“Susurrant, Suspirant
Easter”
Matthew
28:1-10
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
April 24,
2011
Easter Day
Sacrament of
Holy Communion
In
seminary, my preaching professor told his students always to create sermon
titles that would, when seeing them posted on the sign board in front of the
church, get people “off the bus” and into the sanctuary.
I fully acknowledge that with my title today I have failed Dr. Macleod
utterly. (The fact that we have
neither a signboard nor buses in this city emboldened me!)
The
story behind the title is that on one of my daily walks recently, I saw a
sprouting seedling juxtaposed with a dead leaf in a tiny crack in a sidewalk (a
scene I preserved with a camera and have had printed in your bulletin).
It immediately evoked in me a response that whispered
to me – “Easter.” Not the
earthquake shaking, roll-back-the-stone shocking, brass ensemble shouting,
triumphal Easter that is appropriate for worship today, but a quieter and softer
Easter that is the way that most of
us, I think, experience Easter in our lives.
A susurrant Easter – which is to say a muted, whispered, but
nevertheless authentic Easter – that in every event or season of our lives is
offered to us and the only question is if we shall allow our imaginations to
perceive it and our hearts to receive it. In
every circumstance God holds out to us the gift of a susurrant Easter that leads
to suspirant – rich, deep, nurturing – life.
We
rightly celebrate Easter Day the way we do, but it is not sustainable for very
long. Tomorrow comes and it will be,
well, Monday and the instruments will be put away, the Easter finery will be
hung in the closet, the big dinners and family gatherings will give way to ham
sandwich and a bag of chips lunches. Will
our lives be any different going forward than they were yesterday before the big
blow outs of Easter Day? They can be
if we take to heart the susurrant, suspirant Easters with which God’s grace
daily raises this world and our lives from whatever kills, torments, or
diminishes. If the way and life of
the Christ is evident in, among, and through us, then we have Easter.
If not, then no matter how grand our Easter celebrations, we just are
making a big ado about a story from the past.
In
our Easter gospel, we read that Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary” make
their way early on the first day of the week to see the tomb of their dear
friend, Jesus. What they expected to
find, of course, was Jesus’ grave, a monument to their sadness at his loss, a
confirmation of the cruel truth that “the world finally beats mercy and
righteousness to death” (Tom Long).
I love that on their way to the tomb, without their knowing it
exactly, they were crossing from one world into another.
They were leaving a world where hope is in constant danger and peace has
slim pickings and the rich get richer and the weak all eventually suffer under
one Pontius Pilate or another. They
were entering into a world of resurrection and life in which fear fades and love
never ends and the meek inherit the earth and the poor in spirit receive the
bounteous
I
witnessed a susurrant, suspirant Easter this week as I watched the beautiful
2005 movie entitled
Long
after the trains had quit running for the day, Olaf arrives with his quirky,
eccentric, but good-hearted friend, Frandsen.
Inge’s shy fiancé is socially awkward and keeps to himself, barely
looking her in the eye. Straight
away, however, he takes her to the local Lutheran church to get married.
But as soon as she starts speaking in German, the pastor of the church,
Minister Sorrenson, refuses to marry them without her citizenship papers for, as
far as he and the townspeople knew, she could be a German spy.
The rampant post-war fear in the town about that also kept the judge from
helping Inge and Olaf.
A
humorous scene unfolds when, after Olaf and Inge leave the church that day, Inge
is told that for appearance’s sake, she cannot stay with Olaf but must live
with Frandsen, his wife, Brownie, and their nine children.
Inge’s fiery side is revealed as she shouts expletives in German and
Norwegian, taking out her frustration at being unwelcome and ill-treated on
poor, quiet Olaf who she draws into a shouting match.
Frandsen takes Olaf aside and says, “Are you sure you want to marry
this one?” But Olaf and Inge begin
to get to know each other and before long – Inge is not able to stand any more
sleeping in a room with nine kids – start to live in the same house, though
Olaf sleeps in the barn. Inge brings
beauty into Olaf’s plain life: gramophone music while they harvest, the poetry
of Keats, waltzing, stout black coffee, and good cooking.
Meanwhile, Olaf offers a strong steadiness that grounds Inge’s life,
the fruitfulness of hard work, and a belief in a God who makes his beloved crops
grow.
In
many ways, Olaf and Inge could not be more different, but they fall in love
surely and deeply and doggedly pursue their desire to be married. Their
growing chemistry is palpable as the two thresh and sift their harvest’s
golden wheat face to face, their weary bodies nearly touching, their passion
still unrequited. Several times in
the movie Olaf is pictured at the bottom of the stairs in the house before
retiring to the barn. He would call
up the steps to ask Inge if she was naked and, if so, he would say good night
from the bottom of the stairs so as to honor her modesty.
In one of the movie’s last scenes, though, Olaf again is standing at
the bottom of the stairs, inquiring if she was naked, planning again to say good
night from there if she was. But
this time, after they had done everything humanly possible to be married, Inge
feels as if they are husband and wife in spirit if not in law, so she warmly
responds to Olaf, saying simply, “Come.”
As Olaf begins to climb the stairs, even the hardest heart cannot fail to
be moved. It is as deep a love story
as ever appears on film, all without so much as a single on-screen kiss or hug.
But
there is also in the movie a glad-handing but sinister banker who forecloses on
the farms of anyone behind in his or her mortgage payment, even those with whom
he rubs elbows in church on Sundays, even his third cousin Frandsen.
Olaf, being a quiet and reserved man, generally avoids disturbing the
peace but in his own way is more than willing to
fight whatever he perceives as injustice.
When
Olaf hears the bank’s auctioneer barking from Frandsen’s house, he rushes
there with Inge, both of them disheveled from harvesting acres of wheat by hand
with no help from their suspicious and inhospitable neighbors.
With dirt besmirching his face, he looks at his good friend, Frandsen,
and then enters the bidding. “Four
thousand, five hundred. Five
thousand, five hundred.” And,
finally, “seven thousand dollars,” quieting all other bidders and
Frandsen’s house is awarded to him. Olaf
turns to Inge and says, “I don’t have seven thousand dollars.”
She says, “I know,” and I wept for the way she looked on him with
such teeming love and proud respect, this man who would risk his own farm and
livelihood for a friend.
Copyright © 2011 by First Presbyterian Church