This Is What It Means To Say Easter

Somebody upstairs was smiling when the calendar came out with the Easter celebration coinciding with April Fool’s Day.  Perfect.  The absurd and the sacred are mixed together, and I don’t know where to go with this.  What are other preachers doing this morning?  Did someone move the body of Jesus as a joke?  But the church is saying that resurrection is no joke at all.  It really happened, and we should never get comfortable with the resurrection of Jesus.  It’s a crazy idea, one of overwhelming optimism, no matter how dark your present reality is.  Jesus is risen.  Resurrection is powerful and wild, just as spring will blossom all around us.  The birds are singing now.    

Easter is a triumphant day when new life overcomes death, and the world is righted by the hand of God, lifting his son Jesus to a new awakening.  But what about Good Friday?  What about all that suffering of Jesus?  Three hours on the cross, after being whipped and spat upon.  Where was God then?  Good Friday and Easter are two sides of the same coin, and you can’t have one without the other.  Joy and sorrow are woven together, and they’re impossible to separate.  That’s life.  The cross is in the middle of our reality, and so is new life.

But what is the right balance between sorrow and joy on this Easter day?  The Protestant cross emphasizes the resurrection victory.  The body of Jesus is gone from the cross, lifted up to new life by God.  The cross is left empty, and becomes symbolic of God’s power, the Easter victory.  The cross is no longer an implement of violence and torture, which it was at the time of Jesus during the Roman Empire.  It took time—centuries actually--for the church to accept the cross as a positive symbol.  Now it can be worn as jewelry.  On the other side of things, the Roman Catholic cross always includes the body of Jesus, called the crucifix.  This emphasizes the centrality of suffering, and the resurrection energy is diminished.  The sacrifice of Jesus is the holy suffering that saves our souls.  He died for our sins, so Catholics portray this, viscerally, with a physical Jesus on the cross.  Here at Kent, we’re somewhere in between in St. Joseph’s Chapel.  Jesus is freed from bondage, but the cross is still close behind him.  His arms are still in the cruciform position, but they seem free to embrace others; to embrace the world.  This morning Jesus is surrounded by beautiful resurrection ribbons made by Ms. Lynch.  Jesus is risen indeed.

The gospel lesson from Mark shows the excitement with the first news of this resurrection.  The most striking element in Mark’s Easter miracle is the presence of three women at the tomb of Jesus.  Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to anoint Jesus’s body.  These three women stayed with Jesus at the cross when he suffered and died, and here they return to anoint Jesus’s body with spices.  Women are more faithful than the male disciples; they are with Jesus all the way, while the male disciples have scattered, fearing for their lives.  Inside the tomb is a messenger who addresses the women.  The text doesn’t say that he is an angel.  The only thing mentioned about the man is his white robe.  In other gospels he is an angel, or two angels, or two mortal messengers.  The messenger says that Jesus will be found in Galilee; that he is risen from the dead.  In our ordinary rounds here at Kent, we hear an extraordinary story, an amazing testimony.  This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often.  How can we integrate this crazy reality into our daily lives?  The women do it by being faithful in response to suffering, by sticking close to the cross.  Life is tragic, but don’t run away from it.  Your presence will be needed shortly, for those you love.  Stay close to the cross in everything you do.  The women do that.  They are faithful in suffering, and they hear the good news before anyone else.

In my English class in Native American Studies, we have been reading Sherman Alexie’s Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  For Native Americans, stories have real power in the oral tradition of a people.  In the language of the Native American world, stories have mighty medicine.  They have healing power.  My study of Native American literature has taught me more about how to go to pain, to human suffering, without there being an immediate answer.  It actually takes a lot of faith to do that.  The collection of stories by Alexie was eventually made into the powerful movie Smoke Signals about two Indian young men on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  The movie is based largely on one short story “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona.”  The occasion of the story is the journey of Victor and Thomas Builds-The-Fire to Phoenix, Arizona, to pick up the ashes of Victor’s father after his sudden death.  The entire purpose of the journey is to go into suffering--to go deeper into that mystery. 

