“The Gift of Resurrection”

Luke 24:1-12

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley

Easter Sunday

April 8, 2007

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            Easter in Minneapolis.  It’s a time when we should be outside enjoying a warm spring-time Easter-egg hunt.  Instead, we’ve braved the cold and we’ve come to this place.  My mother prepared to play hand bells at the outdoor Sunrise Service at the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland where the snow is piling up on the blooming forsythia.  It’s no accident that Easter comes in the spring.  With the flowers, we are reminded of new life.  There is a bit more light outside as our evenings get longer.  Eventually, warmth will bring out the joy in our lives.

What a day it has been so far.  The bright colors and the flowers have returned from their Lenten exile.  We celebrated the baptisms of three of our young people.  We have welcomed back friends and family from afar.  We have enjoyed great music.  What a day. 

But mostly, we are here because something happened on that first Easter morning almost 2000 years ago.  Today we celebrate the gift of resurrection.  It ranks right up there with the incarnation as the greatest gifts God has bestowed upon us.  Today, we are here to embrace this gift, the gift of resurrection.

            It was a gift that the disciples were slow to accept.  Good gifts are often like that.  The disciples were hiding for their very lives—afraid that a fate similar to Jesus’ was on its way for each of them. 

            They weren’t the first to get the gift.  The gift first came to women.  The scripture says that women were the first to come to the tomb.  It was the women who stood by Jesus until the very end.  It was the women who were at the cross.  It was the women who were denied the historical distinction of “disciple”, but proved far more faithful than all of the other disciples combined. 

            The constant figure in all four gospels was Mary Magdalene.  But in Luke’s Gospel she is joined by Joanna, Mary the mother of James and some others whose names were lost to history. 

            There they were on the first day of the week.  Now that the Sabbath was over, they hoped to wash out his wounds and properly prepare his body for its eternal rest When they arrived, someone had rolled the stone away from the tomb’s entrance, which made their job a bit easier.  But when they entered the tomb, the body of Jesus was gone.  Where might it have gone?  Who stole it?

            As they were asking these questions two men appeared in dazzling clothes.  They said to them, “why do you seek the living amongst the dead?  Don’t you remember Jesus said this would happen?  He predicted his own death and his own resurrection?”  They remembered, and they went right away to the disciples and told them the news.  It was hard for them to believe it, too. 

            It’s hard to believe in the resurrection if it’s just words.  What we need is evidence.  Evidence is what makes resurrection real. 

            The women had the empty tomb, the strangers in fabulous clothes reminding them of the private words Jesus spoke to them.  The disciples just had the words of the women.  And with each passing person, the story seems so much more far-fetched.  Unless.  Unless it is backed up by evidence.

            That evidence would come in the coming hours and days.  Jesus would appear to people on the road to Emmaus.  He would appear at a fish fry on a beach.  Jesus would appear in the hiding place of the disciples.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus would appear in the garden and speak with Mary Magdalene.

            But those are old stories of something long ago.  How do we claim the gift of resurrection now?  Where is the evidence?

            In a few weeks, Teresa Mock will be directing a show here at UBC entitled, “Body & Sold”.  It was written to expose the ways people run away from home and get lured into prostitution.  Many of the scenes were adapted from true stories told from the streets of Minneapolis.  It’s a stark, in your face show full of the shocking stories and colorful street language that depicts the reality of people’s lives.  Many of them felt that there was no way out.  It all seemed so hopeless. 

And into this abyss stepped people who were willing to bravely steer them in a new direction.  These people saw the humanity of the people caught in sexual trafficking.  And they helped them believe in their own resurrection.   It’s not a simple three days and your done kind of thing.  For some it takes unlearning a lifetime of belittling concepts of love entwined with power and violence and evil.  But the first step in resurrection is to hear the stories.  It’s to remember that those stories are mingled with our stories.  When we do that, then we experience resurrection, because we experience the crucifixion of old ideas.

            Resurrection can’t happen without crucifixion.  We need Good Friday in order to experience Easter.  We need to remember that something has died before we can say that something has risen.  That’s when resurrection becomes real.   

            Many of us have experienced our share of Good Fridays.  We have experienced pain and sorrow and despair and loneliness and doubt.   

            But the very fact that we are here means that we experience something to help us on our way.  That is the gift of resurrection.  

            Throughout the Lenten Season, we have considered our gifts.  We have considered the gifts of endurance, of discernment, of patience, of forgiveness, of garlands and of presence.  Today we claim the gift of resurrection—not as simply an ancient story, but a present reality that gives us the hope and the joy and the power to live life in a new and powerful way.

