Psalm 85, by John August Swanson. Used by permission of John August Swanson Studio.
Click here to watch a video of this sermon.
Two men in dazzling clothes appear to the women, and tell them something astonishing.
Two men in dazzling clothes.
Maybe it’s me and my husband Andrew, who has worked for Nordstrom for nearly 31 years, and therefore enjoys a lifetime discount. Yes. Andrew and Stephen stand at the empty tomb in dazzling clothes from the Nordstrom flagship store, saying astonishing things about life rising up, about death being routed, death now little more than some flimsy burial wrappings (Nordstrom doesn’t carry those) left behind by the Risen One who has no need of them and has already gone from here, off to rouse and raise others, off to carry the Good News of resurrection life across all borders, through all locked doors, into the stoniest of hearts, into hearts broken seemingly beyond repair.
Or it is you wearing dazzling clothes.
Why not?
You’re here today in your Easter finery, or even just jeans and a jacket — everyone dazzles today — and you have Good News to share. Or maybe you don’t feel all that dazzling, so you’re more comfortable being among the women who hear the Good News from the dazzling people, and you carry it back to your friends even though you’re still trying to work out exactly what it all means. If you are among the women (who incidentally are the first apostles), then fair warning, you may be disbelieved. They will accuse you of telling an “idle tale.” Trauma haunts the very landscape, you see. Everyone is weary. There’s the pandemic of course, and the war in Ukraine, and more shootings — just this week someone opened fire at a Brooklyn subway stop — and warming seas and political warfare and economic crisis. So you in your dazzling clothes, and you others among the women who came to the tomb: you may be disbelieved, if you go from here to tell others that there really is cause for genuine hope.
But I hope you go and say all that anyway. And I hope someone today in dazzling clothes can fill your heart with that hope, too. Maybe it will be an impeccably dressed gay couple. (I’d be happy to help!) But I suspect it may be some others among us, four persons in particular, who in a few moments will be clothed in dazzling garments.
Oh, these four people. Dear friends, I have cherished them, served them, and prayed for them. Many of us have! I’ve seen the cards and notes people have sent to them these past weeks. Their parents and sponsors have also embraced them, naturally, and brought them here this morning to plunge them into the baptismal waters. Drowned with the crucified Christ, these four will then rise up from that water in life, and they will shine with God’s resurrection light. Suddenly, not too long from now, the empty tombs of our hearts will be graced by the presence of these four dazzling evangelists, robed and gleaming, sprinkling us with water and saying to us, “Remember your Baptism.” Then they will join us at this Table of Thanksgiving, where we will break bread, and in the breaking of that bread we will recognize the risen Christ among us.
But there’s something about these four people that I now am ready to say, trusting that my reputation as their biggest fan will survive, even as I tell you something about them that might, at first hearing, sound like a disappointment. I have told you over the past weeks that Breesa, Livia, Robbie, and Eddie are saints, that they are fierce friends, that they are insightful, that they are refreshingly blunt, and that they are in so many ways simply delightful. All true. But they are also this: they are ordinary. They’re just people. None of them is a published author, at least yet. None has gained fame saving lives in an apocalyptic conflict. None of them speaks in tongues, or has worked wonders. Okay, one or two of them can just reach and lightly touch the light fixtures in this room, if they get a good running start. All four of them are impressive! They are athletes, scholars, friends, all the things. But they are ordinary. They’re just people.
And this, more than any of their skills or achievements – this ordinariness is what makes them apostles of the Resurrection. The Risen One appears to ordinary people, people who rise early to go to an ordinary graveyard to do an ordinary thing – to attend to the remains of their dead friend. And so hear this Good News: if you possess no particularly unique talent or skill; if you feel tired, sad, and hopeless; if you have counted your failures and forgotten the better days; if you are in anguish about someone you love; if you feel unforgiven … or unforgiving; if you have not once seen a vision or witnessed a miracle; if you think that death is death and nothing matters; then you, not some better version of you, but you, you are the one who is visited today by a dazzling messenger of God, and you yourself can be that messenger, too.
This congregation, every last one of us an ordinary person, has thrived in a time of staggering transition, challenge, and change. We have not just survived a pandemic (which as we know all too well isn’t quite over yet), we have drawn closer to one another, and taken care of our homebound friends. We have prayed together, studied together, visited each other, pledged our wealth to the cause, and made church together with more of God’s dazzling light, not less.
We have lost our priest, but held her in our hearts as God called her to a new mission, and we are moving ever closer to knowing who, even now, is living and working somewhere and will be among us, in the near future, as the next rector. (Spoiler: they will be an ordinary person, and an apostle of the resurrection.) We have welcomed newcomers almost every Sunday, and this Lent we have integrated some new folks into our community at midweek soup suppers. We have said goodbye to staff members and hello to new ones, all of them clad in dazzling clothes, all of them ordinary folk with Good News. We have buried many of our beloved friends and companions, always singing our song of “alleluia,” even at the grave. We have asked hard questions, and even found an answer or two. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve said to people, “Grace Church is vital and healthy, and also a little stressed.” Another way to say it: we are a whole lot like those first witnesses to the resurrection: excited, exhausted, talking about something that beggars belief.
And here is how it works. Here is how ordinary people encounter resurrection, and go off to tell others about what they saw. We let the hard things break us. The women went to the tomb, expecting death. They had stayed with Jesus all the way until the end, and beyond. They let their friend’s terrible death break them. They did not expect resurrection, or understand it when it came. In fact it terrified them. All they expected was that their broken hearts would find some sort of peace, if not exactly healing, at the graveside of their friend.
We are not all that different. We are not safe; very little in our lives is certain, let alone secure. Our children are up against so many things; they are vulnerable, and that is deeply scary. This community has seen death, and endured seemingly relentless change. We are heartbroken. And yet here we are, like those women! Here we are, at the empty grave of Jesus, in this garden, the tombs of our beloved dead just back there. We are ordinary people who are letting the hard things break us.
But we keep coming back, here, where we can be together, and when we, like those women long ago, and like our children who later today in Baptism are being drowned with Christ – when we come here together, we discover that life rises up. God’s resurrecting life dazzles and delights us, and also unnerves us. I am daunted by my love for you, for this community. I am dazzled and delighted by our bonds, but they also freak me out a bit, because I could lose you, because we could hurt each other, because everything is real, and powerful … and because I will lose you. All things end, and that is heartbreaking.
But God: God is not a thing, and so God does not end. God is beyond all things, beyond all existence, beyond all time, beyond all heartbreak. God is here, but God is also beyond. Death is here, but life breaks in from beyond. Sadness and fear are here, but joy takes their hand and embraces them. “Still in grief we mourn our dead,” one of the old hymns has us sing. Still in grief we mourn our dead, and the death of some of our deepest hopes and dreams. But that old hymn says more: God sends God’s Spirit, and in God’s Spirit is God’s resurrecting power. And so: I have seen wondrous things! I have seen life rising up here, in this community, in the souls of our baptized, and even now in you, each and every one of you.
Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed: This I know; this I have seen; and this I will sing to you, my heart broken badly but renewed, my spirit rejoicing in God my Savior.
Alleluia, amen.
***
Preached on the Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Day, Year C, April 17, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43
Luke 24:1-12