That's How the Light Gets In (Festival of the Resurrection; Luke 24:1-12; April 16, 2017)

That's How the Light Gets In

Festival of the Resurrection
Luke 24:1-12
April 16, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

If you were here last Easter--or pretty much any Easter--you would have heard me say, "Of course I believe in the resurrection of the dead. I'm a Cubs fan!" See? See? What did I tell you?

There are glimpses of resurrection--of new life--all around us. And not just in the return of a once great baseball club to the winner's circle after a long drought. In the Northern Hemisphere Easter lines up with spring. Even the word Easter itself is simply borrowed from the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre for whom the month that we call April was named. The only thing we know for certain about her comes from the Anglo-Saxon historian known as Bede the Venerable who wrote in The Reckoning of Time,

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.¹

I suspect she may have been a fertility goddess of some kind, but Bede doesn't say so. Whether I am right or not, the signs of renewed life around us seem to resonate with the theme of resurrection. My grass, which badly needed mowing last fall when I ran out of ambition, has come back fresh and green and is, even as I speak, laughing at me and my plans to keep it under control. Birds that have been absent over the winter have returned. Trees have a green cloud around them, a hint that leaves will soon unfold. Decorah's bald eagle chicks are once again the wobbly stars of the Internet. Pasty-skinned Decorans have emerged from their winter shelters, into the bright spring sunlight, blinking and shading their eyes, grateful to have survived another winter. This is the sort of resurrection with a small "r" that we look for in the spring.

There are other, less seasonal, resurrections with a small "r" as well. Part of our life might be an annual round of tests and an appointment with our oncologist to review them. It's just part of the regime of watchfulness that every cancer survivor knows. Our doctor tells us that the tests show no sign of cancer's return and we didn't realize that we hadn't been breathing, not really breathing, until the news sinks in and we are suddenly more alive than we had expected to be. That's resurrection with a little "r".

Or we have buried a spouse. The death was foreseen, but still a shock, and we have never been in such pain. We knew that our life was ended and yet, somehow, we kept living. A year or more later we are surprised when we have days with no tears, days with a little joy even, and we discover that having grief as a companion is not incompatible with resurrection with a small "r".

But these resurrections with a small "r" are not quite what we are talking about on Easter morning. Some of these are expressions of the changing seasons. Our anxiety over the coming of winter is eased by our experience that winter is followed by spring. We are upheld in our grief, at least a little, by the knowledge that other people have survived the experience. Good Friday and Holy Saturday have been followed by Easter and Easter, at least an Easter with a small "e" can be expected.

But there are some experiences of Good Friday, some experiences of Holy Saturday, for which there is no guarantee of Easter. Eleven days ago a woman who called herself Om Ahmed, a woman from the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria where poison gas killed about eighty people, had this to say to a reporter for the Washington Post:

If the world wanted to stop this they would have done so by now. One more chemical attack in a town the world hasn’t heard of won’t change anything. I’m sorry, my son died yesterday. I have nothing left to say to the world.²

This is what Holy Saturday looks like when there is no promise of Easter.

And what will become of the signs of spring when there is no longer any winter to speak of? When apple trees bloom in February? When polar bears can no longer swim from maternity dens on land to the edge of the pack ice where the seals they feed on live? Can we still speak of the cycle of the seasons when the cycles have spun out of control?

This is what Holy Saturday looks like when there is no promise of Easter.

I know it's Easter and you did not come here to hear how badly we are doing. you came to hear reassurance and hope. I don't have much hope myself. I have none at all, if hope is confused with optimism, for I am not at all optimistic. We are taking a shrinking window of opportunity and gleefully giving it away to the extractors of oil and coal so that they can show a profit for a few more quarters, no matter what the cost to everyone else in the long run. The day is coming when I will have to say to my granddaughter and grandsons, "I did what I thought I could. It wasn't enough. I am sorry." This is what Holy Saturday looks like when there is no promise of Easter.

