John 20.1-18
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti! Christ is risen! Risen indeed! Such a blessing to be with you all this morning. I love the hymn we just sang. As those of us in the preaching business say, “It will preach! That hymn will preach!” So if nothing I say today resonates….go back to that hymn.

On this Easter Sunday, our resurrection story is from John. I love each gospel’s resurrection story. Each one has some significant revealing detail to share with us as we encounter the mystery of the resurrection. However, of all the resurrection stories, I find John’s version the most personal and intimate, the most embodied in its telling. If we listen closely, with the ears of our hearts and imaginations, we may feel the grass of the garden wet on our feet in the dark early morning, the cold shadow of the tomb as we look inside, the warmth of the sun on our shoulders as it rises. We can hear the pounding of footsteps running, the heavy breathing of runners, the weeping of a shocked woman. What smells and even tastes might this story hold if we listen with our bodies, our senses and not just our heads? Garden smells, the taste of tears? What new thing might you see in your mind and heart’s eye as you hear this story that may be very familiar to you? Or perhaps, you are hearing it for the first time? Deep Breath. In and Out. I invite you this morning to be aware of how your body experiences the story of Mary and the disciples discovering the resurrection of Jesus.

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“I have seen the Lord.” What an unbelievable blessing to say this affirmation of resurrection! I long to be Mary in that moment. I long to say that affirmation with my life, “I have seen him, Jesus, the Teacher, the Lord.” Not just to hear the story and know that in the context of our Christian faith it offers hope. I long to live Mary’s resurrection affirmation with my whole being.  “I have seen the Lord.”  What about you?

It is not easy to experience, let alone think about resurrection, as 21st century, rational, scientific, progressive Christian people. We hear the story and so quickly move to hmmmm…..how did that really happen? Did it really happen? Did the writer of gospel talk to Mary and get a first-hand account? Or to Peter or the other disciple whom Jesus loved? So quickly we move from our bodies where our imaginations live and from our hearts where our emotions live to our rational thinking heads. We have been taught in our yearning for truth to discount our bodies, our imaginations, our hearts in favor of our minds, in favor of figuring out what really happened. What if we learn to include it all? Recently I heard psychologist and author, Brené Brown, say, “We are not thinking beings who also have emotions. We are emotion beings who also think.” This helps me encounter scripture and particularly, today, the story of the disciples and Mary’s discovery of resurrection.

I need to encounter this story with my whole being this year. Believe me, I read again the exegetical, theological, and homiletical commentary from scholars that I deeply respect. Surprisingly it was there that I found the prompt to go back and remember that in reading I experience the story with my whole being, body, mind, heart and soul. Here is what I found listening in this way.

The gospel stories that we call accounts of the resurrection are really accounts of the discovery of Jesus’ resurrection. The resurrection has already happened. We just discover it with Mary, with the women of the other gospels, with the disciples. How the resurrection happened? What that was like? Was it bodily or spirit? We don’t know. No one was there but Jesus and God. What I do know, with Mary from this text, is that Jesus died. In the previous chapter of the gospel, John tells us that Mary Magdelene stood at the crucifixion with Mary, Jesus’ mother and Mary the wife of Clopas, Jesus’ aunt. Mary saw the whole agonizing process. She heard Jesus’ last words, “It is finished, completed.” She saw the soldier pierce his side to make sure he had died. She was very likely there when he was taken down from the cross and when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body, prepared it for burial and placed it in the garden tomb. Mary knew with her whole body that Jesus was dead. I’m guessing that most of you know that bodily feeling that comes with the extreme shock of grief of any kind, the rock in the pit of your stomach, your heart that seems to literally ache, the shaking feeling in your muscles.

Our bodies imagine the shock, the sharp inhalation of breath, when Mary sees the stone rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. The worst has happened, but now what? Another body blow of tragedy? Someone has taken the body of our beloved. What else can happen? Our bodies can feel the fear of the disciples as they hear the news and run to the tomb. Our bodies can feel the giant, “WHAT?” when the tomb is found empty and not just empty, but the grave clothes, the winding sheets are empty, the head covering is separate from the clothes, and set aside, folded neatly. Perhaps, we are shaking a bit from the early morning chill as well as the shock. Then we “believe?” How does that feel? A realization, chills down our arms, a calm, a bemused state of wonder as we head home? What next?

