By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorAlleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! The ancient greeting rings out with a truth first described as an idle tale! How about that? The women come back from the tomb of their beloved Jesus telling the disciples about the empty tomb and the angels and the message of Jesus being raised for the dead and the disciples dismissed it as an idle tale. As though the women thought the disciples were being a bit too gloomy and thought they’d perk them up a bit with a resurrection story. Peter goes to verify and him they believe. Somehow the women who stood by Jesus the whole time were making things up, but Peter who denied him was credible. Now that’s an idle tale.
The details of the resurrection the women spoke of are vague and lost in the mist of time and layered story. But something happened. Something so profound as to propel the disciples, not to return to their former lives, but to turn to a lives of missionaries to proclaim the resurrected Jesus. Lives that often led to deprivation, ridicule, persecution and martyrdom. People don’t do that for an “idle tale.” They do that because of some truth that has deeply transformed them. They do that because their lives have so profoundly changed that there was no going back.
In the first lesson we read this morning from Isaiah, we hear the author in the voice of God saying, “..I am about to create a new heaven and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating...” People of faith have always believed in God’s ability to create something new from something old. Order out of chaos. And even life out of death. Over and over again, the stories differ in the details and times, but the essential similarity is the triumph of life over death. The victory of truth and justice over that which is evil and self seeking. There has always been a belief in resurrection.
The story of Jesus’ resurrection is so compelling because it is a victory over death itself. Prior to that, most resurrections had to do with health or life’s circumstances, not life itself. What made Jesus so miraculous is that God’s action created something new. A new heaven and a new earth.
I believe in resurrection. I believe in Jesus’ resurrection and I believe in my resurrection and I believe in your resurrection. I believe in the resurrection of Haiti and Iraq. I believe in the resurrection of people and places where life is in danger or lost. Because I believe that resurrection is life itself and that life doesn’t end, it transforms.
The disciples become interesting case studies for me. They had pretty decent lives before Jesus showed up. Steady jobs, families, they pretty much knew their way around and probably felt relatively secure and comfortable in their lives. Jesus shows up and turns everything upside down. They hit the road, have a little hint of glamour and fame, but that ends badly with an arrest and Jesus’ execution.
But in the midst of all this, they got a taste of a deeper life they didn’t see or know about before and they couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. They saw and felt the love of God in a powerful way they could no longer live without. They chose a more difficult life, physically, in most of their cases, but we have to assume that the serenity they had in their spirits was worth the price. What an amazing depth of knowing God that would lead them to live the lives they led. For as vague as the details of the Gospels can be about the resurrection, the lives of the disciples who continued to follow Jesus after his resurrection are testimonies not only to Jesus’ resurrection, but their own.
I have experienced resurrection myself through new life that has risen from the ashes of divorce, addiction and the deaths of loved ones. I have seen the resurrection of so many others whose faith in God and the promise of resurrection has changed their lives, especially when they thought it was over. There is a living death that occurs in so many ways, that each of us can testify to. And I’ll bet that without much prompting, many of those stories of living deaths can also be understood to contain the seed of resurrection. And these are not idle tales. They are real.
I’ve seen people in the throes of addiction, what I often call the living dead, who have found new life through recovery. I’ve seen sections of towns and cities come back through the efforts of hard working activists, organizers and regular people on the street. I’ve seen people who faced the deaths of spouses or partners with faith that their lives would continue and did.
I’d like to tell you a particular story of resurrection that I saw last year. While I was on sabbatical last year, the first leg of the trip was to the Holy Cross Monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa. During the month I was there I got to know the small community of brothers pretty well. One of the brothers, Josias, told some of his personal story in a Lenten sermon he preached while I was there. He took for his text Psalm 22 that begins, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me..” It’s a very important psalm since Jesus quotes it from the cross. It’s verses describe the desolation of the speaker and how beaten down he is. The verse Josias focused on was the 6th verse that says, “but as for me I am a worm and no man...”
He stopped there and told a little of his story as a black man born in Johannesburg during the last days of Apartheid. The struggles and tensions in those final days of that evil system, the danger and the temptation to be beaten down by it. His lips trembled with emotion as he told of the assaults on his humanity and how often he was treated like a worm and no man.
He told of his early conviction in his faith and how the love of God in Jesus pulled him out of despair and gave him new life. This shy, soft spoken, sweet young man riveted the congregation when he looked up from his sermon text and declared in full voice, “I am a man, and no worm.”
Resurrection is claiming life from that which appears dead. Josias spoke for all of us in the life circumstances that make us feel “less than”. In God’s love we are people and not worms. We are worthy enough for God to have been incarnated in the life of Jesus, to have given us miracles and healing. To have taught us and shown us the love of God. To have died for us and risen, as proof that life does not end. It changes and deepens, but it does not end.
In truth some people still call stories of resurrection “idle tales”. They are not. Once you’ve seen them or lived them, you can’t deny them. They are wonderful stories of hope and love, and they are worth telling, despite what anyone else thinks.
From the psalm today, verse 24 speaks for us - On this day the Lord has acted, we will rejoice and be glad in it!” Amen.
©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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