Seven short days ago, exhilarated but spent after a vigorous morning of Palm-Sundaying with the likes of you, your children and your children’s children, I went home for a little R and R. I went alone, given that the trophy wife I married over 37 years ago was attending a shower. The refrigerator yielded a few leftovers and the microwave rendered them edible, so I parked both food and body in front of the telly to watch the Pistons do battle with the Pacers.
But given that basketball had not yet begun, I hit that little button on the clicker that jumps you to the channel last watched before this one. Which is how I arrived at the Travel Channel and their countdown of “The Ten Best Beaches for Tanning in the World.” As I remember it, one was in Hawaii, one in Monte Carlo (all the places you might expect), although one was in Thailand (which is not a place I would have expected).
Each beach featured water and sand, sun and fun….and flesh (lots and lots of flesh). I mean, when I turned back to the Pistons, they were covered up like the Amish in comparison to the people on those beaches. But I felt very old when my first thought about those uncovered bodies was the danger that the sun might pose for their skin forty years from now. Given that come Tuesday, some surgeon is going to dig a couple of holes in my face to repair the ravages of rays absorbed in the years when, if I wasn’t too young to know better, I was certainly too young to care.
Yet all of us enjoy the sunshine. Most of us crave the sunshine. While a few of us absolutely require the sunshine. Early in my employment here, I shared leadership with a colleague who suffered from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Which was a real malady….a winter malady….a when-the-day-is-gray-I-feel-debilitated-and-depressed malady. So she outfitted her family room with a series of bright lights in whose glow she absolutely needed to sit for an hour or two in order to become her old self again. In a world of heat-seeking missiles, many of us are light-seeking people.
Never did I realize this so much as I did in Costa Rica where, in the span of a few days, I became learned in the subtleties that distinguish dry forests from cloud forests from rain forests. I walked over and through the tops of trees on those wonderful suspension bridges (which, depending on the elevation of the span and the velocity of the wind, were more harrowing than thrilling). But atop the forest it was light. In the forest, it was dark. So dense was the vegetation that, although it never stopped raining, I never got wet. Damp, certainly. Musty, inevitably. But wet, hardly.
As I told you a few weeks ago, I learned that over seventy percent of the plant growth in the rain forest (orchids, ferns, bromeliads) grows from the tops of the trees. All it takes is a crack in a branch for a seed to lodge and flower there. Because there is light out there, don’t you see. For there to be light in the midst of the forest, a tree has to fall to the floor of the forest, cutting a swath through the heart of the forest, allowing space for the sun so as to recreate the forest.
But of greatest amazement were the walking palms. A trunk would emerge from the ground in one place, grow a foot above the ground in that place, then turn abruptly ninety degrees to the right or left (growing parallel to the ground) until launching upward at some other place. Why the jog in the growth pattern? The search for a shaft of light, don’t you see. It is as if the palm tree says to itself: “Too dark here; better I should try it over there.”
Easter people understand that, given that Easter is a dark-to-light story. In John, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb “while it was still dark,” while Luke says “early dawn,” Matthew says “toward the dawn,” and Mark says it happened “when the sun had risen.” We’re talking degrees of difference here. Half light. Partial light. Dawn’s early light. Shades and slivers of light. We’re talking about the time of the morning when some of you like to jog and others of you like to fish.
But brightness is emerging. Meaning that darkness is receding. The friends of Jesus have made it through the night. Just as we friends of Jesus have made it through the night. There were nights we didn’t think we would….didn’t think we could….weren’t sure we cared. But morning broke anyway.
A variation on a time-worn story finds a man on an otherwise darkened stage, illumined by a single spotlight. He is crawling on his hands and knees, searching for his keys. When a police officer offers to help, he begins by asking the man where he lost them. “Over there,” the man says. “I lost them over there.” Prompting the question as to why he is looking for them over here. Leading the man to answer: “Because the light’s better over here.”
