Re-membered

Easter Day 2016

1On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 8Then they remembered his words, 9and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. – Luke 24:1-12

Listen to the audio of this sermon here: Easter Sermon 2016

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee?!

That’s what the messengers say to the women who have come to the tomb, spices in hand, to serve their teacher and friend one last time. They have been through a very difficult week, they are away from their quiet Galilean home visiting the bustling city of Jerusalem, they are grieving and exhausted. This is not the time for a pop quiz about what they remember from Jesus’ teaching.

Remember?! Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee?

They are racking their brains trying to conjure up some sentence that will make this strange and upsetting scene of the empty tomb before them make some sense. Perhaps they feel like it’s on the tip of their tongue but not quite there. Others beginning to shoot glances at one another wondering where all this is going and whether they ought to get themselves out of there.

Remember?! Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee?

What they remember, perhaps, is not so much what he said as what he did. They remember the taste of the bread on the hillside when hungry people got something to eat. They remember the lump in their throats the first time Jesus sat down at a dinner table with the undesirables of Galilee and they waited to see the reaction of the religious and economic elite. They remember the friends they have seen healed and the many more they have only heard about. They remember the joyful procession with palm branches and coats strewn on the road as a royal carpet for his entry to Jerusalem. But what does any of that have to do with now, with this empty tomb? Where is Jesus?!

All those things are bouncing around in their heads, a jumble of memories flooding by after the death of their friend. Memories that now are clouded by grief. It is hard to hold onto them in the face of their pain and sadness. Not just the death of a friend, but the death of their hopes for transformation, freedom, justice…love. They put their hope in Jesus, then put him in a tomb, and now he is gone!

But for us the grief and pain is not so different. The memories of what Jesus did and said in Galilee, the message of hope and healing, the awareness of God’s presence with us all clouded by the images of pain and suffering we experience. We come this Easter morning bearing the weight of a broken and hurting world. This week’s terror attacks, the ongoing refugee crisis, the persistence of racism and xenophobia, the constant stream of gun violence. Our aging bodies, our dying friends, our depression and fear and anxiety. It is so hard to remember any words about hope and healing and – dare we say it? – resurrection. No matter how loud we shout it, “Alleluia” does not make our problems go away. No matter how many balloons we fill, or hymns we sing, or prayers we pray, our grief and pain continues to cloud our memories. And yet the question of the messengers persists:

Remember? Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee?

And finally the two dazzling messengers explain: the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. And that does sort of ring a bell…but could it be? If so, where is he? What, then, is next? What does it all mean?

If Jesus can rise again, if the Easter life of mercy and love and justice and freedom and wholeness can triumph over death, what else might be possible? If Christ is risen, then all those memories – the feeding of the hungry, the welcoming of the stranger, the healing of the broken, it all lives. It has a chance again. In the face of the worst we can imagine, there is the possibility of new life, of resurrection life, of God’s life triumphing over our darkness.

And the women don’t so much remember what Jesus said as they are literally re-membered by what Jesus has now done. By Christ’s rising from the tomb they are remade into Easter people. They are put back together from the shattering of grief and death. They are re-created to live in the Easter life. They are re-created to live with the hope of all those things they remember, the hope that God, in the midst of the worst of their pain and loss is making that Easter life a reality.

So they go running from the tomb, those memories suddenly fresh and bright again. They do not yet understand it, perhaps they do not even believe it, but they run to tell the disciples. They run to say that they remembered resurrection. They remembered the ways in which Jesus had been showing them an Easter way of life all along. They remembered the look of new life on the faces of those Jesus had touched. They remembered the joy of hope and promise and life. They remembered that Jesus warned them that it would take death and a tomb to usher in this Easter life forever.

And this, this empty tomb, it means that while we are trying to remember his words, his way of life, while we are struggling to transform our world and come to terms with our pain that Jesus has literally re-membered us, re-made us into an Easter people through the waters of baptism. In our confusion and doubt at the empty tomb, in our tears and weeping for the darkness we have been through, we are freed to live now as an Easter people. We are re-created to live in God’s Easter life now, even as we wait the promise of what is yet to come. We are given the promise that the victory is already won, that God is already turning the cosmos around no matter how things seem to turn out.

We come to worship on this Easter not just to remember the story but so that we might be re-membered. We get wet with the water that drowned us in baptism and brought us to life again. We sing the loud and joyful songs and proclaim the Easter story so that our ears ring and our bodies resonate with the news. We eat and drink the bread and wine at this table, because we need to touch and taste God’s putting us back together again with the saints of all times and places. We need the reminder of all the ways that we have been re-membered into Easter people by God’s rising from the tomb. So that finally, when we at last come to death and we see Jesus reaching out to us, we remember resurrection, because it has been with us all along. So that in our final hour we recognize the coming of God’s Easter life in all its fullest glory, and Christ himself emptying our tomb, saying to us, “Remember? Remember how I told you?”

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!