Practice Resurrection

“Practice Resurrection”

Luke 24:1-12

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

April 4, 2010

Easter Day

The title of the sermon today – “Practice Resurrection” – is the last line of a marvelous poem by the Kentucky farmer, poet, activist Wendell Berry. Today is my thirtieth Easter as a Christian preacher and that counsel – to practice resurrection – is the best approach to Easter I know.

It is useless, I think, to argue about “what really happened” at the tomb in which Jesus had been placed and afterward, for not even the four gospels agree with one another on the details. People can assert all they want about the physics and metaphysics of the resurrection, but no one really knows. It is superfluous to fight about whether the resurrection was physical or bodily or mythical or metaphorical. There are cases to be made for them all. When Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador found himself in the crosshairs of that country’s government’s enmity for his deep support of the poor thirty years ago during the civil war there, he said that if he was killed he would rise again in the Salvadoran people and that is what happened after he was assassinated, his martyred spirit fueling great change there. That is what we can say for sure about Jesus the Christ as a church bearing his name still gathers two thousand years later and millions of people around the world affirm his presence in their lives.

So, as Wendell Berry says, practice resurrection. Not practice in the sense that we talk about practicing the piano or practicing one’s golf swing. But make it your practice like a physician practices medicine and an attorney practices law. Easter trumpets – hence our trumpet lilies adorning the sanctuary – a new way of life and living that squares with God’s heart and desire for life on earth, a way of life and living that cannot be erased, eradicated, emasculated, or emaciated for the power of God is behind it. Practice that way of life. Practice resurrection.

Berry ’s poem (Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front) begins by sarcastically decrying the safe and predictable lives for which too many of us settle, chiding our complacency and our all-too-willingness to give ourselves over to “the man”:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbor and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

To counter that deadening life, Berry encourages us every day to:

…do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world…

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it…

Ask the questions that have no answers…

Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest…

Laugh. Laugher is immeasurable.

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts…

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go…

Practice resurrection.

Make resurrection living your practice. The Aging & Saging Group is in its fourth year of meeting here on Thursdays at noontime. It is one of the most profound communities of people of which I ever have been a part. Each Thursday brings its own wisdom, insights, compassion, and honesty as our lives and our life experiences get shared with candor and compassion. Of everything that has been said there during our gatherings across the years, what stands out for me is when someone said a couple of years ago that “we can choose peace in every situation.” I cannot tell you how many times since that day I have called that notion to mind, and in so many various circumstances, and it has made all the difference in my life.

How can we choose peace when so much happens in our lives and the world around us that seems to preclude it? Because it is a resurrection gift bequeathed to us. “Peace be with you,” the risen Christ said not once or twice but three times to his disciples on Easter evening when he came to visit with them. (They were huddled in a locked house in fear that they would be accounted guilty by association with Jesus and marked out to suffer the same fate as he did.) Then, John tells us in his gospel, Jesus “breathed the Holy Spirit” on them, sharing with the disciples the Pentecostal power and promise of resurrection life that, scripture declares, is poured out on the church in all ages and, in fact, on all flesh.

So, living in the Spirit, we practice resurrection. At our Maundy Thursday service this week, Don , in his leadership of the service, had made provision for the ritual of foot washing after the manner of Jesus who washed the feet of his disciples as a sign of his love for them and his service to them. The invitation was extended to our Thursday night worshipers, if they cared to do so, to present themselves to have their feet washed or to wash someone else’s feet. Paul (named redacted for online version), our beloved Paul, our friend, when he was telling me this story after the Good Friday service the next day and who has given me permission to tell it to you (because he believes that the stories of the children of God belong to the whole people of God), said that he always has shied away from such a thing. But, just as he was shrinking from it again this year, he felt a tap on his shoulder and, turning, found Harry (name redacted for online version) leaning in to say to him, “Come on, Paul, I want to wash your feet.”

So Paul put aside whatever reticent feelings he had and Harry washed Paul’s feet with all of the friendship and tenderness that is so characteristic of Harry. Paul said to me that it was “the most sacramental thing I ever have experienced in my life.” Because what else was in play for Paul, unbeknownst to Harry at the time or anyone else, was that earlier in the day on Thursday, Paul and Merrillie had received the difficult news from his doctor at Roswell that his prostate cancer that had become active again had moved into his bones and the doctor had said frankly to Paul, “You are going to die of it.”

So, while Paul’s story certainly holds something of Good Friday crucifixion, Harry and Paul practiced resurrection. There in a darkened corner of a darkened chapel in this old, proud rustbelt city, Easter appeared in the guise of two venerable and vulnerable old friends caring for one another as they shared the ancient ritual of humility and grace. And Easter came also in Paul’s affirmation that though the coming stretch of his journey is shrouded in mystery and no doubt he would want this cup to pass him by if it could, that nonetheless it offers an opportunity to walk more deeply than ever with faith in the God who never loses anyone he loves and to savor whatever earthly life remains to him along the way. So peace be with you, dear Paul and Merrillie, as you practice resurrection and as we practice it with you.

How else might we practice the peace of resurrection? Here are a few ways. How might you practice resurrection?

By leaving the past to God’s mercy and the future to God’s discretion, we can be wide awake to all of the opportunities for newness that come to us in the present moments of our lives.

By opening our hearts and minds and souls to the pain of the world and other people, we help to bring suffering beings back into the land of the living.

By forgiving those who have sinned against us or hurt us, we find another resurrection, or two, in the making.

By being confident that God can make something out of our selfishness, greed, anger, or jealousy and opening ourselves to that transforming power, resurrection comes near.

By encouraging someone’s sense of wonder, or maybe our own, and believing that even the ordinary ground on which we stand is holy, life becomes fresh and abundant.

By welcoming both guests and new ideas into our lives with consideration and graciousness, we are participating in the resurrection that hospitality brings.

By walking the paths of beauty and noticing the spiritual radiance in people, places, and growing things, dead places in us come alive again.

By helping to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice.

By making connections with others from whom we have been separated either by personal history or by old, historical traditions, estrangement flees, enmity flies away, and resurrection life percolates in new and renewing relationships.

By being concerned for others’ circumstances as much as for our own, life is raised to a more joyous and lovely level.

How impoverished we are, and how we trivialize Easter, if we see resurrection as having happened only to Jesus long ago. By the power of God’s Spirit, Christ’s resurrection extends to every corner of the world and to every nook and cranny of our lives. Death and crucifixion that seem so evident in our lives and in the world are only penultimate; life and resurrection are God’s last words. So we are invited to become creative conduits of the love and energy of God to the world. We are invited to be living Easter baskets, if you will, who carry God’s power and hope to all who are in need them and, in so doing, find that we, too, experience Easter in the routine of our every days.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! For you. For me. For all of us. For the whole world. Therefore, as Easter people of God and in the name of Christ, practice resurrection!

Amen.

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