"When Finished Isn't Final"
Preached on April 4, 1999
by
The Reverend Joanne S. Miller
It is a great privilege as well as an awesome
challenge to preach on Easter Day. This is the day, of all days,
to preach what is the focal point of all Christian faith, worship
and preaching: the astounding news of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. This is my first opportunity to write and preach an
Easter sermon, and as I began to consider what I might say,
I found myself thinking about how the meaning of Easter for
me has changed over the years, as I have grown up and faced
changes in my life.
When I was a child, Easter was about keeping
vigil over the crocuses near the front door of my house. The
first sign of them peeping out from under the dark earth was
a sign of spring and new life, both of which I connected to
Easter day. Easter also had its family traditions, such as my
sister and I bounding down the stairs into the living room to
search for the jellybeans my parents had hidden. After that,
there was the excitement of going to church and there being
given a potted pansy plant to take home. Every year, I loved
getting that pot of pansies. I don't know how or why that tradition
began, but every year I was mesmerized by those beautiful pansies.
Now when I think of it, holding that plant was like holding
the good news of Jesus' resurrection in my own hands.
Over the years, Easter has taken on new meaning
for me, particularly as I have experienced the loss of people
I have loved, witnessed the profound grief of others who have
lost loved ones, and struggled with all the ques-tions which
death introduces into one's life. I find that I need Easter,
a day to sing hymns of resurrection faith, a day to hear proclaimed
with assurance, that the Lord is risen. So while for me, those
signs of resurrection I experienced as a child in flowers and
traditions are still important, my understanding of the meaning
of this day has expanded and deepened to include a resurrection
faith -- a faith in the power of God to overcome death, a faith
in God's love that is stronger than death, and a faith in eternal
life which Jesus promised.
Easter is such an important day for Christians
because of its great hope and promise for eternal life. The
resurrection of Christ is God's empowering word of new life
and hope in the face of death and despair. We tend to think
of Easter primarily as God's victory over death and God's promise
of eternal life, and Easter is that. Death's power over life
is bankrupt, and we can live as those who need fear death no
longer. Yet, we tend to think of Easter as a one-day celebration.
Tomorrow we will face the temptation of seeing our lives in
a pre-Easter sort of way, without hope or much anticipation.
While the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus
is that God has overcome death with a love and a power stronger
than what we thought was the last word about life, the resurrection
is more than that. The resurrection is also God's word to us
that God's amazing love and power can bring us new life every
day, in ways we never expected. The good news of the resurrection
of Christ is that we can depend on God's inclination to work
the unexpected in our lives. There is a continuing reality of
the good news of this day. It contains God's promise that for
us there is always hope and great possibility, not just in death
but in all circumstances. The resurrection is one more sign
of how God does not want us to simply go through the motions
of living, void of feeling or stuck in our despair.
Ironically, it is out of moments such as these,
moments of emptiness, moments of loss, grief, and despair, that
resurrection has its beginnings. For resurrection does not begin
with good news. It does not begin with triumphant proclamation
that the Lord is risen. It begins with the absence of God. It
does not begin with new life; it begins with no sign of life.
It begins with death. It begins with Good Friday. The story
of Mary, standing in the early morning darkness outside a garden
tomb, is first a story about death. It is a story about grief
and loss and confusion. John's gospel makes it clear that Mary's
tears on that morning were spent because "they have taken
away my Lord."
Mary's grief was great. It is the grief felt
when one feels so terribly alone. Her deep sense of loss is
evidenced in her wish to take care of the body of Jesus. It
is a strange thing to say, of course, but the presence of a
body is often a comfort in grief. Nothing can be done to push
back the terrible reality of death, but the presence of a body
means that there are duties to be done, rituals to be performed,
ceremonies of honor which can be enacted, places to put our
grief. Mary was feeling that deep grief that accompanies the
physical separation of death. "Why are you weeping?"
said the man she presumed to be the gardener. "Sir, if
you have carried him away, tell me where you had laid him, and
I will take him away."
