<html><body><div>Part 1 of an unproofed homily for Easter Sunday morning.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE
EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>EASTER
DAY a</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ACTS
10:34043<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>16<sup>th</sup> APRIL, 2017</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>COLOSSIANS
3:105<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 118:1-2, 14-24</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>JOHN
20:1-18</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What difference does this day make –
to me, to you, to everyone?</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>It
was only two Sundays ago that we were warned of the stench of darkness and
death. Lazarus’ sister Martha<span style="margin: 0px; color: red;"> </span>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</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>FIRST</u></b> morning.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This is part of the story of Easter.
Nothing will ever again be as it was. Everything – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>EVERY</u></b>thing – 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.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HAD</u></b> 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.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I don’t care to go into this too
much as the law <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WAS</u></b> 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.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WAS </u></b>no way to deny how the
Romans ruled and the way that the human body worked.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b>
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.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>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.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><sup>1</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><sup><br></sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><sup><br></sup></span></p>
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