Thanks to you all for the courage to come to
the tomb. To risk resurrection this morning! We find all over again every
Easter, the church of the resurrection can only be born of the crucifixion.
Will you say that with me one time please? The church of the resurrection
can only be born of the crucifixion! And we have been saying this Lenten
season, and will continue to say during Eastertide, the “being born” part –
becoming a body, incarnate, made flesh, -- as well as a heart, a mind, a
spirit – the “being born” part is just as powerful as the “dying.” For we
do not come to the tomb this morning expecting to find any elements for a
new life. Rather, we come only to collect and connect the remnants of the
old one.
We are “born again” by surprise, by relief
and release of life in the midst of death. Phyllis Osborne, Paducah,
Kentucky, whose son is a U.S. Marine in Iraq, makes this connection for us –
“Every mother whose Marine has come home has experienced that sense of
resurrection, that God has been listening . . . night after night. When we
set eyes on them again, we count each of their fingers, like when they were
newborns. It’s as if our child’s birth has occurred all over again.”
We seek resurrection as well in the lives of mothers who children do not
return
There’s a meditation prepared for this
morning that suggests we display of a crown of thorns, a white burial cloth,
a hammer, a cross, and a stone. That is how Claire so powerfully set the
tables for our last supper and first communion with Jesus Thursday night –
with hard rocks and nails and coins among the elements of the meal. The
meditation suggests we acknowledge parts played by the thorns that mocked
the one we call “Lord,” the robe that teased him, the hammer that pinned
him, the cross that tortured him, the tomb that buried him. Then that we
carry out this morning each of these instruments of suffering and death,
even as we stripped the sanctuary of all adornment Thursday night. For this
morning we have found, “There is no end to love.” There is no end to love.
It is love of life, even in death, that
brings the women, and us, to the tomb this morning. We come in the dark,
exploring a place within and around us we never have been before. We come
bringing the oils of our fears, our doubts, our pains, our losses, our
disbeliefs and our griefs. We come to visit the memory of Jesus, already
fading so fast. The Greek word for tomb is “memorial.” We come for
finality, what we call “closure,” in hopes that by coming, by caring, by
touching and soothing the body so hastily wrapped and buried, we might
strength to go on with our old lives again. Our minds are already like
scrapbooks of images of our lost lives with Jesus now dead, now gone. The
empty tomb rudely empties our memories as well! All that is gone is
forgotten now. The present bursts forth into life. The future is born
again! The past is open-ended! Memory now has a future!
Not that we have done away with dying and
death, though that may well be on God’s agenda. None of us has escaped
death yet, not even Jesus. This is not a festival of immortality, of
endless life without death. This is a Festival of Resurrection, of
immediate life out of death! Yet by belief in this moment, we are
challenged to do away with all of the death that we can. Think of how many
instruments of death, like so many crowns of thorns, robes, hammers,
crosses, and tombs, litter our lives as well. Think of how many deaths we
as a species contribute to and even cause to each other. Work against death
must become the fulltime employment of all our lives! Which is not the same
as work against dying. We will always need safe and loving places and
people for our dying.
A friend of ours in Chicago, Bob Koehler,
whose wedding to Barbara we performed, whose daughter our daughter baby-sat,
writes in his weekly syndicated column – “Most of us grasp the absurdity and
ghastliness of mechanically prolonging the life of someone who is brain dead
or interrupting a person’s dying process over and over with ‘heroic’
intervention just because doing so is medically possible. We have a right
to say no. “And indeed, saying no is a simple and natural, an acceptance of
the course of things.” “Seven years ago,” Bob continues, “my wife died of
pancreatic cancer. I sat silently beside her in the last hour of her life
and witnessed the transforming miracle of death. The pain furrows on her
face loosened as she let go. She became beautiful and radiant. Her
breathing grew shallow and slowly, gradually ceased.”
[Greeting folks at the door after the 9 am
service, we learned a judge from the Florida Supreme Court was in the
congregation. His wife said they much appreciated what we said. You just
never know, especially in Reno!]
