2020-04-13
Brooke Strong
The Easter service was livestreamed due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Click below if you would prefer to listen to a higher-quality audio-only recording
Sermon Text
Scripture: John 20:1-18
Christine Valters Paintner, an American poet of sacred matters, has written a poem that gives us something of a glimpse into the world of today. It’s called “In a Dark Time”:
Do not rush to make meaning.
When you smile and say what purpose
this all serves, you deny grief
a room inside you,
you turn from thousands who cross
into the Great Night alone,
from mourners aching to press
one last time against the warm
flesh of their beloved,
from the wailing that echoes
in the empty room.
When you proclaim who caused this,
I say pause, rest in the dark silence
first before you contort your words
to fill the hollowed out cave,
remember the soil will one day
receive you back too.
Sit where sense has vanished,
control has slipped away,
with futures unravelled,
where every drink tastes bitter
despite our thirst.
When you wish to give a name
to that which haunts us,
you refuse to sit
with the woman who walks
the hospital hallway, hears
the beeping stop again and again,
with the man perched on a bridge
over the rushing river.
Do not let your handful of light
sting the eyes of those
who have bathed in darkness.
It may sound odd to read a poem like that on Easter. Why muddy the waters with mournful images, with reminders of bleakness, with evocations of people “bathed in darkness”? And I get that, I do. At the same time, though, these are the times in which we live, aren’t they. A virus has put a stop to normal life. It has quarantined us, and forced us not to share space, and made us wary of any contact. It has felled people we know and have perhaps loved deeply. It has altered our entire landscape. This is our reality, isn’t it. And while it may be way off-center to try to make meaning of this catastrophic virus, as Paintner says, it is not at all inappropriate for us, even on Easter, to acknowledge the pain, and to name it. To name something is, after all, as the Bible well knows, to give us some measure of power over it. There is nothing more biblical than naming the agony of these days.
That is so clearly what the culmination of the story of Jesus’s life does: it names the agony. As the gospel of John tells it, two full chapters are devoted to the details of Jesus’ last day on earth—the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the trial by religious and civil authorities, the crucifixion, the mocking, the death. There’s no light brushing over of these details. They are set out in gruesome and vivid imagery. And those details are remarkably of a piece with the shared life we have all been living over these last several weeks. We, too, know suffering and fear and death. This is our world: bathed, in so many ways, as Paintner says, in darkness.
So it’s striking and beautiful, as my clergy colleague David Long-Higgins notes, that the story we’ve heard today begins this way: “Early on the first day of the week, while it was not yet light . . .” (John 20:1). While it was not yet light. Bathed in darkness, Mary knows what we know. As was Mary, we, too, are in that place where it is not yet light. We know it well: meetings and family get-togethers no longer in person, but by Zoom and Skype and FaceTime; rare forays from the confines of our homes; masks on friends and strangers keeping us from seeing full facial expressions; wary avoidance of people on the streets and in the stores; deep-set fears of contracting this novel coronavirus.
Nor is that all. Other challenges don’t suddenly stop because there’s a virus afoot. For some of you who are in school, learning at home is exponentially more difficult and less satisfying than learning in school. Here a man breaks a hip. There a woman is diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer. Close quarters will almost certainly exacerbate domestic abuse and violence. Struggle abounds.
So we know what it’s like to look for Jesus on the first day of the week, while it is not yet light. We know what it’s like to stumble around in the shadows searching for just a tiny spark. We know what it’s like to keep turning, turning, turning, hoping against hope to find something that will answer our prayers and give us what we most deeply need. It’s not yet light, and we are searching.
As Mary makes her way, in the dusk of early morning, to the place she hopes to find the body of Jesus, she stoops to look into the tomb where his body has been buried. Two angels are there, but there’s no Jesus. In her desperation—can you imagine going to the grave of your parent or spouse or child, and finding that the body had been removed—Mary anxiously turns and sees someone she thinks must be the gardener. And tellingly, she has no idea that this stranger is actually Jesus.
In many ways, we are Mary. This is where we find ourselves: while it is not yet light, we are looking for Jesus. And what may well be the case is that Jesus is standing there, right in front of us, and we simply don’t recognize the risen Christ in our midst. Maybe what’s needed is for us to train our eyes and hearts to see a risen Christ whose way of appearing is so often different from what we were expecting.
Cameron Trimble, a minister who heads an organization called Convergence, wrote this week about a friend of hers who’s a potter. “My friend Dana . . . makes stunning glazed bowls, plates, and cups, each with their own unique shapes and colors. Her work is breathtaking to behold.
“The last time I was in her home, she handed me a bowl that had gold streaks running through what looked to be old cracks. When she saw me looking more closely, she said, ‘This bowl has been through a lot over the years, and it finally broke apart a while ago. But I felt like I could do more with it. So I melted gold and put it back together.’ But then she said something that I will never forget. She said reflectively, ‘You know, I can now see that it’s more beautiful for having been broken.’”
