Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
Grace and
peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
There are
a couple of phrases that have entered our collective lexicon
that are
somewhat helpful to us, but not always.
These are
‘life goes on,’ and ‘the new normal.’
Whenever
there is a sudden trauma in our lives,
especially
when there is a death,
well-meaning
folks say, ‘Life goes on.’
I counsel
people about what to expect in the first year after a death
and I may
use the phrase ‘the new normal.’
Perhaps we
even use these phrases to comfort ourselves.
‘Life goes
on,’ we say, as if trying to convince ourselves.
And indeed
life does go on.
After a
period of shock and grief, we eventually become adjusted to tragedy.
We even
see this as we as a nation
adjust
ourselves to acts of indiscriminate violence
at
schools, universities, public events, and military bases.
After a
brief focus on these terrible events,
some
hand-wringing and angry calls for reform,
these
events quickly fade from the public consciousness
as the
next news cycle brings more events
upon which
to focus our attention.
We as communities
are okay with the deaths of so many young people
from drug
abuse, even as we legalize drugs in order to obtain revenue
and
supposedly drive down crime.
We get
used to ‘the new normal,’ and we say, ‘life goes on.’
While
perhaps the phrases are peculiar to our time and place,
this
sentiment is hardly unknown.
After all,
the women processing to the tomb of Jesus
were
expressing this in their actions early in the morning on the first day of the
week.
The new
normal was that Jesus was dead,
and life
was going to go on.
They were
going to see the tomb,
perhaps to
reconcile themselves to this new normal,
before
they had to move on to a life without Jesus.
And they
encountered not a gravestone,
but an
empty tomb, and an angel.
Imagine if
the angel had said,
‘Life will
go on.’
Would
anyone have told that story?
Would we
be here this morning?
I’d wager
we’d be somewhere else.
Imagine if
the angel had counseled the women
that they
were now in a ‘new normal,’
and that
they would slowly get used to it.
Such an
angel would be a mere dispenser of human wisdom,
cold
comfort indeed.
Instead
the angel uses a phrase that is stunning
in both
its simplicity and its audacity.
‘Do not be
afraid.’
These are
words not only to reassure the women
in their
fear at the appearance of an angelic being,
but a word
that they may come back to again and again.
‘Do not be
afraid.’
Fear death
no more,
for Jesus
has been raised.
The new
normal is no longer death, but life.
Now the
women leave the tomb ‘with fear and great joy,’
and they
encounter Jesus on the road.
‘Do not be
afraid.’
Again, not
only a momentary word of reassurance
to those
who are seeing a dead man,
but a
watchword which shall now echo through their lives.
This is a
message they are to take to the disciples, to us.
a message
from God himself.
This word
shatters the worldly wisdom of ‘Life goes on,’ and the ‘new normal.’
It is not
death that has the last word, but life.
It is no
longer sin that has the last word, but forgiveness.
It is no
longer evil that has the last word, but God.
‘Do not be
afraid!’
So why is
there so much fear in the world?
Why is
there so much fear in the Church?
Among
God’s own people, those of us who gather
to hear
the Word of Resurrection,
fear rears
its ugly head.
Jesus may
be raised, but life goes on in the new normal.
There is
the new normal of disease and divorce and depression,
there is
the new normal of decay and death.
With a
word Jesus would dispel these,
not that
we do not have to undergo trials,
but that
they might be transformed.
They no
longer can overcome us,
for God
has overcome sin and death.
Why is
there so much fear in the Church?
For there
are those in the Church, the pastors among them,
who fear
that the Church is dying.
We see it
around us in the culture,
we see it
around us in our congregations,
that the
churchgoers are graying,
that
attendance and offerings are dropping,
that the
pastor is often the youngest in the room.
We long
for the old days
when we
had to set up chairs in the back
and in the
narthex for Easter Sunday.
We cannot
afford to tithe,
we cannot
afford even the time to go to weekly church
in this
expensive and busy world.
God will
forgive us, after all.
Even some
of you out there may think,
‘I am too
busy for weekly church.
God will
forgive me.’
This is
the new normal, and even though the church shrinks
in stature
and statistic, and may die,
life will
indeed go on.
‘Do not be
afraid!’
This word
shatters the new normal.
‘Do not be
afraid!’
This word
says not ‘life will go on,’
but ‘God’s
Word stands forever.’
‘Do not be
afraid!’
If you
think, ‘I cannot afford the time to go to church,
I cannot
afford to give the way I know I should,
like my
parents and my grandparents did,
because I
need so much, and God cannot provide for me,’
If you
think, ‘Oh, the future belongs to the big churches,’
and,
‘There is nothing that I can do,’
and, ‘I
don’t want to get involved,’
then I ask
you,
do you then
dare to say that you believe in the forgiveness of sins,
the
communion of saints,
and the
resurrection to life everlasting?
How can we
say, ‘He is risen indeed, alleluia!’
if God
cannot do little things?
If he
cannot accomplish these trifles,
then he
cannot raise the dead either.
On the
other hand, if God is risen from the dead,
then there
is nothing that he cannot do.
He can
forgive the greatest sin,
he can
empower the weakest believer,
and he can
raise us from the dead.
What are
we afraid of?
That God
will abandon us?
That he
will allow us to starve, run out of time and money?
That it is
all up to us?
Or do we
believe the word of the angel
and the
word of our Lord?
Do we
believe that this word, ‘He is risen indeed,’
still has
meaning and place in our world and in our lives,
and that
is our God-given duty and joy
to make
this word known to our brothers and sisters
in
everything we do?
‘I have
loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore
I will continue my faithfulness to you.’
‘Oh, give
thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
his
steadfast love endures forever.’
‘Everyone
who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’
All of
these are different ways that we hear,
‘Do not be
afraid!’
For those
who trust in these words,
life
indeed takes on a new normal,
one that
allows us to suffer evil, trust God with our brokenness,
and sing alleluia through our tears at the grave.
It allows
us to say even in the midst of the realities of the world
that
‘Life’ with a capital ‘L’ goes on forever.
that God
has something to do with us yet,
that God
still has something to do with the Church.
If we
simply hear and hold to these words,
‘Do not be
afraid,’
if we seek
Jesus ahead of us,
we shall
find him,
and in
him,
our true
destiny and our true selves as well.
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