Mary is too overcome with grief to even think, “What next?” She simply weeps. She sobs even as she encounters the empty tomb and two angels, even as she sees Jesus himself but does not recognize him. She weeps because she knows Jesus is dead. She saw that. She experienced that in the marrow of her bones. Now she cannot even weep over his body and say goodbye. His body is gone. How can he be gone? We can feel this in the depths of our solar plexus. This utter, utter grief. This pain. Then, she hears her name…”Mary.” And hearing her name, she recognizes Jesus. “Teacher!?!” He is not gone? He is not gone! He is here. How is he here? He is here.

Imagine for a moment, Jesus calling your name in the moments of your deep grief …. Really. Take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine Jesus calling your name.

This is Mary’s resurrection when she stands in the presence of the resurrected Jesus – not merely resuscitated but resurrected into a new creation by the power of God’s love to conquer death. I like to imagine that she flings her arms around him….the tightest hug imaginable. I can feel that hug in my body. Can you? And I imagine that Jesus laughs….maybe they both laugh….till they cry. Then Jesus says, "Don't hold on to me. I have work to do with God. Go tell my brothers and sisters that I have work to do with my Father, my God and your God.”

How hard it must be to let go of the one you love when you feel that you just got them back!? I feel that tingling in every cell of my body.  Yet, Mary trusts that this is not the end, but the beginning of something new that has never been experienced before. She trusts. She goes and becomes the first resurrection preacher, proclaimer. “I have seen the Lord.” 

My friends, we, too, through Mary’s story, are invited to proclaim. “I have seen the Lord.”  I know that we often do not feel up to the task. The burdens of our times, of our personal lives, weigh us down. How can resurrection even exist? We are immersed in so much bad news it is hard to hear good news. Anxiety and fear are real in our crazy times. AND I say to you as one who has stood at the foot of the cross with tremendous grief believing that the whole of life, the whole world was lost, almost annihilated by the obscenity of death, I say to you, “Listen for your name. The resurrected Christ is calling you.” It is God’s purpose of love, not ours purposes, as well-intentioned as ours might be, that ultimately prevails. And God’s is Love. Love is the Victor. “Death is not the end. The end is life. God’s life and our lives through God, in God.”[1]

Trust the story today as you have experienced it. Keep bringing your whole selves, your whole being, to the presence of God. Trust your body and your heart as well as your mind, to know God’s presence here in worship. Trust that God will meet you as Jesus met Mary in the garden out there in the world.

Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti! Christ is risen! Risen indeed! We have seen the Lord.

May it be so. Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2022 and beyond. May be reprinted only with permission.
 
[1] from Frederick Buechner’s 1966 sermon collection, The Magnificent Defeat; shared in an email  

John 20.1-18
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
If you’re at all like me one of the questions you probably ask yourself each Easter is, “Well, did the resurrection really happen the way the Bible said it did?” Ask yourself, then, “What does the Bible say about the resurrection?” You just heard Jane Anne tell the beautiful story from John’s gospel about Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus outside the tomb and not recognizing him at first. In fact, John gives us two detailed chapters of stories about the resurrected Jesus. There are more than a few resurrection stories in the New Testament, and John’s is the very last to be written.

Mark, the earliest gospel writer, says that there are three women followers of Jesus who show up at the tomb expecting to find Jesus’ body so that they could anoint it with aromatic spices. But they find a tomb that is empty except for a young man in a white robe who says, “He has been raised; he is not here.” That’s the end of Mark’s story. Nobody sees the risen Christ…just his empty tomb. Poof! Done! Short and sweet.

Matthew adds another layer…when the two Marys show up on Sunday morning there is an earthquake, and an angel appears to roll away the stone from the tomb. Then, as they run to tell the disciples, the risen Christ meets them, tells them not to be afraid, and to let his brothers know that he’ll meet them up in Galilee, and then he meets the disciples there.

Luke adds some elements to Mark’s empty tomb story, but the women encounter two men in dazzling clothes, who ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” and tell them, “He is not here, but is risen.” Then, Luke tells us the wonderful story of the two disciples who walk along the road to Emmaus with a mysterious stranger and how he (the risen Christ) is made known to them in the breaking of bread.

The earliest biblical accounts of resurrection are actually not in the gospel accounts that we read every Easter, but rather from Paul, who wrote even earlier than Mark. Paul has a different story of what resurrection is all about because not only did he miss the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection, he never even met the man who was a walking, talking, teaching, breathing, preaching, table-turning prophet. The only encounter he had was with the risen Christ, years after the crucifixion. He wrote to the church in Rome about 25 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and says, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.”[1] And to the church in Corinth he writes, “So it is with resurrection…it is sown in a physical body, it is raised in a spiritual body.”[2] That’s an interesting and an early twist, isn’t it? What is a spiritual body? Is that part of the reason that in John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize Jesus at first and that Jesus tells her not to touch him?

