Turning our Eyes, and our Lives, to Resurrection

          

 

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!

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[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.)