Easter Nonsense: Sermon for Easter Sunday

Utter nonsense. Empty gossip. Garbage. That is how the eleven disciples reacted to the news that the women brought to them on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Most English translations of St. Luke’s gospel use the term “idle tale” – as in, “these words seemed to them an idle tale.” But to our modern ears, this translation falls a little flat. It doesn't quite communicate the  incredulity of the disciples’ reaction to the women. Some lexicons actually use “garbage” as the more accurate translation. Imagine that – the news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead being likened to garbage.

 Who can blame them? Those who abandoned Jesus, and hid out when he was being tried and crucified, had seen crucifixions before. It doesn’t get any more dead than that. And in those days, death was not nearly as sanitized and private as it is now. People were used to seeing, touching, and smelling death. It was a part of their everyday lives. So they knew the power and the finality of death. And their experience told them that nobody beats death…not even Jesus.

Though we are less in touch with death in our context today, we still know and have experienced its power. Centuries upon centuries of history hasn’t changed the fact that we human beings have a natural fear of death. So humankind throughout the ages has spent a great deal of energy trying to protect ourselves from death. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Good health and safety are prudent goals to seek. We go to the doctor, wear seatbelts, follow laws and regulations, and invest in law enforcement and military to promote safety and well-being. These can all be good things.

But what is not a good thing is for us to make an idol of death. It is not a good thing for us to hold death in such high regard that we come to believe that it is the ruler of all beings…that it is more powerful than life.

But the Easter narrative – the Christian narrative – tells us that it is death who should really be afraid. Imagine that…death being afraid of life! Theologian Jason Byassee points out that the Easter story proclaims that “life is more nimble, more alive, more disruptive than death. After Jesus’ resurrection, no tomb is safe. No domain is marked only by death. Life…[not death]…reigns [eternal].”

So the real utter nonsense…the true garbage…is the belief that death had the last word over Jesus, and that death has the last word over us. And while we are talking about nonsense, some might think that I’m crazy for doing this, but I’d like for us all to pull out our Prayer Books and turn to page 491. When you get to that page, you might think that I’m mistaken…why would he have us turn to the burial office on Easter Sunday?! But I lament the fact that the only time we hear these profound words of resurrected life in Christ is at a funeral. The news is simply too good to relegate only to times of grief. So I’d like for us to join together is saying the opening anthem for the burial rite:

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life,
even though he die.
And everyone who has life,
and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.
 
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. 
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.
 
For none of us has life in himself,
and none becomes his own master when he dies. 
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, 
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord's possession.

Happy from now on
are those who die in the Lord!
So it is, says the Spirit,
for they rest from their labors.

St. Augustine of Hippo declared that “we are an Easter people…and alleluia is our cry.” Let us go out into the world singing our alleluias and channeling our love and actions towards living and proclaiming life in Christ. Imagine a world where abundant life in Christ was the primary narrative. Death would indeed tremble with fear.