Easter Sermon 2020

There were two things that I did not miss at all when Melanie and I moved to Colorado for school: bugs and humidity. We’re in a really nice time of the year right now for Georgia. The mornings are cool and crisp, the days are in the seventies. This is a really, really nice time with regards to the weather. This is perfect camping weather. Perfect cook-out weather. But we all know what’s coming. Summer. Sure summer sounds fun. It sounds like a good time, doesn’t it? But we know the truth, you and I. We know that summer here means mornings that begin in the upper 80s. We know that it means by the time we get out of the car and walk into the office, we need to reapply the deodorant. I had a friend from Colorado recently move to Arkansas, and when I asked how things were going, he said that he was learning to sweat with dignity. Yes, here, summer means months of laboring under the tyranny of the sun, the heat, the humidity, and yes…the bugs as well. And it lasts so long. We’ll have oppressively hot weather sometimes into late October!

But here’s what happens. At some point, usually around Labor Day or just after, something happens. I’ve got these two giant oak trees in my backyard. I love them, they are the only thing that make it tolerable to go outside in August, but sometime in September, the tips of the leaves, some of them, not all of them, but some of them begin to change their hue from a bright green to a pale yellow. It’s slight at first, especially that early. But the sight of that small change is like a cosmic sigh of relief. It’s a reminder that, my world is not a sun-scorched, sweat-dripping, nightmare. This summer will end, and I will live once more in a world where I can walk barefoot to get the mail, where I can sit on the porch and read, where I can hold my wife’s hand while we walk and not feel like I’m bathing her in my sweat!

Now of course, when those leaves begin to change ever so slightly, the days are still hot, humid, and horrible. And they are for many weeks after my oak trees begin to change colors. I still can’t do any of those things. But it’s different now, because now I can point to something. I can point to my oak trees, and I know that summer is going to end.

This, this is how the first followers of Jesus made sense of the Resurrection. The world seems to be one way, then something happens, something amazing and unique and beautiful, and then the world continues on just as it always has, but it’s different now…because the leaves have begun to change.

Our text this morning comes to us from the viewpoint of a group of women. These women were disciples of Jesus. We know from the previous chapter that they had been with Jesus for some time now, following him, learning from him. They’ve bought into his message. They’ve believed him when he said that the Kingdom of God had arrived in him. Some of these women had even supported him financially as he went from town to town teaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom.

And we learn that these women were at the scene of his death. When Jesus’ closest followers, his twelve disciples had scattered in fear, it was these women who stayed with him to the end, watching him endure the torture of the cross.

Now, this very likely wasn’t the first crucifixion these women had ever seen. Thousands of Jews had been crucified before Jesus, and thousand were afterwards as well. In fact, forty or so years after Jesus’s death, as Rome razed the city of Jerusalem, it was recorded by several ancient historians that the Romans crucified some 500 people a day. Jesus may have been unique, but the way he died was not. This was undoubtedly a familiar sight for this group of women.

It was a familiar sight that spoke of how the world is. Can’t you imagine that as they watched this man, in whom they had put all of their hopes, by whose teaching and message they had been swept away. They had left everything to follow this man. They had watched him do things no one else could - healing the sick, providing food. He had this radical message of inclusion, inviting the lowest of the low to eat with him, even claiming that they had a place in the Kingdom of God, that the Father loved them, that the world was a safe place because the Father cared for them so deeply. Can’t you imagine them, at the foot of the cross as Jesus died, and as he’s placed in the tomb, can’t you hear the sound of that dream world die?

And can’t you hear them say, “This is how the world is.” We’ve seen this all before, they say. The vision of Jesus suffers the same fate as thousand that came before him - it’s crushed by injustice, violence, and the powerful. We learn that those in places of power, the chief priests and Pharisees ask that guards be posted at Christ’s tomb, to ensure that his movement and his message be utterly destroyed and forgotten. Yes, we can hear these women saying, “This is simply how the world is.”

And who can blame them? You and I are stuck in our homes, separated from friends and family and all semblance of normal. Why? Because this is how the world is. And chances are that you’re actually doing alright, all things considered, but we know that there are thousand upon thousands of people in our country that are not doing well at all. People who have lost jobs, people who have no homes to stay put in, people who can’t afford for the world to shut down. Yeah, this is how the world is.

Who can blame these women? Ours is a world where cancer exists, where wars rage, where the rich get richer and the poor get poor, where people are judged by the color of their skin or the language they speak, where children die before their parents. Because the truth is, if you haven’t experienced some sort of tragic loss in your life, or a season of pain or sorrow, you are in a tiny minority of the human race. Why? Because this is how the world is.

The Christian faith is not a pipe-dream. The Christian story doesn’t turn away from or ignore or avoid the darkness of this world, it actually embraces it, it participates in it, it’s looks right at it, because Jesus is crushed by it. This is how the world is.

And yet the Christian faith makes the audacious claim that that view of the world is not the whole story. That description of how the world is, isn’t altogether true.

