned to where they were staying and prepared spices and ointments, and then had a full sabbath rest according to the commandment. Early the next day (the Greek word for very early is the same word for deep), they returned to the tomb (the Greek word for tomb has the same root as the word for remember). So another way to hear the story is, “At deep dawn, they returned to their remembrance.” Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were as prepared as they could be, to do the thing they had to do, but never wanted to do: lovingly care for a body too soon dead. They thought they were prepared, but when they arrived, they discovered they were completely unprepared. They were prepared for something. What they found was nothing, big nothing.
I wonder how long they stared at the nothing, wondering what in heaven’s name to do; because there was nothing to do, there was nothing there. At some point they must have looked at one another; because if they had continued to look only ahead of them, they would not have seen the dazzling men, who suddenly stood alongside of them, not in front of them, beside them, and asked, “Why are you looking for the living in a memorial?” Well, the answer, of course, is they actually weren’t looking for the living at all, they were looking for a dead Jesus.
The two men, in their fancy Easter outfits delivered their surprising message that Jesus, the Risen Lord, was alive and on the move. According to Luke, however, this was not an experience of resurrection; it was a story that pointed to resurrection. And in fact, when the women told the apostles, all of the other apostles doubted them, not just Thomas. Now maybe it was because they were women; but I think it was because talking about resurrection was not then, and is not now, particularly compelling unless one has already recognized a resurrected Jesus Christ. It’s not an idea; it’s an experience.
In some ancient manuscripts, the last sentence of our Gospel reading today is not included. It’s the one about Peter seeing the empty tomb. It apparently wasn’t enough for some to end the passage with the part about an idle tale and the apostles not believing the women. But what we miss in our NRSV translation is that Peter doesn’t leave and go home; he leaves and goes away to himself. Like the Prodigal Son, earlier in Luke, Peter goes to himself, wondering what the empty tomb means. “Here I am,” I can imagine Peter saying. “Here I am,” I can imagine the Risen Lord replying. “Here I am in the breaking hearts and the breaking bread. Here I am in the shared grief and the shared fish. Here I am in the beauty of the earth. Here I am in the love of friend and stranger. Look at me. Here I am. Here I am. Here I am.”
You may know that the prophet Isaiah, the Apostle Paul, and the Evangelist Luke were all addressing people for whom the victory of the Holy One was not readily apparent or obvious. In their times, it was not at all clear that people who were being faithful would be blessed, because it seemed like only the bad guys got what they wanted; and there was a marked tendency to blame God or complain of God’s absence when things were not going well. Can you imagine that? Isaiah, Paul, and Luke all write to assure the people that God’s faithfulness to the people is ongoing and everlasting whether the people are sure or unsure. For those who have ears to hear, God’s call is for a new creation marked by justice and right-relationship, by compassion, mercy, and peace. These are not theological or philosophical ideas, but the consequential actions of being in relationship with the Divine. In the new creation, in the resurrection, nobody will be at risk. Nobody will be threatened. The most vulnerable will be well cared for. This is a picture of public practice. Don’t ever think that the First and Second Testaments are not about political choices that shape the well-being of society. Throughout the entire Bible, we are repeatedly assured that when we are living in fidelity to God, also known as Love, “The splendor of grace illuminates our hearts completely.” Live today and the days to come as if that were true! Happy Easter!
- Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), v. 2, pp. 1167. Available online.