The Ven. Howard Stringfellow
April 17, 2006
at 8 o'clock in the morning
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
If you think it’s challenging to sing at eight o’clock in the morning, I want you to try preaching.
Today marks your new beginning whether it feels like it or not. For Christ’s resurrection created the church. We simply would not be here if the first disciples of Jesus, returning to his tomb at dawn on that first Easter Day morning had found, as they expected to find, his dead body. Because of the onset of the Sabbath at dusk on Good Friday, they had only been able to lay him in the tomb. Being good Jews, they could not anoint his body. They had to wait until the Sabbath was over.
But what they found, instead of his dead body, was his empty tomb. At first, they thought someone had taken his body away. Then Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths. Then John, the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, also went in, and he saw its gaping emptiness. He saw, and he believed. Peter, as you know, recollects himself, so that he could say, as he does in the first reading, “You know .… how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”
I believe that is why you are all here this morning. Whatever else you know, you are aware of how extraordinary Jesus was. Because of his love and mercy for the outcast and the people on the margins; because of his power to heal the sick and afflicted, to bring peace and sanity to the disturbed and even the possessed; because of his loving honesty that afflicted the powerful, the comfortable, and the self-righteous; because of his amazing sense of inner security and peace and his fearlessness in the face of all the things that make us fearful. If slow at the tomb, Peter was right later when he spoke the first reading today.
So that we may not be slow in the face of the empty tomb, we all need to understand two things.
One. It was inevitable that Jesus would go through his suffering and death, terrible as it was. Jesus knew this and said so. The disciples, led by Peter, would not hear it, but Jesus insisted on it. Actually, Jesus’ death was more than inevitable. It was necessary. The necessity stems from the fact that God is not only almighty. God is almighty love. God, out of almighty love, created human freedom, and with that freedom, God allowed for the possibility that we would choose not to love him in return. God took the risk, out of love, that we would choose to get lost. It was necessary for God to come among us, and in coming among us, endure the worst we had to offer, so that he could bring us back with his almighty love.
Two. Although it was necessary that Christ die, it was impossible for death to hold onto him. In words from a hymn, “They cut me down, but I leapt up high. I am the Life that will never, never die.” We do not speak of a resuscitated corpse. But neither do we speak of a disembodied spirit, a soul, or a ghost. On this side of things, on earth’s side of heaven, all that was left was an empty tomb and some grave cloths. On the other side of things, on heaven’s side of earth, the risen Lord shows us something entirely unexpected and new. Saint Paul describes the mystery in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, in verses following those of the Epistle: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable .… It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” One of my favorite verses, found in the Epistle to the Colossians, puts the resurrection this way: “You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Again, today marks your new beginning whether it feels like it or not. Beloved in Christ: take hold of this gift today. Let go of all the dead things that waste so much of our time and energy. Let us leave them behind for others to gawk at, like the burial linen in Jesus’ tomb. Let us get a grip, as they say, on life, which is hid with Christ in God and which will take us through everything, even death. And let’s be ready to tell people the Good News, the reason why we have a new lease, a new beginning, on this the most glorious day of Creation.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
