It is an unusual Easter this year for many of us. And in recognition of the fact that many of our normal Easter routines have been interrupted, I thought that I would share this sermon that I preached via live stream to my own congregation this morning. Sermons are really meant to be spoken, not read in print, but since this is a blog, written it shall be :) Christ is risen, friends. Even today. Christ is risen. Alleluia!
“Grief,
Interrupted”
A Sermon Preached at Bethel Mennonite Church
Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020
Text: Luke 24: 1-12
Can
I begin with a moment of personal honesty?
I
struggled with writing the sermon for this morning’s worship service. This
year, I have struggled to feel ready for joyful resurrection. The world is
still too hard, the lurking danger of the pandemic that we are fighting still
feels too real.
Before
the sobering realities of COVID-19 really sunk in, I already had a good idea of
the shape that I hoped these Holy Week services might take this year. As time
has gone by, and our daily lives have shifted so dramatically, it has become
very apparent that I would have to let go of these plans, these hopes, these
dreams for what could have been. I would have to adjust my expectations, to
know that I couldn’t look you in the eyes and see you looking back at me as I
spoke these words, the way that I desperately wish I could.
All
of which is to say that there was a very real grieving process that I had to go
through in order to work my way back around to the good news of Easter.
I know
I’m not alone in this. I know that many of you carry griefs of your own right
now. Grief about family members who live in personal care homes or assisted
living facilities where you can no longer visit them. Grief about family
gatherings that won’t be able to happen this Easter, at least not in person.
Grief about trips canceled, about jobs lost, about people you love who are
sick, about deaths that have occurred for which funeral services or memorial
services have had to be postponed or have looked dramatically different than
you expected. Griefs about missing friends and classmates, and saying goodbyes
in the midst of classes being moved home as schools have been closed.
Reluctantly releasing hopes about how graduations and other life milestones
might be celebrated. Profound loneliness. So much grief!
Grief
that can feel oh, so heavy!
Grief
that surely weighed upon the women early that Sunday morning as they set out at
dawn to return to the tomb. The same
tomb where, just days ago, they had followed to see how his body was laid
there. The tomb they had hurried home from in order to prepare the spices and
ointments before the Sabbath started, before even this would have to wait until
the appointed time of rest had finished.
Never
has it struck me so clearly that the women left at the break of dawn that
morning to go prepare a body. A real body, the body of a friend whose death
they had witnessed with their own eyes, whose last words they had heard with
their own ears. The body of a friend whom they had loved, and whom they dearly
missed.
I
wonder if part of the reason for their very early morning outing that day was
that their collective sleep had not been good the night before, as grief can do
to us. I wonder if they were glad for this concrete task, taking the spices and
ointments to prepare the body, which at last gave them something familiar to
do, as hard as it might be.
The
good news of Easter doesn’t begin with loud hallelujahs, although that will
certainly come. It begins at a tomb—a tomb in which a body had been laid, a
tomb that by all accounts should still have held a body awaiting preparation
for burial, a tomb which inexplicably lay empty.
Grief,
interrupted.
The
women swing from perplexed to terrified as two men in dazzling clothes
appear at their sides from out of nowhere. Somehow, when I imagine myself among
those women, I think that terrified is putting gently how I would have felt
after the roller coaster of fear, grief, and confusion that culminated in this
supernatural encounter on that first Easter Sunday. Really, there are no words!
They
are already ducking and hiding their faces by the time these ‘men’ open their
mouths to speak—and while I normally associate divine messengers with loud,
booming proclamations--goodness, I hope they spoke the words gently, with
voices filled with love and compassion! “Why do you look for the living among
the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was
still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be
crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
And
because the women had followed Jesus from Galilee, had been among those in his
wider circle of disciples, had been listening intently to his teaching along
the journey toward Jerusalem—they did remember what Jesus had told them.
So
they pulled themselves together and regrouped. Which is something that I’ve
hardly ever paid attention to in the past, but which I now imagine to be no
small feat. There was no body to anoint. The thing that they thought they had
set out to do, no longer needed doing. They had to figure out what to do with
the unthinkably good, the unfathomably hopeful, with this interruption for
which there were no instructions, no road map to follow, no prescribed next
steps.
