EASTER DAY 2007
A sermon preached on Easter Day, April 8, 2007 by the Revd Danon Daniel Weir
They came early in the morning, rising before dawn to make their way to the tomb where Jesus had been hastily buried as the Sabbath came at sunset on Friday. They came to do what women have done in countless ages and in many cultures, to prepare for burial the body of one whom they loved. Each of them had, in her own way, been changed by her encounter with Jesus. Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene had been healed by Jesus, and we can only guess at how the lives of these other women had also been changed. But, Luke tells us, when the women arrived at the tomb, they found that the body was no longer there, and they saw two men in dazzling clothes who challenged them with the question, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:5)
"Why do you look for the living among the dead?"
All of us here this morning have, I would guess, a love and devotion for Jesus which is of the same sort, if of different depth and intensity, as that of the women at the tomb. We have all had some experience of Christ which, at the very least, has moved us to be here in this place to worship this Easter Day. We can look back to those moments when something in the Gospel of Jesus Christ helped to make sense of our lives, to give them meaning and direction, to give us comfort in the midst of trouble, a sense of identity and of belonging to something beyond ourselves. At the very least, I would guess, we can look at Christ with the kind of nostalgic devotion, the kind of wistful remembering that we reserve for childhood friends. We can look for Christ among the memories and mementos of our past.
But the messengers at the tomb challenge us, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"
I grew up always knowing about Jesus. Some of my earliest memories are of Sunday School and of going to Christmas morning services with my grandfather. As I trace the course of my life, I can recall significant moments when God's presence was powerfully felt, when my life was changed thrr with Christ. It is those encounters, and the love which I experienced in them, that have led me to this day, to my being a priest, to my serving in this parish. But no matter how rich those experiences may have been - and I know that they pale by comparison with the experiences of many of the saints of this parish - no matter how rich they may have been, they are history, past and gone, and I cannot, I dare not seek Christ in those memories, for I will not find him there. He is not there, but has risen. All that those precious memories can do is to lead me to the place where I can hear the promise that Christ is alive, where I can hear the challenge to seek him, not among the dead memories of my past, but here and now, and in the days to come. Jesus is not back there in the past, but here in this present moment, and out there in our future, waiting to meet us on the road.
I have to admit, though, that I am thankful for those memories, for they are a kind of sacred history, an imperfect account of the acts of God in my life. In times of darkness and difficulty, in the Good Friday experiences of life, they have helped to sustain me, to give me hope that the One who has loved me in days past loves me even now in the darkness and will love me in whatever days lie ahead. I am thankful for the people who inhabit those memories, for the saints, some now gone, who helped me to see and know Christ at work in my life. One such saint was a lovely old lady in the parish where I was a curate. When I first arrived, she was already confined to her apartment and later she moved to a room at a nursing home. I would visit her, bringing her Communion and she would tell me stories about her life, stories about her family, all of whom sang in the parish choir, and about the people she had known down through the years. She had had an incredibly rich Christian life and her faith was strong and lively, even though she was no longer able to attend worship and most of her friends had died. She was the person I visited on days when I was depressed, because her faith could always bring light into whatever darkness I was experiencing. Although we talked about her life's story, and although her memories were wonderful, she was always seeking to meet Christ in the present moment, in the receiving of Communion, in her ministry iest, in her growing friendships with the other residents of the nursing home. She was one who knew that she shouldn't look for the living among the dead.
The most important thing for each of us this Easter Day is to discover that Jesus Christ, our Crucified and Risen Lord is present and will be present with us. All that we need to do to is to look for him, to seek him not in fond memory, but in the concrete and often challenging circumstances of our lives. This One who, out of love for us, embraced human experience so fully and without reservation that it led him to the Cross, this One has triumphed upon that Cross, winning the final victory over sin and death, over all the evil in this world which threatens to destroy us. This One is alive, waiting to meet us as we open our eyes to see him, waiting to make real for us the victory of The Cross.
But even if we hear and respond to the challenge at the tomb and look for the Risen Christ in our present life, there is still danger. The victory of the Cross, won at so great a price, is too often something we see only in a narrow way, as a purely private and personal matter, failing to see that it ought to touch every part of life, from world politics to family relationships. George MacLeod, the founder of Scotland's Iona Community, put it this way: "I simply argue that the Cross be raised again at the centre of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a Cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek (or shall we say in English, in Bantu and in Afrikaans?); at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died about. And that is where [Christians] should be and what [Christians] should be about." (MacLeod, G.F.: Only One Way Left, p.38) We can look for Christ only in our past, refusing to believe that he is alive in this present moment. We can look to him only for personal comfort, refusing to allow him to transform all of life, all of society with all of its relationships and institutions and structures. Or we can seek him as One who is alive in the midst of all the joy and pain, all the failures and successes, all the challenges and difficulties of life. We can seek him there, where we live, where we face hard decisions, where we deal with difficult relationships, where life is often messy and confused. We can look for him in those situations where, most of all, the Cross needs to be raised and the victory of Calvary needs to be made real. The choice is ours, and the messengers at the tomb still challenge us. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Amen.
