Sunday, April 20, 2014

Chirst is Risen!


Sermon for Easter Vigil 2014

Rev. Rik Rasmussen

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!


It seems perhaps a bit odd to stand here and preach after hearing the drama unfold in the readings and the music.  But these readings speak to me.  Indeed the entire week of liturgy and readings starting with Palm Sunday – last Sunday up to this moment speaks to the church.  It is a peculiar thing in our society to set aside over a week to let a drama unfold.  Perhaps even more remarkable in our fast paced instant gratification world is that the church asks us to set aside forty days to remember events that took place over 2000 years ago.  But perhaps what is more odd is the degree to which this drama still speaks to us. 

St. Paul’s started this Lenten journey towards Easter with the reminder that we are mortal.  We participated in a radical ministry of taking the Ashes – the mark of our mortality outside on Ash Wednesday where well over a 100 people stopped for prayer and meditation.  But it was not just people in search of a quick bit of grace.  It was all sorts and conditions that could not get to a full service and it was also the over 100 people who came into the church for the full liturgy that the church offers.  It was clear that the world is hungry for the peculiar love that is offered by God through Christ.

Lent was bookended by St. Paul’s again taking church outside.  This past Thursday  - on Maundy Thursday – St. Paul’s was invited to participate in washing feet at St. Matthew’s.  Loreen and I went to St. Matt’s and spent a couple of hours washing the feet of people who had gathered to get food from the food closet.  The foot washing out at St. Matt’s was not the gentile Episcopal foot washing where we gather inside and ritually dribble a small amount of water onto clean feet.  This was real foot washing complete with soap, a scrub brush and ample amounts of water.  We followed the washing of feet by gently rubbing lotion into sore and tired feet and offering a pair of new socks to keep their feet clean.  A wonderful and amazing thing happened.  After commenting on how lovely it was to have their feet washed and for us to pray with them many people decided they wanted to return the favor and wash someone else’s feet.  Even – and perhaps especially – the children also wanted to wash feet.  And they did it with as much care and love as anything I have ever witnesses.  One young gentleman – after having his feet washed by his aunt stood to the side and watched us wash feet for awhile and then, in a small voice asked if he could try it.  He ended up spending the better part of an hour washing peoples feet.  Through this offering it was clear that the world is hungry for the peculiar love that is offered by God through Christ.

On Good Friday we remembered man’s inhumanity as we recalled the passion of Christ – the nailing of the God of Love to a cross.  We recalled how the authorities and even the people who had been gathering for healing turned and called for death.  The death of the God of love.  A death that came with the promise of forgiveness.  A death that shocks us down through the generations.  After all how could anyone nail the God of love to a cross?

This morning we remembered the in-between time.  That time when the church remembers that Jesus – after he was laid in the tomb and before he rose again went to the dead.  He entered into hell and offered love and forgiveness to the very people who had said no to god.  We remembered that the God of Love will continue to pursue all of us and offer unconditional love.  Even after death.

Which brings us to tonight.  To the breaking of the Lenten fast.   To a time of restoration.  We started with the new fire and then came into the church to hear the old stories.  Part of me would love to have that part of the liturgy sitting around the campfire.  After all the series of Old Testament readings are like stories that would be told around a campfire.  So imagine us sitting around the campfire listening to the lessons.  You could imagine – thousands of years ago a small child asking how creation came into being and a tribal elder gently telling the creation story that we just heard. 

Next we remembered how God heard the cries of the Jewish exiles in Egypt and sent an unlikely – and if you read his calling story – an initially unwilling Moses to lead the nation of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.  The love that heard the cries of a people who had turned their backs on God time and time again – and these people would go on to aggravate God for forty years in the wilderness.  A story told around the campfire for many years before becoming part of our written tradition. 

Then we hear the prophet Isaiah singing a love song for creation.  A song that promises that salvation is not earned but is indeed offered freely to all.  A promise that has been repeated over and over again down through salvation history – a promise made continually by the God of Love. 

Then we heard of Ezekiel’s conversation with God.  How Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones.  And those bones turn out to be the whole house of Israel.  A nation that had, once again, lost its way and turned away from the love of God.  Ezekiel’s vision is a promise that our God of Love will put new flesh on theirs and our dry bones and breath a new spirit into us.  Once again the God of love is reaching out to a people who had lost their ways.

After these readings we can come in from our campfire.  We come into the church and declare “Alleluia Christ is Risen!” and sing the Gloria. We banish the darkness and glory in the Easter light.

Which brings us to the Gospel Reading.  After the disciples “good Friday” they only knew that their teacher – the one who came to earth to heal and spread the good news was dead.  It is the morning Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to the tomb.  They are expecting to find a body that they will lovingly wash and prepare for a proper burial.  It is, once again the women.  The women who did not abandon Jesus during his crucifixion who come in the morning.  It in not the male disciples.  They are in the locked upper room.  But what do the Mary’s find?

An empty tomb and an angel.  An angel who tells them that Jesus is not there.  To run and tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus has risen.  That the death’s tomb could not hold the God of Love.  An then they run into Jesus – Jesus tells them to go to the men and tell them to follow Jesus’ earlier directions to meet Jesus in Galilee.  It is in this scene that perhaps they are starting to understand all the things that Jesus tried to tell them before humans tried to kill the God of Love.  That Jesus over and over gain, just like the stories of God that we heard in the Old Testament readings, was not going to abandon us.  Jesus came to prove that nothing could kill love.  The God of Love refuses to die or give up on us. 

That is the good news of Easter.  God created us all – every single one of us – in God’s image.  God’s dream for us and for creation is a creation of love.  God’s dream is that we – yes all of us –will be agents to help spread that love into the dark corners.  When we are in exile, like the Egyptians, we can be assured that God hears our cries.  That if we are only able to open our eyes God will lead us out of exile.   As the prophet Isaiah promises we do not have to earn salvation or love.  That for some extraordinary and peculiar reason God loves all of us.  Each and every one of us. 

When we feel like a pile of dry bones God promises to put sinews back on our skeletons and to breath new life into us.  God indeed loves his creation so much that he was willing to come dwell with us.  To prove that nothing – nothing that we do or that anyone else can do will kill God’s love.  Oh we try.  Just like over 2000 years ago and even before we have a propensity to turn our back to that Love.  But Jesus proved that we cannot kill that love.  That if we go looking for Loves tomb we will find it empty.  Not because love is gone but because is it all around us. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – the one God of Love is alive.  And we are called on this Easter to shout from the highest hills that Love will not die!  We are called – as followers of the itinerate preacher Jesus– as followers of the God of Love to help spread God’s dream of love beyond these walls.  That is the Easter Message.

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen

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