Easter; March
31, 2013
Acts 10:34-43
Ps.
118
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12
I don’t think we are too terribly sure about resurrection.
As it says in the Gospel, “these words seemed [to us] to be an idle tale.” If
the first witnesses to Jesus’ rising from the dead don’t believe, how can we?
We are so terribly caught up in the here and now, the to-do
list, the worry and strain of everyday life. Life does consume us: children and
grandchildren, sickness and health, unemployment and underemployment, being
bored and stressed. “The world is too much with us,” as the poet William
Wordsworth wrote
… late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; --
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon![i]
Of course, that is not the curse only of modern, industrial
life – or post-modern, digitized life. Wordsworth wrote in the early 19th
century, and the disciples lived in the 1st. All the disciples, women and men,
were so caught up in the mundane they could not see the glorious even when it
hits them in the face. As they approach the tomb on that Sunday morning, they
go there still as disciples, followers of Jesus – but disciples who don’t
remember the lessons, and followers who have forgotten the way.
They have forgotten the everyday miracles Jesus performed
among them: the people he healed, people who were restored to family, to
community, to life, from their crippling infirmities that kept them isolated
and alone. They have forgotten the stories he told, where the lost were found,
the alienated and rejected reunited with their loved ones, the children
restored to the bosom of their families. They have forgotten the grace, the
no-holds-barred welcome God gives each of us, all the time, the assurance that
there is now and always enough – and more – to go around. The world – from the
entry into Jerusalem, to the Passover meal, to the betrayal, arrest, trial and
crucifixion – has indeed been too much with them.
As disciples, on that Sunday morning, they have forgotten
all those things. But it is at the moment when we see them realize that this
indeed could be the most powerful of all of Jesus’ miracles that they change
from disciples into apostles – from forgetful students into the ones who run
pell mell into the world to tell this story, eye-witnesses to the amazing thing
that had happened.
But what about us? We for whom this 21st century world is
still too much with us? The writer Anne Lamott has chronicled this world, and
how a confused, sometimes fragile, often brave in spite of the odds, ordinary
American woman keeps in touch with her own spiritual center and finds much
evidence of grace in the world around her. I picked up her book Help, Thanks,
Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, for my Good Friday-to-Easter reading, because
I knew she would ground me in the here and now – and help me find a way to
understand the resurrection in this world that is too much with me.
Lamott lives in northern California, and as an adult, over
twenty years ago, found her desperate way into an ordinary Presbyterian church,
which she still attends. What she means by prayers of “help” and “thanks” I’ll
leave to you to read on your own, but this little bit about the prayer of “wow”
stood out to me:
Even though I often remember my pastor staying that God
always makes a way of no way, periodically something awful happens, and I think
that this time God has met Her match – a child dies, or a young father is
paralyzed. Nothing can possibly make things okay again. People and grace
surround the critically injured person or the family. Time passes. It’s beyond
bad. It’s actually a nightmare. But people don’t bolt, and at some point the
first shoot of grass breaks through the sidewalk.[ii]
Even in this early early Easter, when winter snows could
still come swirling back tomorrow – in these late days, when we are dealing
with a world of burdens and worries – resurrection is all around us, like that
grass breaking through the sidewalk. If we pay attention to this world around
us, we can, like the disciples, make that transition from forgetful learner to
amazed apostle. As Anne Lamott says, “… when all else fails, follow
instructions.”
… breathe, try to slow down and pay attention, try to love
and help God’s other children, and – hardest of all, at least to me – learn to
love our depressing, hilarious, mostly decent selves. We get thirsty people
water, read to the very young and old, and listen to the sad. We pick up litter
and try to leave the world a slightly better place for our stay here.[iii]
Paying attention to that – to all of that – to those
ordinary miracles Jesus taught us, of bringing health and wholeness and hope
and life in the simplest of ways – we can be very sure there is resurrection.
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