Easter Sermon

Sermon

Easter 1997

Valerie Ann Hart

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

       What a glorious morning, a glorious time to celebrate resurrection, a glorious time to acknowledge that through Christ’s resurrection each and every one of us has been resurrected, made new, lifted up, healed.

Alleluia, Christ is risen

       One time I was at the grocery store about to buy some corn chips. Next to me was a woman who lifted up a bag and replaced it and said, “no one will buy this bag, it’s full of broken chips.” And indeed it was. I too passed it over in favor or one with nice big whole unbroken chips. But since then I have been thinking about what kind of chips Jesus would choose. What do you think?

       The Christian church is often described as a resurrection community. What does it mean to be a resurrection community? What do we mean by resurrection? To resurrect means to bring to life again that which has been dead, to lift up again that which has fallen, it means the transformation of that which is broken into that which is truly whole. It is taking something that is broken, dead, destroyed and lifting it up to a state that is even better than what it was before it was broken.

       In order for there to be resurrection, there must be a death of some kind. In order for Christ to be resurrected he had to be broken. There is no Easter without Good Friday. Before he could be resurrected Jesus had to be broken. We are reminded of this each time we celebrate the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper. The bread does not become for us Christ’s body until it has been broken. Through the breaking of the bread it is transformed. In the same way Jesus had to be broken in body, mind, and spirit - he had to die to who he was - he had to lose his identity as the Galilean Rabbi named Jesus - he had to disappoint his followers who each had some idea to who he ought to be - he had to resist all the demands, inner and outer, for him to be anything other than who he truly was - he had to die to it all in order for him to be resurrected as the Christ.

       We are a resurrection community, because we are a community of people who have been broken. We come to Christ, we look to the resurrection, not because we are already perfect, not because our lives are always wonderful, not because we feel full and complete, but because we are broken, each in our own way. We know that we are not perfect, that we are often in physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. That sometimes we feel lost, abandoned, empty, and afraid. We come because somehow we know, as Peter said, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”

       We are like the community that surrounded Jesus - a group of men and women who each had their own stories of brokenness. There were prostitutes, and tax collectors, passionate fishermen whose uncontrolled anger had won them the nickname “sons of thunder” and an insecure teacher who came to see Jesus at night. There were those who were greedy, and those who were afraid. There were slaves and army generals. There were those who had been diagnosed as crazy, possessed by demons, and those who had been blind beggars. There were menopausal women and epileptics. Each one had a story of brokenness. It is for this reason that I am convinced that Jesus would have chosen the bag with the broken chips. He always seemed less interested in those who were whole and sure of themselves and more interested in those who knew themselves as broken.

       And with Jesus’ death this motley group became even more broken. They dispersed, they denied their relationship with him and they hid in an upper room. Their expectations about Jesus and his movement had been broken - shattered - by the cross. Even the women who came to the grave responded not initially with joy, but with fear to the knowledge of the resurrection. What was to become of this community of broken people? The most amazing thing about the resurrection stories is not that some of his followers claim to have seen him alive, but the dramatic transformation that took place in these broken followers. Those who were hiding and afraid became fearless speakers, telling the good news of Christ. Peter who once denied he knew him found the courage and the voice to speak eloquently of his love. The women who were afraid to tell anyone eventually did and went on to share the gospel as far as Rome. This band of broken people became a force that changed the world. These frightened people risked their lives, and often lost them, in speaking out for what they believed. This community of broken people was resurrected into a powerful force. Who says you can’t use the broken chips?

       Like Jesus’ followers we are a community of people who have been broken, but we are not just a broken community, we are a resurrection community. That means that our brokenness leads to resurrection. Our brokenness leads to rising again to something that is even better than before we were broken. Just as a doctor will tell you that if you break a bone, after the bone has healed that point is stronger than the rest of the bone. Through the healing it becomes stronger than it was before the break.

       Through the healing of our brokenness we become more than we were before we were broken. Through the healing of our wounds, we become resurrection people. We have died to who we thought we were, died to our self-identity as victims, or abusers, users or sinner, haters or lovers, insecure or self-absorbed. As resurrection people we live into our wholeness. We are ready to die to that which is broken in us, to let ourselves be healed, to let ourselves know ourselves as resurrected people.

