The Church of Our Redeemer
Spiritual Growth :: Sermons
Easter Day 2010
Luke 24:1-12
When I graduated from college, lo these many years ago, I did an old fashioned job search, I was trying to get a job in book publishing. Remember how people use to do that and actually send paper resumes through the mail and everything? Well, I lined up a bunch of interviews and my brother, who already had a fancy banking job, took me out to dinner one night and gave me some big brother advice. He said, Kate, only three things matter in a job interview. You just need to tell them, that you’re smart enough, that you’re a nice person, you’ll be easy to work with, and third, that you won’t mess up, you need to make them believe you have a high fear of failure. It was good interview advice, and it probably got me a job. But looking back on that, I wonder if that’s the kind of advice, the kind of thinking, that Easter breaks open and turns upside down. Easter is about God’s new life, and perhaps is also about letting go of our fear of failure.
There was probably a lot of fear, as well as grief, present on that first Easter morning. It was early in the morning, on the first day of the week, and the women went to the tomb, to prepare the body of their dead teacher and friend for burial. But there’s no body, the tomb is empty, and they encounter only strange people who ask them an important but perplexing question: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He’s not here.”
On Thursday night I talked a bit about Jesus’s death, how Jesus died for us and how the meaning of his death is in his self-giving love. That is central to Christian faith, but our Holy Week observances don’t end with remembering the Last Supper or with Good Friday. Jesus died for us. But Jesus is not dead.
Maybe it would be easier if he were. A dead Jesus doesn’t ask anything of us. If Jesus is dead, all we need to do is honor his legacy, as the women did by going to the tomb. A dead Jesus doesn’t ask us to change anything, or to make hard choices in our lives, or to trust in him and step beyond where we are comfortable going. *
We know that Jesus died for us, but do we know that Jesus is risen for us?
Jesus is not dead and our job is not to honor his memory but to live -- with him and through him and in him, and let him live in us. And that means giving up our old ways of living (which might include trying to make other people think that you are smart and nice and won’t make mistakes) and to enter into new life with him. And it might mean giving up our fear of failure.
Because Jesus failed, right? The whole Jesus movement failed, Jesus inspired and helped a lot of people, but in the end they were all shouting for his death, and even his closest friends betrayed him and ran away. When the women went to find the disciples on Easter morning to tell them that the tomb was empty, the men weren’t strategizing about how to carry on Jesus’ message now that he was gone. They were all in hiding, trying not to get arrested, thinking about going home and getting back into the fishing business.
There was probably no more rock-bottom moment than when those women walked into the tomb, the place of their deepest fears. And yet, what did they find in this place of fear and death? Nothing. Nothing.**
It was empty. That’s Easter. That when we finally face our worst case scenario, God has made it empty.
Why do you seek the living among the dead? Jesus was raised for us. What if death is not the last word for us? What if we could fail – as Jesus failed, as the disciples failed – what if we could mess everything up and fall down, but then but then get up again, and start over and do something new? (Pause) Think for a minute about the thing you are worried about right now. What’s the worse thing that could happen? What if we were OK with letting it happen -- OK with looking like an idiot in front of other people, OK with losing a job, Ok with facing an illness, even OK with letting a loved one let go of this life and go on into God’s kingdom, knowing Jesus has been there before us. Not happy about it, but knowing that with God’s help we’re able to deal with it, because we know that God will bring us something new, will bring us to a place beyond it just as God did with Jesus. What if we could let go of our fear of failure, our fear of death, our fear period? That’s Easter, and that’s what resurrection is.
The deepest meaning of resurrection is about new creation. Through Jesus’s resurrection, God creates everything new again, and all that was hopeless is made into new possibilities and new hope. What in us needs to be created new? Are we allowing God to do that in us? Or are we holding back because of our “fear of failure.” You know I don’t mean to harsh on my poor brother, he’s 20 years older since then, too, he’d never say that now. In fact, not too long ago he told me his new job hunting technique was to take a job he had no idea how to do, that felt way over his head, and then just try to do it, learn and grow on the job.
That sounds like an Easter way to live to me, and maybe a good metaphor for letting God’s new life grow in us. We may have no idea where it will take us, and we may feel way over our head, but Jesus is not dead, and Jesus will show us the way. The tomb, the place of our deepest fears, is empty, and resurrection opens up new life to us.
Maybe this is all summed up best by a line from a poem from the Sufi poet Rumi, who wrote many poems about Jesus and this is from one of them:
He is a letter to everyone
You open it.
It says, “Live!”
*Awaken, the Rev. Andrea La Sonde Anastos
**Sermons that Work,