Easter Sermonette

This is a reflection I gave for my church’s 8:00 a.m. Easter service a few years ago. Also printed is the scripture passage used. (NIV)

"After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee.There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

So: This story begins with the two Marys heading to the tomb after the death of their beloved leader. Maybe we’ve had quite enough Holy Week at this point, but for me, resurrection only makes sense when we start from a low place. These women were all but literally beaten down.

It is an unfortunate truth that most of us know grief all too well. We have experienced stagnancy and aloneness that grief brings, the paralyzing pain and the desire to, perhaps, crawl into that tomb with Christ, move the stone, and sit in the darkness, waiting for enough time to pass that resurrection comes while we sleep.

…But it doesn’t. The story shows that it takes an earthquake and an angel to shake these women out of the reality that grief isn’t the end of the story.

I don’t know how many of you are watching ‘The Cosmos,’ but Caleb and I consider ourselves amateur science nerds, so we have been making time to watch Neil deGrasse Tyson give us a tour of the universe. As he and Carl Sagan have done a wonderful job of showing, the patterns of the universe repeat themselves on both grand and small scales. Sometimes we can better understand a story by making it smaller or more personal, but sometimes the profundity of an experience is best portrayed by the grandeur and extravagance of the universe.

I think Jesus is a supernova in this story. He is a shining star who seemingly collapses into a dense mass of chaos. Jesus’ ministry seems to climax and then come crashing down as he is brutally executed and his dignity reduced to that of a common criminal. Jesus is killed in the most shaming way possible. His followers are dispersed and disoriented. Suddenly the life they thought they were living, their goals and ambitions, their purpose in life comes crashing down. Jesus’ followers may not have understood astrophysics, but they would certainly identify with feeling like masses of dense chaos.

When I dropped out of college (which I did, if you didn’t know), I think I was catering to the chaos within me. I let my depression and eating disorder consume me. I crawled into that tomb and let the failure that I thought I was become me.

I started working full time and tried to brush my struggles under the rug. I tried to fight my disappointment in myself and the disappointment of others. As anyone who has struggled with eating disorders or depression knows, though, pretending doesn’t help. It may get people to leave you alone or to allow yourself to hide behind a facade, but pretending you’re okay when you’re not only makes the pain worse. Like a dying star, you begin to collapse in on yourself. You become alone in grieving for yourself and for the person you wanted to be. You lose sight of whatever light you used to have. Like a dying star, you become self-cannibalizing until you have no more of your energy left to consume. And it seems like that’s the end.

But as the Marys could perhaps tell us, that’s not the end of the story. As is evidenced through the universe, resurrection happens. The explosive deaths of celestial bodies lead to opportunities for Life. Our Earth exists because of a series of deaths and explosions. Often times, we need to die to ourselves in order to be born again, to be resurrected into a new kind of life.

Climbing out of our low points requires us to remember this. When you’re at the bottom of one of those pits, it feels like that’s all there is: more low. But if we look up, maybe there’s an angel waiting to give us good news.

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus says. Resurrection happens. Jesus’ followers realized that it wasn’t the end of the story: there was work to do and growth to happen. In this past year, I got married and I began a Masters’ degree. Five years ago, that felt impossible. Five years ago, I felt worthless, like there was nothing better for me than a job that I hated, than hating my body, than hating myself.

But Jesus rose from the tomb and told us not to be afraid: not to be afraid of resurrection, of the work there is to be done. There is life and meaning and possibility, even when it feels like there can be nothing but more low. It may take an earthquake and it may take angels, but Jesus shows us that even after hitting the lowest of our low points, even after a shaming, public death, even after being stripped of our dignity and worth, we can rebound into an explosion of brilliance like that of a supernova. Resurrection happens in Jesus, in the grandeur of the universe, and in the smallness of our own lives.

I know that now and I hope, when I start losing sight of that, that I can hear the reminder not to be afraid, that I can look up at the stars and find in myself the small light that I need to illuminate the path that is still ahead of me and of all of us.