And Cameron goes on to say, “This is what I know about God. Our God, the Ultimate Potter, looks upon this broken world and, just like my friend Dana, sees how it can be more beautiful because of its brokenness, not in spite of it. God never causes the breaks, mind you. But once there, God uses them to bring forth new and even more beautiful creations.” And she finishes by saying, “Easter is a story of how God took the brokenness of crucifixion and transformed it into new life through resurrection. God made something new, something even more beautiful in the risen Christ. We can trust God to do this with us. This season, when everything is off and you may feel broken to your core, consider that God is creating within you someone more beautiful for having been broken” (email, April 10, 2020).
In our very brokenness, while it is not yet light, God is doing a new thing. Right here in you and me. And it has to do, so often, with unbidden, and sometimes unnoticed, gifts, and with the ways God’s caring habits show up in you and me. Theologian Matthew Fox reports a story about the anthropologist Margaret Mead. She “was asked [once] by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But instead Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed.
“Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink, or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
“‘A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts,’ said Mead. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized” (Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox, March 22, 2020).
In the midst of challenging times, signs of civilization are all around us. While it is not yet light, a father reads a bedtime story to his frightened toddler. While it is not yet light, a woman sends countless cards and makes myriad calls to people who are homebound and lonely. While it is not yet light, a family puts together a jigsaw puzzle, and makes their own pasta and sauce, and plays volleyball on their lawn with one parent gleefully yelling about her spouse, “Did you see him cheating?” While it is not yet light, shattered femurs are healed and restored, broken pots are turned into things of beauty. What’s broken is healed. What’s lost is found. What’s disintegrated is restored. What’s dead is brought back to life. “This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:23).
I began with a poem of Christine Valters Paintner, and I want to end with a poem of hers, as well, a poem set to music and accompanied by photographs (https://vimeo.com/404108104). It’s called “Praise Song for the Pandemic”:
Praise be the nurses and doctors,
Every medical staff bent over flesh to offer care,
For lives saved and lives lost
And for showing up either way,
Praise for the farmers, tilling soil,
Planting seeds so food can grow,
An act of hope if ever there was
Praise be the janitors and garbage collectors, the grocery store clerks,
And the truck drivers barreling through long quiet nights,
Give thanks for bus drivers, delivery persons, postal workers,
And all those keeping an eye on water, gas, and electricity,
Blessings on our leaders making hard choices for the common good,
Offering words of assurance,
Celebrate the scientists, working away to understand the thing that plagues us,
To find an antidote, all the medicine makers,
Praise be the journalists keeping us informed,
Praise be the teachers, finding new ways to educate children from afar,
And blessings on parents holding it together for them,
Blessings on the elderly and those with weakened immune systems, all those who worry for their health,
Praise for those who stay at home to protect them,
Blessed are the domestic violence victims,
On lockdown with abusers,
The homeless and refugees,
Praise for the artists and poets,
The singers and storytellers,
All those who nourish with words and sounds and color,
Blessed are the ministers and therapists of every kind,
Bringing words of comfort,
Blessed are the ones whose jobs are lost,
Who have no savings,
Who feel fear of the unknown gnawing,
Blessed are those in grief,
Especially who mourn alone,
Blessed are those who have passed into the Great Night,
Praise for police and firefighters, paramedics,
And all who work to keep us safe,
Praise for all the workers and caregivers of every kind,
Praise for the sound of notifications,
Messages from friends reaching across the distance,
Give thanks for laughter and kindness
Praise be for our four-footed companions,
With no forethought or anxiety, responding only in love,
Praise for the seas and rivers, forests and stones who teach us to endure,
Give thanks for your ancestors,
For the wars and plagues they endured and survived,
Their resilience is in your bones, your blood,
Blessed is the water that flows over our hands
And the soap that helps keep them clean,
Each time a baptism,
Praise every moment of stillness and silence,
So new voices can be heard,
Praise the chance at slowness,
Praise be the birds who continue to sing the sky awake each day,
Praise be the primrose poking yellow petals from dark earth,
Blessed is the air clearing overhead,
So one day we can breathe deeply again.
And when this has passed may we say that
Love spread more quickly
Than any virus ever could,
May we say this was not just an ending but also
A PLACE TO BEGIN.
While it is not yet light, a place to begin: love exploding more quickly than any virus ever could. May we celebrate the sublime beauty of God’s resurrecting power. And may we join God’s indomitable, irresistible force of love. Even while it may seem as though there is not yet light, behold, there it is: the true light that enlightens the world—brilliant, gorgeous, embracing light, making all things new even as we speak. Thanks be to God!