I want to propose an idea to you about the nature of resurrection. If there is a lifeless corpse before us, and it comes back to life, isn’t that really freaky and gross? Basically, we’re talking about a zombie. What I don’t hear in any of the gospel stories is the zombification of Jesus. What I hear in John’s gospel is that when he is raised, he is raised with a spiritual body…whatever that means. John’s Jesus walks through walls and closed doors…clearly without the same physical body. And yet after coming through closed doors with Thomas, he allows the disciple to probe the holes in his hands. Still…not a zombie.

What if resurrection is less about revivifying or resuscitating a corpse and more about what Paul says: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead … so we too might walk in the newness of life.” What if resurrection and resuscitation are two entirely different things, and if resurrection looks nothing like a scene from Shaun of the Dead? For me, resurrection is a mystery with a capital M, and I suspect none of us will ever figure it out, at least in this life.

What if resurrection is about new life, new beginnings, do-overs, fresh starts, the life-giving spring following the dormancy of winter? What is it in your life that could use a fresh start or a new beginning? God invites you into that! God lures us from our stuck places into “the newness of life.” It takes courage to step out into something new, and that is what Jesus offers us through his example…that even crucifixion and the bonds of death don’t hold him.

I’ve also been thinking about what resurrection might mean for us at Plymouth in a post-pandemic frame…as we return to in-person worship and having the ability to interact with one another and be the church in the same physical space.

It’s been a long time since we were together. A lot has changed. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. The world has changed. Are you expecting to walk back into Plymouth some Sunday and have worship be exactly like it was? Is your expectation that it will be basically a resuscitation of the church just as it was on March 10, 2020? I hope not! There are going to be some limitations as we start because the pandemic is still in play, and there are likely to be things you miss (like singing and hugging and coffee hour and handshakes). More affirmatively, I hope that you and I have learned some things about ourselves, our community, and our faith in the process of living through a pandemic in the past year…lessons that we won’t simply chuck out the window.

What have you learned about what is really important during the pandemic, both personally and for the whole church community? I’ve learned not to take hugs, face-to-face conversations, shared meals, singing hymns together, and communion for granted. I’ve learned that church buildings are important, but they aren’t everything. I’ve learned that the church is about relationship: with God, with each other, with our neighbors…and we can do that without face-to-face presence if we try hard. I’ve learned that people love and feel deeply connected to God and to their church, and that people show up and make a difference, even when it’s inconvenient, and that gives me a sense of warmth and hope. I’ve learned that you can do a strategic plan during a pandemic, and that an amazing team of people are willing to overcome obstacles to help learn about where God is calling you and all of us together. And I’ve learned that you don’t need to live in Fort Collins or neighboring communities to be part of Plymouth.

My hope is that we, as a church, will not experience mere resuscitation…but resurrection. That together we won’t look like a revived corpse when we return, but rather a spiritual body infused with the newness of life. Think about it…if the church is the body of Christ in the world today, do we want to be a worldwide zombified corpse or a renewed spiritual body?

Friends, we have lived together through more than a year of pandemic, and at times it has felt like endless months of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday with no Easter Sunday in sight. It has been a year of death and disease and fear…a year of political animosity and violence…a year of reawakening to the realities of racism in our nation…a year of the worst forest fire in Colorado history just over those hills…a year when the building was shut down. But we have made it through the hardest part. With more of us getting vaccinated every day, the end of this phase is in sight. The glimmers of Easter sunrise are here, bringing new beginnings and new life with them. Let’s grasp this moment with courage and be ready for resurrection.

Christ is risen! We arise! Hallelujah! Amen.
 
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Romans 6.4
[2] First Corinthians 15.42-44

Acts of the Apostles 2.42-47
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Here is a big question: How are human beings supposed to live together? We have been trying to figure that out since the beginning of civilization. Even in Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel gives a mythic answer to the reason we are separated by various languages. But we need to go deeper than just linguistic differences. How are we supposed to live together? That is one of the questions that this story from the Acts of the Apostles tries to answer.

On a macro level, humanity has attempted different systems and responses over the last few hundred years that we in the 21st century assume is the way it always has been. And that’s not so.

