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| Easter 2019 at St. David's Episcopal Church, Kinnelon, NJ |
Easter Day C
In the name of Christ. Alleluia!
Have you ever been trapped in a
rabbit hole of online videos? It might
be while you’re browsing for something on YouTube, or when something catches
your eye on Facebook, or Instagram, or any of the other online video services
there are out there – they seem to be limitless. But sure as the world, you’ve gone down the
rabbit hole when each video that you watch somehow seems to spill over into the
next.
Perhaps you’ve found some song
that you wanted to hear, and then the system helpfully suggests that you listen
to this other one, and one after another they capture your attention until,
before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour just following from one to the next.
I get caught in these traps from
time to time, but recently, I fell into one in a video about how various kinds
of artistic creations are made. There
was one that showed a video of a piece of wood being turned and carved into a
bowl. That led to more and more, and
before I knew it I was hooked. But the
one that really captured my attention was watching an artist and his creations
formed from globs of paint poured onto a rotating surface of wood.
He began by pouring various
colors of paint into a plastic cup – each color separated by a layer of white
paint. Once there was enough, he turned
on the platform that caused the board to gently spin, and slowly began spilling
the paint into the center of the board.
Gradually, he incorporated different techniques: raising and lowering
the cup, swirling the cup around to drop the paint in different shapes… All the while the board continued to spin,
and with it, the paint continued to spread, taking on new dimensions and new
directions. It created an entirely new
thing of beauty that the globs of paint, layered in the cup, would never have
pointed to on their own. I understood
how it all worked, but even so, the end result remained mysterious and
surprising. Even beautiful.
Today, with two millennia of
history at our back, we’re looking across the board, already covered, colored,
and beautiful, but we’re here to celebrate all that’s spread. We’re here to celebrate that first moment of
Easter – the moment when the women discovered the empty tomb, and the
messengers from God who shared with them the Good News of Christ’s
resurrection. The Good News that death
could not contain the love that had lived through Jesus, and that would
continue to live through Christ and the church.
I’m sure you all saw the news
this week, and the heartbreaking images of Notre Dame, the Roman Catholic
Cathedral and ancient place of worship horrifically burning. Even if you’ve never walked through the
gardens, or stood, awed under the massive stones, or admired it from the banks
of the river, even still you know that place.
Its image is legendary and powerful, all around the world.
But, as heartbreaking as it was
to see the images of the Cathedral in flames, or its interior in the aftermath
of the disaster, and even as heartbreaking as it is to remember that this holy
place of worship would be marred in this way at this holiest time of the
Christian Year – even so, I couldn’t help but remember the women at the
tomb. Because, even though the cathedral
burned, the church did not.
The church wasn’t born when we
first learned to stack one stone on top of another. The church was born when those women first
heard that Christ was alive. And not
just then, but the birth of the church happened when those women left that
place, so that they could share that Good News with someone else.
The church doesn’t live in the
buildings. It also doesn’t live – at
least not in its entirety – in our knowing about God and Christ. The church doesn’t even fully live in our
faith that grows from that knowing.
Where the church really lives is in the telling.
The church lives in our retelling
the story here, today. The church lives
in our retelling the story around this altar every Sunday, and all the other
times we gather here. And the church
really lives in those moments when this story propels us into the world to
share the Good News with others – in the same tradition of those women sharing
the Good News on that first Easter morning.
We share the Good News by telling
the story with our words, but even more by telling the story with our
lives. The church lives best when we’re
living the ministry of Jesus by teaching people about the nearness of God’s
love – even to those who feel most distant.
The church lives best when we’re living the ministry of Jesus by feeding
those who are hungry, and giving shelter to those who are vulnerable, and
giving comfort and courage to those who are lost and afraid.
That’s where the church
lives. And that’s where Easter happens,
not just once each year, but every day, and everywhere that we proclaim through
our words and through our actions that Christ is alive. Easter isn’t the moment of resurrection, but
the ongoing moments of spreading the Good News of resurrection, like paint
forming unexpected art while mixing and sliding across a board.
We are inheritors of this great
tradition. We have been told this Good
News – because those women first answered the call to tell it to others.
May we all answer the call
ourselves. May we all keep spreading the
Good News that Christ is alive. And may
we all live our lives in ways that keep spreading that Good News to the others
around us who still need to hear it.
Amen.
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