He Is Risen

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 65: 17-25 and John 20: 1-18 Sermon Title: He Is Risen Preached on April 21, 2019 It is an uncommon gift to be here this Easter morning. It is a gift to gather here for worship in this place, because simply having a church to worship in is a miracle that we must not take for granted. This week in the headlines made it clear. The Cathedral of Notre Dame was burning on Monday. From that moment on and throughout the week, this tragedy had so many searching for words. I read one journalist who wrote: The image of Notre Dame burning took my breath away. And yes, I was speechless. A series of thoughts raced through my mind, some fairly apocalyptic. It wasn’t just Notre Dame – “Our Lady” – that was being destroyed. To my mind, I was witnessing the immolation of Western Civilization. The words that kept repeating themselves as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing were simpler: This is so wrong. It is wrong. It just is. Just days before Easter, the Cathedral that took 200 years to build, that stood as something constant, something that could be counted on, was going up in smoke. This same journalist wrote, “Ah, yes, wars and revolutions come and go, but Notre Dame stands.” That’s how it’s been in Paris for 674 years, up until this week, when the city learned that even Notre Dame can be gone in an instant. In Louisiana I imagine there are at least three churches feeling very much the same thing. Three churches there were intentionally burned in racist violence between March 26th and April 2nd. What these congregations lost in the fire is the same as what we would have lost. Their church buildings held generations of worshipers, hosted thousands of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Those sanctuaries were places of safety, reminding worshipers of God’s presence among them despite wars, divorces, disappointments, and deaths. For many the church building that they lost was their constant, their grounding, their foundation, and despite the changing tides of popular culture and the ebbs and flows of human life, that constant of theirs was gone all at once. It’s wrong. It’s just wrong not to have a church on Easter. Our church mourns with our sister Presbyterian Church in Wetumpka, AL, who lost their historic sanctuary to a tornado last January. This month’s Sunday School offerings will be sent to them, to help them rebuild. This is what the church should do. Like those French billionaires and others who have pledged fortunes to help rebuild the cathedral, we must help as we can, for everyone needs a place to worship God. But we must not fool ourselves. Rebuilding isn’t going to fix everything, because the comfort and healing that the broken hearted seek doesn’t come from a building. The source of the grace and forgiveness that we all need is not stone but flesh and blood. This room may point us towards God and make us aware of his presence, but while this is God’s house, this is not the only place God lives. However, so often we mistake the container for the contents. We look at the edifice forgetting that what lies inside her walls will stand for all eternity. We go to the tomb, and ask, where is he? That’s what Mary did. She went to that place, expecting to see a stone sealing the tomb of her savior. Her meager hope was to visit the place where his remains had been laid to rest. It’s as though she went to visit the grave to lay some flowers upon it, only to see that someone had run their car into his headstone, dug up his casket, and tossed it to the side. Witnessing such desecration, she’s not just disappointed. She’s not just concerned. She’s not just brokenhearted. She must have been more than all that. I imagine that she was that fierce blend of anger and sadness that those who knew her recognized and were wise to get out of her way. From the tomb I can see her storming off to notify the disciples. Two of them rushed back to the tomb with her, but after seeing the tomb empty, the disciples just returned to their homes. That makes sense in a way. Lily and I went to the library last Friday. It was closed, so we went back home. I often go by the bank too late and find the door locked. When I do, I don’t wait around expecting it to open. I go back home. But this week I went to Kroger looking for Root Beer Peeps (yes, they make those now). I thought they were sold out because they weren’t with the regular peeps. I almost went back home empty handed, but it turned out Kroger had them. I was just looking for them in the wrong place. Mary was looking for him in the tomb when a voice broke the silence asking: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Did you hear that? “Supposing him to be the gardener.” She was right there outside the tomb, tears clouding her vision. She was so consumed by despair, anger, and helplessness that she didn’t recognize him. She was so sure that if he were anywhere it would be in that tomb, and if he wasn’t in there, he couldn’t possibly be walking around. She was so sure it wasn’t Jesus talking to her that she thought the man standing before her was the gardener, because her imagination did not prepare her to see him standing there alive and well. And this is Mary were talking about. If Mary was temporarily blind to the presence of Christ, it should be no surprise that hope is hard for us, because all the time we’re looking for him in the wrong places, too hopeless to see all around us the proof that he can never die. Like the Psalmist, we lift up our eyes to the hills, though our hope doesn’t come from the hills. It comes from the Lord. We bow down on our knees in the sanctuary, though Churches are but one place where he may be found. It’s like how we long to be held in the arms of our mothers or fathers, but their love for us is not waiting in the graveyard, it is living in our hearts. This is how the evil one takes advantage of us. He uses our tunnel vision against us. We are always looking for God in the same old places, so bad luck tries to destroy our faith by setting the Cathedral on fire. Despair stalks the graveyard and draws our focus towards the tombstone with its two dates trying to tell us that life can begin and end. Two men flew airplanes into the Twin Towers thinking this will defeat the soul of our nation, but if freedom and democracy live in a building and not in our hearts, we are hopeless already, for Christ is not in the tomb but that hardly means he’s dead. Yesterday the New York Times reported: For centuries, the Notre-Dame Cathedral has enshrined an evolving notion of wat it means to be French. This cathedral may enshrine what it means to be French, but I say, what it means to be Christian is to stand back and watch him rise from the ashes. For our identity is not tied to a building. Our faith does not depend on what can be built of stone. And our hope cannot be toppled or crushed by trials and disappointments, tragedies or strife, temporary suffering or seemingly endless frustration, because every day the sun rises and there, we see him. In every infant born, he smiles upon us. Each time we dare sing Halleluiahs in the face of death we celebrate the God who has won the victory. And no matter how much evil lurks this earth from the back alleyways of our city to the halls of congress, we cannot be discouraged, for Christ has risen. That truth has to change the way we live, for saying that we believe it and letting that truth rule our lives can be two different things. Sara and I ran a 6-mile race out in Covington just yesterday. I want you to know that I ran faster than I ever have before. I finished in the top ten of my age group. There were only 8 men in my age group, but that’s hardly the point. At about mile 5 I was feeling tiered, and there were two signs at the 5-mile marker. One that said, “Runners, this way,” and the other that said, “Hospital, this way.” It’s so easy just to stop running, especially when we can’t see that he’s with us. But it is in the moment of despair that we must ask ourselves: is he gone, or are we looking in the wrong place? This Easter morning nearly 200 Christians were killed because their churches in Sri Lanka were bombed. But the bombers do not understand us. They think we will see the rubble and will give up. The believe that we will see the dust settle and will know we are defeated. Only we know the power that rises up from ash heaps and dances to defy the power of death. We will keep running. For we are on a journey towards the New Jerusalem, and not even death can stop the one we follow. A New heaven and a new earth awaits where the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives for but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. Before we call he will answer. While we are yet speaking he will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and in that day that he is bringing, we will finally stop hurting and destroying each other, for we will see Christ alive in our neighbor. We will know that he lives on in the desperate immigrant, in the thirsty and the hungry, the broken and the outcast. He is not gone, he is not dead. He has risen. Amen.