At the end of the 19th century, after evidence for biological evolution had been presented, some began to say that we live in a dog-eat-dog world where the fittest survive, that is and ought to be true for humanity as well, and it birthed SOCIAL Darwinism. The poor in industrial England, the Irish, and child laborers who worked in dangerous conditions were thought to be where they ought to be: at the bottom of the food chain. A 19th c. English clergyman, Thomas Malthus, even proposed that “excess” human beings would die off so that others could survive. And haven’t we seen a bit of that Malthusian catastrophe proposed by some political leaders (who ironically also claim to be “pro-life”) that it would be okay for some of the elderly and infirm to be taken by Covid-19 and to make a place for the fittest to survive? How do you think God sees our society?

Economics is a relatively new field, and the Scotsman Adam Smith is known as the father of economics for his seminal book, The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. And we he developed the ideas of capitalism and self-interest, and of course they grow into unfettered capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. You and I probably take it for granted that we are “consumers.” Stop and think about that…“consumer.” It’s one role in a mechanistic equation…and isn’t life more than that? Aren’t you also a “lover” or a “teacher” or an “advocate” or a “Christian” or a “parent” or a “sibling” or a “citizen”? Let’s pause for just a moment and reconsider the initial question: How are we supposed to live together? Are we supposed to consume materials and goods? Are we just cogs in the system of interconnected wheels in a stupendously large economic machine? How do you think God sees us?

Another vision is that we are meant to live simply as “free agents,” doing whatever we like in a “do your own thing” kind of way to nurture our self-satisfaction? Are we just out for ourselves (and maybe our nuclear families on a good day), or are we really a part of something bigger?

Throughout most of human history, the nature of living together in clans, communities, tribes, and nations has been survival…enough of the basic things like food, clothing, and shelter so that we could survive. And as civilizations and nations developed, the question of how we are meant to live together dogged us every step of the way. In Genesis when Cain kills his brother Abel, God asks where Abel is, and Cain famously replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And that is the big question: to what extent are we responsible for the well-being of the people who form our social grouping: towns, states, nations, regions. I think about that picture of the earth from space taken by the Apollo astronauts from the moon, and it is abundantly clear that our fate is inextricably bound together as residents of the same “big blue marble.” How do you think God sees us?

The Acts of the Apostles gives us insight into the way the first Christians answer the question of what life together ought to look like, and it may be a fairly idealized vision. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home (in good social distance) and ate their food with glad and generous hearts (after washing their hands for a full 20 seconds), praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” This is a description of DISTRIBUTIVE justice, where people recognize that there really is enough to go around if we share what we have. It is a statement about profound abundance.

Have you ever noticed how many economic systems are based on fear and scarcity, rather than on generosity and abundance? We have so many refrains of abundance in the biblical record that we stop noticing them as such: manna from heaven, my cup overflows, the loaves and fishes…it’s all about God’s abundance.

Here is a question for you: when have you operated out of a sense of fear and scarcity, and when have you made decisions based on generosity and abundance?

The Acts of the Apostles describes a radically different vision that most of us Christians — even progressive Protestants — have of how things work today.

As the Second World War began and many German Christians accommodated, if not encouraged, the rise of the Nazi regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book called Life Together about what Christian community could and should mean. “In a Christian community,” he writes, “everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable… Every Christian community must realize not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship.”

I wonder how that plays out at Plymouth. Each of us is weak in some ways and strong in others. We are utterly reliant on God and on one another, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we will be able to live together in harmony.

What if we expanded that idea to the wider community? Six months ago, I rather doubt that some people would have counted grocery checkers and truck drivers and the UPS delivery guy as “essential workers.” And in some medical institutions, nurses are seen to exist in a stratum under physicians, but if you’ve ever been in the hospital, you know how critical they are in terms of your care, but they are unsung heroes. But then again, I haven’t seen military jets doing fly-overs to recognize hedge-fund managers and advertising executives lately.

How are human beings supposed to live together? I think we’ve been doing a pretty poor job in this country, but I have certainly seen glimmers of hope in the way neighbors support one another, younger members of Plymouth doing grocery shopping for elders, people wanting to reach out and contact other members with a call or a card or a text message. Please, let’s not let go of any of that pulling together when the pandemic is over. Let us continue to grow into what Dr. King called the Beloved Community and what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. These visions are far richer than anything Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand could have dreamed up, and they are infinitely better for the human soul.

Christian community at Plymouth is going to look different in the future  in ways that we cannot fully imagine. We are likely to continue livestream worship, even after we can worship in person. For a long while, we may need have social distance in worship, adjust the way we greet each other and celebrate communion and have coffee hour. I have no idea when that will be, but I know that our sense of connection and love for one another has not been diminished by our physical distance.

Life together at Plymouth is going to be different, in ways that none of us can yet anticipate, but I do know it’s going to be rich. I have faith in God to show us how to be community, and I have faith in you to come together in faith.

