Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
4/19/ Easter 2A
4/19/ Easter 2A
New Life Starts in the Dark
Well, we’re
going on to about a month of this new way of staying inside, not traveling,
defining essential workers, limiting grocery runs, wearing masks and new communicating and worshiping
with media and technology. This is our
4th Sunday of FB Live….
I imagine
that, like me, we’re all getting tired of the changes - although we are also
adapting, and on some level perhaps getting more used to it - getting our
routines down, learning to teach from home and have our children around more.
I’ve seen many jokes on FB about having to be the mean mommy or daddy
& make kids do lessons that the teachers send. Children are learning, perhaps, to be more
self-guided in their studies…. There
have also been a lot of jokes about wearing pjs all day, especially the pants
part, as Zoom and other platforms mainly see the top halves of people! And jokes about eating everything in sight,
drinking more...
We joke about it
so we don’t explode in frustration, I expect.
It’s not easy, all these changes - if we couldn’t poke fun, we might be
crying. We encourage ourselves that we
are making these changes because of love and care for the more vulnerable among
us, and want our medical persons and resources to be able to cope.
A friend
from my former congregation in rura SC called this week - their local towns
have maybe 1 or 2 cases; our Onondaga cnty has what, 462 cases and 11 deaths
(as of Friday) - The crises going on in the big cities, like our own NYC,
Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans are not our experience, although we read
first-hand accounts about the terrible insufficiencies of personal protections
and equipment, and suffering and deaths, and the toll on health care workers in
those places. In world-wide charts,
virtually every country in the world has infections now - our United States now
leads the rest. We are all competing for
supplies. This is what a pandemic is -
an epidemic that pans the whole world.
What the future holds as far as prevention, treatments, vaccines, and
the economic impact and recovery, no one knows.
Although we might long for it all to
be over, this is going to be a major change in the world, even if the impact is
not yet felt in every cnty equally. Even
when the curve flattens & begins to go down, doesn’t mean it’s over,
despite what some folks say. Right now we’re all guessing when we try and
predict the changes.
Again, the Scripture texts chosen
for the Sundays following Easter are wonderfully appropriate. In the time of Jesus, those who followed
Jesus and had their hopes pinned in him, they are suffering a HUGE letdown;
grief over their loss of dreams and hopes is intense as they are gathered
behind locked doors in fear of repercussions.
No, it’s not a pandemic - however, I do hope that we can feel their fear
and their very real loss of hope, direction and normalcy. And I hope we can anticipate, with our
knowledge of what happens historically after this, the magnitude of the change that has just begun.
Today’s text is based on the very
Sunday of the resurrection, when the news is brand new and brought by the few
women who have gone to Jesus’ tomb to do burial rites, who instead find an
angel announcing the good news that Christ is risen. A few disciples have run to the tomb and also
found it empty except for discarded grave clothes. Nobody knows what it means. It must be overwhelming and confusing, like
huge changes and traumas always are.
In the trauma of severe loss and
change, like Jesus’ followers then were in, and we are in now, too --- parts of
our brain seem to shut down, because we can’t take it all in at once. Anxiety is high; our coping skills and our
resilience are tested. We may react in
different ways- from depression to acting out anger. We aren’t able to process
everything. Children and adults as well will ALL need time to process, come to
grips with things. Think of the variety
of ways people grieve a loved one - Some
close down, others act out in anger and frustration, some refuse to think about
it, some go on auto-pilot to keep small things done. Some begin to function in a can-do mode, and
end up overfunctioning and then being exhausted.
“We had hoped he was the one to
redeem Israel,” is a deeply moving expression of the loss of hope. On top of this comes the news from the Mary’s
that they’ve talked to an angel who says Jesus is risen, whatever that means!
We can imagine the FURTHER shock and lack of comprehension. We can we’ll imagine why they have locked the
doors of the room they’re in.
We can imagine them reeling from
shock when the risen Christ just appears out of thin air. Have we totally lost
their minds? Are we hallucinating, all
at the same time? No wonder Thomas, who
has hidden himself somewhere else, doesn’t believe it! Are they able to understand what it means
when Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit?” They probably need years to understand what
that entails - that the whole situation of the entire world has suddenly and
profoundly changed.
