Rise Up Singing!

March 23, 2008; Easter Sunday

Matthew 28:1-20; Isaiah 65:17-25

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

I don’t know whether or not that now traditional Easter greeting goes deep back into the roots of Christianity. It may be ancient, although it is not something I recall from my childhood in the church – and I am pretty certain that I attended, oh, about 18 consecutive years worth of Easter Sunday services before beginning my wanderings beyond church.

I do recall a Youth Sunday when my older sister was in high school. We’re talking early 1970, when the hair was long, the love beads still quite stylish – at least in Chattanooga, and everything orthodox was up for grabs. The kids asked the congregation if “the resurrection” was necessary to Christian faith. I don’t remember who the youth director was at the time; I do know that there was a new one by the time I was in high school a few years later.

Nowadays I can certainly tell you what the orthodox understanding of “the resurrection” is, but I won’t stand up here and tell you that what you think about that orthodoxy concerns me greatly. If holding on to the creedal proclamation – “I believe … in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”

If holding on to that formulation is deeply meaningful to you, then hold on to it, by all means. If, on the other hand, that ancient creedal confession is a stumbling block to you, then let it go. It’s OK. Hold on, or let go. Either way.

Nevertheless, resurrection is why we are all here this morning.

Resurrection is why we are here.

Oh, to be sure, many of you worshipping here this morning have not been in a church since this time last year … well, maybe at Christmas. It is wonderful to welcome you today. You may feel like you are here out of some old memory or obligation, but at the deepest places we can go, resurrection is why we are here.

We may not all share the same understanding of resurrection, and some of us may have only the foggiest idea about it, but resurrection is why we are here.

It is a simple word, really, with a straightforward meaning. Although we have weighted the English translation with centuries of theological complications, the original Greek of the New Testament means, quite simply, “to rise up.”

It is something each of us does every day, with little fanfare, unless you have teenagers in the house, in which case “he is risen” announces a near miracle if spoken before 10:00 a.m.

The commonplace of these ordinary resurrections – the daily rising up – belies a deep faithfulness and obscures an even deeper longing. After all, it does take a deep faithfulness to rise up every day. After all … after all that each of us has endured of the particular and unique sufferings of our own lives – losing loved ones, battling addictions, struggling with chronic illness or pain, seeing dreams die around us – after all of that, to rise up again each day takes faith. To rise up again each day takes trust in the created order and in its Creator.

Such faithfulness is not, of course, the fullness of Christian life; it is only a necessary beginning of the journey of a resurrection people. Such faithfulness arises from the midst of a profound longing, a deep aching desire to experience resurrection and to join our voices together in a more profound Hallelujah!

That hope for resurrection draws us here this morning.

It is not ancient history; it is not vague obligation; it is not quaint memory. It is wind and fire! It is power and light! It is Christ, risen and alive in our lives! Even in a Good Friday world broken by sinfulness.

I wrote part of this sermon a couple of weeks ago, sitting in the Lincoln Parlor at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while waiting for the DC police to come take a statement from me on the theft of my laptop – taken from an office at New York Avenue during the peace witness. A world of war … and petty theft – broken, indeed.

The Lincoln Parlor houses the original manuscript of Lincoln’s proposal to pay compensation for freed slaves. It is, so to speak, the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln was, famously, a complicated man, troubled by bouts of depression and faced with the extraordinary challenge of holding a country together as a people confronted its most difficult moral crisis, and war rent asunder the young republic. In the face of all that, Lincoln remained a man of authentic hope. Such hope is not mere wistful longing, rather, it is active participation in God’s love and justice.

The draft encased in the parlor at New York Avenue is a simple text with a few scratched out, corrected items – an utterly ordinary piece of writing that presaged an almost unbelievably extraordinary resurrection in the lives of a people bound and shackled to be sure, but waiting, longing to rise up singing Hallelujah!

While that liberation – as incomplete as it may remain – is a central episode in the history of our still young nation, it does seem sometimes almost as ancient as the liberation of the Hebrew slaves when Moses acted in authentic hope, proclaimed emancipation and modeled a way walked in more recent times by the likes of Martin King and Desmond Tutu.

Where do we turn today to experience such resurrection?

Well, where did the women go on that first Easter morning, and what advice did they receive? To begin with, they went to the tomb, to the place of death, to the site of the deepest brokenness human beings experience. They went to a place where they knew their hearts would be broken. They went to a place of vulnerability and risk.

What was it Jesus told his followers a bit earlier in Matthew’s gospel? When I was hungry, you fed me. That takes going to places where people are hungry. When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink. That takes going to places where people thirst. When I was in prison, you visited me. That takes going to jail. When I was sick, you came to me. That takes going to places where people are sick.

We cannot get to those places when we live fenced lives. When we put up barriers between ourselves and a hurting world we not only live under the illusion that we can escape suffering, but more importantly, we wall ourselves off from the places where resurrection happens, the places where Jesus is, the places of authentic hope and of eternal life.

Abraham Lincoln knew this, and answered the call to lead a divided nation. Moses knew this, and answered the call to free the slaves. Martin King knew this. Desmond Tutu knew this. You and I, we know this, too, and if we open ourselves to our various callings, we will follow the risen Christ into places of authentic hope and eternal life even and especially amidst places that seem filled with darkness and despair.

The women of the gospel knew this, and so they followed Jesus even when they had lost any expectation of finding life of any kind. The advice they receive there is crucial. In Luke’s account, an angel asks them, “why do you look for the living among the dead?”

In others words, do not stay in this place but go and look for life. In still other worlds, go into the places of hunger and thirst and imprisonment and suffering, but do so with hope, seeking life and participating in the love and justice of the gospel of the risen Christ, such that you rise up again and again and again from the inevitable falling that you will experience in such places. And in that rising up, you will find your soul filled with a more profound Hallelujah!

Indeed, resurrection is why we are here. The resurrection of Christ, however you imagine it, means something utterly essential for human life. Resurrection does not mean that suffering will be no more.

Rather, resurrection means this:

It means that hope resides in the midst of despair; an essential element of the new heaven and new earth that God is creating in our midst.

It means that light shines in the darkness, and that darkness shall not overcome it.

It means that in the face of the sometimes loud clanging “no” of human strife, struggle and suffering, God speaks a decisive “yes” to all of creation.

It means that “in every insult, rift and war, where color, scorn or wealth divide, Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives where even hope has died.”

It means, “Christ is alive, and comes to bring good news to this and every age. Till earth and sky and ocean ring, with joy, with justice, love and praise.”

He is risen! Risen indeed!

Let us rise up singing, and carry this song of resurrection hope into all the world! Amen.