I
imagine spilled spices lying discarded on the grass outside the tomb’s opening,
a marker of the place where the encounter with God’s messengers that morning
upended everything and sent them off on an entirely new mission.
When
they return to tell the rest of the apostles of all that had happened at the
tomb that morning, heart-wrenchingly, the men thought their words nothing more
than an idle tale. It was only Peter who believed them enough to check things
out for himself—and it was only when he saw the linen cloths, the remnants of
the shroud, lying in the empty tomb that he truly believed.
Spilled
spices and an abandoned linen shroud—perhaps these are the true markers of the
first Easter. Signs of what is not, before there is yet any evidence of what
is.
Resurrection
begins with grief interrupted. And initially, that might look like puzzlement,
fear, amazement, and cautious hope more than it does like overflowing,
overwhelming joy and praise.
Because
resurrection is disorientation, if ever there was such a thing! The body is
missing—and bodies do not just go missing from tombs sealed shut with large
stones. Bodies do not get up and leave because they’re tired of waiting for
someone to come with the burial spices. Bodies do not stand up, carefully
remove the shroud that has been wrapped around them, and carry on being, well,
living bodies.
Except
that it happened.
Mary
Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, Peter—they saw it with their own
eyes. They heard it with their own ears. And they believed it in the depths of
their very souls.
And
because they did, because they dared to speak of the unspeakable, to share
their idle tales even with those who would not believe—because they dared to
allow grief to be transformed into audacious hope—so can we. So can I. So can
you.
Today,
on Easter morning, we stand looking in amazement at the spilled spices and the
abandoned linen wrappings, and we are also invited to put our hope in the
impossible.
We
dare to proclaim it in the face of a news cycle that can feel impossibly heavy
as we count presumptive positive cases and watch to see if the curve is indeed
flattening; as we hear of the agony being experienced by those in areas where
the death toll continues to climb exponentially; as we corporately speculate
about how this will impact us in weeks and months and years to come—we dare to
proclaim that in Jesus death does not have the last word, that the light shines
in the darkness and that even now, the darkness has not overcome it.
And
we pay attention to the things around us that might seem innocent enough at
face value, but as we take a closer look seem to point to a higher truth. That
aromatic dust was actually supposed to be the preparation for a burial that was
not necessary. Those abandoned cloths littered thoughtlessly on the ground were
in fact unwrapped from a corpse that is now eating and talking and whole among
us.
While
we gather for worship this morning via screens and phones from the safety of
our own homes, staying apart for the sake of the common good, it is a profound
act of love and care for our neighbours—an act of solidarity that is literally
sustaining life in these days.
While
I wish I could look each of you in the eyes this morning and wish you a happy
Easter, in these last four weeks I have experienced so many examples of people
reaching out in love by phone or email; I have seen Care Groups going to
extraordinary lengths to support one another during these unusual times; I have
witnessed people working hard to adapt our technology to allow us to continue
to connect as much as possible as a church family until we can once again meet
face to face; I have seen young adults step up to staff our food bank every
other Monday, both meeting the needs of our neighbours and caring for people in
higher risk demographics in our congregation by allowing them to stay home. All
of these, and so many more, have been for me the spilled spices and abandoned
linens that have served as powerful and tangible reminders to me that there’s
another story at play here, one that is more powerful than the story that the
world is offering me. A story of grief interrupted, a story of light and life
and hope, a story of resurrection. Our story.
Friends,
we are resurrection people.
I
suspect that has never been a more powerful statement for us than it is this
Easter, as we find ourselves nose-to-nose with the very reality of death in a
way that my generation certainly has never before experienced.
We
are resurrection people. And so, with some amazement, puzzlement, and even with
some fear, we are called to embody Life even in the midst of death, in myriad
different ways. We are called to be good news, even if it is scorned by some as
idle tales. We are called to love with abandon, to spread hope as if it were
contagious, to embrace the possibility of a good that is greater than any force
in the world can offer.
We
are resurrection people, now more than ever.
And
so this morning, together we proclaim from all of the corners of the places
where we are, the good news that we allow to shape our lives and change our
paths; the good news that leads us to turn our eyes from the business of death
to witness the miracle of capital-L life.
Leader: Christ is Risen!
All: He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Leader: Christ is Risen!
All: He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Thanks
be to God! Amen.
