New Life – Inexpressible Joy (Easter)

John 20: 1-18

Roger Lynn

April 16, 2017

Easter Sunday

(click here for the audio for this sermon)

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! It is the proclamation of Easter. It is a central proclamation of the Church. For hundreds of millions of people it is an important expression of what they believe. It has the potential to capture our imagination and shine a light of hope into the darkness and the gloom of a frightening world. It can serve us well.

It can serve us well – if we will remember that such a proclamation seeks to describe an experience. It is not the experience itself. In many ways our culture has left us rather poorly equipped to really experience faith and give expression to it, because we have lost an appreciation of poetry and metaphor. In this scientific age in which we live, something is perceived to be true if it can be proven by verifiable means. And if not, then it isn’t true, and thus isn’t worthy of our attention. I know that is an overly simplistic picture, but at some level it really is how we operate. There are so many debates which seem to be couched in black and white, either/or terms. Evolution versus creation. Faith versus reason. Science versus religion. We lose so much of the subtle, nuanced flavor of life and faith when we seek to approach things in such a manner. We get stuck in unhelpful arguments that lead us away from life instead of towards it.

Christ is risen! What does that mean? Why does it matter? Is there more than one way to understand such a statement? As I thought about all of this, a wonderful phrase came to mind. Marcus Borg used to tell about a Native American storyteller who always begins his stories by saying, “Now, I’m not sure if it happened exactly this way. But I’m absolutely certain it’s True.” That’s how I feel about the Easter story. As far as the details of what took place on that first Easter morning, I am not at all prepared to say what actually occurred. Each of our four Gospels offers a different version of the story. And yet, what I do know with a kind of certainty which has nothing to do with scientific proof is that something extraordinary and life-altering lies behind the stories. I know this because I have experienced it for myself.

Those first followers of Jesus caught a glimpse of the truth he had shared with them – God’s reign begins right here, right now, in the very midst of this life, and each of us is called to participate in that abundant reign of love and grace, peace and wholeness. Most of the time they didn’t really understand it, but there were at least moments when the veil had been pulled back just enough to reveal a different reality. And then it all came crashing down around them. In the face of this amazing new way of approaching life, the status quo won. This one whom they had followed and come to trust and believe in had been silenced. How was it possible to reconcile Jesus’ message of hope and promise of new life with the reality of his brutal death? It should have been over – just one more wonderful dream shattered by the cold, hard light of reality. Except that it wasn’t over. Remarkably, against all odds, against all expectations, the new life they had experienced as they followed Jesus was still there. Everything he was, everything he stood for, everything he shared with them, everything they had come to understand through him continued to be true, continued to be real. The Romans couldn’t stop it. The religious authorities couldn’t stop it. Death couldn’t stop it. New life was pulsing through them, shaping their very experience of the world around them.

But how do you talk about that? How do you share that amazing good news? How do you make sense of such an experience, for yourself, to say nothing of anyone else? Language is so limited. We’re pretty good at talking about what we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, experience with our senses. But words quickly fall far short of the goal when we try to capture such profound, life-giving experiences of our souls. Everyday speech is simply not up to the task of conveying matters of the spirit. And thus it is that we turn to the language of metaphor, poetry, story. Not to capture the experience. After all, how can you capture the wind or a ray of sunlight? No, we turn to such language in order to offer tantalizing glimpses, enigmatic hints, awe-inspired invitations to simply enter into the Mystery, the inexpressible joy, of God’s abundant new life which flows around us like the waters of the ocean. 

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! The angels proclaim it. The pilgrims shout it out. Even the skeptics pause to wonder. May we remember to look beyond the words as we experience that which lies behind the words – abundant new life, in this and every moment, direct from the heart of God. Amen.