We still don’t totally understand
the extent, the depth or the breadth of that change. The change of even God being born in flesh -
the Incarnation, we call it in theological terms - we are still learning what
that means. Now the death and resurrection,
Christ’s appearance as the first of a new creation - we are still learning what
that means. And again, the gift of the
Holy Spirit, the breath of Christ, the breath of God (which REALLY explodes on
the day of Pentecost) - we are still learning what that means as well. It’s that big of a change - 2000 years later
humans are still trying to comprehend the change in the world that this
means. The risen Jesus tells those
gathered there that they are now sent to the world, just as Jesus was sent -
and by God. That’s a huge thing to take
in as well.
I’d like to point out a few things
about the whole story of Jesus’ resurrection that may help us in our current
crisis:
New life starts in the dark.
Lots of our resurrection illustrations have the empty tomb with a bright
light shining from it, and maybe even a glowing Jesus standing there… that
isn’t how it happened. The women arrived
at first light, as it now wasn’t the sabbath any more, and they could give
Jesus’ body the right rituals.... and that body was already gone. It had happened in the dark, and no one
noticed it until it was day again. Like
seeds that fall into the ground and die, the apostle Paul later says, there in
the darkness of the soil, they sprout.
Like all kinds of new starts and new ideas, they come without a lot of
fanfare, unremarked at first. Like our
human infants, who we don’t even know have started growing inside our bodies
until they begin to cause changes in us.
We don’t remark the turning point of new life until it’s further along,
and beginning to manifest. The roots go down BEFORE the stem comes up. New promises of hope may well already be
started in our hearts and our world.
Whatever God is doing in the world
has probably already started, without fanfare and notice. Whatever God is doing in our congregation and
all congregations, the seeds may well already be planted. God is always working.
We can’t take it in yet.
We will be working out what this means in our history and in our
children for a long time yet. We will
need time and space to process, intentionally to talk about it. While the new
life is started by God without our help, we need to comprehend what it
means. We need to process the trauma.
We need to lean on the Holy Spirit, the breath of God and Christ, for
our future. What if the disciples had
said, “Well, that’s over, so let’s get back to the way we were….”??? Actually, they did go back to fishing - we’ll
see that in another text - and the risen Jesus finds them there and recharges
them with ministry. We also find
ourselves saying, “when things get back to normal…” Friends, we might try to deny that this
happened and try to recreate the way things were, but it’s not gonna ever be
the same - especially for the next generation.
This is an opportunity for us to rethink, reimagine, look at what wasn’t
working, look for where God is bringing new life - be ready to be adaptable, to
respond to what’s new. It’s the Spirit
that will lead us, guide us, show us the way - we need to be open and ready for
God’s guidance, actively seek out the voice of God’s Spirit, praying for our
sensitivity to the Spirit, listening for the Spirit.
We need to be prayerfully prepared for seeing, recognizing and
following the new life God is bringing.
We need to pray that this be so.
One of the interfaith clergy groups I follow online is actively
pondering what changes in worship, ministry and service may emerge because of
this virus and the consciousness it’s raised.
We now know more about the world’s interconnection, the value of the
really essential workers, the importance of the wisdom of science, the
importance of preparedness, the need for good leaders. Our congregations are learning - well, maybe more like “coping with”- the ways that technology may be harnessed and
used for the gospel. Our hearts may well
be more sensitive to the mission needs in the parts of the world that we think
of least.
I think we’re still in the confusing
part of grief and loss, and just beginning to imagine the future - maybe a lot
like those Christ-followers who gathered over the next weeks as the news of the
risen Christ spread. Confused, perhaps,
feeling vulnerable, stressing over the changes, wondering what is going to
happen. Trying to still be alive and
hopeful, our indomitable spirits caring for others worse off than we are,
trying to maintain the goodness of life despite the current restrictions. unfortunately, we may at some point be among
the actively grieving - we’re going to be dealing with this virus for quite a
while. Predictions as to a vaccine say
maybe in 2021….
We tell our Easter story in a week,
but really, you know, things take a long time.
The gospels weren’t written down until some 60 years later - it took a
while to process and understand. Later,
our history books may talk about this first real major pandemic on one
page….those of us who live through it will know it took a lot longer. Our
Easter message is a message of hope, and a message of God recreating
life while it’s still dark - let’s hold on to that hope, and trust in God. AMEN.
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