It’s a Come As You Are Party! Luke 24: 1-12 Easter Sunday, 2007

I’m guessing that the last thing anyone here needs this morning is yet another reminder that today is Easter Sunday. The lilies here in the chancel, the jellybeans you received when you came in, the children’s sermon about Easter Eggs you heard a little earlier, all pointed to the obvious – today, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the 15^th of March – is indeed Easter Sunday.

And, as is the case every year, Easter symbols are everywhere. Some are Christian in origin, like the colored eggs we talked about earlier and, by reference, the jelly beans, which are popular at Easter simply because they look like little eggs.

Some are more closely related to springtime than Easter. The rabbit, for example, is a fertility symbol more than anything else.

And some are more closely tied to florists and greeting card makers than to anything sacred. The lily is a beautiful flower that florists force to bloom in time for this week on the calendar. The fact that we use lilies as memorials for people we love, and form them into the shape of a cross, makes them sacred, but the lilies themselves have no particular Christian connection.

But, springtime can remind us of resurrection, so the secular and the sacred can be connected if we stretch a little; and if you allow for a bit of creative thinking, any flower, including the lily, that grows and blooms can easily symbolize resurrection.

The point is this. There are lots of images that can remind us of Easter; chocolate bunnies and baskets filled with candy eggs and baby chicks at one end of the spectrum – the stuff of fable – and empty tombs and crucifixion images and the Hallelujah Chorus at the other – the images from holy scripture. Symbolic meanings are associated with all of these images. Some of them are helpful, while others actually cloud the true meaning of the day.

If you’ll permit me, I’d like to try to craft another image for us to fix in our minds – an image that will remind us of Easter, but more importantly, an image that will help us better understand the meaning and significance of this holiest of holy days.

The source of the image is a modern fable I recently read.

One day, or if you prefer the language of fables, “once upon a time,” God looked down at the earth and saw all the evil that was going on, and decided to take the spiritual “pulse” of the humans living at that point in time. So God sent down an angel – one with a strong background in demographics and sociology – to do a survey.

The angel returned to heaven with the results. “Well, God,” he explained, “according to our survey results, 95% of human beings are wicked, bad and evil. And 5% are really good.”

“Only 5%!” God exclaimed. “It must be better than that. I’m sending down another angel to take another survey.” Even God knows that when you don’t like the results of one poll, take another one.

Well, it wasn’t long before the second angel returned with the news. Sure enough, the results were the same the second time around. 95% of the human beings surveyed are wicked, bad and evil; 5% are righteous, and oh, by the way, that 5% are feeling really discouraged.

As you might expect, this upset God a lot. So, God decided to reach out to the righteous 5% and give them some encouragement by sending each of them an uplifting e-mail (remember, this is a modern fable, and in a modern fable, God can certainly send e-mails).

Do you know what that e-mail said? No? Oh, I see, you didn’t get one either.

I guess none of us are a part of that 5%, are we? Yet, here we sit, together, in Church, on Easter Sunday morning.

My friends, if we are to grasp the true meaning of Easter – grasp the true meaning of the resurrection we sing about and read about and celebrate today, we need to recognize this simple fact: Easter is for the 95% of us who know that we are not particularly righteous, as well as for the 5% of us who think we are.

Because the church, after all, is not a Saint’s Club. Just the opposite. It is an organization made up of the un-righteous. A sinner’s Club.

And at Easter, more so than any other time of the year, we who are listening are reminded of that fact.

Just look at the Gospel text for today:

“It was still dark,” Luke writes, “when Mary Magdalene and her friends set out for the cemetery.” "Early dawn," he says, before it was light enough for any of the Roman soldiers to see them and make them turn back.

She and the other women went sadly, with no great expectations of what they'd find. At most, these women hoped someone would roll away the stone for them, so they could enter the burial place.

The Lord whom they loved was dead. They made their way to the tomb with spices and perfumed oil, to anoint the body for burial. It was one last courtesy they could do for Jesus.

