Easter’s Consequences

Unlike most of you reading this, I was not leading a congregation in worship this past Sunday.  I was with my wife and daughter spending a few days on the coast of Maine.  Easter Sunday morning, we attended a local Episcopal church. The Priest, in his homily, was afraid to say too much about Resurrection--and instead waxed on about the flowers, the chocolates, the signs of Springtime, the festal foods, the music--including the good ‘ole Baptist hymns they sang at the community sunrise service (which made me wonder--as a Baptist myself--Why is it that Episcopalians always sound condescending when they talk about Baptists?  Perhaps for the same reason that Baptists always sound derogatory when they talk about Episcopalians...but I digress). 

Steering clear of the Resurrection was sort of where Mark’s account, this year’s Gospel, leads us.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

I fear too many sermons said nothing of any consequence this past Sunday...not true, I am sure, of the experience those congregations represented by the readers of this note.

My friend, David Dragseth, Pastor of Lake Park Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, sent me a copy of his sermon.  I think if I had been sitting in his congregation, I would have had a very different experience than I had in my pew this past Sunday.  Reflecting on the fear that seized those who came to tend to the body of Jesus on that First Easter morning, David proclaimed:

On the Sabbath so long ago, Mary and Mary and Salome had it all figured out.  Death ruled the day. 
This was the way of things.  You learn the rules and you play things the way death wants you to play them.
You come, you anoint, you dress it up, you pay your respects, and then you move on. 
Your human capacity to change anything is severely limited by death.  You can t do much. 
You are going to die too someday.  Know your place.

But then, then, this figure stands there in a white robe and says a few little words that scare the hell out of your nice little worldview. . .
He is not here, He s been raised.

And all of the sudden you’re scared. 
Because this illusion you ve been living for so long that you don t matter, this untruth that you really don t make a difference,
this opiate that your actions can t reform the world, this delusion that the world will never really change,
this heresy that we can t make the world a more loving place,
this suffocating and stifling societal sickness which says that our institutions and our governments
and our family systems and our relationships can t change or don t matter,
this entire culture of death and dying and negativity and despair, this massive stone of it is all is all declared a lie.

Roll the gargantuan stony untruth of it all away. . . death does not rule.
Life rules.  And because of that every one of your actions, every day, every hour, every second, will remain forever. . .
Your life is destined to be lived, no matter how much you try to kill it off. . .
your life pulsates forever. . . and that, my Easter friends, is an enormous responsibility. . .
are you scared yet?

Thank you, David D.  A reminder that there is so much of consequence to be said in Easter’s wake. 

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