Sermon: Easter Day

The Very Rev. William Thomas Deneke, rector

We have gathered this morning to celebrate a mystery. A mystery born out of darkness but shaped by love.

The Easter mystery speaks dramatically to the darkness of our existence. It addresses sorrow, suffering and death. The resurrection does not deny death; it does not negate grief, but it offers hope in the place of despair.

Resurrection is different from the so-called immortality of the soul. Immortality suggests some sort of soulful, mist-like existence that continues on without a body. The Easter story knows nothing about such as this.

The Easter experience was not a theory or a grasping for immortality, but a one of a kind experience. Witnesses to the raising of Christ had to come up with an explanation to describe it. They used the Greek word “anistamai” for “resurrection”, which means “an act of standing up after having lain down.” Resurrection was a gift from God. It did not represent immortality of the soul. It was not resuscitation or revivification in which the revived would die again. Resurrection was a wondrous gift that opened not only the tomb of Jesus but also a window into the very heart of God. And that, more than anything else, is what we are here today to celebrate.

Easter addresses every fear that we have ever had or will ever have. During this past week our liturgies have addressed the suffering and death of Christ. We witnessed Christ’s agony and fear, and, finally, his horrible death and burial in a tomb.

All of us have been or will be in that tomb. We all have been in places of darkness, in places where life has run its course, where we are not able to summon what is needed to deliver us.

Some have experienced that in depression. Some in the loss of a loved one, some in finding their lives turned upside down by the loss of a job or the discovery of a terminal illness. Others have experienced the tomb through the suffering of the world, through hunger, oppression, genocide and greed. And all of us know, on some level, that one day we will be placed in some resting place where God alone can rescue us.

Whether or not we attended the services of Holy Week, we can sense the shadows of death over our shoulders even if we choose to ignore them.

That is the context for Easter. And while the resurrection of Christ reveals the wonder and love of God, it also calls us to turn from dismissing human suffering and to respond to it with Easter hope.

Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is based on indications that things are going well; optimism assumes that the present trajectory will continue and bring positive results. It is an attitude whose roots, ironically, are often fear-based.

Hope, on the other hand, does not arise from a perceived pattern of success. Hope can come into being amid the worst kind of gloom, the kind fit only for a thoroughgoing pessimist. Hope arises not from the situation itself but from something outside the situation. It is a light entering into the darkness. It is something beyond us. A gift of grace.

Easter is about hope. Holy Week sets the stage by presenting the dark and ultimately helpless condition of humanity. No degree of optimism will roll away the stone from the tomb. No embrace of a purpose driven life will save us from the results of crucifixion. But because of Easter, we can go to our crosses with hope in God’s love. We can enter the tomb trusting in the One who raised Jesus from the dead.

Easter is not theory based. It is experiential. The Easter faith of the earliest Christians came not from arguments but from experience. They had no way of assembling a “body of evidence” to convince unbelievers of Jesus’ resurrection. Each person had to decide for himself or herself.

And that remains true for us. Resurrection is always beyond whatever arguments we construct for it or against it. It is too embedded in the mystery of life, too dependent upon the love of God to be affirmed or dismissed by arguments.

Easter is a mystery because it is so close to the heart of God. It is a wonder because it reveals the smile on God’s face.

What we can do is hope in Christ. What we can do is live each day remembering God’s smile by sharing the good news in how we relate to others. What we can do is to stop being so self-absorbed and concentrate more on discovering God’s love in all sorts of places, even in the graveyards of human misery. We can respond to the Easter mystery by supporting love among the suffering and by lifting up those who live in darkness. We can dare to hope in Christ, not in a way that denies suffering and death, but in a way that trusts the love of God to transform darkness into light. We can be willing witnesses of that transformation and willing supporters of God’s Easter experiences.

When we are freed through hope, we discover joy and strength we never knew we had. Consider the change in Simon Peter, a disciple of Christ. At the trial of Jesus, Peter denied knowing Jesus. Driven by fear and failed optimism he became lost in darkness. Later, after the resurrection, Peter, with courage and strength, confronted the very authorities he once feared with his Easter faith, even though this would lead to his own execution.

Easter hope takes away the fear of death, not death, itself, but the power it exercises over us. Easter hope enables us to live fully not grasping for control but trusting in the love of God.

And so this morning, we gather around the wondrous Easter mystery. We come with thankful hearts, and we come in hope. Not the shallow hope of optimism or the skewed hope of argument. But the hope revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an Easter experience of the love of God beyond our imagination but as near to us as the air we breathe.

Let us pray:

O Lord, you enter into the tombs with us and bid us stand. You are beyond all marvels, and we are blessed beyond measure by your love. Give to us the hope of Easter, not as a balm for our anxiety but as openness to your wonder. Enable us to see you in others and to affirm your presence even in places of death in our own lives and in the lives of our neighbors. When we forget your wonder, remind us of Easter, and when we die, hold us close to your breast. We are grateful and our hearts are filled with joy because of Easter. Alleluia. Amen.