We can only guess what might have been on the women’s minds. Each might have thought to herself, "He'll never speak to me again, but I'll remember that voice forever." Or, "He's gone, but each time I meet someone he healed, the memories will return." Or even, "If only his teaching and stories about love live on, he will not have died in vain."

All those things may have crossed Mary’s mind and the minds of the other women who accompanied her. But they didn't expect to see anything but a dead body at their destination.

Imagine how surprised the women were when they discovered that the stone had been moved, and they found the tomb empty.

And then try to imagine what they must have felt when they turned around and messengers from heaven – angels – stood before them in dazzling brightness. They fell over with shock and fear.

I love the angel’s line in this story – it is one of my favorite phrases in all of scripture: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the angel says. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

”Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise?"

When the words of the angel finally sunk in, the women were overwhelmed with joy. Think of the happiest news you have ever received – the birth of a child or grandchild, the excitement of a huge promotion, the letter of acceptance from the school of your dreams…and then double it; even better, quadruple it. Mary Magdalene and her friends’ joy was even greater than that. They probably wanted to jump and shout and hug everyone in sight.

The women quickly told Jesus’ disciples the great news, but the disciples couldn't bring themselves to believe it at first.

They were intrigued, but not convinced. Curious, I suspect, but not persuaded. It wasn't until later, when they saw the empty tomb themselves and then recognized Jesus standing in their midst, that they accepted he was risen indeed.

The unbelief of the disciples is significant. These men were human. They were real. They were not so different from us.

Even though the disciples had spent the previous year listening to Jesus on a daily basis, even though they were eyewitnesses to his miracles, even though they had heard from his own lips the warning that he would be killed and the promise that he would rise again, these disciples had doubts, and fears, and ambitions and regrets.

Yet, despite all of those human frailties, that small band of disciples succeeded in literally turning the world upside-down.

Once they saw Jesus, they changed their whole view of the world. The doubts and fears that had paralyzed them were gone. They realized that Easter was for them. They realized that the resurrection had unleashed the power of God’s love and forgiveness and made it available to everyone – particularly to the un-righteous; particularly to the 95% of us that lead imperfect, generally un-holy lives.

If it was hard for these disciples to accept the good news of the resurrection, how much harder is it for us, 20 centuries later? If their beliefs were shaky, how much more difficult must it be for us to have confidence?

Yet, the central message of the gospel is that despite all of that, Easter, and the resurrection it celebrates, is ours. It is absolutely for us.

I remember many years ago, when I was a teenager, my friends and I would sometimes have come-as-you-are parties. Life was not nearly so spontaneous then as it is now, and as I’m sure many of you will remember, parties would normally require dressing up and decorating and all sorts of preparation.

So getting an invitation to a come-as-you-are party was liberating. It was spontaneous. It added an element of surprise. You could join the party no matter what you were wearing. You didn’t need to bring any thing or any one other than yourself.

And that, my friends, is the image I hope we all take away from our Easter worship today.

Easter, you see, was the first day of a new era. It was the beginning of the Church of Jesus Christ. And the Easter invitation to be a part of that Church was then and is now an invitation to a come-as-you-are party.

The door to our party is wide open.

Do you have doubts and questions? Bring them along. Fears? Join the crowd. Feelings of guilt and remorse and inadequacy? You’re in good company.

Remember the state of mind the disciples were in when they first heard the Easter message. They had questions and doubts and fears and other feelings just like ours.

And just as Easter was for them, it is for us as well. The life-changing, world-changing power of God’s resurrection love is greater than any of our shaky beliefs or low expectations.

And to top it all off, when we come to the party, as we are, questions and doubts and fears and all, we learn together that Jesus Christ can take our decidedly human faith and use it to enrich our lives as they have never been enriched before.

So, brothers and sisters, on this Easter Sunday, with images and symbols all around us, let’s grab hold of the true meaning of it all. Let’s accept the Easter invitation, come as we are, and allow the grace of god, wonderful as it is, to work in us and through us from this day forward.

AMEN