[Propertalk] Easter Day 2-17 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Part 1 of an unproofed homily for Easter Sunday morning.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY    EASTER DAY a 

	ACTS 10:34043    16th APRIL, 2017 

	COLOSSIANS 3:105    PSALM 118:1-2, 14-24 

	JOHN 20:1-18 

	 What difference does this day make – to me, to you, to everyone? 

	It was only two Sundays ago that we were warned of the stench of
darkness and death. Lazarus’ sister Martha told Jesus, “It’s
going to be bad. Really bad!” But Jesus went ahead anyway. Similarly
at Jesus’ own death. He’d been buried hurriedly because it was
almost the beginning of Passover. There was only a moment in which to
put spices and fragrant herbs within the folded linen burial cloths.
But the tomb was open to the air and the light 

	 All that had been dark, dirty, blood-stained, and, yes, stinking,
had gone. The light, sweet air of the newly created day had taken care
of that. And Mary Magdalene was blown away. She was startled. She was
baffled. She didn’t know what to say or do. One thing was for sure,
though. Jesus’ body wasn’t there. As one of our familiar hymns
puts it, “God’s recreation of the new day” meant that darkness
is no longer to be feared. Nor are dirt and smell. Nor is anything
that tries to imprison us. All of that has been overwhelmed with the
breaking of morning – that FIRST morning. 

	 This is part of the story of Easter. Nothing will ever again be as
it was. Everything – EVERYthing – without exception, had been, and
continues to be, turned on its head. It’s as if everything is broken
apart and then reassembled to let the Light in, to allow the picture
to be complete and filled with Hope and Love. All the pieces, like
those of a giant puzzle, fall into place so that even twists, and
turns, and things that look like dead ends, can be seen as part of
something infinitely more wonderful than we might even have dreamed.
The nastiness, the violence, the supposed finality of the cross of
cruel and painful torture is shown to be overwhelmed. No longer do any
of these have the last word – for Jesus or for us. Life takes on a
whole new aspect. 

	 Have you ever, I wonder, been part of something where the law was
broken? It may have been you breaking the law. It may have been
something which swept you up in it, but, nevertheless, it was you who
became a party to it. I know I have and, strangely enough, I can think
of several times when I felt incredibly exhilarated. 

	 I’m not talking here of something which could lead to my arrest.
In a way, the law, the regulations involved, were beyond the scope of
any civil authority. Yet human beings HAD put things within a certain
framework. They’d set certain boundaries and everyone was supposed
to observe them. Some people were supposed to stay out, to refrain
from participating in what was considered outside their purview. Yet I
can think of different occasions in my life when, somehow, someone
lifted the barrier. Without seeming to worry about consequences,
people invited me in, giving me permission, so to speak, even if
strictly they didn’t have the authority to do that, so that I might
experience joy with them. 

	 I don’t care to go into this too much as the law WAS broken, both
by people extending invitations and me accepting them. However, what I
felt was a wonderful trust and acceptance. I was valued. I was wanted.
I was needed. I was affirmed as being part of the larger picture and
purpose of life. The law was shown to be of human manufacture and
could be superceded by God’s love and compassionate generosity. 

	 I see this in the description of what happened between the close of
Friday afternoon and the opening of this day. There were laws, so
called laws, devised by humans to control. There were laws designed to
intimidate. There were physical laws by which people were controlled
and prevented from going beyond a certain point. After all, who could
stand up to the Roman army? No one! Punishment was swift, severe and
irreversible. Who could stand up to the physical anguish of being
suspended from a wooden cross? Who could continue to push one’s self
erect and gasp some air into one’s burning lungs? Over the passage
of tortuous hours, the human body can only stand and take so much. The
whole point of this, though, was to drag the pain out, postponing the
inevitable as much as possible. There WAS no way to deny how the
Romans ruled and the way that the human body worked. 

	 Yet what Mary discovered at the tomb that Sunday morning was that
the rules – human law and human understanding of law – were no
longer the ultimate authority. The empty tomb spoke of the fact that
God’s law, God’s power, overwhelmed human law. What we think up,
the rules and regulations we desire, the imaginative power we have
that’s based on an incomplete understanding of life; those things in
which we place our often misguided trust; this is NOT the last word.
Just as, in a lesser comparison, someone tore down the barriers and
invited me in, to participate, to discover how my gifts were equal to
others, and were able to lift everyone up a bit; in a much grander,
life-altering way, Jesus burst more than the rock-sealed tomb. He
demonstrated that we have to revise how we think about life, about
relationships, about how we believe in light of the fact that He had
overwhelmed what we took as the ultimate and unchanging power of
death. Jesus took on every law we might imagine, and showed how they
all paled in comparison with the Power, the Love of God. 

	 Franz Jägerstätter was almost unknown outside of his local
community in Austria. What made him stand out, however, was not his
public eloquence – which was actually pretty good – or anything of
that nature. He was a conscientious objector during the time when the
Nazis were in power. People in Austria on the whole seemed caught up
in their approval of the Nazi annexation of Jägerstätter’s
country, but he refused to take the required oath of obedience. “His
priest, his bishop, and many others advised him to take the military
oath and serve in the German army. His neighbours advised him to do
the same.” Even from prison, under threat, then sentence of death,
he remained adamantly convinced that the law was immoral, that it had
no bearing, that it was superceded by God’s law. A biographer said
that the “balance of realism and hope, of passion and compassion, of
conviction and graciousness is precisely the voice needed in our world
today.” 1


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