Like Mary, we know how deep grief can be. It
is not just grief in death that can leave us feeling so alone.
We know too, what it is like to live with the absence of hope
in our lives. We know life that seems to lack the very essence
of life. We know what it is like to feel the absence of God.
Promises broken. Hurts that don't heal. Confusion that keeps
us stuck. Grief that never completely goes away.
Without the physical body of Jesus, Mary did
not yet have a way to feel her Lord was with her, close to her.
Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once noted that an infant's first
social achievement is the willingness to let the parent out
of sight without bursting into tears of rage and anxiety. When
that moment comes, the parent's love and presence have become
"an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability."
"Do not hold me," said the risen Lord to Mary, calling
her, to move from the "outer predictability" to the
"inner certainty" of the power and presence of God.
We too, are called to move to this inner certainty.
Our faith need not depend on outward signs, such as tangible
pieces of evidence of Christ's resurrection, but on an inner
certainty that God is with us. If Easter begins with the absence
of God, it ends with the presence of God. If Easter begins with
grief and despair, it ends with possibility and promise. It
ends with hope, a hope which is based on the good news that
God is, in ways often hidden, shaping all human life redemptively
and bringing all things to fulfillment in Christ. It is at the
sealed finality of human possibility that God enables resurrection.
That inner certainty of the power and presence
of God can be ours. The God who called Mary's name in the garden,
the God who knows our name, will never abandon us. We may grieve,
as did Mary in the face of death, but not as those who have
no hope or future. We may wonder what the future holds, but
we do not step into an unknown future. We step into a future
held by God. The faith we proclaim this day is about an ultimate
reality at work in what appears to be hopeless situations. Resurrection
faith is about expecting God to work in your life in ways that
you cannot imagine. Resurrection faith is about God's power
at work in our lives enabling beginnings out of endings.
In the book, A Word from the World,
E. B. White writes these words about resurrection faith as he
sees it expressed through his wife, Katharine, and her care
of her garden.
"I seldom saw her prepare for gardening,
she merely wandered out into the cold and the wet, into the
sun and the warmth, wearing whatever she had put on that morning.
The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up
for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected,
in advance, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden --
a crucial operation, carefully charted. The morning often turned
out to be raw and overcast, with a searching wind off the water
-- an easterly that finds its way quickly to your bones. The
bad weather did not deter Katharine: the hour had struck, the
strategy of spring must be worked out according to plan.
Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine
would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat, much too long for
her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes,
and proceed to the director's chair -- a folding canvas thing
-- that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There
she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather,
while her helper produced dozens of brown paper packages of
new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate
interment.
As the years went by and age overtook her, there
was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance
on this awesome occasion -- the small, hunched-over figure,
her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there
would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her
own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting
there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the
dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."
Dare we plot the resurrection? Dare we plot
and plan such radical intrusion of God upon our lives? We may,
because that is God's word to us: we can depend on the amazing,
startling presence of God to bring life out of death and darkness,
to make beginnings out of endings.
There is a story about a witness at the Nuremberg
War Crime Trials. The witness escaped a death camp and the gas
chamber. He survived by living for a time in an open grave in
a Jewish Cemetery in Wilna, Poland. While he was there, he saw
a young woman give birth to a child in a nearby grave. In her
delivery she was assisted by an eighty-year-old gravedigger.
When the baby uttered its first cry, the old man prayed, "Great
God, hast thou finally sent us the Messiah? For who but the
Messiah could be born in a grave?"
Who indeed? For who but God can turn endings
into new beginnings?
Let us pray. O God of new beginnings, help
us to live with the inner certainty of your love for us. With
assurance, enable us to live with faith and hope in all times.
For your love is stronger than death, and powerful enough to
surprise us always with new life, new beginnings, and a future
filled with promise. In the name of the risen Christ we pray,
Amen. v
