Signs of Resurrection

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! 

Happy Easter everyone! It’s so good to see you here today and so good to celebrate this great feast of Easter, to practice Christian Initiation — Baptism, to have the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper or Mass, and to enjoy this Sunday at St. Andrew’s.

There are many of who’ve been part of a faith tradition for as long as we’ve been alive, and so the strangeness, the awesomeness, and the overwhelm wears off and we start to hear it like a story our neighbor tells us about their houseplants “I’ve been watering them on Wednesday and Saturday now and it's making such a difference. Our interest level depends on how much we like houseplants — it’s not life changing, it’s just part of neighborly-ness. But if we stop for a minute, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen!” WHAT??? What’s happening?” 

I was poking around in one of my clergy groups on social this week, and one of the members told this story about her family. If they are all together and someone starts telling a story that they’ve heard before, you raise your hand. And if everyone’s hand is raised, you have to stop telling it. However, there are some beloved stories that override this rule, the ride and die stories, like how my grandma loved natural beauty so much she was always pointing it out, or how my grandpa just adored being with the people who he loved even at the very end. These are the stories that we never get tired of, the stories we tell over and over and over again. 

This is the kind of story that we hear today. Even if we’ve heard it a hundred times a thousand times, even if we’ve heard it so many times that it’s hard to hear it anew, this is a story that overrides “the rule.” We can’t stop telling it and neither could those first witnesses of whatever it was that happened. Yet don’t forget it. They were also the ones who had to figure it out, the ones who were first paralyzed and terrified, the ones who hurried to tell the eleven, the ones who thought it was an idle tale, the one who checked it out for himself, and needed some time to process. 

Yet it became part of the canon, both literally — because it’s in all four the gospels, and metaphorically — because this story is an again and again and then again story. In our texts today we hear it told three times, four if you count the collect of the day -- in the gospel, in the story of Peter and the Centurion, and then we hear Paul putting the whole story into context in Corinthians. Again and again and yet again.

And this is also our story, y’all. So what stands out? What might this story tell us?

This stands out. That according to our text, there was a missing body, and the women were the first to know. Even though women at that time weren’t explicitly forbidden from being witnesses in a trial or a personal matter by scripture, culturally, by that time, women were prohibited from serving as a witness because they weren’t emotionally stability and were biased witnesses. Yet in our story, the women were the first witnesses, the first ones to hear this news, the first ones who shared this news with the others. Y’all Jesus stood with the marginalized, using the ones who the world excluded to show God’s power and imagination and brilliance.

This stands out. Even as the women shared the good news right away, once Peter saw the evidence in the tomb himself, he needed to go home and think about it. This is because resurrection is such a big mystery that it takes longer than a few hours or even a few days to take in. It takes a lifetime. It’s such a big mystery that it took the women and Peter and the apostles a generation, a long time to figure it out. But once they figured it out did, they couldn’t shut up. Why do you think Peter told this story to Cornelius? It was because yet another thing had just happened — the Spirit of God had just come to those to whom everyone thought it was impossible for God to come to — and Peter was so overwhelmed and overjoyed, and so amazed that he told this story, this ride or die story of our faith. And this wasn’t the only time. They — Peter and the eleven, all of them — when life was filled with the good, filled with the bad, this was the story that gave meaning to their lives. Y’all, this is the story that defines and gives meaning to our lives too. 

This stands out. This story is the basis for the Great Feast of the Resurrection, what we are celebrating today, the most important feast in the whole church year. We prepare for this feast for forty days, and then we celebrate for fifty days, even longer than we withhold for Lent! So whatever you did for Lent, whatever preparing you did, you’ve got to figure out how to invert it and to celebrate! Throw a party! Eat lots of chocolate, even more than Halloween! This is the most important story, the one that all of Christianity hinges on, the strange story that still leaves us overwhelmed and full of questions even after two millennia, yet the story that we all know with our bodies and with our hearts and so it’s time to celebrate, to break out all the joy, all the stops, all the goodnesses! We also need some time to let it sink in, to let this big mystery break into our lives and to celebrate. Y’all, this is what Easter and the season of Easter is all about! 

Our first spring back in Michigan, we took a walk at our park. There was a warm rain falling, just a spitting. Night was falling. We first heard the peepers. But then, as we walked by the stream, we saw them. Hundreds, thousands even, of little baby frogs, no bigger than my pinkie nail! Every direction, every step, they leapt out of the way. But just a few months ago? Covered in snow, with no sign of life anywhere. But now? Bursting with life and noise. But if you blink, if you’re really busy in the early spring, you miss it. 

If you blink, if you’re not looking you'll miss it, yet little froglets are all around us, signs of resurrection! They point us to the new heaven and new earth that’s happening right now. They point us to the hope that lives in our bodies now, the signs of the active Body of Christ, the Church, YOU! And all of us can see the little froglets everywhere, if you just go out for a walk and look around you, if listen to the stories, especially the strange ones, the ones that are full of mystery, the ones that tell the story of resurrection in our own lives and those of others.

I squeaked a little as I received a text from one of you, wanting more in their faith life than they have right now. I gasped with wonder this week when I heard about the Great Pyrenees that found the two-year-old lost overnight in the Arizona desert. I delighted as one of you told me that their community — a strong and beautiful one — is holding them up when they need it the very most. I look out at all of you, all of you who practice so much resurrection with your bodies, who live hope, as you dedicate your lives to serving, to loving, to resisting, to being the people of God, in this place and this time. Can you see it, hopping, leaping out of the way, and so small you miss it? 

Because just as those froglets grow and then have babies of their own, so did resurrection. It didn’t stop with the women, or the eleven, or even us; it spread out. This is a story that we continue to tell, that lives in us, in this beautiful incarnation of Church, St. Andrew’s. In just a minute, we will welcome three new Christians into our faith community. We will again promise to do the good work of God in the world, with God’s help. We will again promise to come together in worship, to love our neighbor, to respect the dignity of every human being. Can you hear those peepers? Can you see them hopping? 

I can too.