            About 15 years ago Jose and Michael blessed the community of Dolores Street Baptist Church in San Francisco.  Jose and Michael had spend decades together living on the streets and in shelters, addicted to heroin and devoted to each other.  When they found out they were both HIV positive, they found methadone.  They found Jesus and they found that little church that I served for six years.  They came with all of their street sensibilities and their unsophisticated and raw faith.  The church was not unlike this one in that the congregation was made up of sophisticated intellectuals who liked to talk and think of big theological things.  They made us really consider what it meant to be welcoming and affirming of everyone. 

            They were compassionate, often giving food to the poorer members of the congregation.  They also often spoke up at the quiet times in worship.  Preaching became kind of like a dancing dialogue.  They kept us on our toes.  They said that the church had saved their lives. 

            When Jose finally succumbed to his disease, we surrounded Michael as best we could.  Shortly thereafter, he decided that he needed to get good and right with Jesus.  At his baptism service, we gathered around the sunken-in baptistery.  Our tears mingled with his tears and those of his mother from North Carolina, his daughter and his grandson.  When he died later that year, he not only did so reconciled to his family, but he blessed his church community with evidence of resurrection.  The resurrection was not simply the lives of Jose and Michael, but that little church community who rediscovered what it was to be the church.

            I asked the young people in the discipleship class to think about what is going to be different about their lives now that they are baptized. 

            They didn’t always have a clear answer, but they considered what it might be like to exhibit evidence of resurrection.  The waters of baptism remind us of new birth.  They remind us of death and resurrection.  They remind us that we have—all of us—made a conscious decision to be here right now in this place at this time.  Will our time from here on be moving us toward despair or resurrection?  Will our focus be upon what is impossible because the world says so, or what’s possible with God’s help?

            Resurrection is the conviction that hope still exists. 

            Resurrection is the experience that we can endure even the great crosses of life and come out on the other side. 

            Evidence of the resurrection is what we’re called to be. 

Is the gift of resurrection one that you can claim?

I see it in the faces of the people gathered here.

            I see it in the recovery from disease or addiction that some of you have experienced.

            I see it in the restored sense of purpose that some of us have.

            I see it in the joy that comes on Easter day. 

            When I look at these young people making this momentous decision to walk in the ways of discipleship, I see evidence of resurrection.  Who knows what they will come up with?  Who knows what truths they will see?  Who knows how they will challenge us and rock us out of our complacency?

            Those scared disciples got together shortly after the resurrection and sure enough began telling the stories of Jesus.  They kept interpreting the meaning of their lives in light of the stories of Jesus and the ongoing revelation of God.  That is when the resurrection really started happening, when people’s lives began to change.  Jesus’ earthly life was over.  His body was dead.  But he lived when people began to change their lives because of the story of his life.

            The point is we have seen it.  And the more we acknowledge it, the more it builds steam and moves forward.

            Jesus would not have been happy if we were simply to look back at his life and remember what a great guy he was.  Jesus calls us all to resurrection. 

We are called to rise up out of our mundane lives. 

We are called to no longer look at the world through the eyes of the hopeless.  

We are called to look at the possibilities which exist in this life. 

We are called to live life with a renewed sense of hope and power. 

We are called to rise up and take a stand. 

We are called to rise up and say “you can count on me to continue Christ’s work as we say no to bigotry, to ageism, sexism, classism, me-firstism, shortsightedness, and condemnation of other people in the name of religion.”

            We are called to rise up and say “the risen Christ is in me and I have the power to see a new day.” 

A day without addiction.  

A day without ambivalence.

A day in which I embrace compassion. 

A day in which I manifest a Spirit of love for all of God’s people. 

A day in which I will do all I can to comfort the afflicted and if need be afflict the comfortable. 

A day in which we might come closer to that time prophesied of old:  where all people might come together in God’s holy mountain and be treated as valuable and sacred human beings.

But we can only do any of that through the power of the one who lived, died, rose on the third day and lives in each of us. 

Sisters and brothers, seek out the living Christ and in everything we do let us continue to claim the gift of resurrection for all of us.

For the gift of resurrection makes it possible to get up every day.

The gift of resurrection makes it possible to claim the gifts of endurance, discernment, patience, forgiveness, garlands, presence and even our own individual gifts.  When you use any of these gifts, you are giving evidence of the gift of resurrection.  You are showing how God works in the world—rising up in each of us and urging us on to a more healthy, blessed and meaningful future.

So sisters and brothers, claim your gifts.

Remember that the gift of resurrection is God’s gift to you.

The evidence of resurrection is your gift to the world and back to God.

May we claim our gifts and may we experience the evidence of resurrection today and every day.

Christ is risen,

Christ is risen,

Christ is risen,

Christ is risen, indeed!