A – The Resurrection of the Lord: 23 March 2008
Acts 10: 34 – 43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24;
Colossians 3: 1 – 4; MATTHEW 28: 1 – 10
A Fresh Start
A Sermon by John C. Bush
Visiting Preacher
Hope Presbyterian Church
Huntsville, Alabama
“Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” was a Broadway play a few years back, and the theme music went to the top of the pop charts. You may not remember the play or the tune, but I’m pretty sure you are familiar with the sentiment. Have just wanted everything to stop. Wished you could bring it all to a dead halt, to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Who among us has never wished for a fresh start?
Life keeps presenting us with these unexpected twists and turns, and things just aren’t going the way you thought they would. Yes. A fresh start would be nice, wouldn’t it?
So, where is the problem for you? Career? Marriage? Kids who are grown up but not mature? The aloneness that comes with separation or relocation? Change that comes at you fast and never seems to stop until it has sapped you of everything familiar and secure?
Is it that you are getting older, or faced with serious illness for the first time, and have begun to think more and more about your own mortality, or that of those you love? You’ve begin us ask yourself, “Is that all there is?”
And so, for whatever reason, it’s time now, isn’t it? It is time now to explore the dimensions of faith again. To ask some ultimate questions, or to explore your doubts. To raise those questions that just will not go away no matter how hard you try to put them to rest. Questions about what is real, what is important, what is worthwhile. Questions about the quality of this life – and the next, if there is another.
If it is time for a fresh start, then you are in luck. You’ve come to the right place at the right time, because fresh starts – being made new again – is what Easter is all about.
Easter faith teaches that life, however challenging, is always open toward the future. Most of us, if we have lived long enough, have gone through times when we might not have been entirely sure of that. Times of disappointment, of aloneness, of desperation or uncertainty, of poor health or failing marriage; of stalled career or kids in trouble.
In one of John Masefield’s epic poems there is an elderly widow, a woman whose life has been full of tragedy. Now, her son – her only child – is about to be executed for crimes against the state. She watches hopelessly as the trap door opens and the rope finishes its work, snapping his neck at the end of his fall. In that moment, all the brokenness in her life flashes before her, and through her tears she mutters something about all these “broken things, too broke to mend.”
It is terrible when life feels like that – too broke to mend. Where there is a past and a present, but no future that you can see from here.
The Easter story beings that way. The horror of the crucifixion is past; the broken body of Jesus was buried quickly as the Sabbath was about to begin. And for two days the followers of Jesus huddle together in anguish and disbelief, or scatter across the city in the isolation of fear and pain. Then, in the dark early hours of the morning, as the third day is about to begin, these two women named Mary go out to the tomb. They went to the tomb – as almost all of us have gone to a cemetery in the days following the burial of a loved one – presuming that when a person has died, that is final, complete, unalterable.
What they found there, however, was something new and remarkable. Something that shows us clearly for all to see, what God values most in this world – what God intends for every one of us – which is life. New life.
It is true that the suffering and death of Jesus underscore the facts of sin and evil in our world and in our own souls. But his resurrection breathes into us a new sense of the intrinsic value of life. Is it any wonder, then, that people like us come here on days like this, wondering whether such a thing is possible? Can this really be true?
If you read the news magazines and keep up with the TV specials this time of year, you know that there is a considerable discussion going on about the impact of these two thousand years of Christianity. About the authenticity of the Gospels and their reliability regarding the details of the life of Jesus. About the influence, for good or ill, on the Christian Church on the shape and destiny of humankind.
It is clear, of course, that Jesus’ resurrection means nothing to some people. Yet, it does continue to lay claim to many of us who have had our expectations and lives changed by our experience of its truth. Whatever happened there that morning, we are left with only two choices, really. We can either fight against this day, or we can embrace it, claim it, share it, as these women did.
These two Marys are witnesses to resurrection, new life, at an empty place. News that is astonishing to all of us who need some good news for a change. “He is not here; he is risen, as he said.” “Go and tell the others … they will see me.” Here are the first evangelists – tellers of the gospel – and they represent, it seems to me, some rather difficult questions for those who say women cannot be ministers. They were the first Christian witnesses. How would Peter and the others have known this good news of faith and hope had the women not told them?
Of the men who heard their testimony Matthew says, “some doubted.” But of these highly motivated women it is only their initial fear, and then their overwhelming joy, that are reported. And, in this experience, to core of who they are and what they believed – what they thought possible, both from life and from death – was changed on the morning of that first Christmas Sunday. That is why, from that day until this, Christians have continued on this day we call “The Lord’s Day,” a weekly celebration of a “little Easter.”
There is incredible joy in believing the promise of resurrection faith – that beyond our pain, or disappointment, our depression, or distress; beyond our suffering and our brokenness – and, yes, even beyond our strength, our successes and our accomplishments – beyond it all, there is renewal, healing and an opportunity for a fresh start.
Of course, this fresh start doesn’t mean going back to the beginning, as if nothing has ever happened in the meanwhile. It isn’t a matter of making a new beginning, but rather of making a new ending. The women went to the tomb that morning filled with grief, expecting nothing extraordinary. But their faithfulness in honoring Christ placed them at the center of something wonderful. And that is the way it often is with faithfulness. God meets us there and gives us the power to live into hope, toward a future filled with renewal and possibility, and open to opportunities beyond our wildest expectation.
A fresh start toward a new ending. That is what Easter is about. Having our lives given back to us – changed, reshaped by hope, cultivated by the Spirit of the living God who lives in us and through us. For you see, nothing – no one – is too broke to fix. There is always the possibility of a fresh start toward a new ending to the stories of our lives.
“The one whom you seek is not here; for he has risen, as he said he would.”
[COPYRIGHT 2008, John C. Bush]
NOW GLORY, HONOR, POWER
AND THANKSGIVING BE TO OUR GOD,
AND TO GOD’S NAME BE PRAISE
THIS DAY AND EVERYDAY,
UNTO AGES OF AGES. AMEN.