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March 23, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 10:34-43, Colossians 3:1-4, Assorted Resurrection Appearances
“Whole Lot of Shakin’: Jesus Is Dying, Jesus Is Rising – Are We?”
Praise the Lord – Christ is risen! CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!! (3 times)
One of my favorite people in the congregation handed me an Easter card and said,
“I hope it is not irreverent.” I said, “I hope it is!” What’s more irreverent
than Easter?! Talk about waking the dead! Not letting a sleeping church
lie! If we cannot sleep in the pew, where can we sleep – in good conscience?!
I always guarantee, no matter what else about my preaching, I will not bore you
or put you to sleep! I got that “Chicago style” preaching so popular in the
news lately.
So the card says, “Today’s Easter sermon is . . . Where the hell have you been since
Christmas?” Of course Jesus has been to hell these past few days – descending
deep into death, turning loose all kinds of banished ones there – for resurrection
does not miss a trick! It applies to all if to any. Jesus is just the
first of those to be raised. The end of resurrection is overcoming of death
itself. And the person who gave me the card already knows that we do not diminish
or disparage anyone being here this or any Sunday. We love and value the person
we may see once and never again -- as much as we do the one we see all the time
and cannot figure how to get rid of! (Not!) Everyone here has their
own valid reason to be here – just as everyone not here has theirs. What we
need is to talk about it! What are the reasons to be here? The reasons
not to be here?
How is this church being the church of Jesus Christ – crucified and resurrected?
How is it not? There are lots of opportunities coming up – and we’re all invited
– new-timers and old alike. Staff-Parish is sponsoring conversations next
Sunday morning at nine and a week from Wednesday with pot luck at 6:30. Two
weekends from now we gather to claim the living legacy of Dr. King for church and
community on the 40th anniversary, the wilderness/promised land year
of his death. There will be a church-wide summit soon on stewardship of all
resources.
Most exciting of all will be chances to hear from the VIM mission to New Orleans!
It is hard to imagine what all they gleaned about being the church in that place.
Where would New Orleans be without hope of the resurrection? And churches?
Easter is always so hard to pin down. Nobody has to ask, when’s Christmas
this year? But Easter, befitting the spirit of resurrection, will not stay
put in any one place on the civil calendar but breaks out all over whenever it will!
Thanks to Jim Ellis I learned, this is the earliest Easter any of us will see in
our lives! The next time it will be as early as March 23 is 220 years from now.
The last time was 95 years ago! The last time for March 22 was 1818; the next
time is the year 2285. So no more complaining how sudden and how unexpected
– of course Easter is!
I suppose for a moment in planning of our responses to the 5th anniversary
of the war this past week, there was a remote chance some of us might risk arrest
and even be in jail this morning! George said he was prepared to fill-in as
preacher and begin, “Well, it’s Easter – and nobody is where they are supposed to
be!” Of course -- like Jesus’ own fair-weather friends and followers -- by
the end of the week we finked, and fickled, and faded, and fled. I hope no
one has to go to jail for this war – for ending it or for starting it. But
if even we do – as Jesus does in nonviolent resistance to all the powers that sit
in Jerusalem and capitol cities everywhere -- we will not begin to pay the price
of all who have died there. Military and civilian, combatant and non-combatant,
Iraqi and American and other, very young and very old – we give them a moment of
silent respect.
If the promise of resurrection this morning does not speak to all who have died,
it does not speak to us. We must not dare to say anything about God this morning
that we would not say to a victim or to a survivor – of these or of any last deaths.
It takes courage and hope to come to the tomb this morning – so I thank and commend
us for being here. Thanks for marching so bravely into the city in snow a
week ago – and for following Jesus as closely as we could and dared Thursday through
the last meal and passion story, Friday through last words from the cross – where
Jesus did not only die “for us” but for charges of blasphemy and treason.
Jesus died because those in power, and we who support them, often uncritically,
can not bear to be so confronted and challenged, so upset and undermined -- by questions
of truth that might set us free. We are willing to give up the life of this
truth-telling troublesome one to remain in denial – and protect vested interests!
Nancy Carter’s commentary on Matthew’s gospel enlarges upon how tempted we are to
protect and defend ourselves – or to ask others to do so for us --even at all costs.
“Holy Week begins and ends with earthquakes,” she says. “Earthquakes are an
important part of Matthew’s geography of God.” Of last Friday Matthew’s gospel
says, “Then Jesus cried out with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that
moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The
earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many
bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”
Of this morning Matthew adds, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the
tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord,
descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” Jim
Douglass says finding bodies may only bring us more death. Had Mary found
a dead body this morning, he says, “It could have led to anything.” During
the wars in the Balkans, he saw repeatedly how “the victim’s grave becomes the blessed
point of departure for the next murder.” So many of today’s wars start beyond
memory ago. “The death penalty lies in waiting in our hearts,” concludes Jim Douglass.
Let us thank God for “no body” this morning! Thank God for taking away our
excuses to recycle forever our vengeance and violence!
Matthew’s is the only gospel that tries to tell us what it is like for those assigned
to guard Jesus’ body. They have to confess what has happened – how the body
escaped them in the earthquake during the night. The religious leaders promptly
bribe the guards and order them to spread the story that Jesus’ disciples actually
came and stole his body while they were sleeping. With all their “church-state”
connections, the leaders further promise the guards protection from the governor.