So what do we do when it is Holy Saturday and there is no promise of Easter? Perhaps we bury the dead like the women in Luke 24. That work had been interrupted by the sabbath sunset. They went back to the tomb with the burial spices they needed and, oddly, found the tomb open, the stone rolled away. Entering the tomb, they saw what Laura Arnold describes as two "glowy" people, but of Jesus there was no sign. I don't know how you typically react when you see glowy people, but the women were frightened and they fell on their knees and bowed down with their faces on the ground. The glowy people--men, the text says, but how can you really tell when they are glowing?--asked what is perhaps the oddest question in the entire Bible: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" Well, because, we were looking for a dead person? But of course, once reminded of it, they remembered that Jesus had said something about being raised, though what he had meant they didn't know. After all, Jesus often said important things that made little sense to them.

They had come to the tomb to complete the death and life cycle. There were things that had to be done for the dead body of Jesus, important things, things required by their tradition so that his death would make as much sense as it was ever going to. But their intentions were thwarted, their plans set aside, the smooth progressing of the cycle interrupted. And then they heard strange things from two glowy people, things about Jesus having been raised. To say that there were cracks in their understanding of the world and the way that it works would be to greatly underestimate their shock.

They went to tell the men what had happened. The men didn't believe them. Well, at least that hadn't changed. Peter didn't believe them, either, but still ran to the tomb to see for himself. There was nothing to see. Just a linen cloth. So he left, "wondering what had happened."

At this point on Easter morning we have the testimony of two glowy people that Jesus is alive. We have Jesus' hints about what would happen after he was killed. But all any of us really know--the women included--is that the body is missing.

It is possible that nothing in the world has changed at all. That violence still trumps justice. That death is still the last answer, to every question. That Jesus is really and completely dead. In which case, there is no space for the dream that Jesus cultivated among us to take root and grow into reality. When we started we still thought the world could change. Now we know better. Now we know that no other reality is possible.

But something has changed. There is a crack in what had seemed to be reality. There is the slightest shift. It's only a shift in the imagination. It's only a few questions at this point. Is Jesus still dead? Does violence always win? Does death have the last word? Are the glowy people right? It's only the slightest shift, but there is now a space in theimagination to think and feel the world otherwise. There is room for a different possibility than the one that claims to be reality to take root and grow and maybe even bear fruit.

Every revolution begins in the imagination and it begins the same way that Easter did, with little cracks in the brittle certainties that convince us that the Romans have won and Jesus will stay dead, that there is no future for the polar bear, and that the death of Om Ahmed's son is meaningless.

What we have in the story of the women, the glowy people, and Peter, and perhaps the best we can do right now is not exactly hope. It is the place just beyond the place where optimism died. It is the place in the imagination where something is working otherwise to reality. It is the place where the smugness of the powers that be is confronted with something that doesn't quite fit. There is a new reality coming into being. It is fuzzy still; its outlines are not yet clear.

Like the women we can only say what we have seen and heard. Like Peter we still wonder what happened. But that might be enough for now. That might be enough for us to stop taking as gospel the thin stories of our days, the stories about the usefulness of violence, the untrustworthiness of our neighbors, and the consummate value of being comfortable. That little piece that doesn't fit just might be enough for us to distrust the lies of the advertisers and the politicians and even the lies that we tell ourselves to explain to ourselves why it is we can’t change things.

It's not quite hope, but it is the place where hope might emerge, hope that would let us say, Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Now that would be resurrection with a big “R”.

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1 The Venerable Bede, De ratione temporum (The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis, Liverpool University Press, 1988, pp. 55), 15.

2 Louisa Loveluck and Zakaria Zakaria, “World Health Organization: Syria Chemical Attack Likely Involved Nerve Agent,” Washington Post, April 5, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-blames-syrian-rebels-for-devastating-chemical-attack-in-northern-town/2017/04/05/ba173c76-196a-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html.