We’ll do this together. May it be so. Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses

Luke 24.1-12
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
Easter 2019
 
The images that are left in my mind following this week are different than they are most years during Holy Week. Normally, I would have images of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the mock trial and beating at the hands of Pilate, the crucifixion by the forces of Empire.

And to be sure, those images were present with me as we walked from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday. But this year there were other images as well. Images of fire enveloping the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, flames licking the 19th century spire before it fell, spreading the fire along the roof covering the nave, and ultimately collapsing in on itself.

President Emmanuel Macron has promised that Notre Dame will be restored in the next five years, which is probably optimistic, though the moneyed families of France seem to be willing to part with millions to make it happen.

The fire at Notre Dame, apparently accidental, is manifestly different than the torching of African-American churches in Louisiana, which is being considered arson and a hate crime; and thankfully, money is flowing in there, too, to help rebuild.

So, in the course of this Holy Week, I was thinking about Notre Dame as an icon for Christianity as a whole. It made me wonder whether Christianity will go through its own version of Holy Week and Good Friday, dying back before it can emerge as a resurrected faith.

For 2,000 years the church universal has gone through repeated times of decline, retrenchment, and downfall, only to re-emerge in a new form. French Catholicism has been moribund for decades, and who knows whether the process of rebuilding Notre Dame will help the faith rise from the ashes…and not just the building. Certainly, stranger things have happened.

The church in our nation, too, is coming to a crossroads. The mainline church has been in decline throughout my lifetime, and though you wouldn’t know if from Plymouth’s experience, that regression has accelerated dramatically in recent years. And it isn’t just mainline Protestantism: Evangelical churches are also in decline, and the Roman Catholic church continues to be shaken to its foundations by the continuing revelation of clergy sexual-abuse scandals.

I wonder if American Christianity needs to experience a type of death in order to come into new life. That may be what is already happening nationally, and though you may not see it, we are not immune from this experience this in Fort Collins.

One thing I do know is that you can’t really understand the meaning of Easter Sunday resurrection without walking through the dark shadows of Holy Week and into the valley of the shadow of death on Good Friday. You can’t experience new life without first experiencing death. That may be where American Christianity finds itself today.

A favorite hymn in our church, “In the Midst of New Dimensions,” contains this line: “Should the threats of dire predictions cause us to withdraw in pain, may your blazing phoenix spirit resurrect the church again.” The Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the church itself, may indeed rise from the ashes.

But the cycle of death and new life isn’t just a sociological paradigm, it’s at play in each of our lives.
As we walk through life, we’ve all experienced the “small deaths.” When we are young, the first loss we experience may be that of a beloved pet or a dear grandparent. As teenagers, we may encounter a broken heart with the end of a first relationship. And then as we enter adulthood, we are introduced to a whole new range of losses: being fired from a job we love, the death of a parent, a divorce. And as we mature further, we are bound to encounter the hard diagnosis delivered by a physician, the death of friends and family, and the loss of physical and cerebral ability. Life doesn’t get easier as these losses begin to occur even more frequently. Ultimately, each of us will say goodbye to this world as we die into the next.

The Apostle Paul, who wrote earlier than any of the gospel writers, said that every day, we are dying and rising with Christ. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” Paul writes to the church in Rome, “so we too might walk in newness of life.”[1] That newness of life is here and now…not just in the life beyond physical death.

In other words, death is never God’s final word with us. There is still more life to come.

Throughout our lives, there are forces around us that entomb us, not just through the little deaths I’ve described, but through the macro-events in the world. And those death-dealing forces, like greed, violence, self-centeredness, and fear can seal the tomb over us if we let them…and there are moments when that happens to each of us. But death is never God’s final word with us.

Somebody has to roll the stone away from the tomb with us, because none of us can budge those huge boulders on our own. The large stones of fear can keep us locked in a sepulcher of our own making. They can lead us into ways of thinking and of being that feel anything but life-giving. So, who will help us roll the stone away?

One of the essential functions of a church community is to be a group of stone-rollers. There are people in this congregation who not only have emerged from the valley of the shadow of death, but who are willing to lend a hand in rolling away the stone that is holding others in death’s dark bond. I see stones rolled away when a lesbian couple, turned away by others, finds a church home that loves them for who they are. I see stones rolled away when we open our building to 12-step meetings. I see stones rolled away when a grieving family is surrounded by the love and support of true intergenerational community. I see stones rolled away when a member’s fear dissipates because of a visit and a prayer before surgery. I see stones rolled away when our volunteers find ways to keep people from becoming homeless. There are countless ways that the people who form Plymouth help to roll the stone away, not just for people within our congregation, but in the community at large.

