Sermon Archive
Sermon Archives
Sermon
By Rev. Dr. Richard Godbold
Easter Sunday, Year B
April 8, 2012
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
How do we speak of the amazing reality we celebrate this day? [PAUSE]
What we celebrate exceeds any way we have of direct verbalization. Perhaps the best we can do is to use ‘borrowed words.’ That is what Bernhard of Clairvaux suggested in wording that has become a part of the beloved Holy Week hymn ‘O Sacred Head Sore Wounded”: “What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend, For this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?”
We can suggest, gesture, use metaphor, poetic imagery; but in the end, our words can never match the wondrous deeds. And that is as it should be. Today is not a day of human victory. It is not a day for celebrating anything we or any of our ancestors have done. This is a God day – the ultimate God day.
It is about what God has done, is still doing in our lives, and will continue to do throughout all generations. It is about God saving us from ourselves, lifting us away from our poorest instincts, away from the consequences of all the things we do that isolate us from the people around us, out of the deep muck we create every day.
The evidence for that dynamic was there from the beginning. Listen carefully to how things proceed in the Gospel we heard a few minutes ago. In John’s telling of the story, Mary, Jesus’ beloved dear friend, whom he had raised from the mire of her life to a place of trust and love among his closest friends and companions, arrives at the tomb by herself – isolated in her grief even from the others who were so close to Jesus and to her. She sees the tomb, impossibly open once again and, assuming that Jesus’ body has been stolen, runs for help.
Peter and John come running, are equally baffled, metaphorically shrug their shoulders, and depart – leaving Mary still beside herself, weeping in grief. She then saw two angels in the tomb who do equally little to offer her solace and comfort. Then she turns around and sees someone whom she presumes is the gardener responsible for caring for the cemetery. Finally, when he speaks and calls her by name, Mary has the relief and joy her heart had ached for.
Nothing Mary or the others – even the angels – did made a difference. Nothing changed until God took the initiative. Nothing changed until Jesus spoke. Nothing changed until Jesus spoke her name: “Mary.”
[PAUSE]
In heart and soul we stand where Mary stands – great parts of our lives consumed with loss or grief or anxiety or anger or depression or fear. We struggle against voices within and voices without that suggest we are less than the remarkable human beings created in the image of our God – flesh and blood vessels of the living, breathing Spirit of our God – that our God continues to intend and create us to be.
The good news of the holy week just past is that God knows our darkness. Jesus has entered our darkness and experienced it deeply, intimately. Jesus met our darkness face to face: the darkness of betrayal, of desertion, of fear so fierce that it erupts in violent words and actions, the darkness of crucifixion, the darkness of a day turned into night at high noon, the darkness of a tomb sealed shut with a mighty stone. Yes, Jesus knows darkness: deeply, intimately.
The good news of this holy week and this Easter day is not that there was no darkness or that there will never be any more darkness. The good news of Easter is that, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)
So, in the end, it isn’t about how we speak of the amazing events of this day …even with ‘borrowed words’… but about how God speaks to us. Today, instead we listen for a word spoken to us. It is about simply rejoicing and listening for God speaking to us. If we listen carefully, in the voice of the wind, in the murmuring of prayer around us, in the text and melody of hymns, in the silence between words, God speaks our names. He speaks to each of us in our darkest and loneliest places. And the greatest word of comfort is a single word. It is our name.
There is no greater hope, no greater peace, no greater joy than knowing that we matter sufficiently that another, whom we know and love, knows our name and will seek us out to reassure us with their presence. God is surely with us day by day. But today, God is with us in sight and sound, in smell and taste and feel. Today God is with us in a way designed to fill our senses and overflow our hearts. Today God is with us with the amazing word of assurance that we never have to fear being alone. And that word of reassurance is simply our name.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen.
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia.
.
.