But why would you believe the world to be any other way? Why would you believe that the sweltering heat and humidity of summer will ever end? When the experience of your life has told you what kind of world this is, why would you ever believe it be any other way? Because the tips of those oak leaves have begun to change…

The resurrection of Jesus forces us to reconsider what kind of world we live in.

If Jesus, crucified on a cross and laid dead in a tomb, if Jesus is alive...

If the schemes of sin, evil, and injustice can utterly crush and destroy you, strip you down and take everything away from you, even your life; if they don’t have the final word...

What’s striking about Matthew’s account that we read a moment ago is how simple it is. It’s just ten verses long. What is the most significant moment in the whole saga of the Scriptures, and Matthew gives us just the barebones of it. Why? I think because Matthew is trying to recreate for us the category shattering experience this was for the followers of Jesus. For these women.

One moment they are watching Jesus die, yet another, perhaps the greatest affirmation that this is how the world is. This is the world in a nutshell. The innocent are crushed. And then, all of the sudden, Sunday comes. They meet the angel. They meet Jesus. Jesus says hi to them. And all of the sudden, they, and we have to re-think how the world is. Because Jesus is alive.

And if Jesus is alive, then sin, evil, and death don’t have the last word. Summer won’t last forever. And why do we believe that? Because the leaves are changing and the tomb is empty.

This story is about the mission of God to confront and defeat evil and death and to rid the world of all injustice, all evil and the consequences of sin. And his prophets looked forward to the day when he would do that. When he’d make that happen. The hope was never that we’d float away to some other place. The hope was always that God would recreate this world, even recreate us, and the word that the prophets would use would eventually be resurrection - that God would raise us up, not in a strictly spiritual sense, but in a real and tangible way. God would make the world new, ourselves included, and in this resurrected world there would be no death or sickness or injustice or evil.

But the way that God has done this, is not how anyone expected. The prophets just said that the new creation was coming, the lion would lay with the lamb, etc, etc. But what happened was that we got a foretaste of that new world, a prototype, a sign, like the changing of the leaves in the heat of summer. This glimpse of the new creation burst out of the tomb.

This is why the resurrection of Jesus forces us to reconsider what kind of a world we live in. Because it’s not what we think.

And what does it feel like for this to happen to you? Your whole life you think the world is one way, and then in a moment it’s all different, and you have to rethink everything. How would we describe what that feels like?

Well Matthew gives it a go. The women see the angel, sitting on top of the stone that has been rolled away. They see the guards, standing stone-still in fear, and they hear the good news that Jesus has risen. And verse 8: “So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.” Fear and joy. It’s not that they were afraid and then they were joyful, Matthew is using two words to describe one emotion. What does it feel like to have your understanding of the world and your place in it blown apart in a moment like this? It’s terrifying, and it’s wonderful.

This experience hits home for me in way it didn’t a month ago. Many of you know that my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world a little over a month ago. And if we’re talking about an experience where all the categories of your world are blown apart in a moment, I can’t think of a better example than being there as my son was born. I mean talk about terror! You can read about it, and I did! Melanie had me read what I think could pass for a textbook for midwives, it was some five hundred pages long. You can read all about it and talk to new parents all you want, but nothing prepares you for the moment when you baby is coming. And when I met Peter for the first time, I was filled with fear! In a moment my life and my world had changed. Everything would be different. And I can attest, that everything has been different, and it will never be the same. And at the same time, the joy was indescribable. Time seemed to stop, everything in the room faded away, because my baby boy was here. I could see him, and touch him, and hear him; and my heart has never been so full as when I spoke to my son, and told him how much I loved him.

It was at once a terrifying and amazing moment. Fear and joy. And it has marked me. That experience did something to me. It awoke in me a new vision and a new understanding of the world and of myself. And I know the emotional intensity of that experience will wear off, and in a lot of ways after a month of sleep deprivation it has. But my world is fundamentally different.

And this is, in a small way, what the story of the resurrection is all about. We think we know what kind of world this is. But the resurrection of Jesus invites us to see that that is not the full story, that is now where the world is going. Death is defeated, the world is being made new, the hope of the Kingdom is real, and I know it because there’s a tomb in Jerusalem that is empty, because the leaves are changing.

I don’t know your story, and chances are good that we’re all over the place with regards to how we’re doing physically, emotionally, spiritually. Some of us probably hear the message of Jesus and his vision of the world, and we think that man that be great if the world really was like that, Jesus. Others of us listening are wrecked with major personal failures, moral failures, lapses of integrity that keep haunting us, and we’ve come to say that this is just who we are, and this is the world that we live in.

But the resurrection emphatically and simply says that is not true. That is not the way the world is and that is not who you really are. We are all entangled in sin and brokenness. We’ve all participated in the death of Jesus, one way or another. But the resurrection says that that is not the last word. Even our own personal sin and evil, they do not get the last word. Because Jesus has taken that from you, he’s died for it, he’s claimed victory over it, and because of his resurrection, there is real hope for a new world, and real hope for a new you. And how do I know that? How do I keep that hope alive when the world is falling apart around me and within me? Because there is something we can point to, something that has happened in history. The leaves change colors. The tomb is empty.

Jesus is alive. He has risen from the dead. The world is not what you think.

Pray with me.