Good
Job, God!
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron
E. Shafer
(Rutgers, April 15, 2001; Easter
Sunday, Year C;
Holy Communion)
Isaiah 65:17–25 (OT, pp. 772–773); Luke
24:1–12 (NT, pp. 91–92)
OK!
Are you ready? Let’s do
it!
Christ
is risen! [Christ is risen
indeed!] Christ is risen!
[Christ is risen indeed!]
Alleluia! [Alleluia!]
A
wonderfully old-fashioned word it is—“Alleluia!”
Now, Laura Jervis set the standard for us last Sunday, Palm Sunday, when,
during her Children’s Sermon, she offered us a modern equivalent to that other
old-fashioned word, “Hosanna!” Do
you remember? She suggested it
means, “You go, God!” And she
had all the kids shout it out with her: “You go, God!”
Well,
today is Easter, the day on which we affirm that our cries of “Hosanna,” of
“You go, God,” have been fulfilled. Today’s
the day we affirm that God has actually gone and done it!
God has raised Jesus from the dead.
And in so doing, God has vindicated the goodness of Jesus, and God has
validated the good news that Jesus preached to the poor, the outcast, and the
oppressed. God has
raised Jesus from the dead.
That’s
why on Easter our “Hosannas” give way to “Alleluias,” our cries of
“You go, God!’’ give way to shouts of …, “Good job, God!”
For God has rolled aside the stone from Jesus’s grave and unleashed in
the world the power of eternal life.
Christ
is risen! [Christ is risen
indeed!] Christ is risen!
[Christ is risen indeed!]
Alleluia! [Alleluia!]
Good job, God! [Good job, God!]
[Hey!
That was certainly loud and vibrant!
Good job, people!]
Easter
is a day for us to affirm not only that God came to Jesus to
roll aside the stone that held him in death, but also that God comes to us to
roll aside those figurative stones, those forces, that hold us in a death-like
grip, constricting and limiting our lives in ways that keep us from experiencing
joy and vitality. Yes, Easter is a
day on which God comes to assure each and every one of us that in our times of
limitation and loss, when we feel more dead than alive, God has the power to
call us forth from our tomb; God’s love is able to reclaim us for abundant
life.
After
that very first Easter, we can be confident that whenever we confront pain or
failure or illness or dying God will come to us, if only we ask. God will come
to us to calm our fears and to carry us through to the eternity of Christ’s
joy and love.
In
the face of pain and illness and dying, fear is instinctive, but we can confront
and cope with that fear by drawing on the hope and faith created in us by
God’s raising of Jesus, the hope and faith that, in God, the death of our body
is not the end of our existence but merely a transition from one experience of
life that’s transient to another that’s eternal.
And
it’s not sickness alone that confronts us with the specters of death, of
limits and losses, of feeling more dead than alive.
We
also confront these specters when we’re caught in the grip of such forces as
racism, homophobia, addiction, greed, jealousy, hatred, violence.
For
overcoming all of these forces, these forces of death, God’s loving presence
is a counter-power capable of breaking the hold such forces have over us.
For God’s love is stronger than sin, as God’s raising of Jesus from
the dead has proven once and for all.
God’s
raising of Jesus trumpets the incredibly consoling truth that whoever we are,
whatever our pain or problem, our anxiety or affliction, our frustration or
failure or sin, God has the power to raise us to life and to well-being.
For even if it should happen that our pain does not pass, that our
problem does not go away, that our failure is not forgotten, still, in the words
of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins [“The Wreck of the
Deutschland”]—still, Christ
“easters” in us, offering us hope for life and well-being on the other side
of physical death. This is a hope rooted in the reality that although Jesus
experienced the most horrifying kind of suffering imaginable, God stood with him
both through it and beyond it, raising him to the glory of life eternal.
You
see, the resurrection is not a denial that pain and suffering exist in life.
Quite the opposite. As the
experiences of Good Friday attest, the resurrection is a sacrament built on
death-confronted, on pain-borne, on tears-shed. Resurrection is a sacrament of life raised from the ruin of
human suffering and pain and conflict. And
faith in the resurrection is founded on those glimpses of wholeness that come to
us in the midst of suffering—it's founded most powerfully of all on our
glimpses of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, when from the suffering
of the cross God was able to bring forth newness of life and of well-being.
On
a Friday long ago, Jesus—scourged, buffeted, stretched out on a
cross—painfully and agonizingly dies.
Then
on Sunday, some women—grieving, distraught, forlorn— go to Jesus's tomb to
cover the stench of putrefaction with the scent of their spices.
There, these women—surprised, perplexed, alarmed—find the tomb open,
and empty!
Suddenly,
dazzlingly, terrifyingly, two beings appear to them, saying: "He is not
here, but has risen." And in
that instant, both they and we are transported from the grief of Good Friday to
the joy of Easter, from the specter of death to the promise of life.
For
what the two messengers are really announcing is that the beauty and goodness,
the tenderness and strength, the justice and love that we saw die on Friday are
again alive.
What
seemed on Friday to be a powerless love is seen on Sunday to have ultimately
triumphed, to have triumphed over all the forces of death in the world!
For as the messengers say, "He is not here, but has risen."
God
raised Jesus from the dead, and Jesus now “easters” in us, offering us the
gift of wholeness and well-being and abundant life that God gave to him.
But here's the hard part! The
Risen Christ calls on us, in turn, to carry that gift of abundant life to
others. Christ calls us, as a
people of God, to share in God’s task of rolling aside many more gravestones,
of carrying the sacrament of resurrection, of life rising from the ruin of
death, to any who are still entombed by illness, fear, or oppression, still
entombed by anyone or anything that crucifies.
Christ calls us to mediate God’s life-giving love to others, so that
Christ may “easter” in them as well.
Christ
is risen! [Christ is risen
indeed!] And Christ desires to
use us to help create a world in which life is continually being raised from the
ruins of death, in the way spoken of by the prophet in our First Lesson: a world
in which infant deaths are no more, in which poverty and despair are eliminated,
in which old enemies become fast friends, in which violence and death yield to
peace and long-life for all.
So
you see, Easter is not the end of the story, but just the beginning.
On Palm Sunday, we journeyed to Jerusalem with Jesus, and today the Risen
Christ calls us to go forth from there out into the world.
On Good Friday, we stood at the foot of the cross, and today we learn to
identify the stigmata of Christ’s hands and feet with the suffering of the
world in every age. And this
morning, we go to the tomb, and there we first hear the life-giving words, “He
is not here, but is risen,” and soon thereafter hear the Risen Christ calling
us to carry the healing power of God’s love to others—so that one spouse
doesn’t abuse the other, so that adults doesn’t pollute God's world, so that
children don’t open fire on playmates, so that love may be seen to be stronger
than sin and all the forces of death.
Yes,
Easter begins with God, yet it ends with us.
It begins in a vigil, yet it ends in a task.
It begins in a holy place, yet it ends in the world.
For it is through the faith and the hope and the love that are kindled in
us by God’s raising of Jesus and that are nurtured in us by our sharing of
them with others that Christ is made known to the world.
Christ
is risen! [Christ is risen
indeed!] Christ is risen!
[Christ is risen indeed!]
Alleluia! [Alleluia!]
Good job, God! [Good job, God!]
And
now, may our shouts of praise to God be echoed back in God’s benediction upon
us: “Good job, people!”
Let
us pray:
O
God, we thank You that by raising Jesus from the dead You have vindicated the
goodness of his life and shown us that in the end evil cannot triumph.
Help us to become agents of Your victory over sin and death.
In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
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