'It is at that point, when we understand our condition, face-to-face with our reality as it is and not as we wish it were, then we are at the point that we can hear the good news,that though we thought Jesus was dead, it is not so. Like the women, we hear the voice of a messenger, not for us an angel, but like for all others after the women, the voice of a flesh-and-blood human being saying he is not here; he is risen!'
The Resurrection of Our Lord – Easter Day
April 9, 2023
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III
St Stephen Lutheran Church
Go,
tell his disciples and Peter
that
he is going ahead of you to Galilee;
there
you will see him, just as he told you.
Let
us pray:
May
the words of my mouth
and
the meditations of our hearts
be
acceptable in your sight, O God,
our
strength and our redeemer.
Has
any one of you ever heard this saying
or
something like it:
God
meets you where you are?
God
meets you where you are.
Or,
if you prefer the vernacular,
He
meets you where you’re at.
What
we might take this statement to mean
is
that we’re on some kind of journey,
that
we’re not perfect people yet,
that
we have a lot of rough edges,
areas
in our lives that need fixing,
but
even though we don’t have everything taken care of,
God
accepts our incompleteness
and
meets us where we are.
A lot of people even nowadays
struggle
with the idea
that
church is for people who have it all together,
and
that since they don’t have it all together,
it
would be a shame for them to approach God at church.
But
if God meets us where we are,
then
even with their unfinished lives
they
may encounter God,
they
don’t have to wait until they have it all together.
And
if that statement or another statement like it
is
helpful for you in that way,
I
heartily endorse it.
For
God does indeed meet us where we are.
However,
I’m going to take it a little further.
You
didn’t think I was finished, did you?
The
statement God meets you where you are is not just true,
but
I’m going to add a word to it.
God
only
meets you where you are.
And, I’d be so bold to say,
if
God only meets you where you are,
then
it might be helpful and important
for
you yourself to know where you are.
And
this is where we meet the women
on
the way to the tomb on Sunday morning,
to
take care of the body.
We
find them at the lowest place they can possibly be –
they
are on their way to the place of death,
their
future and Jesus’ present,
But it is not only the women who are at that place
of
grief and sadness, oriented toward death,
but
the disciples are facing the death of their leader
and
the death of their dreams,
and
the feeling of failure and shame.
While
Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane,
they
slept;
when
he was captured by the soldiers, they fled.
And
Peter was no doubt doubly ashamed of his failure,
for
from fear for his life in the courtyard of the high priest
he
had denied three times even knowing the Lord.
The
women mourned the death of Jesus
and
the disciples also bore their failure.
And
the world?
Jesus
may have been a glimmer of light,
but
that light was extinguished,
and
the world went on its course without him,
its
human race seething as it always had,
and
always would,
with
desire and rage and envy,
bitterness
and despair, pride and spite.
And
so this is the place where they are,
the
absolute lowest place,
whelmed
in sin, death, and evil,
without
even a shred of hope to cling to.
Often
at the beginning of a service
we
have the confession,
which
includes our saying before God and everybody:
We
have not loved you with our whole heart;
we
have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus
taught that to love God with our whole heart
and
our neighbors as ourselves
is
the summary of God’s law;
and
we say that we have not done that.
But
I had an insight one day
that
when I was saying to God,
‘We
have not loved you with our whole heart,’
I
believed that on the whole I was doing okay.
My
whole heart?
Well,
no, but who’s an A-plus student every time?
I
know I’ve got some rough edges, but who doesn’t?
Or,
on days when I was feeling really bad about myself,
maybe
I had a failing grade,
was
at around 55 percent of my heart loving God.
I
didn’t realize that even then,
I
was giving myself some credit before God,
if
only for feeling miserable about myself.
I
still wanted to have something for myself,
something
that I could bring to God as a badge of honor,
something
that God would not have done for me
that
I had done for myself.
Where
I really was, where I really am,
was
exactly at the place
where
the women and the disciples and the world
were
on Easter morning,
whelmed
in sins, assailed by evil, oriented toward death,
with
nothing to my credit.
And
it is important for me, and I believe for each of us,
to
know that on some basic level
this
is where we all are all the time.
We may not look like it, we may not feel like it,
but
we as individuals and collectively as the human race,
though
we long for holiness, life, and God,
are
captive to sin, death, and the devil.
Some
days we will feel that more deeply than others;
some
days it’s just a fact we need to keep in our heads
so
we don’t get carried away with ourselves.
So
once we’ve reached that place,
or
realize that we are always at that place,
it’s
still not at that point we meet God.
What,
you thought I was done?
It
is at that point, when we understand our condition,
face-to-face
with our reality as it is
and
not as we wish it were,
then
we are at the point that we can hear the good news,
that
though we thought Jesus was dead, it is not so.
Like
the women, we hear the voice of a messenger,
not
for us an angel,
but
like for all others after the women,
the
voice of a flesh-and-blood human being saying
he
is not here; he is risen!
The
messenger re-orients us,
turns
our faces away from despair to hope,
from
death to life.
Then
the messenger says to the women:
Go,
tell his disciples and Peter
that
he is going ahead of you to Galilee,
there
you will see
him, just as he told you.
For
the Gospel of Matthew, at least,
the
‘where you are’ at which you meet the risen Lord
is
on the way to the place
where
he has told you to go to meet him.
You
hear this at the place of failure, of fear, of death,
and
then you turn away from that place
and
you go to where you’ve been told to go.
The
women ran from the place of death
to
tell the disciples what they’d seen and heard
and
it is then and only then that Jesus meets them.
And
Jesus doesn’t go along with them
to
meet the disciples,
but
the disciples also must first
hear
the message of where they are,
so
that they may not wallow in failure, fear, death,
and
go to where Jesus desires to meet them.
The
world goes about its business on a day like this,
and
after we’ve been about our business here,
we
too will leave,
delighting
in God’s gifts
of
food and drink and recreation,
reveling
in the beauty of a spring day
upon
which God, in his infinite mercy and goodness,
has
chosen to clear the skies even over Pittsburgh.
But
first we have come here,
because
God only meets us where we are,
and
we at least know where we are.
whelmed
in sin, death, and evil,
and
so we must hear this good news not once only,
but
over and over and over again,
He
is not here, he is risen!
And
here as well he meets us,
we
receive the tokens of our Lord
in
which he is truly present to forgive each sin
and
heal each wound and save each unsavable person,
with
the promise that even death will be no more.
We
go out to return again into a new world,
or,
rather the world is it really always was and has been,
but
we see it clearly now,
each
moment of life alive with God,
each
sip of water, each morsel of food,
each
ray of sunshine and drop of rain,
received
as if directly from the hand of God.
And
each suffering we take,
if
not with unsullied gladness,
but
with a joyful assurance
that
if we receive it with faith and hope,
then
nothing, not even death,
can
separate us from the living Lord,
and
each suffering is only the road
on
which we may meet God.
Okay;
I think I’m done now.
Oh
– one more thing:
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