       We come to Christ as broken people, asking to be resurrected into something more, something greater. Yet, you wouldn’t know that looking around. For some reason, especially on Easter, we feel a need to present ourselves in the best possible light when we come to church. We put on our best clothes, fix our hair, shave or put on makeup. We want to look our best. And we bring our families and tell our children to behave and our spouses to make a good impression. We hide our brokenness from each other as if we believed that we are the only ones with a story of pain and suffering, of doubt and fear, of abandonment and loneliness. We forget, that this resurrection community is not about proving we are already well, but seeking out healing, it is not about already being perfect, but about being forgiven, it is not about being fearless, but learning to transform the fear, the doubt, the pain. It is about the process of resurrection. And we come together as a community to remember and celebrate Christ’s resurrection - through which we are assured that there is more, much more, unimaginably more, to life and death than we had ever dreamed. We celebrate that through his resurrection we have the potential to be resurrected, to be lifted up, and to become more. We are reassured that who we really are is so much more than the broken, struggling human being we think we are. That who we really are is a loved, resurrected, child of God, who is full of grace and joy and peace. And all we have to do to know that is to die - to die to who we think we are, to die to our pretensions of wholeness and admit our brokenness, to die to our fears and doubts, to die to the illusion that we can do it on our own, to die into the loving arms of Christ who will resurrect us from out current state into a superior state - who will lift us up - who will show us what it means to truly live.

Easter sermon

What are we hoping for, expecting, on Easter.

Easter Morning 2012

Transcribed from a sermon given

By The Rev. Valerie Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

We have a pretty good idea about why Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. The one she loved and had been following was dead. He hadn’t had a proper burial and she wanted to anoint his body. We can understand that if someone has died and hasn’t had his body prepared we would want to go and do what we can. That was her intention. What she expected was to find a stone rolled across the front of the tomb and a decaying body within.

But I ask you today, what brought you here this morning? Some of you I know are here because you come to church every Sunday morning. It’s just what you do. And I’m sure that some of you are here because someone you care about a lot wants you to be here with them. And then there is everything in between. Some of you may be here because Easter is an important time for you. Others may be here because it just seems like the thing to do and you don’t quite know why you are here but it seems like the right place to be. Each one of us got up this morning and made the decision to come here, expecting something.

Maybe you expected to have some great music which I trust we are going to continue to experience. Some of you may have come because you love the Easter decorations, the feel of Easter and the smell of Easter lilies. Some of you may have come hoping you will hear some words of wisdom. Some of you may have come to see friends. Some of you may have come expecting to be a little bit bored. We all are here for a reason.

What happens to Mary Magdalene is not what she expected. The stone was rolled away; Jesus’ body wasn’t there. It was nothing like what she expected, so she began looking, searching. She was looking for was Jesus, that is she was looking for his body. So, even when he was standing right there she didn’t immediately recognize him.

What are you looking for? What are you looking for today? No matter what you think was the reason you are here, there is something that you are looking for – something that you are yearning for. Maybe you want a little bit of a sense of peace. Maybe you are looking for hope. Maybe you are looking for a break from unending worry. Maybe you are looking for some joy. Maybe you are looking for something to change your life. What is it that you are looking for?

Sometimes it is hard to put a word to what it is that we are yearning for. But we all have those deep soul desires. Something that we are looking for, searching for.

For Mary Magdalene it was Jesus. But what she found shocked her. What she found was so amazing she couldn’t believe it at first. She didn’t recognize him until he spoke to her.

We have to remember that no one, no one at time period, expected a human being to die and then three days later be up walking around. It was not part of anyone’s expectations. Even those who believed in a life after death, did not believe it could be a body walking around. Not the Jewish people, not the pagans, not the Romans, no one expected someone who was dead to be up and walking around.

Read today of several different ways that people encountered the risen Christ. We heard Peter talking about his own experience of the resurrected Christ. We have Paul telling the story of how first Christ appeared to the disciples, and then to over 500 at one time, and then to James and much later, much later, Jesus appeared to Paul. This appearance was after the ascension, after Pentecost. There was already a Christian church, because Paul was persecuting the church. He was trying to destroy it because he didn’t believe it.

Paul was riding on a donkey on his way to Damascus when something knocked him off his Donkey and blinded him. While he was lying there on the ground he had an experience of seeing Jesus. It changed his life. He describes it as having been the most recent one to have seen Christ. He didn’t say I had a feeling that Christ was there. He didn’t say I had a dream that I saw Christ. He saw the risen Christ and it changed his life.

Now these people who had the experience of the presence of the risen Christ didn’t say “I believe that Christ is risen.” They said, “I know that Christ is risen.” When you have seen something yourself you don’t believe that it is there, you know that it is there. You can be told by someone else about something and you can say that I believe that what they are telling me is the truth. But once you’ve seen it for yourself, you no longer believe it because someone else told you, it becomes the truth to you. It becomes a fact.

There are a lot of people who don’t say they believe that Christ is risen they know it. What we say at the beginning of our service is not Jesus was raised from the dead as if it happened long ago. What we say is “Christ is risen”, right now, today. Christ is Risen. The presence of the risen Christ is as much real today as it was on that road to Damascus.

What are we looking for? What are we really looking for? I think we all are searching for the same thing that Mary Magdalene was. She was searching for Jesus. We are searching and yearning to know that risen presence. There is something within us that has brought us here today, something that has brought us here today that says I need an experience of the risen Christ.