Victor doesn’t have enough money to take the trip, and the Tribal Council doesn’t have any ready funds to help Victor.  So Thomas offers to help pay for the trip, on one condition: that Thomas gets to go on the journey.  The history between the two is not so good.  Thomas is a loner; he talks to himself; he’s pretty weird.  In their childhood, Victor and the other boys made fun of Thomas.  Victor even beat him up once.  But now they both need each other.  Thomas is an orphan, and he saw Victor’s father as a surrogate father for him as well.  The one thing that Thomas Builds-The-Fire can do is tell stories, which he does whenever someone asks.     

            “’Hey,’ Victor said.  ‘Tell me a story.’

            Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: ‘There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors.  But it was too late to be warriors the old way.  All the horses were gone.  So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city.  They parked the stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back home to the reservation.  When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents’ eyes shone with pride.  You were brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys.  Very brave.’

            ‘Ya-hey,’ Victor said.  ‘That’s a good one.  I wish I could be a warrior.’”

            Sherman Alexie’s writing is inspiring and healing, even as it goes to places of sorrow and suffering, like the journey of two people to pick up a father’s ashes.  It holds tightly to sorrow, like the women at the cross.    

            “Thomas Build-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: ‘I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign.  I knew I had to go there but I didn’t have a car.  Didn’t have a license.  I was only thirteen.  So I walked all the way there, took me all day, and I finally made it to the Falls.  I stood there for an hour waiting.  Then your dad came walking up.  What the hell are you doing here?  He asked me.  Waiting for a vision.  Then your father said, All you’re going to get here is mugged.  So he drove me over to Denny’s, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation.  For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me.  But they didn’t.  Your dad was my vision.  Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying.  Take care of each other.’”   

            When the journey ends, the two men who have come of age now split the ashes of Victor’s father, half and half.  They fulfilled the father’s command: to take care of each other.  Jesus says the same thing to his disciples: love one another as I have loved you.     

            “Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this story: ‘I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water.  And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home.  It will be beautiful.  His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow.  He will rise, Victor, he will rise.’” 

On Easter Sunday, we have constellations of hope and new life surrounding us.  With the Easter faith, we know that tomorrow will be better than today.  The universe is on our side; a victory has already been won.  We just need to live into it, day by day.  We remember the women at the cross, and then at the tomb, who show us how to be faithful in sorrow.  If you do this, you will be the first to see the new thing that God is doing.  These three women became the first witnesses to resurrection because they were steadfast in the face of suffering; they knew the truth first.  And two Native American boys become men, sharing the ashes of a father, as they forgive him and forgive each other.  Both groups are holding the same Easter message.  Take care of each other.  Take care of the planet, because she is the mother of us all.  Love is the mightiest medicine in the world, and today we share new life; and seek its source with faith in God.  Happy Easter to all of you.  The Lord is risen.   

Holy Interruptions

The Old Testament reading was the story of the flood in Genesis on this First Sunday of Lent.  For forty days and nights, the earth was covered with water.  The animals are gathered together in the ark with Noah and his family.  Creation is made new in this story.  The flood was thought to be a purification of the human race after a time of great wickedness.  After the flood, God establishes a covenant with Noah, all people, and even the animals to never destroy the earth again with a flood, and the symbol of this covenant is the rainbow in the sky: “This is a sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

We heard this story as our campus is covered with snow from winter storm Noah.  Is this a coincidence?  I think not.

I don’t think we can ever hear this story the same way again after our own experience with a flood in January here on the Housatonic River.  It was a complete interruption in our daily lives as we dispersed from the school to higher ground in the surrounding communities.  When you have an interruption like a flood, it makes you look at your life from a new perspective.  What did we learn or come to understand?  I think we learned to have deeper appreciation for mother nature; that there are natural forces alive and at work on this planet that make our own agendas and worries seem small and puny when we look at the big picture of the natural world.  The interruption pulled us out of our daily routines and made us see reality in a new way.  Is there now a rainbow in the sky for us, as there was for Noah and all the animals?  I will scan the skies, and let you know.  Our small flood definitely pales in comparison with the great flood described in Genesis.  Yet our lives were interrupted.  We learned that we are not wholly in charge of our world.  We have to respect nature, its beauty and its sometime peril.

My life has been pleasantly disrupted by the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, during this month of February.  So many of the winter sports require physical courage.  I mean, how do you do aerial skiing or the luge for the very first time?  It must be terrifying.  And then there is curling.  I still don’t understand the rules, but I can watch it for hours.  I love the manic sweeping of the ice that they do.  I could definitely use these athletes to clean my house.  The Winter Olympics reminds me that I can do more than just survive during the winter months.  I can thrive, and maybe even excel.  And so can you in the weeks ahead.

