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Resurrection Faith                        1 Corinthians 15: 19                   April 4, 2010

After what was surely one of the snowiest, coldest winters in memory, it's good, this morning, to enjoy such a warm and pleasant Easter day.

But suppose the icy weather we lived through this past winter was here to stay? Suppose that April had never come; suppose, instead, that the earth had somehow spun out of its orbit and headed off into space, away from the sun, leaving us perpetually in the grip of winter's blast?

That would be a dreadful prospect, to be sure. Almost unthinkable. But, according to St. Paul, it would not be measurably worse than the state of human affairs without Easter.

Paul puts all of his Easter Eggs in one basket, laying out his Resurrection Faith for all to see: If there is no resurrection - "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ," he writes, "we are of all people most to be pitied."

"But," he continues, "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died."

So, April is here. Resurrection has overcome crucifixion. Life has overcome death. And we may, as we did to start our service this morning, "Sing Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!"

Resurrection is the very centerpiece of our faith, my friends, for two important reasons - one down-to-earth, and one more cosmic.

It is the centerpiece of our faith because of one man's escape from the grave. That's the down-to-earth reason.

And Resurrection is also the centerpiece of our Christian faith because it announces the phantasmagorical, cosmic victory of powerful love over loveless power. *

The down-to-earth, reason, put very simply is this: Jesus is alive. In the flesh.

On that first Easter Sunday, as Luke tells it, at the first light of dawn, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James - a group of wonderfully faithful women - come to the tomb expecting to anoint Jesus' body with their spices.

Jesus had been executed as a criminal. And even though in those days the bodies of criminals were typically not buried but left to the vultures and the wild dogs, an important man named Joseph of Arimathea saved Jesus' body from such an awful fate.

Joseph buried the crucified Rabbi in a tomb; and the tomb was then closed by a great circular stone. To visualize it, picture a huge stone wheel, running in a groove across the opening of the grave.

When the women arrive at the tomb, they are startled. Not only is the massive stone rolled away, but two men in dazzling apparel suddenly appear beside them and ask them what is perhaps the most important question that could possibly have been asked: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

I'm reminded about the story of a man who, one day, was frantically searching for something under a bright streetlight when he was joined by a policeman, who asked him, "Sir, what are you looking for?"

"The keys to my apartment," the man replied. And the officer generously joined him in his search.

After some time of searching in vain, the officer asked, "Are you sure you lost them here?"

"No," replied the man, "I lost them over there," pointing to a dark corner on the other side of the street.

"Then why are we looking for them here?"

"Because there's no light over there."

The women, faithful though they were, were looking for Jesus in the wrong place. And when you think about it, much like them, we too often look for Jesus in the wrong places. The convenient places, perhaps, but not the right places.

If we think back to the last night that Jesus spent on earth with his disciples - his best friends -we might gain some insight into where we might find him today.

Jesus, by this time, knew that he only had hours left to live. And he knew that his disciples would need something to keep them going - to keep their faith alive.

Jesus could have given his disciples Bible verses to read or prayers to recite or words to say, but no. Instead, he gave them simple concrete things to do that would give them what they needed when he was no longer around to teach them himself.

On the last night that he spent with his friends, Jesus taught them to wash feet and share supper. He gave them things they could get their hands on. He gave them things that would require them to touch one another.

He didn't tell them what to believe, on that last night, he said "do this, in remembrance of me."

As one scholar puts it "In the case of the meal, he gave them things they could smell and taste and swallow. In the case of the feet, he gave them things to wash that were attached to real human beings." **

Too many of us go looking for Jesus - if we go looking at all - in all the wrong places. In places where all we can do is think about him or get more information about him.

"In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest - when many of us have at least two e-mail addresses, two telephone numbers and a fax number - the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. What we need is not more about God. We need more God." ***

And Jesus was, and is, the ultimate reminder that God comes to us in the flesh.

"I would look for the Risen Lord where people are free to give rapt attention to one another's existence," writes William Sloane Coffin. "Not where they try to get attention, where they give it. For giving our attention to one another's humanity is our constant Christian calling." ****

Perhaps the holiest thing you did this morning was reach your hand out to the person on your left and the person on your right; making a connection.

That is the down-to-earth reason why The Resurrection is so important to our faith. When we reach out and touch one another, we experience the presence of the Lord - who was, and is, in the flesh.

But that's not all. There is another reason why ours is a Resurrection Faith. A reason that has cosmic significance. Eternal significance. Resurrection is the inevitable victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power.

The Resurrection proclaims an incontrovertible truth: the good that Jesus did in this world was not done in vain. It proclaims the truth that "while you can crucify God's love, you cannot keep it dead and buried." *****

Our celebration of The Resurrection is the quintessential, annual example for us that, current events and appearances to the contrary, the battle over evil is being won.

And, boy, do we ever need to be reminded of that truth, again this year.

I read a story, this week, about two old codgers who chartered a plane to go hunting for moose, this past winter, in the forest surrounding Moosehead Lake in the northwestern part of Maine. As the pilot of the little seaplane let them off on the shore of the lake he reminded them, "Like I said, I'll be back in three days. But remember, this is a small plane: there's room for the two of you and one moose."

Well, three days later, the pilot returned and taxied to the shore, and he was irritated to see, between the two old boys, not one but two moose, and huge ones at that.

"Look," he said, "I told you - just the two of you and one moose."

The old-timers looked at each other in surprise and answered: "Funny, the fellah last year didn't complain."

Well, when the pilot heard that, the fear of his competition proved greater than his other fears, and he relented. Grumbling, he helped the two men pile both moose into the plane, and the old-timers climbed in on top of them.

They took forever to get off the lake, barely clearing the trees on the far shore and, about a quarter of a mile farther on the plane clipped a particularly tall pine and crashed, sending pieces of fuselage - and moose antlers - in all directions.

Miraculously, none of the men in the plane were killed. Finally, one of the old codgers came to, pulled his head out of the moss, spied his companion a short way off and asked, "Where are we?"

His buddy replied, "Oh, about a hundred yards farther than last year."

Here's the good news: God brought Jesus back to life to demonstrate that the system that killed him could not prevail. To signal that God's justice will win out - not just in heaven, but here on earth as well.

And even when everything seems lost, when it feels much more like Good Friday than Easter, we need not be discouraged, because we know that God is in charge.

Jesus saw fit to return to the world that crucified him. That is the cosmically significant message of this Resurrection Day.

Though it doesn't appear that the world is any safer than it was a year ago and though it doesn't appear that there are any fewer children living in poverty and though it doesn't appear that we are any closer, as an American people, to being able to disagree with one another without sounding like we hate one another. . .

Yes, even though, when we look around, we realize that we're only about a hundred yards farther than last year -we can still remember this: The Resurrection changed life - our life - forever. As it happened to Jesus, so will it happen to us.

What remains, for us, is to never tire of searching for Jesus, the risen Lord, among the living; and to never stop challenging the assumptions of the powerful.

God has done God's part. Resurrection has overcome crucifixion. Powerful love has won out over loveless power. We are privileged to live in a Resurrection world, celebrate a Resurrection faith, and privileged, now, to sing, "Jesus Christ is Ris'n Today. Hallelujah!

                                                                             AMEN

*       From a sermon preached by William Sloane Coffin on Easter Sunday, 1984.
        Many of the ideas in this sermon were inspired by his words.
**      Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, p. 44
***     IBID, p. 45
****   From a sermon preached by Coffin on Easter Sunday, 1986
***** IBID, Easter 1984

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