A New Day’s Dawning
Rev. Charles Lewis John 20:1-18
April 8, 2009 Acts 10:34-42
Prayer
Almighty God, we come to church this Easter morning - as we have all our lives to hear news that is always new, a newness that stretches our imaginations and fires our hope and kindles our love. Thank you, dear God, for this morning. Startle us now with the truth of the story we’re about to hear, that hearing we might believe, and believing we might trust, and in trusting we might offer ourselves to you, full of hope and joy through the Spirit of our risen Lord. Amen.
Introduction to John 20:1-18
Not a single page of the New Testament was written without the conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead and that the world was a more loving, compassionate, and hopeful place because of it. Despite this unshakable conviction, however, the Easter stories in all four gospels never answer the question, "How did the resurrection happen?” Nor is there ever any attempt to prove it to those who don’t accept it by faith. What we get instead are stories of people whose lives are transformed by faith, by hope, and by love. We turn to one of those stories this Easter Sunday.
Sermon
The music has been wonderful today, and I want to thank the handbells, the choir, our brass ensemble, flutes and French horn and Phyllis and Steff for helping us celebrate Easter as it should be, with great music. Easter gives us every reason to rejoice (and applaud gifts of music offered in thanks to God). Easter brings a song of hope to our hearts, and joyful music is a natural response to our Easter faith.
Thinking of the beautiful music we’ve had this morning has reminded me of a Presbyterian colleague who had a woman in his congregation with a pet parakeet that always provided a joyful sound of music in her home. The bird was fittingly named Chipper because it would sing throughout the day. It’s cheerful sound brightened this woman’s life and bringing a smile to any guests who came to her home.
One day, as the woman was cleaning out her bird’s cage with a canister vacuum, the telephone rang. And as she reached for the phone she heard a “schlup.” She gasped. She knew immediately what had happened. She dropped the phone, turned off the vacuum, broke open the bag and grabbed the bird out of the dust. She dashed off to the bathroom where she quickly cleaned it off, dried it, and then tenderly stroked it back to life. A reporter from the local city paper got wind of the miraculous incident and went to talk with the woman about what happened. At the end of his interview he said, “I’ve got to ask you, “How’s Chipper doing today?” “Well,” she said, “physically he’s O.K., but he doesn’t sing anymore. He seems to have lost the song in his heart. ”[1] Chipper just doesn’t seem to be too chipper anymore.
Sometimes we can experience a day, a week, a month or longer where the song in our hearts seems to be taken out of us, where our energy and faith get zapped. There are people who have come here on this happy Easter morning wanting to be full of cheer but whose joy is tempered by feelings of grief, or concern for a loved one with cancer, or with anxiety about a situation in our family or feeling troubled by the conflicts in our world. It’s Easter, but the reality is that we still live much of our life in a Good Friday world.
It was in the depths of a Good Friday world that Mary Magdalene trudged along toward the tomb at an early morning hour while it was still dark. The disciples and she had been through the ringer. Their dearest friend and master, in whom they’d placed their all their hopes, had gone into Jerusalem early in week to the cheering of the crowd, only to find - through a completely unexpected twist of events - that by the week’s end the cheering had turned to jeering and the triumphant entry to a tragic exit. The One who had given their hearts reason to sing – who’d healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, eaten with the outcasts, loved the unlovables, and shown compassion to the last and the least – had been put through his own ringer. And he never made it out alive.
In this sanctuary last Thursday evening, we experienced a hauntingly beautiful Maundy Thursday and Tenebrae service with our choir singing a magnificent piece of music and three of our junior high youth passionately reading passages related to the crucifixion while the organ played softly in the background. After each reading, a candle was extinguished and the lights were dimmed. It ended in complete darkness, as the Christ candle was extinguished and we sat in utter darkness and silence. After a moment, a wonderful soprano voice was heard through the darkness singing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” If you were not here, I wish you could have been. It was a very moving service. It prompted us to imagine the sobering and terrible end to a life that had been lived with an overwhelmingly gracious spirit and generous heart.
For Mary, though, there was no imagining as she slowly made her way to the tomb on Easter morning. She had lived what we can only slightly grasp. She had been there when they crucified her Lord. She was there when the song in her heart was silenced.
But, as you know, something astonishing happened as she arrived at the tomb to anoint the body. She discovered that the massive stone placed in the mouth of the tomb had been rolled away. When Peter and John arrived and looked in, John, it appears, believed, Peter, it seems, doubted and took John home, and Mary stayed there and wept. As she did, she peered through her tears into the tomb and saw two angels who asked her: “Why are you weeping?” “Because, she said they have my Lord and I don’t know where they have laid him.” To Good Friday sadness is added another sadness, the body seems to have been stolen.
Then Jesus, though unrecognized, appeared outside the tomb, also asking: “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” And then he calls her by name: “Mary.” And just like that, a light goes on. Just like that, the darkness of the morning turns to the dawning of a new day’s light. It’s as if a vale were lifted from her eyes so that her sight is lifted above her grief, her vision raised above her fear. Her hope has been resurrected and the song of faith swells again in her heart as she is sent rushing back to tell the other disciples what has just happened to her.
You see what’s occurred, don’t you? Our first witness to the resurrection who had come in darkness of Good Friday, rushes back to the disciples in the radiance of Easter’s light. She had come to weep. She left to witness. Through a simple, personal encounter with Jesus, a new day had dawned for her.
