The Easter Sermon by Rev. Lillie Mae Henley
The story of Jesus from Mark.
Women were there. The brave women.
Joseph of Arimethea took the body to the tomb.
Mystery.
We all love a good mystery.
In a book
In our family
In our neighborhood
There is something about a mystery that takes us to a place where we don’t usually go
You see, in our culture, we worship facts, we worship reason
Age of enlightenment
Age of reason
Post-modern de-construction
Post-modernity
It is all about facts, reason, rational thought
Facts define
Facts hem us in
Facts limit us to – there is no room for anything else when we have “the facts, m'am, just the facts.”
Yet, we all love a good mystery.
Did you hear about the man who was traveling somewhere in the middle of our country were the roads are long and the towns are few and far between? It was a trip that he rarely made. It was late at night, he was having car trouble, and he wasn’t sure he would make it to the next town. The next town, just happened to be the town of an old friend from university. He had not seen this friend since college—thirty-something years before. As he was thinking about his old friend, and all the crazy fun they had when they were young—so long ago, he forgot about the noisy problem under the hood, and before he knew he on the edge of the town and his car died. He got out, thinking no one would be out this late, but after a while a car came his way. He did everything he could to flag it down. The man in the pick-up stopped and said, “Hey! Stranger, need some help?”
You know who it was, it was his old friend.
We all love a good mystery.
There was a woman Ellen, in her forties, who had two beautiful children, not quite teenagers, yet… But she was depressed. She had been for well over a week. She went to her therapist, she didn’t have to go see her too often, she was pretty grounded, and had a lot of love in her life, but she went because she was quite depressed. While there, as they talked, she brought from her subconscious the knowledge, that her daughter, her first daughter, the one she was forced to give up because she was a teenager and her parents wouldn’t help her—what a rigid society we Americans had just a few years ago. Anyway, her daughter, her first daughter, had turned twenty-one last week; she was now a woman, had reached a milestone, and it was just one more milestone in her daughter’s life that Ellen had missed.
When she got home from her therapist visit, she was sitting quietly in an old grief when the doorbell rang. It was the mail carrier and she had a special delivery.
You know what it was, it was a letter from her first daughter, reaching out, hoping Ellen was the Ellen she was looking for.
The mystery here is not the loss of her first daughter, that is sad, well it may be a mystery for some of us today how our “acceptable” society, in the last half of the twentieth century could have been so oppressive. But then, actually, for many of us it isn’t.
The mystery here is, the letter, delivered on the day she discovered her subconscious mind never forgot her daughter’s birthday.
We all love a good mystery.
At the end of my first year in seminary, the Controller told us in a school meeting, that the school generally gave the students a $300 check before they left to tide them over until they entered their chaplaincy that summer or found summer work or entered their internship. It was to be repaid out of our loans or grants the following fall. We had to write a letter requesting the funds, though. I was on my way back to Texas to be a chaplain in St. Luke’s in Houston, so I wrote the letter, and the financial office put the check in my mail box at school.
At the end of my second year, I was headed south once more, to see friends and then go to Raleigh, NC for my internship. I kept telling myself to write the request letter for the $300. I kept saying it, but I was so busy I forgot. Now this was when I was much younger, and I did not forget as easy as I forget now! Nor, did I forget doing what I did remember to do!
The last day, while I was packing, I realized I forgot to write the request for the check, so on my way out of town I decided to stop by the financial aid office and see if it was too late to get the “advance.”
Before walking over to their office, I stopped by my mailbox one more time, and sitting there, waiting for me, was the check.
The mystery of these stories do not deal in facts. Oh sure, there are some “observable” events, and relevant life processes that are part of these stories, but they are mysteries.
No facts here, mam, no facts here.
We all love a good mystery because we are a curious animal. Alice and Wonderland at the beginning of Chapter 2 when her amazing, mysterious journey is about to begin said,
`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English);
Rational thought is wonderful. We would not want to be without rational thought. But our lives are full of wonder
An egg is an egg, but what comes out of an egg is miraculous
Leghorns and Rhode Island Red
Ladybugs and beetles
Lizards and snakes
Fish and frogs
To name just a few creatures that come from eggs
Our life is full of wonder and mystery
Gwen Frostic wrote,
Our life is full of wonder and mystery.
Mystery opens us up, opens us up to the discovery of our fullest potential
Mystery offers no limits
Facts limit us and can tyrannize us, facts, objectivity, leave no room for our imagination or faith or spiritual journey
The open tomb, look at the image on the front of your order of service, the open tomb, invites us in.
Invites us in to discover what the image tells us.
Someone said the tomb was open, but there are no facts, no proof that it was opened, yet the mystery invites us in to explore the story, the possibilities, the meaning of the open tomb
If the open tomb was fact—it would become idolatry, something the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, including Isaiah warned of.
Isaiah 44
Idol makers all amount to nothing, and their precious works are of no avail, as they themselves give witness. To their shame, they neither see nor know anything; and they are more deaf than men are. Indeed, all the associates of anyone who forms a god, or casts an idol to no purpose, will be put to shame; they will all assemble and stand forth, to be reduced to fear and shame.
The smith fashions an iron image, works it over the coals, shapes it with hammers, and forges it with his strong arm. … Of what remains he makes a god, his idol, and prostrate before it in worship, he implores it, "Rescue me, for you are my god." … idols have neither knowledge nor reason; their eyes are coated so that they cannot see, and their hearts so that they cannot understand.
Everything religious which humankind has made themselves and said, “This is fact, this represents reality,” has become idolatrous to someone.
The open tomb, the mystery of it, is not idolatrous, it is open, it invites you to journey with Jesus, it invites you to journey with God.
It is a fact that there are many homeless people in Washington DC and it is a fact that there is more HIV-AIDS cases here than any urban environment in the United States. What can I do about that?
Yet, the open tomb, Jesus’ last words to his disciples at the Passover, love each other as I have loved you, invite me to look into the tomb and see the homeless and see the HIV-AIDS patients and do something, because I “ought” to; not because it is fact, and as a citizen I am expected to, but because the tomb invites me to journey with them.
To what does the mystery of the tomb invite you?
To what ministry of Jesus shall you take up?
To what social service shall UNMC take up?
READINGS
Mark 16:1-8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Kathleen Rolenz
"Easter Is Breaking"
Somewhere across the world,
Easter is breaking
not the Easter we may think of,
with arms upraised and "he is risen" echoing from canyons,
but a much quieter, less dramatic Easter.
Somewhere in the world -perhaps not this day, but some day soon,
a woman and a man rise from their beds,
shaking the sleep from their eyes,
and find their children already awake and
preparing for their morning prayers
There has been no gunfire, no drug wars, no yelling or shouting or screaming,
only the quiet of the night and the peace of silence around them.
And somewhere in the world, perhaps not this morning, but soon, very soon
A soldier is packing his duffle bag,
has emptied out all his bullets,
is changing into civilian clothes,
and is coming home, for peace has long been established,
and there is no need for his presence.
And somewhere in the world, Easter dawn breaks over the earth,
not only on this day, but every day,
and the familiar pulse in our veins throbs of "peace, peace, peace."