Those experiences can look very different. Some people experience the risen Christ as a still small voice inside that they can barely hear. Some people experience the risen Christ as something that is so powerful they almost feel like they have been knocked off their donkey (to put it politely). Some people may experience the risen Christ in the face of another person.

My prayer today is that everyone gathered here today has an experience of the risen Christ. You may have had it this morning with the glorious sunrise, you may have had it as you walked into the church and you saw the decorations. You may experience it in the music, or in the readings, or in the face of someone sitting near you. Perhaps you’ll experience the risen Christ when you see the children come in. They are going to be carrying a cross with flowers. Maybe, maybe your experience of the risen Christ will be while the children are looking for Easter eggs – or when we share in the bread and wine and remember that Christ asked us to remember him by breaking bread and blessing wine.

My prayer is that each one of us get a glimpse of the living Christ, the Christ that is risen, the Christ that is here with us, and that that glimpse will answer whatever it is that you are searching for, and change your life and make it so that you no longer say “I believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead” but you can feel in the depths of your being that you know that Christ is risen and present with us today.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Easter sermon

The commercialization of Easter with cute bunny rabbits and plastic Easter eggs can make it appear trivial. But the Resurrection is anything but trivial. That Easter day long ago changed history and changes our lives today.

Easter Day 2010

Transcribed from a sermon given by

The Rev. Valerie A. Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Alleluia.  Christ has risen.

Response:        The Lord has risen indeed.  Alleluia.

You can do better than that. 

Alleluia.  Christ has risen.

Response:        The Lord has risen indeed.  Alleluia.

Much better. 

There’s a story from during the time of the Soviet Empire when the communists were ruling and were trying to eliminate all religion. They had people who were trained to go around through the countryside to all the towns and teach them about atheism.  One of these teachers of atheism, these philosophers, they called them, came to a town.  All the people were gathered because they didn’t have any choice about coming.

In this large auditorium he expounded eloquently on how atheism was the only real truth.  At the end of a couple of hours of exquisite reasoning, he looked down on this group of people and he was sure that he saw shattered faith and hopelessness, that they had been convinced.

There was a moment of silence, and he asked, “Are there any questions?”  There was some more silence.  Then way in the back of the auditorium, a man with a loud and clear voice said, “Christ has risen.”  And the whole auditorium responded, “The Lord has risen indeed.”

Christianity always has responded well to affliction.  When the culture has tried to make Christianity illegal, it has become stronger.  When it has gotten pushed down, it has grown up.  When there have been martyrs, new people have become Christians.  Christianity can resist that kind of thing.

But our culture doesn’t actively resist Christianity.  In fact, it calls itself a Christian culture.  But it has done something more insidious.  It has taken Easter and it has trivialized it.  Easter has become domesticated with cute little chickens and baby rabbits.  And Easter has become commercialized.  We all know this.

It’s become all about springtime.  Easter break is now spring break where you go party.  When you go into the stores, you see all the Easter decorations and all the nice pale spring colors. It’s all very pretty, and it’s all very nice, but not real important.  It’s become trivialized as another time to send cute little cards on Facebook.  Or perhaps you go and visit your family.

But, of course, we know Easter isn’t trivial.  That’s why we’re here.  It makes all the difference in the world.  The commercialization, the making of Easter commercial, to me is very ironic because Jesus, the one who died and has risen again, went into the temple and kicked out the moneychangers because He didn’t want the worship of God to become commercial.

We’ve done a pretty good job with Easter.  You know what I mean. I found this one, which is the one that gets me.  (Holds up a stuffed animal) It looks like a little bunny rabbit, cute, soft, fuzzy little bunny rabbit, but actually, it’s a bear in a bunny costume [Laughter].  What that has to do with the life, death and resurrection of Christ, I have no idea [Laughter]. 

Rabbits became associated with Easter because Easter was also the time of Pagan fertility celebrations, and rabbits are known to be prolific.  Nothing to do with Easter.  And then we’ve got plastic eggs.  Now, real eggs, real colored eggs came to be associated with Easter for a real reason.  The story goes, that Mary Magdalene, after The Resurrection, traveled all over the known world, which was the Roman world at that time, telling people about The Resurrection and her experience of the risen Christ.

And it said that she made it all the way into Caesar’s Palace and was meeting with the emperor.  As she was talking, the emperor said, “That can’t be.  There couldn’t possibly be a man risen from the dead.  That would be like that egg over there on the table turning red.”  She reached over and she picked up the egg, and she raised it up, and it turned bright red.

So if you ever see an icon of Mary Magdalene, you’ll see her holding a red egg.  And that’s why we started dying Easter eggs.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the tradition of Easter eggs is taken to a high art, and they still remember Mary Magdalene, and why it was done.