And so, this is an invitation to resurrection: I welcome you to become part of the movement that Jesus started and that continued after his crucifixion. I invite you to be part of this great sea wave of resurrection that sweeps people up together to become part of the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. I invite you to find your place of resurrection here at Plymouth, where you can be part of a community of belonging, where you can deepen your own spiritual journey while helping to roll stones away for somebody else.

There isn’t much in the news these days about hope or new life or new beginnings. Our nation is in a shadowy time…but death is never God’s final word.

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who lived through “the Troubles,” which, ironically, were settled by an agreement called The Good Friday Accord, wrote these lines:

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
History says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave,’
but then, once in a lifetime,
the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
So, hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.[2]

That’s a promise of new life as well. It can be ours as a nation and as a world. It can be ours as a community of hope and faith and love and new life. It can be yours as someone who is God’s beloved. Death is never God’s final word.

That word — God’s ultimate word — is love.

May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Romans 6.4
[2] Seamus Heaney, from “The Cure at Troy.”

Poem Response
by Anne Thompson

Images we see --
black churches in hateful flames,
Notre Dame ablaze

dims the green spring grass.
Can we rise up from ashes?
Death experience

comes to all of us --
the common lot in all life.
Every day we die.

Death dealing forces
can seal the tomb over us.
Roll the stone away?

Unseal our grief tombs?
We can be the stone rollers,
be Resurrection.

Roll the stone away
for those who are ill and weak,
for those who need food.

Hope for a sea change
believing in miracles,
In love and new life.

What is it you seek?
Death is not the final word.
Love is ultimate.

Help us bring the spring
after the winter darkness
which nurtured new life.

Mark 16.1-8 
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC 
Fort Collins, Colorado 
Easter, April 1, 2018 

During the season of Lent, our Seekers group here at Plymouth has been studying a wonderful book by Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan called The Last Week. The authors use only Mark’s story of the week between Palm Sunday and Easter. We usually get the mix-and-match approach with a bit of Mark, a chunk of Matthew, a smidgen of Luke, and a whole lot of John. Mark’s gospel is, of course, the earliest in the New Testament, and it’s fascinating just to read this account on its own, because it is the first known literary interpretation of the story of Jesus. This is the story you’d have had at your disposal if you were, say, a Christian in Syria in the year 75.

This may be news to you, but Mark was not a Hollywood screenwriter…or even a Victorian novelist. His prose is blunt and rough, and Mark’s entire gospel abruptly ends with today’s passage…just like you heard it: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” That’s it. Full stop. Signing off. End of gospel. 

In subsequent centuries, two separate editors added their own endings to the gospel, wrapping things up more tidily, manufacturing a denouement on Mark’s behalf. 

But Mark leaves us with an empty tomb and scared, silent witnesses. That’s a bit unsettling, isn’t it? It makes us uncomfortable. Having read the other gospel accounts and Paul’s experience of the risen Christ, we want a bodily resurrection, a spiritual resurrection…something! We want a conclusive ending, but that isn’t what we get. And because there is no ending to the story, we each have to imagine our own. 

John’s gospel provides the wonderful images that we often relate to: being a critical thinker like Thomas, who needs the empirical evidence yielded by poking his fingers in Jesus’ wounded hands, in order to grasp that Jesus is physically present. And the two dejected followers who are walking on the road to Emmaus, who fail to recognize Jesus as he walks alongside them, but who is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. But all Mark leaves us with is an empty tomb! 

So, what conclusion do you imagine for Mark’s gospel? What happens to the risen one? …to the women who find the empty tomb? 

The earliest biblical accounts of resurrection are actually not in the gospel accounts that we read every Easter, but rather from Paul, who wrote before Mark. Paul has a different story of what resurrection is all about because not only did he miss the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection, he never even met the man who was a walking, talking, teaching, breathing, preaching, table-turning prophet. The only encounter he had was with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, years after the crucifixion. He wrote to the church in Rome about 25 years after Jesus’ crucifixion saying, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.” (Rom. 6.4)
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In what ways has the risen Christ been present to you? How are you experiencing the “newness of life?” How have you died to an old way of thinking or living only to discover new life? Have you encountered transformation in the midst of your everyday life? The story of resurrection is not over! It’s an ongoing drama; your life is the stage, and you are the actors. 

Going back to the story, did you notice what happened to the disciples – “the Twelve” – in this narrative? They’re long gone; they’ve fled. Joseph of Arimathea provides the tomb, secures Jesus’ body from Pilate, takes Jesus’ body down from the cross, wraps his body in a linen shroud, entombs Jesus, and he himself rolls the stone to seal the tomb. 