I believe in resurrection. I am convinced it is a reality, a power in our lives, not provable by argument but experienced by faith. I believe it happens daily, that it has happened to me, and it continues to happen. As a pastor I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again.
I know of a person who was wracked by anger and bitterness. After years of struggle, she was finally able to let go of her anger and resentment, forgiving those who had caused her great pain. She’d worked at it for years, but she’s found a way to release all the pent-up feelings for revenge. Today she is unburdened and unbound. A new day has dawned for her. I don’t know what you call that, but I call it resurrection!
I have a friend who was on his way to the grave if he kept drinking so heavily. He knew that if he kept driving while under the influence, one day he was going to steer himself right into the cemetery, or he feared worse taking someone else with him. One day, he said, something got into him, the will to say, “This is it! No more, ever!” And he stopped cold turkey. It was nearly twenty years ago that a new day dawned for him and has greeted every day since in the same light of sobriety and faith. I don’t know what you call that, but I call it resurrection!
I’ve witnessed a couple who was within a hairs-breath of calling it quits on their marriage. But in a surprising last second change, a miraculous turnaround occurred. What looked for sure like the sun was setting on their relationship instead became the sun rising to the dawn of a new day. I don’t know what you call that, but I call it resurrection!
I
know someone who was so seriously wounded while in Vietnam that while he lay on
the ground, one medic mumbled stood over his body saying, “Take the others
first, this guys probably isn’t gonna make it.” But he awoke in a
military hospital in
And resurrection comes on larger scales too. How about when the wall came
down in Eastern Europe years ago and a short time later apartheid crumbled in
Do you see?
A new day dawns every time we watch love conquer hatred.
A new day dawns every time we witness courage overcome fear.
A new day dawns every time some mortal soul miraculously rises above self interest.
A new day dawns every time we see resurrection hope where there should be no hope.[2]
Before
Roger Gordon worked at
One day, however, a change occurred. A work tool showed up missing in the count. The POW’s were lined up and the one guilty of steeling it was ordered to step forward and confess. When no one stepped forward in line to confess to taking it, the guard screamed, “Then all will die,” and raised his gun to shoot. At that instant, an enlisted man stepped forward and said: “I did it.” After he was brutally killed, the tools were inventoried again and it was discovered that there had been a mistake. None were missing. One of the prisoners at that time shared with the others a verse that he’d remembered from childhood: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
A new day dawned in the camp at that moment. Prisoners began treating each other with respect and the dying with tender care. Gordon himself had written a final letter to his parents, awaiting his own death just days before when that new spirit took over the camp. He had been in the infirmary they called “The Death House” because the guards simply lined up the shriveled bodies on the floor side by side there and waited for them to die. But with the new spirit, instead of letting him waste away alone as they had with the others, several men nursed Gordon back to life along with other men next to him. Gordon said that he’d thought little about God for years, but as he would later put it: “Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.” He was made the unofficial camp chaplain and they built a tiny church to say prayers for one another. They created their own school and hosted university level courses using whatever scraps of paper and props they could scrounge up.
In his book, “To End All Wars,” Roger Gordon told about the transformation of individual men in that camp being so complete that when they were finally freed, they treated their sadistic guards with kindness and not revenge. Gordon’s own life took an unexpected turn after the war when he decided to become a Presbyterian minister and ended up as dean of the Princeton Chapel.[3]
Two worlds had lived side by side in that camp, one based on fear, arrogance, and violence. One based on faith, hope and love. In the end, one would prevail over the other. The one is destined in this world to succeed, the other to fail.
I believe that that all these experiences of resurrection I’ve just shared are not isolated, unrelated events. Each reveals that the power of God is stronger than death, stronger than hatred, stronger than bondage of any kind. Each of these experiences of resurrection are part of the same power that burst open that tomb hewn in the rock two thousand years ago, a power still let loose even today right here in this sanctuary, a power available to each and every one of us.[4]
Sometimes it’s a power let loose on us as it was let loose on Paul
on his way to
But the best way to find out how resurrection power happens to people is to listen to their stories. Listen to the people around you in this sanctuary this morning, people who have experienced resurrection power and are now witnesses to a new day’s dawning in their life. Ask them how it happened. Ask to hear these stories because the fact is before the resurrection was ever written down as a central doctrine of the church it was first an experience of the human heart, which knew God was calling our name. Before it was anything else, it was an experience of God’s power to save, to heal, to make whole, and to bring out of death’s destructive force, new life.[6]
So with the deep seeing of the heart, may our lives bear witness to this great truth: the last word was, is, and shall be not defeat, not denial, not despair, not death. The last word was, is, and shall eternally be… life. Life forever more!
Prayer: Gracious Lord, may we experience the reality of the resurrection in our lives over and over again. May we see its truth with the deep seeing of the heart and bear witness in a Good Friday world to the Easter world which you are calling us, a world where faith, hope and love prevail. Through Christ our risen and victorious Savior. Amen.
[1] As told by Presbyterian pastor Bruce Porter of Church
of the Palms in
[2] Rev. Michael Lindvall Sermon delivered at “The Brick Presbyterian Church” in NYC, April 11, 2004.
[3] As told by Phil Yancy in “Rumors of Another World” p.172-177.
[4] Rev. Carlyse Gill – Easter Sunday sermon on April 16, 2006 at St. Alban’s Parish, WA. DC.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.