The Resurrection of Our Lord A
Text: Matthew 28:1-10
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
April 12, 2020

Dying, and Rising

There is an old saying, I’m sure you’ve heard it, and I looked it up this week and I learned it comes to us from Benjamin Franklin. The saying goes that there are only two things in life that are certain: death, and taxes.

Well, well, perhaps these things are not quite so certain after all, for in the year 2020, for the first time since the establishment of the income tax in the United States, because of the coronavirus fight, that drop-dead, rock-solid, never-been-moved deadline for filing your tax return has been extended beyond April 15. You know, rolling back the stone from the tomb on Easter was one thing, but rolling back the tax deadline? That’s a miracle! That’s when you knew the federal government was catching on that this coronavirus thing was serious, right? When they decided it might be more important to leave that money in the pockets of the American people for the time being. You know you’re living in a different world, when taxes are no longer a certain thing.

Might it be that death, as well, is not nearly so certain as we think? On Easter Sunday, the Day of the Resurrection of Our Lord, but what is projected to be the peak day of the coronavirus death toll in Illinois, do Christians dare make such a claim?

That question gives you the sense that, while Resurrection is good news and people normally flock to churches on this day to hear it, yet also is the news of Easter terrifying. In all four of the gospels we are told that those who first witnessed resurrection, were filled with fear.

And there’s a lot to be afraid of. The gospel stories also tell us that you don’t know resurrection unless you’re willing, like the Marys at dawn, to go right up to the tomb. Usually, you know, we don’t go there; we’re afraid of it. We stay far as we can from death: we live healthy, work out, eat right, and we go to the doctor. Concerning death, we want to keep our social distance.

But occasionally death catches up to someone you love, and then like those women, you have to go and see death up close. Here we are in the middle of a lethal pandemic, and it becomes painfully clear that death can always bridge that social distance to find any of us. What has collapsed has been more than so many sectors of our economy, and more than significant parts of our overwhelmed medical system. What has collapsed is the illusion that we were somehow safe from the kind of threat and danger that so much of the world – Syrian war victims; immigrants in the US; people who live in poverty – live under all the time. But this isn’t supposed to happen to us, is it? We’re the biggest, wealthiest, most advanced, most powerful, right? If big and wealthy and advanced and powerful can’t keep us safe, what *hope* do we have?

And that’s the question right now, isn’t it? What hope do we have? The message of the Passion of our Lord and Easter Day is that your hope does not lie in
• Collecting as many things as possible before it’s too late,
• Or that business about the big and wealthy and advanced and powerful,
• Or in holding your precious loved ones as tight as you can before you’ve got to give them back, or
• Wasting the precious few years of your life trying to postpone death.

No. The message of Easter Day is rather to discover a death-defying hope.

Easter hope. Do you think a hope like that won’t stand up to a time like this? You’re wrong about that.

I know because I sit with dying people. I walk with people who lose their loved ones. I preach, at funerals.

If you don’t think Easter hope will stand up to a time like this, you may just be confused about what Easter is. You may be thinking that Easter is about renewal, and new beginnings; about the noble perseverance of the human spirit, and about the first daffodils of the spring. But let me tell you, when death catches up to you, when the tear-stained faces of a broken-hearted family and the expectant people of a church community look to you in the pulpit, well, do you really think any of that sentimental stuff is going to help at all?

No. Easter hope, is a different word entirely. It’s a word that’s not for any mere human to work for, or achieve; it’s a word of trust in something that’s way beyond any such work of ours. It’s a word that comes to us, when we wonder how we could ever move the stone away from the tomb, and, lo and behold, the word comes to us that the stone has been rolled away, already.

See, the word from the pulpit when death comes near must always be the same as the word of the angel on Easter morning: “Whyever would you seek the living, among the dead? He has been raised and is going ahead of you now, to Galilee!”

And if the preacher at a funeral – and the preacher in a pandemic – can bring that kind of word, then two things happen to the people that hear that word.

One, the people are reminded of a hope for a future that is so, so far beyond our own ability or comprehension. It’s the hope of nothing less than eternal life. It’s the only hope we’ve got these days, that God’s own self is even now working through us to make something Godly out of this awfulness.

And two, people start to wonder about the life they’re living right now. You can’t go to see a body in a tomb, you can’t go to a church funeral, and you can’t live through a pandemic, without confronting some questions that are hard, questions of ultimate significance. You may ask yourself if the work you do is really what you are called to do. You may ask yourself about your place in the family, with whom you have been, oh, spending a lot of time lately, and what it is might need to be different, there. You’ve got time these days to ponder about what will be said when someone is delivering your own eulogy, and then wonder if it’s possible to live differently between now and then and, who knows?, maybe change your life. Resurrection, right? Easter hope, right!

That’s why this Easter morning is such an opportunity, to join Mary Magdalene and the other Mary in staring right at the empty tomb of Jesus – because then we can stare at our own tombs of loss and death without fear. “Do not be afraid,” says the angel at the empty tomb, because followers of Christ do not dread death; we actually try to get it over with as soon as possible. When we live in real Easter hope we live, as if we have died to the things of this world already. In the words of the old country song, we live like we were dyin’. It’s the word that is spoken over us right from the get-go, in our Baptism: that it is because in Baptism we have been united with Christ in a death like his, that we are surely united with him, in a resurrection like his.

Because you see, you don’t have to roll away the stone of that tomb, of any place of loss and death in your life. You go to face it, and you will find that stone rolled away already; resurrected new life has already been won for you by the sacrifice and life of our Lord Jesus Christ. God can always be found beyond the destructive powers of such threat and tragedy as we know right now. God is waiting for us there already, waiting to bring us back to new life. After every cross, resurrection is open to us.

So the stone that covers the tomb is already rolled back, but it will be up to us to walk out of the tomb as re-born, as new creatures, as – could it be? – a new nation. It all depends on the choices we make.

If our choices arise out of a new vision of right relationship and justice. If we come out of this with a renewed understanding of our shared community, our real interdependence, of just how much we are, rich and poor, *always*, not just in crisis, but *always* in it together. If we can leave behind what scares us about one another, and look instead for what unites *all* God’s people, then we’ll emerge from this tragedy as a people with a new calling on this earth. Resurrection, right? Easter hope, right!

Did you notice where this morning’s Resurrection story, where it all finishes up? “He’s going ahead of you,” says the angel. Where? “To Galilee.” Galilee?! That’s where the Marys were from, in the first place! Isn’t the resurrected new life supposed to be something that transports you to heaven, to beyond the river, into my Father’s house with many mansions?

Not for you, my discipled friend! None of that for you yet, because the Easter story gets finished back in Galilee, where the women and the disciples lived. Back in the ordinary places, where you and I spend most of our time. Back where we work and live and make our home. The Easter story gets finished when ordinary people do the most extraordinary things with their lives.

The Easter story gets finished when the hungry are fed and the homeless given shelter and the Covid victim is cared for; right there is the Easter story. When the sinner is forgiven and broken relationships are mended. The Easter story is finished when the lonely are made part of a church community, when those in grief are comforted. It gets finished when parents find time to raise their children, when business people do what’s right, when leaders have the courage to lead people beyond their fears.

The Easter story gets finished every time someone comes to know that it is in giving life away that we find it.

All across the world on this Easter Day, in churches speaking every language under the sun, the frightening call will be made to think again about the eternal purpose of our lives, to walk out of our private tombs, and to walk instead toward the Easter hope of the risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

The risen Christ is waiting for us, as the angel reported, in the ordinary places. Listen to that angel, then, and do not be afraid.