Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
Matthew 27:62--28:15a
Resurrection

Easter Sunday is almost a given. Having finished their Easter Egg hunts and opened their Easter gifts, they put on their finest and come to church to sing the same triumphant hymns and hear the same message about the resurrected Christ.

Does that mean you just grab last year's Royal Performance sermon and deliver it again? I hope not.

I would try something different, something that can't help hold people's attention. Instead of eggs or lilies, I would take a common household toaster, the kind that pops toast up vigorously. I would set it on the communion table, plug it in, and start toasting two slices of bread.

I would explain that we know the Passion/Resurrection story so well, that it no longer has any surprises for us. As Presbyterian minister Michael Farris put it, “We treat Easter like a toaster. We drop Jesus into the ground on Good Friday and wait for him to pop up again on Easter morning!”

You cannot, of course, predict when that toaster will pop. When it pops, reload it with more bread and start it again. Each time it pops reinforces the message about the shallowness of our Easter expectations.

While the toaster keeps popping, I would re-tell the story of Easter morning – with recurring interruptions from the toaster! – either from Mary's perspective (see excerpt below) or from inside the tomb.

I would try to imagine what it's like to be restored to new life, and still be buried alive. The darkness. The closed space. Feeling around. Perhaps almost panicking. And then to hear the giant stone moving, grating against the rock surface. And in a tiny corner, the first crack of daylight appearing, a slim crescent like a new moon. As it opens wider, the light of dawn spills into the tomb. And the sheer rejoicing – the feeling of release, of freedom from pain, from suffering, from injustice, the joy of life restored, renewed, reaffirmed...

I would suggest that this is both a one-time story, and a universal story. The Bible and Christian tradition assert that it happened to Jesus. But as Jesus is present in “the least of these,” which includes us, the same experience is also ours.

Easter reminds us that we too can share that rejoicing, that freedom, that joy... It's more than just Jesus popping up again.

Excerpt from Last Chance: The Final Week of Jesus' Life, (Wood Lake, 1989, pages 139-142)
Knowing the end of the story gives us an unfair advantage over Jesus' followers. We know about Easter; they didn't. When they gathered at the foot of the cross, they knew just one thing – it was over. All that they had done, had experienced, had hoped, for the last three years – it was all over.

There was no hope. The cross offered no reprieves, no stays of execution, no last minute phone calls from the governor. Once the victim was fastened to the cross, the only possible outcome was death. And death is forever.

That was the hardest thing for us to face after our son Stephen died. That we would never see him again. Never. It's a terrible, aching, empty feeling. And everyone who has lost a child, a partner, a dear friend, knows it.

Unless we can remember that feeling, we can't begin to understand what Easter felt like.

Mary certainly didn't expect to see Jesus again, when she came to the tomb early that Easter morning. It had probably been the worst three days of her life. She was at Calvary. With the other women, she stood and watched.

At first, every thought, every prayer, would have urged him to keep struggling. “While there's life, there's hope,” she would tell herself.

As she saw how much effort each breath took, her hope would begin to fade. She'd start to realize that her hope was really for herself, because she couldn't imagine life without him. Slowly, as she heard him suck in each shuddering breath, she began to realize that the only hope for him was death.

And she would begin to say, “Please, let him die... but not with this breath... not yet...”

Her eyes must have been too full of tears to see, but she could still listen. Listen, to each breath, dragged into his lungs by muscles straining against the relentless pull of his outstretched arms... And then there were no more breaths.

I know how she felt. For I have been there too.

She longed to go to anoint his body, to care for him one last time. But she couldn't. For by then the Sabbath was starting, the Jewish day of rest.

All through that endless Sabbath, she had wept and waited.

Early the next morning, she came to the tomb, hoping to offer him one last gift of her love, one last act of devotion. But the body was gone. Whoever had taken it had robbed her of her last chance. She didn't even have his corpse to cry over.

Is it any wonder that, when she saw someone through her tears, she cried our frantically, “Tell me where you have taken him...”

Then she heard her name: “Mary.”

She knew the voice. She knew the person. He was not dead. He lived.

In that instant, all the pain, all the loss, lifted off her. The endless waiting, the rears, the agony, the bleakness of her life – it was all gone. And all that joy, that relief, came bursting forth in one word: “Rabboni.”

The word goes by so quickly when we read it in John's gospel. But if we could hear it as she said it, none of us would have any doubts about the reality of Easter.

JIm's full List of suggestions for preaching these stories