Easter Sunday Sermon 2013

Easter Sunday Sermon: March 31, 2013

John 20:1-18

Preacher: Pastor Carrie Smith

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!

As preparations were being made for this amazing Easter celebration, coordinating the details of all the volunteers and the music and the dancers that would make it a day worthy of the Good News of the resurrection, our organist Allison and I had a pretty unusual email exchange. 

Now the message I received said something like this:

“Pastor, Kristin and I want to do “Dinosaur Glory” for Easter Sunday. Is that ok?”

Dinosaur glory. Dinosaur glory… It took me several minutes, and then it came to me:

“Din-o-saur Glo-ry, risen and conquering Son…”

Yes, thank you, iPhone autocorrect for that laugh! And you’re welcome, my friends, because some of you will now be humming that tune throughout the rest of my sermon.

Now with that story in mind, you might be able to understand why I suspected some kind of conspiracy to confuse the pastor when, a few days later, I had the opportunity to teach the Bethany Preschool children about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We sat right here on the step and I read from a story Bible about how Jesus, the Son of God, died on a cross out of love for us, and on the third day he rose again, which is what we celebrate on Easter. Things started out just fine, but very soon the conversation drifted to Easter bunnies. And then to chocolate. And then to chocolate eggs. And then to eggs in general, and finally…to dinosaur eggs. And suddenly, we were in the midst of a full-on discussion of dinosaurs and all their glory.

Now why do you suppose a conversation with preschoolers could move so quickly from the death and resurrection of Jesus to dinosaurs? Maybe it’s because they’re a bit mysterious. After all, we can’t see them, but we believe in them! Maybe because they’re larger than life, kind of like Jesus. Maybe…well maybe just because dinosaurs are AWESOME and so is Jesus! Amen?

There is perhaps no better way to experience anew the strangeness of the Easter story than to try and explain it to preschoolers. And on this beautiful morning, a morning when the flowers and bells, choirs and brass, the organ and dancers are all assembled to proclaim the joy of the resurrection, it’s easy to forget just how radical the message of Easter really is. After all, we are here to celebrate a story that most would say is unbelievable: that Jesus died, in front of his friends, in a public execution; that his body was laid in a tomb, and a large stone was rolled in front of the entrance; and that the third day, the first day of the week, he walked out of the tomb, very much alive!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!

The resurrection is unbelievably Good News. But if preschoolers so easily put the resurrection of Jesus into the same category as dinosaurs, then maybe we have a clue as to how unbelievable it really was for Mary, Peter, and the disciple Jesus loved, on that very first Easter.

The way the Gospel of John tells it, it was Mary Magdalene who was at the tomb that morning. It was still dark, but she could see enough to know the stone blocking the entrance to Jesus’ tomb had been moved. She was also smart enough to know not to hang around to see if the people who moved it were still lurking nearby! Instead, she ran to get Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, and she told them what she believed to be true: That someone had stolen Jesus’ body.

One by one, they each encountered the empty tomb—first Mary, then the disciple Jesus loved, and then Peter. And one by one, they each came to the same conclusion: Jesus had been taken from the tomb. All three of them believed, based on the evidence available, that the powers and principalities that had put Jesus in the tomb had now taken him away. It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, based on what life had taught them so far: that fear, judgment, prejudice, and death always have the last word.  

It’s a conclusion we might come to, as well. After all, isn’t that what we’ve experienced? Isn’t that what the world has offered us so far? All around us, from Aurora to Newtown, from Syria to Chicago’s south side, from the halls of Congress to the children’s cancer ward, we have these facts to contend with: Violence no longer shocks us. Fear is our primary motivation. The gap between rich and poor, between healthy and uninsured, between those with a future and those without, gets larger by the day. And people we love dearly have died and are dying. Based on this information, an empty tomb is just that: an empty tomb. End of story.

And yet, here we are, on this Easter morning, celebrating with Christians around the globe the unbelievably Good News that the empty tomb was just the beginning!  We sing and pray and proclaim to all who will listen, that God has done something new! “In fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. And since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being…the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!

But just how do we come to believe the unbelievable? How do millions of people like you and me come to base their lives on this radical tale of resurrection and new life?

For Mary Magdalene, it happened when Jesus called her name.

She didn’t believe when she saw the stone rolled away. She didn’t believe when two angels all in white spoke to her from inside the tomb. And she didn’t even believe when a gardener—who looked strikingly like Jesus—popped up behind her and started asking her questions.

No…she believed the moment she heard that one word: “Mary.” Jesus spoke her name in love, and with that one word called her out of despair and into the resurrection life. This is, in fact, how each of us is called from death to life, from despair to joy, from unbelief to faithful proclamation. God calls us by name, and brings us to new life.

If it sounds too simple, I will tell you a story: I heard Jesus call my name once.

Yes, I said it: Jesus spoke to me. I know, I know, this isn’t the sort of thing a Lutheran generally shares in polite company, but it’s true. It was a terrible day; a day when I was on the way to the doctor’s office to receive what I was certain was bad news. In fact, I was so certain of this bad news that I had worked myself into an absolute mess: Not eating. Not sleeping. Google-diagnosing myself (never a good idea) and, by the time we got into the car, very nearly hyperventilating.

And then, it happened. Jesus called my name, plain as day, while I sat in the front seat of the car. And what he said was, “Carrie! It’s going to be ok.”

We might hope that if we were to receive a message from the divine it would be something a bit more eloquent or poetic. But at that moment, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I needed to know it would be ok—no matter what the news from the doctor turned out to be. I needed to hear Jesus calling me by name. And I needed to remember that my life—my resurrection life—was in his hands.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we know that God calls each of us by name in baptism. Last night, we were blessed to witness that moment for five brand-new saints: Olivia, Brock, Brody, Corrine, and Nikolas. We rejoice that through water and the Word, these children of God have been called by name and have been made alive in Christ! Amen!

And on this Easter morning, it is my joy to proclaim to you that God does not stop speaking on the day of your baptism! Because he has been raised, Jesus continues to call you by name: through the Holy Scriptures, through prayer, through music and art and dance, through the liturgy, and especially in these few, powerful words: This is my body, given FOR YOU. This is my blood, shed FOR YOU. These words call us daily from death to life, from fear to joy, and from unbelief to faithful proclamation.

And now…back to dinosaurs.

No, really!

There are those who would call the church a dinosaur. It has been called, more than once, a relic of the past, unsustainable and irrelevant to the life of people today.

But, my dear people, as long as there are people who need to hear their names spoken in love; as long as there are those whose names even the church refuses to say out loud; as long as there are those who live in fear of death and have not heard the resurrection news; and until the Lord has destroyed every ruler and every authority and every power and has put all his enemies under his feet—the Church, my friends, is no dinosaur.

The Church of Jesus Christ is now, and ever will be, the living, breathing, always renewing, ever-reforming, resurrected body of Christ, sent into the world for the sake of others.

Join me, sisters and brothers, with Mary Magdalene and Peter and all the witnesses of the resurrection, and with the whole church across the world, in proclaiming to all who have ears to hear: I have seen the Lord!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!