The enduring mystery of Easter
Commentary
I have always dreaded the task of writing an Easter sermon. One root of the problem has been the desire to get it all wrapped up in some neat and convincing package of words. All of us share with our age the analytical passion to get at the root of all things. We also share the pride that impels us to think our little box of brains is adequate to the task.
Anyone who thinks deeply enough and long enough about God eventually reaches the frontier of mystery. "Please tell me your name," Jacob asked the mysterious night visitor with whom he wrestled. To know the name of God is to know all there is to know about God. But Jacob had to stop at the edge of mystery. We all do. In a story by H. G. Wells a bishop meets an angel and demands to know the truth. Placing his hands on the bishop's head, the angel said, "The truth, all the truth in this little head? Why, the truth would split your head open."
So, do you find the Easter narratives awkward, perplexing, contradictory, and peppered with symbolic nuances? Could it be otherwise? The finite simply cannot bear the traffic of the infinite. The human word cannot fully convey a reality that exhausts the power of human vocabulary. The mystery of Easter is nothing less than the mystery of God himself. If we cannot lay bare that mystery, grasp it, master it, neither can we escape it. There are strands of that mystery that draw us even where we cannot fully understand.
There is, for example, the enduring mystery of Jesus. He keeps cropping up in history. He persists in being part of the human dialogue. His memory persists in the way that the memory of others does not. The church continues as the community of active memory. In a scene in Lloyd Douglas' book, The Robe, Marcellus, the Roman centurion who had the robe of Jesus becomes a Christian and tells his fiancé the story of Jesus. She responds, "It's a beautiful story, Marcellus, but we don't have to do anything about it, do we? Let's leave it just where it is." "That's just it," says Marcellus, "I cannot forget it. Because it happened, things can never be the same for me again." That's the way it goes. People keep getting their lives tangled up with this man Jesus. If he had never made the scene we would certainly have less problems of conscience. There is a tenacity about his words.
Another strand of the mystery is the durability of the classic Easter symbols. I do not mean the bunny, the egg, or the lily. I mean that strange symbol of the Lamb that was slain yet stands victorious despite the deadly wound. An eternal principle has surfaced in history. Despite the lethal wound, the Lamb reigns. The cross did not stop Jesus; the gallows did not stop the martyrs; a bullet didn't finish off the dream of Martin Luther King. Truth has a way of ruling from the scaffold.
Mingled with these is the mystery of the enduring timeliness of the Easter news. It is addressed to us personally in our frailty, fear, and guilt. The cross story that impales us in the telling becomes the sign of abounding grace usward.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Acts 10:34-43
"They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him." Here is a key verse for the preacher. The preceding and following verses control the field of meaning. Jesus came out of Nazareth in the service of the God who shows no partiality and ministered to all as he crossed the barriers between people erected by an exclusionary piety and ethnic bias. He was charged with blasphemy and put to death. The cross was the human "No!" to Jesus and all for which he stood. The resurrection was God's resounding "Yes!" to Jesus and his ministry. Now through the church ordained for mission the liberating word goes forth to all that Christ alone is their judge and not the powers who label and expel them.
This reading could well be an example of the earliest Apostolic preaching and the No/Yes dichotomy that provided the form of proclamation. Jurgen Moltmann in his important book, The Crucified God, reminded us of the condemnation of all to whom he went: the poor, the powerless, the victimized, the stigmatized, the outsiders, the forsaken.
The enemies of Jesus believed in a resurrection in the last days when all those outside the circle drawn by dogma would be finally condemned by God, a final confirmation of those dogmas. The resurrection of Jesus in history and proclaimed by the church turns upside down those human judgments endorsed by the reigning piety. God's "Yes!" has powerful social implications.
If this No/Yes theme suggests a sermon, a crucifix could serve as a visual illustration. The crucified Jesus represents the human "No." Turning the cross around so it becomes the empty cross signals the Divine "Yes." If indeed Peter's sermon is representative of the Apostolic preaching, then the earliest preachers of the church were at once profoundly simple and simply profound.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
In this passage Paul is in the midst of some highly speculative thought. What is important for the preacher are the affirmations that lie behind the words. The Apostle's thoughts embrace the whole human family and express the conviction that we are bound together and the human drama is not going to just fizzle out. "As in Adam all die so will all be made alive in Christ." Those are key and beautiful words enshrined in the reading and envision a transformed humanity under the Creator and ever creating God.
John 20:1-18
Mary Magdalene is at the center of this reading. We meet her in the opening verse bearing a grief with which everyone can identify and so distraught at the sight of the empty tomb that she runs to Peter and the unnamed disciple who keeps appearing in the Fourth Gospel. He outruns Peter to the tomb. (There is more than one hint in this gospel of a bit of John-Peter rivalry and disagreement.) They confirm for themselves the report of Mary that the body is missing.
The disciples return to their homes and Mary stays at the tomb. We expect suggestive nuances in John's writing and Mary's encounter with the two angels is certainly suggestive. We recall the words of Jesus: "You will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (John 1:51). Is John telling us that heaven touches earth in the death and exaltation of Jesus?
Mary is concerned about the body of Jesus and when she recognizes the Lord she wants to hold him. All this is so human and understandable. It is in the body that we know and love one another. We are all made orphans by death. John is telling his church that though Jesus is not physically here this does not mean that he is not with us as a real and experienced presence.
While we can identify with the grief of Mary and take comfort from the words of the Risen Lord we do not want to miss the tribute John has paid to Mary. She is the first to see the Risen Lord, and the first to be commissioned by him. She is one of the heroines of the Fourth Gospel, a gospel in which women also play leading roles, and this probably reflects that in the Johannine community they serve on equal footing with men. Again I must recommend The Women Around Jesus by Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel. She has a most informative and fascinating chapter on Mary Magdalene in Christian tradition.
