Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen, indeed!)
There’s a legend that circulates among preachers that, one year on Easter, a courageous
(or lazy) priest decided that sermons are superfluous on this most special day.
So, he stood up and shouted the familiar proclamation, waited for the people’s
conditioned response, and then went back to his chair for the Nicene Creed. The
story continues that, while some parishioners were glad for the chance to
arrive at the restaurant early for Easter Brunch, most people were
dissatisfied—feeling that the priest hadn’t quite done his job.
I’m not going
to try anything like that today, although I do agree that trying to explain resurrection in any authentic
way is impossible. I can gush about the cycle of life: about yellow daffodils
emerging after a long winter, or about the metamorphosis of caterpillars into
butterflies. I can try to compare some experience in my life to the fear and
awe that the disciples must have felt on that first Easter: “Once there was
this time that a “dead” opossum in my backyard “resurrected” when I poked him
with a stick, and it scared me half to death!” But after the tired old
metaphors and the lame stories, the strange claim still remains in all of its
weird and wonderful glory--that Jesus appeared to the disciples after his death,
in some kind of bodily form, thereby defeating Sin and Death forever. Even in
Scripture, there is no explanation of what happens between Jesus’ horrible
suffering on the Cross and Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead. The only
picture that we’re given consists of the stone walls of a silent tomb. Rowan
Williams warning applies to preachers as it does to all of us on Easter:
“However early we run to the tomb, God has been there ahead of us.”[1]
In today's Gospel, Jesus directs our
probing eyes away from the blank mystery of the tomb, and points us to Galilee, to the world that we claim has been transformed by
resurrection. Come with me today, then, to a Christian community nestled way up in the
Cascade Mountains of Washington State. The place is called Holden Village and
was founded in an abandoned copper-mining village in the early ‘60’s by
Lutherans looking to save the place from destruction, after the falling price
of copper caused the mine to fail. It is a place for retreats and for Christian
formation—a place where people try to practice their Christian faith carefully
and consciously, as individuals and as a community. They live sustainably and
in harmony with the natural world around them. They worship together daily;
they practice Christian joy; and they work together to provide hospitality to
their guests and to care for one another in meaningful ways. Even in this kind
of idyllic community, though, far removed from the temptations and tribulations
of society-at-large, sin and death still have a foothold. Even this Christian community
of disciples must struggle to live Easter lives in a complex world.
Not too long ago, it was discovered
that the old copper mine, blasted by greedy human hands into the heart of the
mountain, had left harmful contaminants that are leaching out into the
groundwater and streams in this otherwise pristine environment. The Holden community
decided that a multimillion dollar clean-up and remediation project was
necessary, and, with funding from Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining
groups, they committed themselves to the work and inconvenience of the task.
Unfortunately, part of the project involves re-routing one of the main rivers
running through the property, and, consequently, destroying a host of beautiful
centuries-old Engelmann spruce trees, native to these special valleys that were
carefully carved by glaciers ten thousand years ago.
And here lies
the resurrection story. Instead of sighing in defeat, moaning over the sinful
state of the world that leads to the destruction of creation—instead of
shrugging in indifference, mowing down the trees without a
second-thought—Christ’s disciples associated with Holden Village started to act as if Christ is truly risen. First,
one of Holden’s frequent visitors, a doctor who is both knowledgeable about
trees and guitars, thought that it might be cool to make a few dulcimers out of
a log of the cut spruce wood, since this kind of wood is prized by
instrument-makers for its beauty and fine sound quality. But then the power of the Holy
Spirit took his idea and grew it. The doctor used his connections
in the guitar world to speak with the director of a mill that makes soundboards
for several famous guitar-building companies. Reluctant at first, because the
project made absolutely no business sense, the mill director finally agreed to
take some of the logs to use in making guitars. And that’s when life really began
to blossom. Suddenly, like buds opening in rapid succession, organizations
from the U.S. Forest service, to the huge mining company Rio Tinto, to the mill,
to the Taylor guitar company, to Holden Village itself, all lost their fear and their need to control. They stopped calculating
for profit, ease, and feasibility, and worked together instead to make it
possible to use the doomed spruce trees to make a limited series of special
guitars. Moreover, these guitars are to be sold with a sizable part of the
proceeds going to charitable organizations that help provide clean water not in
Holden Village, but across the world, for rural residents in Central America.[2]
Can you see
it? Can you see the web of good springing from evil in this story? Can you see life
springing from death? Can you see wild abundance springing from dry desolation?
Can you see a whole group of Christian disciples looking at their imperfect world with
resurrection eyes and living as if Christ is indeed risen? Can you see
Christian disciples living without indifference and fear and greed and
control—and living instead for the earth, for one another, for the Kingdom of
God? N.T. Wright points out that Jesus’ story of death and resurrection is not
just “a story of some splendid and exciting social work with an unhappy
conclusion.” Nor is it “just a story of an atoning death with an extended
introduction.” It is the “story of God’s kingdom … generating a new state of
affairs in which the power of evil has been decisively defeated, the new creation has been decisively launched, and Jesus’s
followers have been commissioned and
equipped to put that victory and that inaugurated new world into practice.”[3]
Christ is indeed risen, but it is up to us to make him seen and known out in the Galillee's of the
world.
When I read
about the Holden Village guitars, I thought that we at St. Thomas needed to
participate in this resurrection story this Easter. And so did many of you! I
shared the story with our Saturday night parishioners and other guitar fans
here in our parish, and they agreed that it would be a wonderful thing for us
to join the resurrection work of joyful music, clean water, and Kingdom living
by buying one of these guitars for our own Harvey Roberts, who—get this—grew up
on a tree farm in Washington State. God has given Harvey a marvelous musical
gift, as well as the strength and desire to share that gift—and the gift of
Christ’s love and joy—with others, both in our parish and with the world
outside of our doors. So let us now join with Harvey, with the shorn Engelmann
spruce trees, with our Lutheran brothers and sisters at Holden Village, with
the businesses who worked for the Kingdom, with the residents of Central
America digging wells to better their lives, with the Risen Christ who unites
us all in Love: and let us sing Alleluia, for today, Christ is Risen! The Lord
is Risen indeed!
[1]
Rowan Williams, Resurrection:
Interpreting the Easter Gospel (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2002), 90.
[2] For more about the Holden Village
guitar project see: http://www.holdenvillage.org/files/2213/8446/4842/Holden_Guitar_Story.pdf
[3]
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope:
Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New
York: Harper Collins, 2008), 204. (Italics are mine.)