Which makes no sense if you are looking for keys. But which makes great sense if you are looking for faith. Start where the light is. Start where the Easter light is. When many of us left this place on Thursday, it was dark in here. This morning it is light in here. Jesus has come from death to life. And we have come from darkness to light.
Obviously, this morning’s sermon title contains a pun that is very much intended. “The sun’s up” is a phrase that, when commonly said, refers to the emergence of a celestial body in the sky, some 93 million miles away.
Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead.
Get up, get up, get out of bed.
Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy.
For those of you who don’t have a memory chip that is older than dirt, that lyric comes from a song entitled “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along”….suggesting that “there’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his own sweet song.”
But let’s be honest, friends. Robins and sunshine, while charming in their appearing, will not put a stop to much of the world’s sobbing….not to mention the world’s grieving and the world’s hurting. Even if you throw in daffodils. Which is why, when we say “the Son’s up” in a place like this…..on a day like this….having just read a text like this….we know that the word “Son” is spelled with an “o” rather than a “u.” What a difference a vowel makes.
The Son of God rose from the dead. God, I wish I knew how. That’s a prayer, Lord. I really do wish I knew how. I wish I knew the biology of it, the chemistry of it, along with the physiology and the physics of it.
Among others, I was critical of the diminished role given the resurrection in Mel Gibson’s recreation of Jesus’ passion. I would have settled for a symbolic (even a cinematic) evocation of victory, triumph and joy. Maybe there was one. But I realize that my hungering was for a “you are there….see it now….we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming, taking you live to an ancient burial ground in Jerusalem” kind of reporting. In short, I wanted to see the rising…. having, for 39 years, preached the results of the rising. In terms of
appearances made,
fears conquered,
disciples empowered,
churches birthed.
I have researched the biblical account enough to believe it, trust it and preach it….even though I didn’t see it, and lack the tools to comprehend it or the words to explain it. As Will Willimon and Joseph Haroutunian keep reminding me, resurrection is God’s doing. And God’s doing is not always within the realm of my understanding. Haroutunian used to ask his graduate students at McCormick Theological Seminary: “If the town reprobate and the town saint died on the same day and were buried (side by side) in the same cemetery, and God came along and said, ‘Get up,’ which one would get up first?” After which he would then pause before saying: “Neither, of course. For only God raises the dead.” The dead do not get up. The dead are raised up.
Resurrection is godly work. There was no “bounce-back capacity” scripted into the genetic code of Jesus. Nor is there a “bounce-back capacity” scripted into the genetic code of us. As Joanna Adams writes: “When it comes to resurrections, no cooperation is needed from any of us.”
And yet I would suggest to you (this blessed Easter Sunday) that while resurrection does not require our cooperation, it invites our cooperation….in that once we allow ourselves to accept its inevitability in the future, it might actually influence our activity in the present.
I love the language of 1 Peter 1:3-9. So much so that I have written some of it into our Calls to Worship for the past several Easters. He says that we are “born into a living hope (get that….a living hope) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Then he goes on to call that resurrection nothing less than “an inheritance”….one that is “imperishable, undefiled and unfailing.” An inheritance. Just think of it. You and I are in the will. That’s why some of you came today. Because you knew I was going to read the will. You also came in hopes that all the relatives….those who feel themselves favored and those who feel themselves forgotten (even the shirttail and the no-tail relatives)….will hear their names in the reading of the will.
Although there are some of you who fear you are not in the will….that you are going to be among the ones cut out, left out or drummed out. It sometimes devastates people when they wind up with a smaller inheritance than they anticipated. A skewed distribution can actually split a family. As it did my father’s, fifty years ago. It opened a wound that festered forever. It never healed. And I’m the only one left who remembers it. Which means that, this side of heaven, there is nobody left who can fix it.
But what if you knew that your inheritance was assured….that it was yours for the trusting….yours for the claiming….yours for the living? It might make a difference, mightn’t it? If you knew there was money in the future, wouldn’t it inspire confidence in the present? And if you know that there is life in the future, might it not do the same (in the present)?