Here in the United States we get plastic ones (Holds up a plastic Easter egg) [Laughter].  You just go to the store and you buy them.  What do these have to do with Easter?  They’re hard.  And you know what?  When you open them up – if you had a real egg, if you really cooked an egg and dyed it and then you opened it up, you’d have something nurturing to eat.  There’s no better protein than eggs.  But when you open up one of these plastic ones, there’s candy inside?  (Walks into congregation with a basket of plastic eggs.) Who wants some candy?  Do you want to pass that [Laughter]?  Yeah.  There.  You want some candy?  Is he allowed to have a little candy? 

Response:  Yeah.

Yeah.  I’ll give you a few.  Who else wants some candy?  Anybody here?  You like candy, Bill?  Oh, Brian.  You’ll take some candy [Laughter].  All right.  Who else is brave?  Who wants to get your sugar high early [Laughter]?  All right.  We got one more here.  One more.  Bill, would you like it?  There we go [Laughter].  Great to get an Easter egg and you get a piece of chocolate candy.  Wow!  And you eat it, and it tastes good, and it’s gone [Laughter].

You’re not really filled up.  In fact, you just want more chocolate.  Sugar and chocolate just make you want more.  And it puts a little weight on too, if that’s an issue for you.  It doesn’t really nurture you.  It doesn’t really give you anything.  It looks like it would.  It has the appearance of something of value, but it’s fleeting.  It’s momentary.  And it doesn’t really nourish you.

But Easter is different.  Easter is not trivial.  Easter is the moment at which history changed.  Nothing has been the same for humanity since that day.  We even have our calendar as before and after that moment.  Everything changed.  And even if you haven’t accepted Christianity, philosophy and the understanding of the nature of humanity changed. 

Everyone has had to deal with and accept the Resurrection of Christ or deny the Resurrection of Christ since that day.  It’s not trivial, and it’s not domesticated.  It’s not a little chicken.  It’s a roaring lion.  It’s not a cute little bunny.  It’s something that transforms our lives.  It’s not safe.  It’s not predictable. 

The women go to the grave, and the first response is fear.  Not domesticated.  And, of course, it’s not commercial because what Easter has to offer is grace.  And grace is free.  You can’t make money off of grace because it’s given by God generously and abundantly. 

We have a tendency in our society to trivialize things.  I was a psychologist before I became a priest, and one of the things I noticed as a psychologist is that we weren’t very good at dealing with guilt.  Now, we were good at dealing with what’s called neurotic guilt, that’s where you feel guilty about something but you really didn’t do anything wrong. 

As a psychologist, we were good at helping people deal with the guilt that something was done to them, and helping them realize that they weren’t responsible for the fact that their mother or father abused them or whatever it is they were feeling guilty about.  We could deal with that kind of guilt.

And we could help people realize that if they felt guilty because they didn’t wash their hands that that wasn’t important.  We could deal with that kind of guilt.  But we had no answer to when someone had deeply wronged another person, when they knew they had hurt someone and they felt guilty about it.  Oh, sometimes in the liberal progressive psychology one could say, “Well, you murdered because you grew up in a poor home and you didn’t have the right upbringing” or whatever.  You blame it on the parents.

But the truth is that’s not dealing with guilt.  That’s making excuses.  And when you’re really feeling guilty and responsible for hurting someone, what you need is someone who will take it seriously, to not trivialize it, to not explain it away, but to acknowledge the pain that we have inside when we know we’ve hurt someone. 

And that’s what we have with Easter.  God never trivialized our guilt.  God never said, “Oh, it’s okay.  I understand.  You had a hard upbringing.  I understand that you’ve hurt other people.”  No.  God never trivializes the way we hurt one another.  But God will forgive it when we acknowledge it.  The God of Jesus Christ is the good father whose son goes off and squanders his money, does all kinds of nasty things.  When he comes home, the father runs to him.  The father wasn’t saying it was okay to do that, the father was expressing his love. 

The answer, what we get at Easter is that God loves us like a good parent.  Acknowledging that we make mistakes, acknowledging that we hurt each other sometimes terribly and cruelly, and yet, even on the cross, Jesus asked for forgiveness for the ones who killed Him. 

The Resurrection says that even when we hurt each other, even when we’re lost, even when we run from God, even when we pretend there’s nothing beyond ourselves, there’s still hope.  Even when we’re dead and lost and hurting inside, there’s still hope because God never gives up on us.  There is always the hope and the promise of the Resurrection.

The resurrected Christ - whatever that means to you - something happened.  Something happened that day when the tomb was empty and the frightened disciples became courageous.  Something happened, and what they tell us happened is that Christ has risen and we’re forgiven and we are loved.  And that makes all the difference.  It brings us hope, it brings us joy, and it brings us new life. 

Alleluia.  Christ has risen.

Response:        The Lord has risen indeed.  Alleluia.