[Propertalk] Easter Day 2016

[Robert P Morrison]

This had a lengthy birth. There will be a check in the morning!
God's blessings for your Easter Lives.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY 

	THE DAY OF THE RESURRECTION: EASTER DAY

	ACTS 10:34-43 27th MARCH, 2016

	1 CORINTHIANS 15:19-26 PSALM 118:1-2,14-24

	JOHN 20:1-18

	 Jesus was raised so that we all might live fulfilled lives, free
from fear, free to discover all the joy and blessing God wishes to
give us, free to be with God.

	Some time ago, I heard a remark on a radio programme that struck a
chord in me. The person talking said, “Loneliness is a caged cricket
hanging on a wall.” If you understand that, in different Asian
cultures, crickets are kept as pets and their singing can be both
entertaining and comforting, then you may be able to appreciate what
lies behind this comment. Crickets, like so much in life, were not
made to be kept captive, within narrow confines. Even with someone
talking to them, they must feel deprived of the freedom to move, to
find new fields in which to sing. In their cages, then, they could
experience intense loneliness and isolation from all that is.

	 So with Jesus. Executed by the occupying power, hurriedly stuffed
into a cave and sealed off from the world, Jesus could not interact as
He longed to do.

	 There are some who suggest that Jesus’ mind was made up about His
ministry and His fate was sealed when He came to the tomb of Lazarus.
It was there that He talked openly about resurrection. It was there
that He addressed the ravages of disease. It was there that He
addressed the terror and the loneliness of Mary and Martha. It was
there that He said that God’s love and power would never be
extinguished from our lives. It was there that the administrators and
the executives made up their minds that Jesus had to go. He was simply
too dangerous to allow to be on the loose.

	 Yet those who were so afraid of Jesus and of His work failed to
understand what He was saying. In actuality, everyone did. If He was
talking about Lazarus’ resurrection, AND the resurrection of
everybody, then surely you’d think they’d understand that
executing Him wouldn’t silence Him. Somehow, however, the leaders
weren’t able to connect the dots, to take what Jesus said and did at
Bethany, at Mary, Marta and Lazarus’ home, and everywhere else, and
see how it described, inevitably, what this meant about Jesus Himself.

	 They seemed to be driven by fear, though, and not just the Romans,
not just the authorities, not just the Temple leaders, not just the
disciples and Jesus circle of friends – not just Mary, and Martha,
and Lazarus. There’s little doubt about that. Just as today, no one
wanted anything to change, especially if it left questions, if it
touched their livelihoods, if it meant forming new ways of dealing
with social realities. If doing business differently, if making
adjustments to home and family, if looking at people, especially those
not known to us, if looking at people with eyes and minds of
equitability – if these were on the table for discussion, then it
generated uncertainty, which led to fear.

	 Then, as now, if anything, they and we want to increase our standing
in the community and the prestige that this affords. All this is
understandable. And so when people saw and heard about Jesus’
actions at Bethany, they HAD to shut Him down.

	 It’s not hard to come to terms with the political figures doing
whatever it took to disparage Jesus and anyone who’d agree with Him.
We know about fear. We see how people act when they’re afraid. What
IS hard to see if why those who had been so close to Jesus, who’d
witnessed the way that He’d brought so much transformation to other
people’s lives, who’d listened to everything He had to say to each
of them; what’s hard is to acknowledge that those around Jesus were
unable to see that His whole life, from start – from the first
angelic message of “Do not be afraid!” – to the last was built
around understanding that God would always be present with us.

	 Does this mean that we’ll never be lonely? Does this mean that
we’ll never feel trapped by people or circumstances? No, we know
that we experience separation anxiety frequently assaults us. We know
that we can be frightened so easily. So the way in which Jesus faced
His ultimate torture and His own death gives us a model by which to
live. And what Mary Magdalene discovered three days later speaks
directly to this. The stone had been removed. Everything which would
have sealed Jesus in; everything which would have prevented Him from
interacting with creation; everything which would have proclaimed that
torture, and abuse, and fear had won – everything was pushed aside
so that the living Jesus could speak to us wherever and however we
are. The removal of the stone, therefore, revealing the emptiness of
whatever threats are made against us, is the key to how we’re
invited to live.