Wasn’t it Charles Dickens who once attended a meeting with some very stuffy bishops, arch bishops, apprentice bishops and wannabe bishops? They were going on and on about less and less, entirely without feeling. When Dickens interrupted the proceedings by saying: “I have a suggestion. Why don’t we move into the conference room, sit around the table, hold hands and see if we can get in touch with the living.”
Armed with Easter’s inheritance (along with its newly-inspired confidence), that sounds like an absolutely wonderful idea….getting in touch with the living, I mean. For when people can trust that there really is light at the end of life’s tunnel, the present darkness is both endurable and addressable.
Consider the visiting school teacher whose job it was to work with children who were hospitalized for long periods, the better to keep them from falling too far behind the others in their class. In preparing the visiting teacher for her next assignment, the classroom teacher said: “We are presently studying nouns and adverbs in this young man’s class and I hope you will be able to help him.” Well, when she got to the hospital, the visiting teacher was dismayed to discover that the child was in the hospital burn unit, in very serious condition, experiencing great pain. Seeing him in such obvious misery, she was embarrassed (and more than a little ashamed of herself) for putting him through such a useless exercise. But a job was a job, so she stumbled through the lesson anyway.
The next morning she returned, only to be intercepted by the floor nurse who said: “What did you do to that boy yesterday?” Before the teacher could render an apology, the nurse said: “We had all but given up on him. But since your visit yesterday, he seems to be fighting back and responding to treatment.” Later, the boy himself explained that he, too, had given up hope. But it had all changed when he came to the simple realization that surely they wouldn’t send a teacher to pound adverbs into the head of a kid who was dying, would they? Ah, friends, when you can glimpse a future, there is no accounting for what you can do….or bear…or believe….in the present.
Kindly allow me a personal moment in closing. Most of you know of the self-inflicted death of our son (Bill) ten years ago this spring. Many of you have heard five sermons over ten years, detailing our journey through understanding, grieving and healing. And a few of you know that those sermons (with an extended introduction) are being published in a manuscript that will be released by Morehouse Publishing Company early this fall. Should you buy the book, you won’t find anything you haven’t heard before or read before….except this. The book contains a brief epilogue which we have never shared before. Quoting from myself:
There is one remaining story I have never shared in public until now. That’s because it is not my story, but Kris’s. She has been marvelous through all of this. It is her desire that I publish this book, and that this story, at last, be told. Preaching these sermons has been one thing. Listening to them, when you are the preacher’s wife and the subject’s mother, is quite another. On the five Sundays when I have spoken openly about Bill’s death, hers—listening to them—has been the harder lot.
But I promised you a story. Here it is. On the morning of the day we were to find out about Bill’s death, Kris woke from a sound sleep before seven. For a number of weeks, both of us had slept fitfully, worried as we were about our son. He would have a good day, and we’d relax, which would be followed by a bad day, and we’d begin fretting again.
Upon awakening Tuesday, May 2, Kris said she had just had the most wonderful dream. In it, Bill was happy, bubbly, confident and vibrant—looking like his old self again—laughing, joking, doing all of his funny impressions. In the dream, he said to her, “I know you have been worried about me. But you don’t have to worry anymore. Everything is all right now. Things are great now. I’m going to be fine now, Mom, it’s okay.” Little did Kris know that at the time she dreamed that dream, Bill had been dead for several hours.
How do we explain that? We can’t. How do we understand that? We don't. How do we treat that? As a gift—for which we are grateful.
You never know when Easter….its wonderful promise and its buoyant hope….is going to come to you. You just never know.
Note: The above-quoted epilogue will appear in Take the Dimness of My Soul Away, scheduled for release by Morehouse Publishing Company at the beginning of autumn, 2004.
I am also indebted to essays entitled “Preaching the Easter Texts: Resurrection and Vocation” by William Willimon and “Good News Indeed” by Joanna Adams. Both can be found in the Easter 2004 issue of Journal for Preachers published in Decatur, Georgia.