Did you notice that Mark not only fails to give Jesus any lines, he doesn’t even include Jesus in the scene? He is absent… only his empty tomb reflects its former occupant.  

Aside from Joseph – who is not a disciple, but a member of the council – it is the women who are the central characters in this narrative. It is they who demonstrate their faithfulness by staying near Jesus every step of the way. While one of the Twelve betrays Jesus, another denies him, and the rest desert him, the women stay the course. It isn’t the Palm Sunday crowd or the Twelve disciples we are meant to follow, it is Jesus and the women. 

Imagine for a moment being one of those women, what they witnessed on Good Friday. Imagine your intense grief on the following day, Saturday…the Sabbath: when you could only make plans to return to the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body with aromatic spices. This isn’t a pleasant task. If Jesus had died 36 hours earlier, you would expect some decomposition would already have taken place, hence the aromatic herbs. 

So, you gather the spices and set out for the tomb early Sunday morning. You steel yourself for the final act of devotion and honor, to anoint Jesus’ body. The sun is rising as you walk with two other women toward the tomb. And then you have an awful realization: you won’t be able to get in. The tomb is sealed with a very large stone, and you ask your companions, “Who will roll the stone away for us?” 

Let’s assume for a moment that it wasn’t a grave robber who rolled the stone away, but rather the “young man dressed in a white robe.” Is he an angel? If he’s an angel with superhuman ability, it’s no big deal to roll away stone. But Mark says nothing about him being anything other than a human. “A young man” does not necessarily an angel make. Mark uses the Greek word, neaniskos (young man), while elsewhere in the gospel, he uses the word angelos to describe a messenger of God. Mark leaves it up to us to determine who the young man was: for many of us have entertained angels unawares. And some of us have been messengers of God without even knowing it. 

What if you were approaching the tomb: who would move the stone for you? Sometimes, we need someone to help roll the stone way so that we can experience the risen Christ. And at other times we ourselves can help roll the stone away for others…rarely can we do it all on our own. Like that young man in the white robe, who contrasts the mourning all around him, we can be a voice of hope, saying, “He has been raised; he is not here.” 

You’ve probably read about some big-time stone-rollers if you’ve been around awhile: Gandhi, King, Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu, and others. But where are the great stone-rollers of our day? Who is saying “no” to death and “yes” to abundant life? I have seen a few like The Rev. Dr. William Barber, the Disciples of Christ minister who leads Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign.  

But some of the mightiest stone-rollers I have seen have just walked through the Good Friday experience of a school shooting. They are young people with names like Tyra and Emma and David. They not obediently staying in the dark shadows of the tomb, but rather rolling the stone away.  

Whether the world sees us as Nobel laureates or nobodies, by virtue of our baptism and our faith, we are called to roll away the stone for each other. Each of us has the capacity to show up for our fellow humans and help create a new beginning, a new insight, even a new life. 
Will you pray with me? 

Holy One, you have showed us once more that death is never your final word. Help us to be agents of your grace and messengers of your peace, that in rolling the stone away for others, we, too, might experience resurrection. 

​Amen.

​© 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. 

Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
Matthew 28:1-10
April 16, 2017 – Easter Sunday
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
 
Matthew 28
1 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."  
 
When I hear the resurrection story from Matthew’s gospel I think I should be wearing a crash helmet and safety goggles. Of the four gospel resurrection accounts, Matthew’s version is the loudest, most bombastic and dangerous, with its earthquakes, lightning fast and dazzling white angel and guards quaking till they faint dead away. It explodes into our imaginations. Matthew narrates his version of the Jesus story with wondrous signs in amazing Technicolor, 3-D and Surround Sound because he wants us to grasp the cosmic implications of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. A new star appears in the  heavens to  announce  his birth and mysterious Gentile visitors, wise wizards from the far east, come to pay this special baby homage. At the moment Jesus dies, Matthew tells us that not only is the curtain of the temple torn in two but the earth shakes, rocks are split in two, tombs are opened and saints of God spill out of them to go walking around Jerusalem even before Jesus’ resurrection! A Roman centurion, one of those least likely to heed the signs, cries out “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Matthew is making sure we get that Jesus brings God’s change for a world in desperate need of change! Change not just for the children of Israel, but for the entire world, the cosmos! Jesus is the Messiah fulfilling the ancient prophesies ushering in God’s Kingdom of love and justice for all people. All is changed irrevocably because Jesus ! All is made new! And we are left breathless with the very dramatic revelation of the good news! Christ is Risen! And you say....Christ is Risen Indeed! Amen!

