I preached this sermon at the St. Lydia's Easter Vigil on Sunday, April 24. The text is Mark 16:1-8; read it here.
I wonder if you ever loved someone so much,
that it seemed impossible to tell them.
I wonder if you have loved someone so dearly
that you could not find the words you needed,
to tell them of the depth of your love.
Instead,
all you can do is grasp for words that never seem enough.
Grasp for signs or symbols:
a gift, an act,
some way to express
a love that runs so deep,
there are not enough words to capture it.
This is a week of words and a week of signs:
words and signs that, together,
keep trying, again and again,
to express a love that runs so deep,
there are not enough words to capture it.
A story that is so true, words aren’t enough to tell it.
And so we pile words on words:
we sing the psalms and hear the stories.
We tell them again and again.
We taste them in our mouths,
and still we need more words,
and turn to poetry.
And still it is not enough.
We still haven’t quite captured it.
We abandon words and turn, instead,
to signs.
To actions.
We walk through the park with palm branches.
We break bread.
We kneel down to wash one another’s feet.
We walk a curved and winding path.
And finally,
we gather on this night.
This holy night,
and stand around a holy fire
and sing holy words,
This is the night
gather around holy water,
around a holy meal.
All to try and say something that won’t be said.
But with every word, and every sign, we get closer.
I grew up in the church, and so for me, every year holds the echo of years that have gone before. I remember the signs most clearly.
The weight of the priest’s hand as he marked the cross in ashes on my forehead.
My feet in his hands as he washed them.
Thursday in Holy Week, he removed every item from the front of the church.
The candles, the bible, everything was carried away.
The altar linens folded up and carried off
so you could see there was nothing but a plain table underneath.
Then he came back to the empty, darkened room,
with a bucket and a sponge,
and got on his knees,
and washed the high altar.
And then Saturday
we sat in that same, dark space,
and he lit a fire, as if from nothing,
and sung the words:
How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight,
and sin is washed away.
It restores innocence to the fallen,
and joy to those who mourn.
It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord.
We each light a candle from that holy fire,
hold it in front of us,
a brave light in the darkness,
and tell these stories that tell us who we are.
That God made the world,
and every day of our lives,
is pulling us from darkness
into light.
This the night when we taste the words that we long to live,
make signs of the people we long to be.
For the women in Mark’s gospel,
passover will never again be the same.
The shared meal,
the blessing of the bread and the cup,
the telling of the stories...
All of it speaks, now of the events that followed.
The tomb,
in the half light of the morning,
the smell of the spices they’d brought hanging in the air.
And then,
the stone rolled away.
The words, from the lips of an angel,
that they heard but could not comprehend:
He has been raised, he is not here.
Weeks, months, years later,
it is all they can think about
when the break the bread,
when they share the cup.
Do this in remembrance of me,
he had told them.
But how could they possibly forget?
Everything is different now.
We all find ourselves in the same place,
standing outside that tomb.
In front of us,
all there is is absence.
The tomb is empty and he is gone.
Not dead, but missing.
But Jesus has left us something important.
He has left us a promise.
You will see him. Just as he told you.
We all find ourselves in the same place,
standing outside that tomb.
He is not here.
He has been raised.
But you will see him.
Just as he told you.
You will see him.
You will catch sight of him in the face of another,
Taste him in the breaking of the bread.
Die with him and rise with him as you go down into the water.
You will see him.
Just as he told you.
The child marked with ashes.
The one who washes your feet.
The priest on his knees, as he washes the floor.
You will see him.
Just as he told you.
In college, I had a professor who taught me religion.
One day he picked up a piece of chalk
and drew a picture of my faith.
He drew an arc on the left side of the board.
And then he drew another arc, on on the right side of the board.
The two overlapped.
And then he pointed to that place, where the two arcs overlapped one another
and he said,
this is where Christians live.
We live in the space between the old world and the new one.
The old world?
That’s a world of death.
A world Christ cracked open when he rolled back that stone.
The new world is breaking through,
and it’s a world of life.
And so we live in a funny half light,
We live in the dawn of tomorrow,
as it breaks in on the night.
We live twilight lives,
standing outside the tomb in the early morning,
the dawn breaking in on the darkness,
our hands filled with absence,
our mouths filled of words that might one day come close to explaining,
our hearts filled with the hope of this promise:
You will see him.
Just as he told you.
Posted by: |