4/1/18 “Easter: A Movement, Not A Moment” by Nancy Petty

Text: John 20:1-18

Earlier this week, I mentioned to Nora, my daughter, that I needed to go home to work on my Easter sermon. In true Nora fashion, she replied, “What can you say about Easter that hasn’t already been said?” And with that one question, the panic button was pushed and writer’s block set in. She was right. What could I possibly say about Easter that hasn’t already been said?

He is Risen! Hallelujah! That’s been said.
The stone has been rolled away. Hallelujah! That has been said.
Death is not the final word. Hallelujah! That has been said.
Jesus lives. Hallelujah! Well, that has been said.

As a sound bite society, we know all too well the sound bites of Easter. Much like the Christmas story, we have cobbled together the various accounts of the Easter narrative from the different gospels until we, as church and society, have drawn a composite picture of Easter morning, complete with the Easter bunny in the place of Santa Claus. We have heard and preached about the women who get to the tomb first and noted that they, the women, were the first to proclaim the resurrection. We have theologized about resurrection—both as mystery and as metaphor. We have rolled that stone away so many times, looking under it and on top of it for a clue as to who moved it and we have reflected on the question, “What stones do we need to be rolling away today?” We have engaged our imaginations about those two figures dressed in white and glowing—are they really heavenly beings or simply human delusions? We have even been those two disciples trying to out run the other to get to the tomb first so that we can somehow, well, I guess feel more important than those who come later.

So yes, what can I possibly say about Easter that hasn’t already been said? Nothing. Nothing, really. But Nora had a second response. This time, an honest question rather than a statement hidden in a question. She asked, “What are we supposed to learn from the Easter story?” The difference in Nora’s two responses seems significant to me. There is a lot of ground between “What can we say about the Easter story that hasn’t already been said?” and “What are we suppose to learn from the Easter story?”

So this morning, in the spirit of Nora’s questioning, I want to offer you two lessons that I think we can learn from the Easter story that still has relevance for us today.
Easter lesson one: Love is the path to life. Fundamentally and profoundly, the journey from the cross to the empty tomb is a love story and it is a story of love’s power. For that matter, the whole of the Jesus narrative is a love story.
Maybe not the “falling in love” kind of love story, although we shouldn’t be so quick to rule out how that kind of love might have shaped and nurtured and deepened Jesus’ response to God’s love. But fundamentally and profoundly, the Easter story, especially the idea of resurrection, is a story of love’s power. Not an atonement love, but rather a substituted love. A substituted love that is described by wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault this way: “Rather than passively enduring a victim’s death at the hands of an angry God, Jesus steps up to the plate and voluntarily offers himself in an intentional act of…taking on his own shoulders a bit of that collective burden of suffering that weighs so heavily upon the human condition.” This is love’s power—a substituted love that comes out of choice.

It is the kind of love that our own Bryan Lee describes this way. He writes speaking of resurrection: “Jesus says Love wins… If one of us who loves without boundaries and submits ourself to live into God’s…SHALOM and gets crucified for doing so, love will always resurrect itself. Whatever heartache, heartbreak, we experience. Whoever may try to quench our thirst, silence our voice, or tell us that we’re just too radical, we live in the hope that Christ has been there, and defeated it.” Resurrected love wins.

Love will always resurrect itself. Oh, how we need to hear that Easter lesson over and over—again and again. Love will always resurrect itself. Speaking of this resurrecting love the poet writes:

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
That love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
Touched by An Angel by Maya Angelou

Resurrected love is the path to life. Alleluia!

Easter lesson two is this: Easter is a movement, not a moment. Moments fade and die but a movement endures. Moments are for but a minute. Movements are the long haul. We, the church and people of the Christian faith, have approached Easter as moment. One Sunday out of the year. One Sunday out of the year, when we make an extra effort to come to church. One Sunday out of the year, when we rise early for Easter baptism. One Sunday out of the liturgical year, when we read the story of Jesus’ resurrection. We treat this story and this day as a moment rather than as the movement it was and is. If you hear anything today, here this: Easter is not a moment. Easter is a movement that is ongoing, day after day, week after week, year after year! Alleluia!!

For those of us who identity as Jesus followers, every day should be Easter day. As a matter of fact, we should mark this movement with #EasterIsAMovementNotAMoment. Go ahead. Get out your phone and send it out into the world: #EasterIsAMovementNotAMoment. And when someone asks you what that means tell them this. Tell them that you are rolling away stones that keep people locked in tombs of oppression and marginalization. Tell them that you are loving your enemies because love always resurrects itself. Tell them that you are resurrecting past dreams of a nation that once proclaimed: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…” Tell them the Easter movement is dismantling walls not building them. Tell them that Easter is a movement that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, welcomes the stranger, gives sanctuary to the immigrant without papers. Tell them that Easter is a movement that sees all people as equal regardless of their skin color, or their gender, or sexual identity. Tell them that Easter is a movement that resists the powerful and lifts up the lowly. Be sure and tell them that Easter is a movement about a love that sets people free. And be sure and tell them that Easter is a movement that has as it organizing force LOVE. A love that always resurrects itself.

It may be true that everything that needs saying about Easter has already been said. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t still need to hear it! As you walk into the world today, walk resurrected in love that is the power behind a movement. What does that mean? That means that we know that when we love, and when we are loved, Easter lives. That means that when we connect with others to do the work of love, we are building the Easter movement. Being resurrected into love that is a movement means the light shines in the darkness right here, and right here, and over there, and that light converges and the darkness is overcome. Walk into the world today resurrected as the people of God who will love the light into the darkness, and whose movement together will overcome that darkness just like on that first Easter morning. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia!