Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007
07/04/07 17:17
EASTER 2007
Winter in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in the 1950s – 6 inches of snow fell on the ground the night before. Author Annie Dillard tells the story (see “An American Childhood,” by Annie Dillard). She was just 7 years old at the time. Joining a group of kids, they stood in the front yard in front of a busy street, making fresh snowballs and taking aim at each car that passed by.
A black Buick slowly made its way down the street and the group of children spread out, waiting for the right moment, and fired away. A snowball hit the windshield right before the driver’s face and made a loud splat. Usually, the cars just kept going, but this time, the Black Buick stopped and its driver got out, running. “He didn’t even stop to close the car door,” writes Dillard. “He ran after us and we ran away from him. He was in city clothes: a suit and tie, street shoes…. Any normal adult would have quit… But this man was gaining on us…”
“He chased us around the yellow house and up a backyard path… under a low tree, up a bank, through a hedge, down some snowy steps, and across the grocery store’s driveways… through backyards and porches and over woodpiles; he kept coming. He chased us silently, block after block, over picket fences, through thorny hedges, between houses, around garbage cans and across streets… He chased us through the backyard labyrinths of 10 blocks before he caught us by our jackets.”
Easter. Christ is risen. Often we hear that God is chasing us – sometimes in a good way, because He loves us and we are lost and He wants to find us and help us to find ourselves; sometimes in a bad way, the God of anger breathing down our necks, ready to pounce and punish us for our sins and offenses, cast us into hell if we misbehave. That was the God some of us learned growing up as children.
But this Easter, I want to reverse that image of God. Instead of God chasing after us, imagine that God is the one throwing the snowballs at us, trying to nudge us out of our complacency, trying to nudge us out of our comfort zones, out of the car, trying to get us to run and feel the adrenaline of life coursing through our veins.
This past year, I’ve been watching a wonderful show on TV on Sunday nights, “Brothers and Sisters.” I recorded one segment, about a husband and wife experiencing difficulties in their marriage, and visiting a counselor for help. Watch this short clip, but especially pay attention to the last segment – the final words of advice from the counselor, because I think these are Easter words for us, as well.
[Watch video]
Did you catch the words at the end? “There are no shortcuts in life or in love. This pain must be felt. The alternative is much worse. It’s what makes us special, beautiful, worthy. That pain is accompanied by something else – hope. And that is where you are. Somewhere between agony and optimism and prayer. So, you’re human. You’re alive. And that’s what we have. Come back tomorrow, and we’ll go on.”
These words, it seems to me, capture the essence of Easter. Easter is about HOPE and about LIFE and about LOVE – about being fully human and fully alive, not just trapped in our car, driving around aimlessly, but RATHER, running full bore, with the wind at our backs, seizing every moment that God gives us, enjoying the thrill of snowballs whisking past us, the enthusiasm and joy of children fully alive and playing in the snow!
Get rid of the silly and sentimental and watered down version of Easter – candied Easter bunnies and colored eggs and going to church once a year just to feel good about ourselves. That’s NOT what Easter is about!
It’s about experiencing fullness of life! Death has been defeated. The tomb is empty. Jesus tells us: “I have come that you might have life – life in all its fullness!” (John 10:10, TEV)
Watch with me this next short video clip: [Show video on Jesus]
Christ IS risen – not just WAS risen, but IS risen, here and now, today. Those others who did great things are dead and in the tomb – Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. Look at these images on the screen – the pyramids, where the great pharaohs of Egypt are buried; Arlington National Cemetery, where our nation’s fallen soldiers are buried; Westminster Abbey in England, burial place of the kings and queens and great men and women of England. But Easter is different – the tomb is empty, Jesus is risen and is alive here and now.
How do we know any of this is true? We don’t, not in a scientific sense. Nobody carried a camera or video recorder in the 1st century. We have only our experience of changed lives and the witness of the early followers of Jesus, their testimony as passed down to us through time and in the Bible, and their changed lives.
