Certain words have the power to redirect the course of our lives with
devastating precision. One moment, our lives are routine,
predictable, safe. Then a single word falls like an axe into our
lives, cutting us off from everything we knew, severing us cleaning and
completely from everything that made sense, clearing a new path into a
new life. From that moment on, you will think of your life in two
distinct acts – your life before this word, and your life after this
word.
Have you ever had a word change your life like that? I know that
some of you have. Here’s a word that can do it, has done it for
some in this room. Cancer. It’s a small word, six letters
is all. But if that word falls into your own life, everything
changes from that moment on. You may recover but you will never
be the same person as before that word cut your life in two.
Sometimes a word alters your life in more complicated ways. It
may represent not an immediate crisis but a long, slow slide into a
terrifying new reality. Consider this word:
Alzheimer’s. The word comes and you know in an instant that you
will be watching the light slowly dim and go out in the life of someone
you love.
A word doesn’t have to be dreadful to change your whole life. I
had a happy but shocking word transform my reality not all that long
ago. Twins! the doctor said. And my old life passed away in
a breath. A new life unlike anything I could’ve imagined took
hold.
Such can be the power of a single word. It can change a life,
change a whole world. The word itself may seem small,
insignificant, a syllable or two. But the force of it can
revolutionize reality.
The women who watched Jesus die alone on a hill had their reality
changed by a word twice. The first word was “dead.” Is
there any word so final as that one? They had seen it happen with
their own eyes. The man they had loved, and listened to, and
learned from was executed as they looked on. He had given them so
many reasons to hope for a better kind of world. That afternoon,
with the sky black as night, their hope was snuffed out like a
candle. A single word – dead – fell like an axe, killing their
dreams and changing their lives.
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and John were among those
women who were there when he was crucified. They watched too
while he was buried in a tomb, sealed with a stone. They went
home mourning, their whole world bent in a new direction, changed by a
single word – dead.
A day goes by. And, as Matthew tells it, as the first day of the
week is dawning, the two women make their way in the semi-dark towards
the tomb, just to see it, maybe touch it, remember what life was like
when his smile lit up their world and his words made hope come
alive. They get there [and all heaven breaks loose.] An
earthquake. An angel appears like lightning. He rolls away
the stone and sits on it – not to let Jesus out but to show he’s
already gone. The soldiers guarding the tomb shake and fall down
like dead men. But the women stay wide awake, staring into the
emptiness of that tomb. “Do not be afraid!” the angel tells
them. “I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is
not here; for he is risen, as he said. Come and see. Then
go and tell.”
The empty tomb and the words of an angel are not enough to change the
world. They are signs – good ones – that Jesus is not to be
sought among the dead. But they are not enough to prove a
resurrection. This is not enough to build a faith on. The
women would need something else. We need something else, too.
The women run from the tomb quickly, with fear and great joy, to go and
tell the disciples what they’d seen, what they’d heard. But
something stops them in their tracks. The One who had been
crucified, dead, sealed in a tomb, comes striding right toward them on
the path. And he utters the second word that would change their
world.
“Hello!” he said. Now your Bible probably doesn’t say he said
“hello.” It probably says something like “greetings” or
“hail!” But the truth is, what he said was not some stuffy,
formal salutation. What he said was the word everybody used then
as the most common greeting. In other words he just walked up and
said, “Hi!” Or “’Mornin’!” The most extraordinary
event in history has just taken place and Jesus comes walking up and
says, “Hi.” A word like “hello” is enough to change the world if
it’s coming from a man who just got up from his grave.
The empty tomb means nothing, the words of an angel mean nothing, if
the Risen Lord himself doesn’t show up. And the way he comes is
without fanfare. “Hi!” he says. “Good morning!” he
calls. And a new day dawns.]
This is how Jesus comes to us, too. The resurrection is not
proven for you and for me by reports of an empty tomb. It is not
proven by arguments or persuasion. It is not about logic or
explanation. It is about the actual risen Christ coming to us,
entering into our lives, bringing greetings of a brand new day.
So much in our lives has been ruined, so much stained, bent, broken,
dying, dead. And then one day something rises up before us, or,
more accurately, someone – the Holy One - rises before us, and says
something like “Hello.” He slips into our lives just like that,
makes himself known gentle as that. Says, “Good morning,” and we
suddenly see that a bright new day has dawned.
When our world has been changed, when life as we knew it is over, and
something new and unknown stretches out ahead of us, there are really
only two ways to respond. Fear is one. Hope is the other.
Of course on Easter morning, when the sun is shining, and the lilies
are blooming, and the music is so good it makes your heart nearly
burst, it’s easy to say, “Oh well, yes. Of course, I choose
hope.”
But the truth is, there are all kinds of reasons to be afraid when the
whole world has changed. New life rocks our foundations, shakes
up our routines, shifts our priorities, challenges the powers that were
already in place, alters reality in unexpected ways, and calls us to do
strange and difficult things. New life is a dazzling and
frightening risk. We have no idea what to expect. There is
so much [about this new life] we don’t know. Fear is both natural
and probable. Think of a child’s first day of kindergarten, or
remember your own very first day of school, and you will recognize that
new beginnings can be absolutely terrifying.
Easter is news of the freshest new beginning – and maybe the most
frightening of all. In Christ, we have been set free from
everything that would bind us. And though we despised our
bondage, at least we knew its contours, we knew its rhythms and
routines, we were comfortable with our old addictions and the vague but
constant drumming of guilt in our hearts. We had grown attached
to our favorite familiar sins and the shame of our darkest
secrets. Like a child with a security blanket, we have lugged
around all our old baggage for so long that we’d hardly know what to do
without it.
And now here comes Jesus, who has defied the one thing that has always
been more certain than anything else – death. In the act of
rising, he has blown the lid off all other certainties. He has
undone all that we had grown so accustomed to – our bondage, our
baggage, our sin, our shame, our addictions, our death. He has
triumphed over everything that would possess us, control us, paralyze
us, intimidate us, overpower us. He has risen over it all.
The question is will we rise with him, to answer his greeting and to
walk in newness of life?
We can seal off our hearts and stand guard like the soldiers, defend
ourselves against the changes a new kind of life means. Or we can
do like those women on that first morning – fall to our faces, lift up
our eyes, hear his words pour over us saying, “Do not be afraid,” and
then rise to run down the road toward the new world.
The words of Maya Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” sound to me
very much like what Jesus would say over us this morning, along with
his words, “Do not be afraid.”
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you….
Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men….
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space
To place new steps of change
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me….
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out…
And say simply
Very simply
With hope –
Good morning.
