"What is Your Story?" [Easter Day Sermon]

“Resurrection of Christ and Harrowing of Hell.” Artist: Unknown Icon Painter, Russian (early 16th century). Public domain.

Lessons:
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10

Psalm 118:14-29

“I know that you are looking for Jesus . . . .He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.”

A question at breakfast

“So what is your story?”

My new acquaintance leaned over and asked me that question while we were having breakfast early one morning at a downtown Portland hotel just as I was pouring cream into a fresh cup of coffee

It took me by surprise. I was startled by the directness of the question.

Not much ramping up here. No polite talk about weather—that perennial icebreaker.

Just those five words: So what is your story?

Looking back on the conversation, I have to admit it was a pretty good question.

For no matter what age we are we all have a story.

It‘s the story we tell—if only to ourselves—about who we are and what really matters to us.

No significant relationship can be built if at some time we don’t reveal some essential pieces of our story—if we don’t speak about the deepest truths that have shaped our life.

So, then what is your story?

A tale of two Marys

It’s a question we might ask those two Marys—Mary Magdalene and the other Mary—the women mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel as they begin their walk to the place where Jesus was buried.

We can be sure that they did have a story to tell.

It would certainly include a young rabbi—the teacher they had been following along the dusty roads of Galilee . . .

a teacher whose charisma, whose striking deeds of healing power, whose provocative stories carried an undeniable ring of truth.

But so quickly—so very quickly—this story so filled with promise, so bursting with hope for the future, all came to an abrupt end.

They would surely tell us about the events of recent days when other followers of the teacher had fled for their lives in the wake of a betrayal by one of their own, Judas by name.

And we would have heard about that brutal confrontation with the religious and civil authorities—the interrogation. And then there were the denials by Peter, someone from their own inner circle—I never knew him!

We might ask where were the men? For it was women, you see, who alone stayed with the teacher until the very end.

These two Marys—along with other women—were present when their teacher was brutally executed by an act of the imperial authority.

And these same two Marys were even present for his burial in a borrowed tomb.

Maybe they would tell us of the crushing weight of defeat they were carrying as they begin their walk.

There’s nothing to believe in. They might whisper.

Nothing to hold onto.

How can it all be over?

But this is where—as they approached the tomb on that Easter morning—that their story takes a sudden turn.

Matthew of all the Gospel writers adds some dramatic touches to the story: an earthquake, a heavenly messenger whose appearance was like lightening, whose clothing like snow.

And now, some two thousand years later, we are still pondering the story of the women.

An intervention

However we may chose to comprehend this mystical story of Easter, some things are clear. Luke Timothy Johnson writing with a historian’s eye tells us:

The Gospels do not support the explanation that during his ministry, Jesus founded the sort of movement that appeared across the empire in the middle of the first century. His ministry only lasted from one to three years and ended with his violent death. His teaching was unsystematic and often indirect. It did not provide the blueprint for a community’s life. . . .

The Gospels—[including the ending of Matthew]—make clear two things: something intervened between Jesus’ death and the start of the mission in his name, and the mission had a different character than Jesus’ own ministry because of what intervened.

What intervened and what gave shape to the new movement was the claim that Jesus had risen to new life after his death and that his followers had been empowered by his spirit. The birth of the Christian movement is the resurrection experience. [1]

Cambridge quantum physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, writing in a book on The Intertwining of Science and Religion:

The resurrection is the pivot upon which Christian belief turns. Without it, it seems that the story of Jesus’ life and its continuing aftermath is not fully intelligible. . .

The grounds for belief . . . and the need to understand how the influence of Jesus continued against all apparent odds, are sufficient to persuade me of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. [2]

Christians have claimed that in the resurrection of Jesus God did something new, creating what the early church came to call the Eighth Day of Creation.

The Hebrew creation story had seven days—the days of the week. Saturday, the seventh day, was the day of rest, the Sabbath day.

In the resurrection of Jesus, God was embarking on a new act of creation—the Eight Day.

So Sunday became the first and eighth day at the same time.

The Eighth Day—the day of the resurrection—marks a new beginning for God.

A new energy was released.

A spiritual supernova had exploded.

All that Jesus said about the coming reign of God—all his teaching, all his reaching out with a healing touch to those in need—was more that a pious dream fast fading away.

With Easter it all became in the power of God a new and living reality.

A new chapter in the human story was being written.

Finding your story

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once suggested that the only way to answer the question, “What am I to do?” is to ask a further question, “What story or stories do I find myself a a part of?” [3]

For Christians, this story—this Easter story—is our defining story—the story that gives meaning to all the others.

But the most curious part of the story, for me, is that Easter was not an ending, but Easter marked a beginning.

For the power of this story is that it is as much about God as it is about Jesus.

God was doing a new thing.

This turn in the drama, though, comes at a towering cost.

Easter is not about writing a new ending to the Jesus story.

Easter moves deeply—redemptively—but always through Good Friday.

It is God’s power alone that transforms the hard wood of the cross into a new green shoot bursting with life.

Going home

So how can Easter happen for us?

If we look beyond the brief elements of dazzle in this morning’s Gospel—the earthquake, the appearance of an angel, and that fleeting encounter with Jesus.

What should really dazzle us in the story of Easter is the invitation to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to experience Jesus in the familiar setting of Galilee.

Jerusalem—the place of Jesus’ death—was alien territory.

Galilee was home.

Jesus was to be found and encountered in Galilee—familiar ground to those followers closest to Jesus.

“I know that you are looking for Jesus . . . .

He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.”

And it is in the Galilees—the hometowns of our lives—where Jesus’ redemptive work is still carried out.

Galilee is where we live and work.

Galilee is where we experience our victories and face our daily struggles.

Galilee is where we die our little deaths.

Galilee is where we find our world of close relationships—our friends and family, those we love most deeply.

Galilee is where our longings, dreams and memories are born.

What happened in Galilee was that the followers of Jesus were given a commission—

they were given work to do.

Every riven thing

Poet Christian Wiman—the editor of Poetry magazine—in recent years came to embrace the Christian story as his own.

And the result was the transformation of his life.

His poetry was affected.

After a dry period he began writing poems again.

Now, he says, “there is more air in the poems.” [4]

His everyday life was transformed.

So in the title poem of his new collection he could write, “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.”

An Easter invitation

We are invited to be part of God’s story—to continue Jesus’ redemptive work—to bring “air” to our congested world:

To bring release to those who are captive to addiction and to violence.

To stand alongside those who live amidst the ruins, those who have lost their way.

To pray and to work for justice and for a reconciled world.

To seek to bring the force of love and compassion to bear upon the principalities and powers—the institutions and structures that can oppress and defeat the children of God.

To create and to heal, to teach and to learn . . . to honor and to safeguard the gift of creation.

What might it mean if like Christian Wiman and countless others we find ourselves in a story that is truly worthy of our lives?

What would happen to us if this timeless story—this story of new life—became fully our own?

So that if someone, someday, asks us—What is your story?

What if we then would reply – my story is an Easter story!

What if . . .

What if—on this day—Christ is risen . . . in us?

______________________

Endnotes:

[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The New Testament:  A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press. 2010. p. 17. (Italics mine)

[2] John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion.  New Haven:  Yale University Press. 2005, pp. 83, 87.

[3] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Second Edition, University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, Indiana. 1984. p. 216.

[4] [1] “Pain, prayer, poetry:  An Interview with Christian Wiman” by Amy Frykholm, Christian Century. April 19, 2011. p. 26.