Let’s be honest: Skeptics abound, and they seem to come out of the woodwork at this time of year. Anybody see or hear about the TV show a few weeks ago, purporting the discover in Israel of the tomb of Jesus and his family. Hogwash! Even the scientific experts and the Jewish archeology authorities in Israel weighed in that it was just a hoax, a shameless effort to grab headlines and make money.
Or Newsweek this past week – a debate between best selling Christian author Rick Warren and renown atheist Stephen Harris, “The God Debate: Is God Real?” In this last year, Harris wrote a book entitled, “The End of Faith,” and his fellow atheist, a scientist named Richard Dawkins, now has a best selling book entitled “The God Delusion.” This Easter, how do we know who or what to believe?
That’s where I really like the words of the counselor at the end of the TV show clip we saw a few moments ago. It takes faith, hope and love. It’s a journey – not always black and white, but gray. We must see with the eyes of our heart. God and faith cannot, ultimately, be proved. Easter and the resurrection are mysteries that transcend space and time and science.
“There are no shortcuts in life or in love – or faith. But the alternative is much worse. It’s what makes us special, beautiful, worthy. That pain – the cross, the suffering, the trials and difficulties we all experience in life – they must be accompanied by something else – hope. And that is where we are. Somewhere between agony and optimism and prayer. We’re human. We’re alive. And that’s what we have.”
You see, without Easter, without the hope of resurrection and new life, then our lives are just a dead end that leads to hopelessness and despair. There is no future. What you see is what you get – a few short years of pain and suffering, and some joyful moments mixed in between, but nothing that really lasts. Easter promises us eternity and fullness of life, starting here and now.
Why are you here today? If you could not speak, and could only tell about Easter by using punctuation marks, which mark would you use?
Is Easter just a question mark – a big maybe, but nothing more?
Is it just a comma, a pause we make once a year out of our busy lives, maybe to enjoy the Easter flowers or the Easter bunnies and colored eggs and some time with our family, a tradition we observe as “good Catholics” but really doesn’t impact us in our lives on Monday?
Is it a period? Is it just a myth, an illusion, a lie, a delusion, as the atheists claim? Death really is the end of the story and there is no more.
Or is it an exclamation point – a way of life that embraces pain and joy, but in both, sees hope for a brighter tomorrow?
Some of us are enchained behind prison bars – of anger, depression, hurt, pain, sickness, frustration, hatred, struggle, tiredness – just fill in the blank. But Easter tells us: You can be free! You don’t carry those burdens alone! God is with you – Jesus Christ, at your side, here and now, risen from the dead. And you are part of a family, God’s family, that is here to walk with you. God is throwing snowballs at us, trying to get us out of our rut, get us out of the car – but will we respond?
Martin Luther, the famous Protestant Reformer, once said, “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I’d plant a tree today.”
In the winter of 1982 Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband.
You see, she knew that death was not the final word. Even though she had been told all her life by her husband and by the Kremlin that death was the end, she knew that there was One who was resurrected and she hoped her husband might be also.
Have you heard stories of dumb criminals? Here are a few:
Chicago: A man was wanted for throwing bricks through jewelry store windows and making off with the loot. He was arrested last night after throwing a brick into a Plexiglas window...the brick bounced back, hit him in the head and knocked him cold until the police got there.
Kentucky: Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.
A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers. The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him.
An unidentified man in Buenos Aires pushed his wife out of an eighth-floor window but his plan to kill her failed when she became entangled in some power cables below. Seeing she was still alive, the man jumped and tried to land on top of her. He missed...
Ann Arbor: The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50am, flashed a gun and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
Sometimes, we are like those dumb criminals, spiritually. We’re stuck in a rut. But Easter tells us there is hope. You don’t have to stay stuck. You can get up and run, and experience real life – because He is risen, He is alive, and He is at our side, throwing snowballs at us (playfully!) to wake us from our lethargy and our slumber. Get up and run!
Happy Easter!