Easter Sermon 2006

Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

About thirty miles southeast of Cleveland there is a place called "Lord’s Town." Whether originally the name was meant to convey "This is the Lord’s town," or was named after an early settler named "Lord," I don’t know. If it was "The Lord’s Town," it now belongs to General Motors, which has a huge Chevy assembly plant built in what was once corn fields and pasture. Other fields have sprouted simple houses, row on row, and acres of mobile homes, made less mobile by concrete pads and driveways.

I don’t know anyone who lives in Lord’s Town, and neither, I imagine, do you. And yet we know those people well. They are married, most of them, more rooted in their families than in their jobs. Fathers play with their children on a Sunday afternoon, watch the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Browns. There is beer in the refrigerator, and on a Saturday night party with the neighbors. Some fishing, some hunting, and a fairly conventional routine for the women, who work either inside or outside the home.

We even know what worries them, in part. Increasing interest rates bother those with adjustable mortgages, and bills and credit card payments are a constant threat. They wonder if their children will do alright at school, or get into trouble. They wonder if they can afford a second home down south, or a camping trailer, wonder if they will always live the way they are living now, and what it will be like to grow older. They wonder if this is all there is. And as they wonder, they do their duty – day by day, week by week.

Is it much different in our town? Just doing our jobs, most of us. As in Lord’s Town, we are family oriented. This week we vacuumed, as we did last week and will do again next week. We have our circle of friends, occasional movie, programs we watch on TV with regularity. Some of us bowl, some Saturday golf. We have deadlines to meet and we meet them, taxes to pay, and

we just paid them. And through it all, we wonder sometimes about the meaning of our lives, about the liveliness of our marriages, about what’s happening in the lives of our children. Wonder sometimes if this is all that there is, as we lock our doors for another night. And as we wonder, we carry on: day by day, week by week. The basic rhythms of our town, and Lord’s Town. Much the same.

I know that in Lord’s Town today children will run through the house in search of Easter eggs, and out into postage-sized backyards looking for more hidden under the bushes by bristle-faced fathers or bath-robed mothers. And I know that today some of you will hide and hunt Easter eggs. It is a nice custom, something for the child in all of us.

There is another Easter custom which we share with Lord’s Town. Going to Easter worship. On the surface, at least, it is a very nice custom. – though in one way of looking at it, the eggs of Easter have more relevant social significance than does Easter worship. The eggs of Easter are symbolic of nature’s cycle – winter to spring to summer to fall to winter. The Easter rabbit symbolic of nature’s cycle – rabbits to rabbits to rabbits.

All of this, the rabbits, the eggs and flowers, is at least in touch with the realty of Lord’s Town and our town. Wheels to axles, axles to frames, and the rolling of Chevrolets. Saturday at the Legion, Sunday the Indians, Monday the plant. Saturday to Sunday to Monday to Saturday, Winter, Spring, Winter.

These are out rhythms. Bills come, bills are paid, and bills come; and the cycle of another month is complete. Parents get up, children get up, parents to work, children to school, children come home, parents come home, supper, newspaper, tv & computer, bed. The cycle of each day, broken by the cycles of Saturdays and Sundays, and the larger cycle of holiday to holiday, year by year. Wheels to axles, axles to frames; chickens to eggs to chickens to eggs. Rabbits to rabbits to rabbits. Significant symbols of the life in circles which most of us experience.

But what can we say of Easter worship? "He is risen! He is not here! See the place where they laid him." Death to life and .............that’s all. And when the women said this to the apostles, the apostles said it was an idle tale. For we all know that the generations rise and pass away, rise and pass away, like spring to winter to spring, like chickens and eggs and chickens.

BUT the women said, "Dead and now risen!" That’s all. Risen and living – that’s all.

Easter eggs and rabbits and flowers – the cyclical nature of this life is clear enough.

But "HE IS RISEN AND DIES NO MORE" is quite a different witness.

To the people of Lord’s Town and those of us here, it says that what we see is not all that there is. That the cycle of work, rest, work, rest, .........the cycle of birth and death..........the cycle of winter to spring and back to winter.........is true enough, but it is not the whole truth. To say "Christ is risen and dies no more!" is another way of saying that the cyclical life of your life and my life is set within a larger scheme of things: where time and decisions have a linear thrust, a line moving to a point in the future, not in circles, but moving from death to life, from disorder to order, from discord to love, from war to peace.

To say "Christ is risen and dies no more!" is to announce that Jesus is the first fruits of a new way of life – a new way of understanding our selves and our world. It is a vision of the Holy City, the New Lord’s Town the new "Our Town," a future in which swords have become plowshares, where all tears are wiped away, and there is no more death and dying – no more winter to spring to winter – no more wheels to axles, axles to frames, and the rolling of Chevrolets.

So here, and in Lord’s Town, ordinary people follow two simple practices today. The eggs of Easter, tied to our cyclical experience, underscoring our wondering about this being all that there is.

But I submit that though it sounds, as it sounded to the first disciples, like an idle tale: It is the witness of the church, whether believed or not, which redeems Lord’s Town and Our Town: For us to say "Christ is risen and dies not more" is to give all of our living a forward motion, a thrust hurling us to a new humanity which has the shape and the style of Christ.

To believe that Christ is risen is to know, as the Gospel proclaims, that the basic movement of our lives is not from life to death, not in circles of endless repetition, but the basic movement is from death to life; it is to know that we are on journey that’s going somewhere, going toward the Promised Land where sin and death are not sending us always back to the beginning.

Because we believe this, because we see our lives, by God’s grace, moving us toward a future which is not the same as our beginning, because the frustrating symbol of the circle is not for us, all of living takes on a different meaning.

Though our love decays and is sometimes demonic, nevertheless an undying and unchanging love is the future, and in this hope we do our current loving.

Though the peace we create may be short, peace is the ultimate future which we know in Christ, a peace which lasts, and in this hope we keep making peace.

Though our building comes undone, the future provides a lasting habitation, and in this hope we keep on building.

Though the music we make, the things we create, are limited, we move from death to life, and the future which comes to our present living in Christ is the sound of gladness, and we live in hope and sing with expectation and create things as beautifully as we may.

Love, peace, building, and making music make a difference, because the movement of our lives is from death to life. Because God is shaping out of all of our circles the future which is love, and peace, and wholeness and the sound of music.

The eggs of Easter are relevant to Lord’s Town with its routine of wheels to axles, axles to frames. Easter rabbits are relevant to Our Town and its circles of winter - spring - winter. But the Gospel of Easter is different.

Its rhythm is death to life, in which Christ stands risen, alive, and coming towards us, straightening out our circles into the arrow of hope for something new and lasting. Life that lasts; peace that lasts; beauty that lasts; joy that lasts.

Life and death. We are familiar with that. But today’s celebration is something altogether different. "Christ is risen!" He has moved from death to life. If Lord’s Town and Our Town are to be redeemed, it will be because of this:

So let the people say: "Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"