Then Bob reflects on current events (as our
brother John Emerson will do on local radio, KDBD, 1400, tomorrow at 5 pm) –
“The peace of her death eased my grief immeasurably. I cannot comprehend
either the religion or the politics that would disturb this peace.” In a
real way in these very moments Pope John Paul !! is offering his death, his
dying, to the world. We are seeing it acted out, step by step, and, painful
as dying may be, I cannot imagine anyone asking the pope to stop living his
life so freely, so fully to the very end. A Vatican reporter puts it this
way, using the pope’s given name – “In this last portion of this
extraordinary journey, Karol Wojtyla speaks only by showing his body. “The
athlete who hiked can run no longer. The hand that wrote can no longer hold
the paper. With his body and his silence, Karol Wojtyla may now be writing
his most beautiful encyclical. Certainly it is a speech that will reach
everyone’s souls.”
Just the body, and the silence, to reach,
and to touch, each other’s souls. Throughout the season of Eastertide, life
with the risen Jesus, to Pentecost, birth of the church as the Body of
Christ, we continue the theme of Stephanie Paulsell’s book Honoring the
Body. (Excerpts are available in the parlor.) The key to our process
has been, every time we see the word “body” use in a personal sense, we ask
what that same use might mean in a congregational sense. We apply the same
sense of frailty and frustration, of dysfunction and misdirection, we often
feel in our own bodies to the life of our body together
In her concluding chapter Stephanie Paulsell
writes, “To begin with the body. That is one way of being present to those
who suffer that helps to keep the whole person in view . . . It is Jesus’
resurrected body that teaches us that bodies matter . . . Jesus insists on
his body: “Look at my hands and my feet. See that it is I myself. Touch
and see.” Touch and see! That is the touch of Jesus this morning, as he
comes upon Mary, lost and alone, in the garden – the touch that gives sight
to sore eyes! The touch that restores our whole view of life.
As surely as in our childhood game, we who
are hidden and lost from view still are sought by the risen Jesus this
morning – Come out! Come out! Wherever we are! From whomever, whatever,
we are hiding, especially from our own fullest view of ourselves. In weeks
ahead we will explore the angel, the spirit, of these congregations we are
(as John puts it early in Revelation), building upon the parts of the body
we are. Even if this is your first time (or first in a long time) to
worship here, we gladly embrace you and welcome you back for this journey
with us! For the angel begins by rolling our stones away this morning –
stones that seal tombs in our lives, stones cutting us off from parts of
ourselves, parts of others, parts of creation itself – parts longing to
linger in light of new life! – even parts revealing to us our own most
hidden hurts, our own most hideous harms – those that have been done to us,
and those we have done to others.
Come out, come out, wherever we are. Come
out, hurt! Come out, harm! Come out, repressed and rejected parts of our
selves, and of our “self together!” There’s room in the light, in the dawn,
in the daybreak, for every last one and every last part of us. God sends
the angel of every assurance this morning, There is no need for us to be
afraid! Even that which is crucified need not stay dead. Even that which
is brutalized, tortured, ashamed. Betrayed, abandoned, forgotten, denied.
That which is crucified is not here! It is risen! It is born again and
anew for us all. Every last woundedness rises this morning. The one who is
crucified goes on ahead of us now. Making a way out of “no way” now.
Making even a people of “no people” now. The very bleeding one is leading
us now! The last and the least are the first and foremost of us now.
Even the women are running to share the good
news with the men. Even the poor are running to share the good news with
the rich. All the outsiders are running to share with the in crowd. Even
the gay are running to share with the straight, the young to share with the
old. Even the murdered are running to share with the murderers, the bombed
to share with the bombers, the war dead with the warriors. And the good
news is all the same news – Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid! DON’T BE
AFRAID! There are as many biblical calls to “be not afraid” as there are
days in the year. It is truly a “daily word.”
And the very same words that were heard at
the birth of Jesus. Just as we ask with the poet then, “Did we come all
this way for birth, or for death?” so we ask one another this morning, “Did
we come all this way for death, or for new life?” For something brand-new
this morning wants to be born in our bodies – our minds, our hearts, our
very souls. Something wants to be born in our lives! Something wants to
be born in our church! Something wants to be born in our world! We know
this day something is even dying to be born! Something brand-new is
demanding this morning to be born out of death into life. Let the church of
the living dead say, amen!
Rev. John Auer