The season of Lent, which began this this week on Ash Wednesday, is a kind of interruption in our daily lives, if we take it seriously.  With the imposition of ashes on the forehead, we are reminded of our mortality with the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  The tradition of giving something up as a daily discipline frames the personal experience of the season.  Like the flood story, the season of Lent is 40 days long.  The number forty comes up with all the readings this morning.

In the same spiritual pattern, Jesus intentionally interrupts his life by spending 40 days in the wilderness where he fasts and prays.  He is both led by the Holy Spirit and tempted by Satan, according to Mark.  Jesus fasting and praying in the wilderness invokes the tradition of the vision quest.  For Native Americans, a vision quest was a time when you left the tribe to be alone in nature.  A chief might do this if he were facing an important decision, or a shaman, the religious leader, might practice this discipline as he sought the well-being of the tribe as a whole.  Jesus seems to be doing the same thing in the mystical Jewish tradition.  This is a time of purification for Jesus when he draws near to the ultimate reality that is God.  For Jesus, God was as near as the blood that runs in our veins, and he experienced this first in the wilderness.  He had to interrupt his life to find his true spiritual path with God.  He had to leave society for a time.  In the flood story and the gospel, the great interruptions in our lives are deeply cathartic and creative; these are the moments when our character is forged before God.  Interruptions can be holy if we let them guide us out of the water of suffering to higher ground.  The flood was the last thing we needed this winter as a school, but there are important lessons in the experience of having our daily routines disrupted if we seek them intentionally. 

This morning I would like to share with you a significant interruption in my life.  Everything came crashing down around me.  At the age of nine, I was diagnosed with cancer.  My childhood was permanently interrupted, and I was sent to Stanford Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California, for chemotherapy and radiation treatments.  My schooling was interrupted on a weekly basis; every Wednesday I missed school to go to Stanford.  Why me?  I must have asked myself that a hundred times, and I never got a direct answer from God.  For Native Americans, the shaman was often a person who encountered a near death experience; one that introduced him to the spiritual reality that feeds our planet.  Why me?  I remember one morning when I was asking myself this question while I waited for an x-ray at the radiologist.  Waiting with me was a girl who had recently had one of her eyes removed.  She was laughing and joking with her mother, while I was feeling sorry for myself.  At that moment, while listening to the girl’s trilling laughter, I stopped asking why me and began to look around.  So many children—these tiny old people, bald and beautiful--were in worse shape than I was; and some of them wouldn’t make it.  At the age of nine, I learned there is something universal about being a patient in a hospital.  We’re all going to end up in one.  When you’re young, it is hard to understand that.  In my childhood interrupted, I had to integrate death into my personal cosmos.  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, I learned.    

My memories of chemotherapy are powerful, though they happened four decades ago, when I was just a confused boy afraid of dying.  I used to run from these memories.  Now I embrace them.  I didn’t talk about my experience of cancer for nine years after I went into remission.  Then it all came flooding back, but it wasn’t bad.  It was kind of beautiful.  There is physical healing, which medicine accomplished, but there is also spiritual healing, which was given to me by God.  My memories help me remember how I got here, even to this pulpit this morning.  I will never forget the doctors and nurses who cared for me.  I discovered that when we are most alone, we are not alone.  My mother was always present during my chemotherapy treatments, but so was something else, something transcendent, but also deeply present in the moment.  The presence of God, like for Jesus in the wilderness.  I had help in my suffering.  I had a higher power.  I also discovered that compassion and vulnerability are deeply related, and there’s nothing wrong with being vulnerable.  I discovered my deepest values as a human being.  Making money was not going to be the purpose of my life.  Though I am a flawed person, I would follow a path where I could be of help to others as my life discipline.  Most childhood cancer survivors are overeducated and underpaid, and many enter the helping professions as adults.

Interruptions in our lives can be painful, but they also can be holy.  They can be the moments when our character is forged before God.  In the overflow of water, both in biblical times and our own, the love of God can come flooding back to us.  God loves each of you if you were the only person on the face of the earth, and grace flows through the broken places in our lives.  May God bless all of you during this holy season on the banks of the Housatonic.