Sermons

Living Into the Resurrection

Good morning, St. Mark’s! 

First, a little preface: I have to say what a privilege it is to be here with you and to share the good news on the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, or, as we call it, Easter. Although I didn’t grow up in this church, I first came through the doors 17 years ago, when I was 22. So really, on some level, I did grow up in this church. Today I am subbing in for our rector, the Reverend Michele Morgan, who is away due to a death in her family. And I have conveyed your love, prayers, and condolences to her. I know we’re looking forward to her returning to us soon. Okay, on with the sermon! 

Several years ago, I was serving at a church in Pflugerville, Texas, that met in an elementary school cafeteria. This was when I was in school at Seminary of the Southwest, in Austin, and the school had a beautiful tradition for Easter Vigil, which is a service that takes place on the Saturday night before Easter. As you can imagine, seminarians go hard when it comes to Holy Week. So that Easter Eve, I was up at a three-hour church service, followed by a raucous reception in the middle of the night. The next morning, I walked into the elementary school, a little tired, a little worse for wear, but also genuinely looking forward to the day. And one of the members of the church greeted me at the door, looked at me, and said: “That’s not an Easter look!” I’ll never forget it. “That’s not an Easter look.”?

And at first I thought she was talking about my outfit, my Easter lewk, like L-E-W-K. But, if you know me, you know that my Easter outfit was fantastic. Then I realized that she was talking about my expression. Easter is supposed to be about joy, celebration, champagne corks, and trumpet fanfares, right? And here I was looking something between exhausted and trepidacious.

But I think that maybe my Easter look, my expression that morning, might have been exactly right. Because as I read this gospel, there is joy, yes, but there is fear. There is also confusion, probably even desperation. In Matthew’s account of this story, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary don’t meet Jesus at the tomb. They meet a terrifying angel sitting on a rock, an angel whose appearance was “like lightning.” The guards are so stunned that they become “like dead men,” which sounds to me like a Greek idiom for passing out.

The Marys only meet Jesus after they have fled from the tomb. When we imagine the resurrection as just one emotion, one experience, we flatten the story. These were real people like us, who experienced the whole Feelings Wheel of emotions. They were traumatized people who had seen their teacher brutally killed just three days earlier. 

I think of all of us as living in that time with the Marys, the time in between seeing that the tomb is empty and meeting Jesus on the road. We’ve heard the good news, but we are still processing. We also live with both hope and fear. We also carry our wounds and aspirations with us.

We live in a world that is so profoundly broken by hate, greed, and self-interest. We live in a country that is revoking rights and separating families. It would be easy to fall into despair. 

But. But we also have the example of the Marys, women who heard the news of resurrection and held on to hope in spite of fear. And we have the examples of holy people who have come before us: Shiprah and Puah (the Hebrew midwives who saved Moses), St. Elizabeth of Hungary (a princess who smuggled food for the poor under her cloak), Harriet Tubman (who led enslaved people to freedom in the underground railroad), and Dolores Huerta (who organized farm workers for better working conditions, even as she herself suffered abuse). The examples of these people saints show us that love, too, is a profound force, one that can bring about new life, that can change everything. We are only here today because the Marys women acted faithfully in spite of their fear. 

Verna Dozier, a renowned theologian who was a member here at St. Mark’s, wrote extensively about the call of Christians. In her book The Dream of God, she tells us. “The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’ Does the world come nearer to the dream of God because of what you believe?” The world came closer to God because of what the Marys experienced and testified to.

I heard echoes of Verna Dozier this week in our bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde’s, remarks. Addressing the clergy, Bishop Budde asked us to consider the gospel of our lives. She reminded us that the gospel isn’t just the testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Indeed, we are called to live out the gospel. We are called to embody the resurrection. Many may only know and experience these things through their relationships with us. 

Where are you living into the resurrection? Is it in your relationships, work, hobbies, or disciplines? Or what areas have become a place of shame or heaviness? Those same emotions may be God calling you to resurrect those areas of focus. Food for thought on this Easter Sunday. 

And so, my friends, my prayer for us today is that we extend a hand instead of a fist, that we enter into a dialogue with curiosity instead of judgment, and that we engage in protest to protect the most vulnerable among us, because when we do, we are living into the resurrection. And when we see another human being, whether here in this country or halfway across the world, as a child of God made in her image, we are seeing with Christ’s eyes. And that is the real Easter look.

Amen.