	 Even so, it’s still difficult for us to absorb the Easter sign
from Jesus. As “Night Prayer” puts it, “We stumble in the
darkness.” So we pray to Jesus, “Light of the world transfigure
us.” “We forget that we are your home. Spirit of God, dwell in
us.” We pray to the God whose power resurrected Jesus that we too
might be transformed from being intimidated by all that makes us
afraid, transformed from falling into ways that demean both ourselves
and others. We, like crickets, are not born to be caged by sin.

	 When we were young, whenever it was Christmas or our birthday,
whenever some relative came back from a trip, we looked for special
gifts. We were excited by toys, by puzzles, by Spiderman ® or Wonder
Woman ® outfits. There were some presents which didn’t really make
us that joyful. We may have been polite, but they never really turned
us on. More than likely it was the instant gratificatory sorts of
presents which had the greatest impact on our lives back then. We
weren’t much into being philosophical or dealing with abstract
things. Yet, somehow, no matter how young, humans are always impacted
by things that can plant the seeds of fear in our souls.

	 In a timely Easter letter to the people of his diocese, Dan Edwards,
Bishop of Nevada, wrote last week about the way that fear seems to be
so pervasive just now. 1 He’s worried about it. He comments about
the vitriolic nature of the current Presidential campaign and its
manipulative maneuvering. But, as he pointed out, this fear didn’t
star within the last eighteen months, although those in their various
stages of campaigning are certainly exploiting it. We might call it a
sign of our times, a sign that we can see everywhere, in every sphere
of life. Those preaching sermons do it; those running for office,
obviously, do it; those in a difficult situation in a classroom do it;
those trying to sell us something, whether via advertisements or in a
store, do it.

	Bishop Edwards talks about fear as a cancer – and I think he’s
using the analogy correctly, not simply fear-mongering with the very
image. He talked about the tumour of fear as meandering, having long
tentacles that reach into every part of our lives. For some reason,
often we feel unable or unwilling to address this sickness in
ourselves and in our society. We LET people fill our minds with
doubts. With images that THEY want to project. If we were crickets, it
would be like putting us in a cage and hanging us on a wall somewhere.
Perhaps we could see out of the window. Probably we’d be fairly
well-fed. But we couldn’t move around. We could interact with only a
few carefully chosen individuals.

	Fear, loneliness, having a poor opinion of one’s self – all of
that reduces us from being less than fully human, from being the
opposite of what God wishes for us. And THIS is what Jesus addressed
in His life, in His death, AND in His resurrection.

	If death, probably one of the greatest fears we may have – at least
the manner of our deaths – if death is NOT the end; if death is
merely a passage into a state of being in which we see and experience
things as God intends them to be, then it is no longer worth the claim
it tries to make on us.

	“God has not promised that nothing bad will happen to us. Life is
usually hard and sometimes tragic. But God has promised to join us on
our cross and raise us from our tombs.” Whether or not we’re
physically dead or merely dead in terms of moral sensibility, God HAS
promised to raise us. “God will bring us through anything the world
throws at us. Jesus said, ‘In this world you will have trouble, but
take heart, for I have overcome the world.’” 2

	The resurrection of Jesus, then, may not be what a young child
imagine will make her or him really happy. To anyone willing to
consider it as the ultimate gift of God, however, we can find
ourselves completely liberated. This doesn’t mean that we should run
amok. It DOES mean, though, that we are charged with ignoring whoever
or whatever tries to enslave us. And we are charged with telling
others of their freedom too.

	 Neither crickets nor humans were made to be caged, whether by bars
or by thoughts, or by actions. Crickets, and humans too, are made to
sing songs of freedom, of love, of respect, of thankfulness. The
Easter Love of God in Jesus is NOT something to tease and titillate
us. The Easter Love of God in Jesus, in all its power once and for all
gives us the hope to be fully human, in all the richness that this
implies. We are invited now to be followers of Jesus and ministers of
impossibilities, no matter what.

	 Because Jesus lives, now we do too, no matter what! This is God
saying to us, “A Happy Easter!” Let’s be uncaged crickets!

	NOTES:

[1] THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2016 “21ST EPISTLE TO THE NEVADANS: FEAR &
LOATHING ON EASTER” DAN EDWARDS, BISHOP OF THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF
NEVADA. HTTPS://T.CO/O9H5NMQK3N [1]

	2 Dan Edwards, Op. cit., quoting John 16:33


Links:
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[1] http://mail2.charter.net/HTTPS://T.CO/O9H5NMQK3N

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