The “earthquake” of Palm Sunday is a less literal one and more the shaking of the
foundations of all church-state powers-that-be -- as Jesus rides boldly into the
city teeming with Passover pilgrims. Earthquakes, says Carter, proclaim the
deaths of “old orders” of things as they are and seem always to be. The world
will never be quite the same for the great shaking it takes this week. We
could claim Matthew’s only recorded words of Jesus from the cross are, “My God,
my God why has thou for-SHAKEN me?”! The last week of Jesus’ life, the first
week of the life of the Christ for us, dances for us to the timeless theology of
tuneful tenor Jerry Lee Lewis, “Come on over baby, whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on!”
Those shaking and quaking the most, “in their boots,” as we say, are those who are
appointed, or appoint themselves, protectors, defenders of our investments in things
as they are. They are guarding the body of Jesus – seeing that nobody messes
with him being safely dead and securely buried! Are there not those in the
church today? Body-guarders? Jesus-protectors? Ritual-defenders?
From whom?! Against whom do we, the body of Christ, need protecting?
Defending? Is it from poor people? Street people? People of color?
People of other faiths? Other languages and other lands? Feminists?
Peace activists? Gay people? Young people? Loud people?
Unusual people of any description? Just who is protecting us from whom?!
And after last week, what do we have left to lose?
Is this not JESUS we’re talking about – needing protection from us? Is this not
Jesus crucified? Jesus harassed, humiliated? Jesus taunted, tortured?
Jesus abandoned, betrayed? Denied, deserted, to die on the cross all alone?
This Jesus might well be asking all us “protectors” of him in church – and we who
like Peter were so confident we would follow him even to jail this week! – Jesus
might well be asking of us -- With friends like these, who needs enemies?!
What’s true of Jesus is true of us – Can we not find the word “us” in “J-e-s-u-s?”
We die with Jesus this week – that we may rise with Jesus this day. Does it
take a literal “earthquake” in church – a crisis of unseen proportions – to call
our attention to the new, unseen and untold thing God is doing for us this morning?
Nancy Carter says there are lots of “inner earthquakes” as well – shakings of fear
and anger, shakings of doubt and despair, shakings of regret and remorse, shakings
of overwhelming and underachieving – Can I get a witness? How long will it
take to shake it all out of us? To open us up to sharing it all, putting it
all on the common table, acting as if in Christ there is nothing to lose?
In Christ we have lost it all already, and all has come back to us in resurrection.
It is no longer we who live, but the risen Christ who lives in us! Making
a way out of no way, making a body, the church, out of “no body!” “No body”
is the word about this tomb this morning – There is “no body” here! God uses
the resurrection to show what all we “no bodies” can do! How we can become
“some bodies” for God.
Speaking of Chicago-style preaching, Rev. Jesse Jackson puts resurrection this way
-- Say it with me if you like – “I am! / Somebody! / I am! / Somebody! / I may be
young! / I may be old! / I may be weak! / I may be poor! / I may be in the street!
/ I may be on welfare! / But I am! / Somebody! / Respect me! / Protect me! / Do
not neglect me! / I am! / Somebody! / My mind can conceive it! / My heart can believe
it! / My hands will achieve it! / I am! / Somebody!” God still uses the resurrection
to shown what “no body” can do. Whole peoples all over the world today refuse
to be dismissed, overlooked as “no bodies” any longer. Refuse not to be seen,
refuse not to be heard, refuse not to be met, and greeted, and invited, and seated
at table – with those who have always been there! All peoples everywhere –
including our own church and community – are saying, our bodies, our places as parts
of the body, the bodies and souls of our children, are every bit as precious as
anyone else’s! We will not stayed locked up, or locked out, avoided, ignored
– any longer!
Coming to the tomb this morning clearly is an “out of body” experience! We
were so sure this body would stay good and buried, and all this “trouble” would
be buried with him. Now we are called to go “out of body” ourselves – to risk
and relate ourselves, embrace and engage ourselves, empty and exhaust ourselves,
pour ourselves out like wine and the blood, break ourselves like bread and body.
When there is “no body,” then “any body” at all may do! That’s why if you
have never been here before, or not in a very long time, you are a perfect candidate
this morning! You are who God may be looking for – a fresh and fruitful body
in the midst of all us used-up ones! “Any body” at all will do! We need
to know this morning, what happens to ANY body happens to EVERY body. From
no body, to some body, to any body, to every body! Behind every locked door
a brother. Behind every locked gate a sister. Come out, come out, wherever
we are!
Look! What is happening! There is “no body” here! Every last woundedness
rises this morning! Every last guardedness disappears! “No body” goes
before us – making a way out of “no way!” Making a people of all who have
been “no people” but slaves in Egypt and anywhere else – slaves even to sin and
to death!
Our very bleeding is leading us now. The last are becoming the first.
The least are becoming the greatest. Look! What is happening!
It’s Easter, says George – and nobody is where they’re supposed to be! Hear
me now!
Even now, the women are running to tell the good news to the men! Even now
gay people are running to tell the good news to straight people. The poor
are running to tell the rich. The young are running to tell the old.
The murdered and dismembered, even, are running to tell their murderers and their
dismemberers. The bombed are running to tell the bombers – the tortured to
tell their torturers. Even New Orleans is running to tell all the rest of
the nation. And the good news is all the same – Don’t be afraid! Believe
the new thing God is doing! Everything can be different! Everyone can
be changed.
Don’t be afraid! For God’s sake, don’t be afraid. Even as the original
Mary and Joseph were exhorted before Jesus’ birth, so this Mary and Joseph of Arimethea
are exhorted beyond Jesus’ death. Something brand new wants to be born in
our hearts this morning. Wants to be born in our lives! Wants to be born in
our church! Wants to be born in our world! To be born out of death into
life! Praise the Lord – Christ is risen. CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!
(3 times) Amen.
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