This sermon, offered by The Rev. Andy Jones at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 15, 2018, is built on the reading for Easter 3B in the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

 

Here is a recording of the sermon

 

And  a transcript of the recording:

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer.

Please be seated.

So here it is the second Sunday after Easter, mid April, happy Spring!  It’s a little hard to believe.  All the evidence points to the contrary.  Spring isn’t here yet.  And I think maybe the disciples were having similar problem this morning, or this evening, there with Jesus.

Now it’s been two weeks for us.  It’s really just still the day of resurrection for them.  The women went to the tomb and found it was empty.  Peter raced to see, came back and told the disciples what had happened.  Cleopas and his companion were on the way to Emmaus and Jesus appears to them and they know him in the breaking of the bread; and now they’ve come back to the rest of the disciples…  And suddenly, all in the same day, Jesus is among them.

So, I just have to hear it this way, and I hope you’ll indulge me for a minute.

Peace be with you.

Oh no!  Wait! Wait!  It’s really me!

Here.  Here.  Go ahead, touch me.  See?  I’m real!

Yeah, I know!  But it’s me!  See the wounds?

Ok.  Ok.  What do I have to do to convince you?

Hey, I know!  How about if I eat something?

You know… he had told them three times.  He told them that this was what would happen.  So, you’d think they’d be expecting him here in this moment.  I have to feel like maybe he’s a little frustrated or exasperated with them.

In chapter nine of Luke’s account we hear,

“The Son of man must suffer many terrible things…  He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law.  He will be killed. But on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”

Just a little later in that same chapter,

“Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of man is going to be betrayed into human hands.”

And then in chapter 18 Jesus puts it all on the line

“…he will be handed over to the gentiles; and he will be mocked, and insulted, and spat upon.  After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.”

So here we are not very long after Jesus spoke these words, and the disciples see Jesus, and they just can’t believe their eyes.  All of the evidence would point to the contrary.  Jesus with dead.

Now I guess maybe, maybe, we can cut the disciples a little slack here, and maybe in fact we should.  Because the disciples, living where and when they did, new all about rejection, betrayal, mocking, and insults.  They knew all about spitting, flogging, humiliation, and torture.  And they knew full well that speaking truth to power, working for justice and peace among all people, and demanding the dignity and respect due to every human being… could very well get you crucified, dead, and buried.  They didn’t need to be convinced that Jesus was dead.

But here he was standing among them again!  It took a lot of convincing for them to believe that this wasn’t the ghost or an apparition.  They knew all about Good Friday, but they weren’t prepared for Easter: for Jesus standing amongst them, clear proof that death is not the end, love triumphing over hate, God still with us even after all that we have done.

Nothing in their world, nothing in their experience, not even Jesus telling them that it would happen, could have prepared them for Easter.  And that’s why they couldn’t see it even when it was standing right there in front of them.

So, two thousand years later, after having had lots, and lots, of time to rehearse, and reaffirm, to re tell this story… I have to ask how prepared we are to see Easter.

Everywhere we look the focus seems to be on rejection, betrayal, humiliation, torture, and death. The world around us and knows all about, is always trying to teach us about, seems to want to live forever… in Good Friday.

That’s a dangerous thing for us because when we are constantly bombarded with Good Friday, we begin to expect Good Friday.

And then getting the Good Friday that we expect, Good Friday starts to feel “normal.”

And when Good Friday becomes normal we stop expecting, stop looking for, may even stop being able to see Easter when it’s standing right in front of us.

We might even start to act as if Good Friday is the only possibility, the only way to be in this world…  And the darkness threatens to overwhelm us.

Now that sounds pretty awful, but I have to tell you that it gets worse!

Jesus says to his disciples, and to us this morning, “You are witnesses of these things.”  You are witnesses of Easter, of resurrection, of new life!  Jesus is expecting us to proclaim the truth, the reality of Easter, in opposition to Good Friday, to all nations.  But if we’ve stopped expecting, looking for, or even seeing, Easter in the world around us… we are going to make pretty poor witnesses.  If we are going to be an Easter people, if we’re going to stand up against the narrative, the posture, the suffocating oppressive weight of Good Friday, then we have to have some Easter to which we can point.

The world around us isn’t on our side.  But I have to tell you that there’s good news.

When our eyes start to fail us, when we can’t see, whether it things in the distance or things up close; we go to the optometrist, and they examine our eyes, and they give us a prescription for new lenses through which to see the world.  We put those glasses on and we see the world, not in a new way, but in the way in which truly is.

Jesus is here, all around us, all the time.  God is here with us offering us new life.  That’s real, that’s the way it is.  We just have to be able to see it.  So what we need to do, I think, is to re grind our lenses and, maybe see the world through Easter colored glasses.

I’ve got a way for us practice.  So here’s the deal.  Today, and today only, when the baskets come around, you to take something out!  In these baskets are some little notebooks and some little labels that you can affix to them that say “Easter Sightings.”  There are 50 days in the season of Easter we’re two weeks in… now my math isn’t great, but we’re somewhere around thirty six, thirty eight if you’re counting Sunday, days left in the season.   Fifty pages on which to write down something every day that witnesses to God’s continued presence in the world, that manifests love triumphing over hate, the tells us that new life can come out of death; a way to practice seeing Easter in a world that only wants to pay attention the Good Friday.

Now if you’re really courageous you might bring these books with you to church, every Sunday between now and Pentecost, and share your sightings with the people seated next to you in the pews.  Because they probably won’t have seen the same things that you have, and they’ll have new things to share with you, and I’m sure that show both need to see and hear one another’s testimony, and witness.  And then, if you’re really brave, you carry this around in your pocket or your purse, it’s small enough, and when you’re somewhere else, not here, pull this little book out and thumb through it, let people see the pastel colors on the cover, and hope that they’ll ask you what’s in it.  And then, you will have a chance to witness to all nations the truth of Easter: that death is not the end, that love triumphs over hate, that new life comes out of things that were old or being cast down, and that we are God’s beloved, and God will never abandon us.

Jesus is here this morning saying you are witnesses of these things.

Amen