Anyone who thinks deeply enough and long enough about God eventually reaches the frontier of mystery. "Please tell me your name," Jacob asked the mysterious night visitor with whom he wrestled. To know the name of God is to know all there is to know about God. But Jacob had to stop at the edge of mystery. We all do. In a story by H. G. Wells a bishop meets an angel and demands to know the truth. Placing his hands on the bishop's head, the angel said, "The truth, all the truth in this little head? Why, the truth would split your head open."
So, do you find the Easter narratives awkward, perplexing, contradictory, and peppered with symbolic nuances? Could it be otherwise? The finite simply cannot bear the traffic of the infinite. The human word cannot fully convey a reality that exhausts the power of human vocabulary. The mystery of Easter is nothing less than the mystery of God himself. If we cannot lay bare that mystery, grasp it, master it, neither can we escape it. There are strands of that mystery that draw us even where we cannot fully understand.
There is, for example, the enduring mystery of Jesus. He keeps cropping up in history. He persists in being part of the human dialogue. His memory persists in the way that the memory of others does not. The church continues as the community of active memory. In a scene in Lloyd Douglas' book, The Robe, Marcellus, the Roman centurion who had the robe of Jesus becomes a Christian and tells his fiancé the story of Jesus. She responds, "It's a beautiful story, Marcellus, but we don't have to do anything about it, do we? Let's leave it just where it is." "That's just it," says Marcellus, "I cannot forget it. Because it happened, things can never be the same for me again." That's the way it goes. People keep getting their lives tangled up with this man Jesus. If he had never made the scene we would certainly have less problems of conscience. There is a tenacity about his words.
Another strand of the mystery is the durability of the classic Easter symbols. I do not mean the bunny, the egg, or the lily. I mean that strange symbol of the Lamb that was slain yet stands victorious despite the deadly wound. An eternal principle has surfaced in history. Despite the lethal wound, the Lamb reigns. The cross did not stop Jesus; the gallows did not stop the martyrs; a bullet didn't finish off the dream of Martin Luther King. Truth has a way of ruling from the scaffold.
Mingled with these is the mystery of the enduring timeliness of the Easter news. It is addressed to us personally in our frailty, fear, and guilt. The cross story that impales us in the telling becomes the sign of abounding grace usward.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Acts 10:34-43
"They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him." Here is a key verse for the preacher. The preceding and following verses control the field of meaning. Jesus came out of Nazareth in the service of the God who shows no partiality and ministered to all as he crossed the barriers between people erected by an exclusionary piety and ethnic bias. He was charged with blasphemy and put to death. The cross was the human "No!" to Jesus and all for which he stood. The resurrection was God's resounding "Yes!" to Jesus and his ministry. Now through the church ordained for mission the liberating word goes forth to all that Christ alone is their judge and not the powers who label and expel them.
This reading could well be an example of the earliest Apostolic preaching and the No/Yes dichotomy that provided the form of proclamation. Jurgen Moltmann in his important book, The Crucified God, reminded us of the condemnation of all to whom he went: the poor, the powerless, the victimized, the stigmatized, the outsiders, the forsaken.
The enemies of Jesus believed in a resurrection in the last days when all those outside the circle drawn by dogma would be finally condemned by God, a final confirmation of those dogmas. The resurrection of Jesus in history and proclaimed by the church turns upside down those human judgments endorsed by the reigning piety. God's "Yes!" has powerful social implications.
If this No/Yes theme suggests a sermon, a crucifix could serve as a visual illustration. The crucified Jesus represents the human "No." Turning the cross around so it becomes the empty cross signals the Divine "Yes." If indeed Peter's sermon is representative of the Apostolic preaching, then the earliest preachers of the church were at once profoundly simple and simply profound.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
In this passage Paul is in the midst of some highly speculative thought. What is important for the preacher are the affirmations that lie behind the words. The Apostle's thoughts embrace the whole human family and express the conviction that we are bound together and the human drama is not going to just fizzle out. "As in Adam all die so will all be made alive in Christ." Those are key and beautiful words enshrined in the reading and envision a transformed humanity under the Creator and ever creating God.
John 20:1-18
Mary Magdalene is at the center of this reading. We meet her in the opening verse bearing a grief with which everyone can identify and so distraught at the sight of the empty tomb that she runs to Peter and the unnamed disciple who keeps appearing in the Fourth Gospel. He outruns Peter to the tomb. (There is more than one hint in this gospel of a bit of John-Peter rivalry and disagreement.) They confirm for themselves the report of Mary that the body is missing.
The disciples return to their homes and Mary stays at the tomb. We expect suggestive nuances in John's writing and Mary's encounter with the two angels is certainly suggestive. We recall the words of Jesus: "You will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (John 1:51). Is John telling us that heaven touches earth in the death and exaltation of Jesus?
Mary is concerned about the body of Jesus and when she recognizes the Lord she wants to hold him. All this is so human and understandable. It is in the body that we know and love one another. We are all made orphans by death. John is telling his church that though Jesus is not physically here this does not mean that he is not with us as a real and experienced presence.
While we can identify with the grief of Mary and take comfort from the words of the Risen Lord we do not want to miss the tribute John has paid to Mary. She is the first to see the Risen Lord, and the first to be commissioned by him. She is one of the heroines of the Fourth Gospel, a gospel in which women also play leading roles, and this probably reflects that in the Johannine community they serve on equal footing with men. Again I must recommend The Women Around Jesus by Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel. She has a most informative and fascinating chapter on Mary Magdalene in Christian tradition.
