March
23, 2008 Des Moines
Easter
Sunday
Matthew
28:1-10
At the
Dawning
It's
lighter now, although there is still more to come. Nights that only days ago seemed to hold
hostage the clock, are now receding in length in deference to the day. And those of us whose spirits and attitudes
have been huddled in February gloom have gradually found ourselves smiling
again – our spirits brightening with the day.
Light can do that for us – burning away the fog of mind and spirit to
reveal a world with brighter colors than we had remembered. Light can change a lot of things when its
clarity is brought to bear.
One of my favorite singer/songwriters – David Wilcox – sings
a song about seeking the truth; seeking the right path when the intersections
are miserably confusing and conflicted.
It's only hard, he implies, when the choice is important, and can be,
therefore, paralyzing.
I was dead with deciding – afraid to choose
I was mourning the loss of the choices I'd lose
But there's no choice at all if I don't make my
move
And trust that the timing is right...
So I'll hold it up, hold it up to the light.
It's how counterfeit money
is often detected – holding it up to the light to see the telltale markings and
threads. It's how bad eggs are culled
from the rest – by shining a light through them. It's how roaches are scattered and truth is
decided and coordinating colors are chosen.
“Hold it up to the light.”
But light can be in short supply. A couple of months ago, on a date that seems
at one and the same time like “yesterday” and “ancient history,” the season of
Epiphany began with the account of the magi – or as tradition has preferred to
characterize them, the “three wise men” -- astronomers from the east who saw a
star rising in the night sky that portended the birth of something – or someone
– important. I began the sermon that
Sunday with a quote from scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan to the
effect that our tradition of locating Jesus' birth in “deepest darkness,” “in
the middle of the night” during the winter solstice is less about historical
time (given that no one really knows exactly what year, let alone what hour
Jesus was born) than it is about “parabolic time, metaphorical time, sacred
time, symbolic time.” [1]
It was all about a people of deep but
long-clouded faith, beginning to see a little light. That could be the implicit sense of John's
description of Nicodemus, the leader and Pharisee, coming to visit Jesus “in
the night” – a darkness, perhaps, of the mind and soul as much as the clock. A deep and cloying darkness, seeking a little
light.
And that light had, indeed, gotten
brighter and brighter along the way.
Appearing in the wilderness for baptism at the hands of John, Jesus went
on to proclaim the dawning of a different kind of life – one in which, just as
the prophets had foretold, captives heard proclaimed to them release; to the
blind, new sight; to the oppressed, new freedom; a brighter kind of life in
which the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek and merciful and pure and
peaceful, one in which those who hunger and thirst after righteousness find
blessing. And more than just proclaim
it, Jesus went on to embody that kind of life – healing and teaching and
uplifting and challenging the myriad encroachments of death.
But if light has a way of breaking out,
from time to time, darkness has a way of reasserting itself. The status quo doesn't relinquish its
dominance willy nilly. Things, after all,
are the way they are because they benefit someone, and those who enjoy those
benefits aren't eager to lose them. And
so the system pushed back – the religious system, the political system, the
social system.
“Why do you believe that?”
“What gives you the right to do that?”
“Why would you expect that?”
“You can't get away with that!”
“That's not the way we do it.”
“That's wrong!”
“That's against the law!”
“That's immoral!”
“I'm telling!”
Even in the face of new light, darkness
kept breaking out all over. And so an
arrangement was made. An accommodation
was negotiated. Judas, one of Jesus'
own, would stick a few coins in the socket and short out the whole power
grid. During the night, far away from
streetlamps and headlights, removed from public view, Judas would lead them to
Jesus so that they could extinguish him for good. “Good,” at least as they understood it.
Soldiers came, trials ensued, then
whips and taunts and nails and groans.
All under cover of darkness. And
finally death. And darkness – deeper,
still bleaker darkness. But that's not
how the story ends. We know that, or we
wouldn't be here this morning. There
are, after all, other things to do on a morning like this; other places to
be. Spring Break is concluding for some,
and we could be inhaling that last little bit of vacation's fresh and liberated
air. There is a basketball tournament
underway and even though it is suddenly less interesting than it was just a
couple of days ago, we could be busy arranging our junk food on the coffee
table preparing for a full afternoon of it.
We could be lingering over the Sunday paper in the company of another
fresh cup of coffee. Or gathering up,
again, the order of routine after a week of spring break.
But instead, we are here, inhaling
deeply of the scent of lilies, basking in the brassy glory of trumpets, and
radiating in our smiles and twinkling eyes...bright light. Because, as we asserted the last time we were
together for grand and deep celebration, “the light shines on in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.”
“As
the first day of the week was dawning,” Matthew tells it -- or, as we might
come to think of it, “at the dawn of life on different terms,” -- Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a
great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and
rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his
clothing white as snow. And an angel of the Lord said to the women, “Do not be
afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not
here; for he has been raised...”
At the dawning. Out of the darkness, into the light, this
way and will of God. Whatever Easter has
to say about our dying and rising, the morning light beaming into
and reflecting out of this empty tomb radiates like a klieg light into the
murky corners of human interacting that only days before had ridiculed the way
of Jesus as weak, or idealistic, or impractical, or hopelessly naïve. Just as the reign of the night is toppled by
the insurgent dawn, so all the shadowy forces of dominance, indifference,
greed, and rigid self-protection and sufficiency are held up to the light of
Christ's rising and pierced by Easter's dawning are shown to be the flimsy
counterfeits reality knows them to be.
The prophet Isaiah said it rightly: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who
lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).
And rising, ourselves, in the clarity of its glow, we hold
our own lives and the values and pursuits that have crowded them up to the
light and see truth on different terms.
l
We hold up the petty lines
of race or wealth or pedigree we draw between people to divide them into more
and less important.
l
We hold up the hoarded
mountains of trinkets and toys and baubles and bling we accumulate as evidence
of our worth.
l
We hold up the fearful
bunkering of our borders and our homes and workplaces and deposits and the
desperate delusion that our “way of life” is the same thing as real
“living.”
We hold it up to the light
of Christ's dawning and recognize the fragile tissue that is our own
designing. And we can't quite go on the
way we were.
We can't quite keep silent, either, seared into our
imaginations and compulsions the instruction of the angel: “go and tell.
“Do not be afraid; go and tell the others, and in the light of the
dawning, they will see me.”
Holding up to the light of
Christ's dawning all that is and extends before us, our paths clarified and
illuminated by the dawning, we go out into the daylight to nudge a few stones
out of the way, ourselves –
...going,
...telling,
...moving,
...and holding up to the light.