<html><body>This had a lengthy birth. There will be a check in the morning!<div><br></div><div>God's blessings for your Easter Lives.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="padding: 0in 0in 1pt; border-style: none none solid; border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-width: 1pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE DAY OF THE RESURRECTION: EASTER DAY<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ACTS 10:34-43 27<sup>th</sup> MARCH, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">1 CORINTHIANS 15:19-26 PSALM 118:1-2,14-24<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">JOHN 20:1-18<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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, <b><u>AND</u></b> 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 </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> 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 <b><u>HAD</u></b> to shut Him down.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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 <b><u>IS</u></b> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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. <sup>1</sup> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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 <b><u>LET</u></b> people fill our minds with doubts. With images that <b><u>THEY</u></b> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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 <b><u>THIS</u></b> is what Jesus addressed in His life, in His death, <b><u>AND</u></b> in His resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">If death, probably one of the greatest fears we may have – at least the manner of our deaths – if death is <b><u>NOT</u></b> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">“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 <b><u>HAS</u></b> 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.’” <sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">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 <b><u>DOES</u></b> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> 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 <b><u>NOT</u></b> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Because Jesus lives, now we do too, no matter what! This is God saying to us, “A Happy Easter!” Let’s be uncaged crickets!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">NOTES:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></h2><h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 15.3333px;">[1]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"> Thursday, March 24, 2016 “<span style="letter-spacing: -0.75pt;">21st EPISTLE TO THE NEVADANS: FEAR & LOATHING ON EASTER” </span>Dan Edwards, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada. <a href="https://t.co/O9H5nmQK3N">https://t.co/O9H5nmQK3N</a></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></h2><h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></h2><div style="padding: 0in 0in 1pt; border-style: none none solid; border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-width: 1pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; border: none;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">2</span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Dan Edwards, Op. cit., quoting John 16:33</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div></div></div></body></html>