Henrietta United
Rev. David Inglis Luke
24:1-9
Easter
“Like Him We
Rise”
Here we are, all dressed up in our Easter best,
filling up the sanctuary, hearing the choir and Handbell Choir give us the best
music they can, having bought candy and maybe toys for the kids, and many of us
planning special dinners with family or friends. And here I am trying to preach
a sermon that will have to last some folks until Christmas. You know, this is a lot of hoopla over a
report that a teacher and healer came back out of his tomb over 2000 years
ago! I don’t mean to sound sacrilegious.
I just want to raise the question, What difference does Jesus’ resurrection
make for you and me today–besides giving us an extra holiday and a good excuse
to eat chocolate cream eggs (not that I’m knocking chocolate anything!).
Here’s what I think about it. The Easter story
isn’t just a crucial story for understanding who Jesus was. It’s also a crucial story for understanding
who we are, right here and now.
Because what the resurrection story proclaims loud and clear is that
there is more to us than just our physical bodies.
Of course Jesus taught this all the time, up to
his telling the thief hanging on the next cross that they would see each other
in paradise, and then right up to his dying words, “Father, into your hands I
commit my spirit.” Jesus believed in our
immortality, he taught about it, and then he demonstrated it when he returned
from death and stood right before his disciples and talked to them as a living,
loving presence.
So because of Easter, when I look at you, I
don’t just see you in terms of what you look like or what you do or even your
personality. No. When I look at each of you, I know that
inside your humanness, there’s a beautiful, precious spirit created by God for
eternity.
We need Easter to remind us of that, because our
spirit keeps getting lost, doesn’t it?
Rachel Naomi Ramen said,
A great deal of energy goes into the process of
fixing and editing ourselves. We may have even come to
admire in ourselves what is admired, expect what is expected, and value what is
valued by others. We have changed ourselves into someone that the people who
matter to us can love. Sometimes we no longer know what is true for us, in
which direction our own integrity lies.
If you feel that this applies in some way to
you, you’re certainly not alone. Because almost everything in our culture seems designed to make us
lose touch with the precious eternal spirit that is the essence of who we
really are. If you’re an average
person, you’re exposed to over 2000 advertisements a day telling you how to be
appealing, acceptable, happy, or satisfied–by buying something that you don’t
already have, or going and doing something other than what you’re doing
now. We are imprinted with images of
what it means to be attractive, successful, respected, competent, cool, or
sophisticated. And if we don’t live up
to one or more of those manufactured images we, don’t we end up feeling inadequate
on some level? And even if we resist buying all of those messages, life
seems to keep throwing more responsibilities and demands and distractions on us
that keep us racing on the surface of life, choking off our inner life and
keeping us from cultivating our own unique spirit.
So if we were to pause and spend time alone and
without distractions, and started pondering the question, “Who am I, really,
underneath it all?”, many of us would feel like we
were peering into a big, empty hole. In
fact, isn’t it that haunting, empty feeling that keeps us trying to fill our
lives with things, activities, food, or ways we can prove our worth? That
doesn’t mean that when God issued us a body, there was some mistake and our
soul got left out. It simply means that
the most important thing about us has gotten buried by lost along the way.
If that happened to you, then the Easter story
is for you! Jesus’ resurrection invites
you to reclaim the part of you that was created by God in God’s image, not the
world’s; the part of you that is inherently worthy and able to bless the world;
the part of you that will return to God when your body no longer serves you.
Your being here today is a pretty sure sign that
you’re at least partly already in touch with that spirit. If you have felt a welling up of hope,
inspiration or joy here this morning, or if you’ve had a sense of coming home
to yourself and God, that’s your spirit stirring to life and reaching out
towards your maker.
If you have been hurt by someone, and struggled
to get to the place where you could finally release the bitterness and
resentment in an attitude of forgiveness, that was your spirit rising above
your instincts for revenge.
If you have betrayed a trust, or hurt someone by
what you’ve done or said, or messed up your own life, and have turned to God
for forgiveness and for the courage and wisdom to right the wrongs and to begin
again, that’s your spirit guiding you back onto the path that will help you
deepen and grow, even through your mistakes.
If you have worked to release your critical
judgements of others and of yourself, and refrain from putting unrealistic
demands on others and on yourself, and keep asking God to help you love your
neighbor as you love yourself, that’s your spirit exercising its remarkable
capacity for unconditional love.
If you see a need, and you step forward and
humbly offer your gifts, that’s your spirit shining its light.
If you see something that isn’t right, and you
stand up for what is just or fair or true, that’s your spirit showing its
courage.
If you look for ways to help make the world a
better place, that’s your spirit doing what it came here to do.
When we’re in touch with our spirit, we feel
whole, connected, alive, at peace and joyful.
When we are cut off from our spirit, we feel empty, needy, anxious,
controlling, and critical of ourselves and others.
If that has happened to you–and in this life it
happens to all of us much more than we want–I invite you to close your eyes and
picture Jesus standing in front of you, as he stood in front of the tomb of his
friend Lazarus, who had died and had been buried. Jesus called out to his buried friend,
“Lazarus, come forth!” So now hear Jesus calling your name, and crying
out, “Come forth! O, come forth! You are here in this world to learn how to
let your spirit shine, even in the midst of pain and fear and hardship. My beloved brother or sister, the world needs
your spirit, now
as never before. You are part of God’s plan, and in this lies
the hope for the world. Come forth in
faith, in courage, and in hope! Your
spirit is created for life and for eternity, and it cannot be destroyed. You truly have nothing to fear. So come forth, and let your spirit shine!”
This is where the triumph of Easter is for me. Jesus
had shown people how to lead with their spirit–how to live in faith instead of
fear, in compassion instead of judgment, with love instead of exclusion. But the guardians of the old reality did
everything they could to extinguish this revolutionary spirit that threatened
their fear-based domination. They captured him, mocked him, tortured him, and
nailed him to a cross to die an agonizing death. “So much for this
The
followers of Jesus went on to create communities where there was neither male
nor female, Jew or Greek, slave or free. They created hospices to care for the
sick whom others regarded as cursed by God. They took
care of the widows and orphans that society had discarded. They challenged the
militarism of the empire that ruled most of the known world. All of this while they were being persecuted
and even martyred for their beliefs. And this same spirit lives on today, even
here at HUCC.
Jesus shows us that in the spirit, we are bigger
than the fears that would entomb us, bigger than the trials that would paralyze
us, bigger than the forces that would defeat us, even bigger than death
itself. So Jesus challenges us taste the
exhilaration of living more freely and faithfully as a spirit whose essence is
love, hope, courage, peace and joy.
Today isn’t just a day to celebrate the story of
Jesus’ resurrection 2000 years ago.
Today could also be a day to celebrate your resurrection, your
spirit emerging from the tomb of doubt, shame, pain and fear into life in all
its fullness, a life that leads you to help create God’s kingdom in this world
and to experience it fully in the next.
So my resurrected, spirit-filled brothers and
sisters,
Soar we now where Christ has led,
Following our exalted head,
Made like him, like him we rise,
Ours the cross, the grave, the
skies. Alleluia!
–
Charles Wesley