While the special effects are magnificent and not to taken lightly, I have to admit that there are some subtler moments in Matthew’s story that shake me to the core. There are the moments in the opening lines when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, possibly Jesus’ mom, get up in the dark before sunrise and quietly journey to the tomb looking for their beloved Jesus. They come to anoint his dead body in the proper ritual way. Imagine that journey....the foundation of their world has crumbled....the cornerstone of their lives has been pulled from its place and smashed. My guess is that they are too tired, too numb, too sad to even think about the future of this movement Jesus has started. Nothing matters anymore except to be with him one last time. I have been on such journeys of grief and I bet you have too.

The women reach the tomb just as the all heaven breaks loose with signs and wonders. Then there is the moment of silence after the flash of lightening, the crash of the rolling stone and the thump of the guards slumping to the ground  unconscious. I imagine that even the birds are startled into silence. Perhaps the women cough and sputter as the earthquake dust settles and clears, sparkling in the morning light but making no sound. It is utterly still except for the pounding of hearts pounding. And into the stillness, out of the darkness of the tomb, the angel says, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus....”

“Looking for Jesus...” In the midst of all the noise of proclamation the angel speaks the simple truth, “I know you are looking for Jesus...” The phrase haunts me. I have been looking for Jesus all of my life. What about you? In fact I would call my search a habit. Something I do repeatedly time and again, particularly at Easter. I can only think of one Easter in my life when I missed church. Even during the years when regular church-going was not my thing, I was in church on Easter looking for Jesus. We may love the Easter egg hunts and new clothes and big dinners with  family and friends, but the real habit of Easter is looking for Jesus. Matthew would tell us in all his signs and wonders that’s because we are looking for God and the life of God’s Kingdom, God’s realm. Isn’t that the place of our deepest curiosity....what is this mysterious thing called Life? Isn’t that why we return habitually to Easter year after year? Looking for new life....looking for Jesus?

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.” Jesus, the man of Nazareth that they knew, crucified because he non-violently confronted the political and religious powers of his time with the love, compassion and distributive, restorative justice of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified,” says the angel. Crucified because he never shied away from Life. Crucified because he lived and preached the wholeness of the Kingdom of God in the very midst of life...with family and strangers, eating and drinking, healing the sick and telling stories to enemies as well as friends, in the midst of controversy with the faith community he loved and conflict with the death-dealing empire of his day.

And the angel continues, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.... indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” He is not here in the halls of the dead, in the dark and moldering confines of a tomb. Jesus is alive and going ahead of you to Galilee, the place where you lived and traveled with him all those years. Galilee, where you live! Jesus is raised and going ahead of you back into life! Go to Galilee, where you live and there you will see him!”

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So we make it a habit each Easter to leave our everyday lives and come to church looking for Jesus. But the angel tells us....”He has risen! Go back to your lives...there you will find Jesus, the proclaimer of God’s realm on earth!” The interesting thing about the word “habit” is that it’s original meaning from the Latin was not repetitive action, but was “a place where one dwells, lives, inhabits.” Our habit must be to look for Jesus in all places we inhabit. He is there hiding in plain sight. In ALL that life brings us: family, friends, learning and work, times of challenge, times of celebration, journeys of grief. And in the confrontation with death-dealing empire power, for we, too, live in times when peace is sought by the world’s powers through warfare rather than the sharing of resources, when the fear of scarcity is used as an excuse to make the richer richer and the poor poorer, when human beings seek dominion over the gifts of creation rather than stewardship of creation’s gifts.

My friends, God’s resurrection of Jesus was and still is the resounding NO to empire’s attempt to control through death and scarcity, to create peace through violence. God’s resurrection of Jesus is the resounding YES to Life and to us as co- creators of God’s realm on earth. Jesus, the Crucified and Risen Christ, is with us in all the beauty and the mess: at the egg hunt and the family dinner; in caves obliterated by bombs and in the hospitals where people suffer needlessly from chemical warfare. Children, Jesus is on the playground with you at school. Grown-ups, Jesus is at work with you. Jesus is in the complicated corridors of our nation’s congress. Jesus walks with us here in Fort Collins in the conversation and the conflict of community building. Wherever life takes us the Risen One goes before leading the way because of the power of the living God. We are called to shout NO with God to death and YES with God in Christ to abundant life!
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Now that is worth celebrating with a few special effects! Amen.
 
©Jane Anne Ferguson, 2017. May be reprinted with permission only.