Episodes
Sunday Mar 27, 2016
Divine Design: Easter Sunday 2016
Sunday Mar 27, 2016
Sunday Mar 27, 2016
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 27, 2016, Easter Sunday.
Text: John 20:1-18
The squirrels and I have a love-hate relationship. I enjoy watching them nest in the large oak trees that line the block of Maryland Avenue, NE where I live. They look cute perched on my porch eating acorns. They look less cute devouring my decorative fall pumpkins or chowing down on the buds from my camellia bush! A couple of weeks ago, two Cooper Hawks took up residence in the top of one of the trees across the street. The other day, I found myself distressed—not because the squirrels had once again made a mess—but because I was watching one of the small, young squirrels dancing up in the bare branches of the oak tree when the Cooper Hawk swooped down in full attack mode and almost knocked the furry creature off the branch. The squirrel regained balance and started running for its little furry rodent life. It could have been worse of course. I could have witnessed a full-on “Wild Kingdom” moment through my front window. And why not? The Cooper Hawk is just being what it is, doing what it is designed to do so that it will survive. It is the way of things in this created world, this cycle of vulnerability and hunger. Poet Mary Oliver captures the beauty and terror and necessity of this reality time again as she describes in her poems the kingfisher with the “silver leaf” of a fish in its beak, the “perfectly arranged mouth” of a watermoccasin, the “grabbing thrust” of the owl’s feet, the hungry snapping turtle with its “bulldog head” nosing “along in the wake of the little brown teal / who is leading her soft children from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps / close to the edge and they follow closely, the good children—/ the tender children, / the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet / into the darkness…”[i]
It is easy to feel like we are all on the edge, dangling our feet into the darkness, vulnerable to attack by hungry, hostile forces beyond our control. It is easy to feel that way because it is true. We are all vulnerable, finite, and subject to all sorts of scary things. Illness, attack, injustice, abuse. We and those we love most dearly are subject to death. Our nation is in a state of chaos due to the violent reality of systemic racism and prejudice, greed, and the rallying cries of hate and fear. Other nations around the world—from the Ivory Coast to Belgium to Syria—are reeling from other forms of cowardly violence, terrorism and human brutality. Climate change and environmental abuse and poisoned water threaten not only human life but other animals and whole ecosystems. It is a dangerous world out there. And it is true that we are all like tender, sweet children dangling our feet into the frightening deep. It is tempting to believe that this is the primary reality, this fearful vulnerability, this anxiety-ridden, always looking over your shoulder, survival of the fittest condition.
Some folks go “all-in” to this temptation—after all, why fight it? This can manifest in at least two primary ways. There is the option to live a fearful, defended, increasingly small life in which you turn in on yourself, on your family, your tribe, and rarely venture out. This way of living doesn’t trust anyone or anything, assumes and expects ulterior motives and evil intentions, it keeps score of every slight, and expends an inordinate amount of energy devising ways to control and defend whatever is considered its turf. Or there is the alternative response: to be the biggest, baddest snapping turtle in the pond. In this way of life, you fight and intimidate and throw your weight around, you focus on building your arsenal in order to gain the upper hand at all times; people are generally adversaries or prizes—and in this way of life, prizes are everything: status, wealth, entourage. Steal, scratch, charm, deceive…whatever it takes to win, to take care of “number one.”
Neither of these options is very creative. Both are driven by fear. Both lead to isolation and alienation—the defensive, controlling person ends up alone behind self-created prison walls while the offensive, self-serving person ends up alone with all her stuff—and a pile of enemies at her gate. Most of us likely find ourselves somewhere in the middle of these extremes—or with aspects of each that flare up depending upon the situation. And it doesn’t take much to see this “us vs. them,” “kill or be killed” framework playing out at every level of human experience—heck even our Super Heroes are at each other’s throats these days (Superman vs. Batman—and Captain America is at war with Iron Man). But is this the way things are intended to be? Is the driving force of creation mere survival at any cost? Is this the divine design?
Mary Magdalene must have thought so. She had seen the world devour the person who embodied and tried to offer a truly different way of life. The hungry jaws of fear and jealousy and control and greed had sunk their teeth in and swallowed Jesus whole. So if even Jesus who had the power to walk on water and turn a lunchbox meal into a feast for thousands, if Jesus who had been able to bring Lazarus from the tomb and to liberate Mary herself of the things that had once bound her, if even Jesus whose intimacy with God granted him extraordinary life-giving power couldn’t overcome the killer instincts of the world, then all hope is gone. The bullies will always win. Injustice will remain our daily bread. Death will continue to paralyze and terrorize and devour. It was indeed dark as Mary Magdalene stumbled to Jesus’s tomb.
When she saw the stone moved, insult was added to injury—for, based on experience, she assumed human interference, that not even death has been treated with respect. Even after some of the other disciples have been there, Mary’s confusion and grief remain in full force. She is then met by two aggravating angels who don’t communicate anything except to ask her why she’s crying—what kind of heavenly messengers are they?! And then she hears the same seemingly obvious question followed by “Whom are you looking for?” Mary turns to respond and, we are told, mistakes Jesus for the gardener. A gardener. Maybe this is just a random detail. But the writer of John doesn’t really do random. And in John’s story we aren’t introduced to Jesus in a stable, but at the beginning of all things. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him… What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (Jn 1:1-5) In the beginning, Genesis says, God created a beautiful world and called it all “good.” In the beginning, Genesis says, God created a garden—Eden—the perfect, unsullied design within which God’s good creation might live in harmony and in peace. Poet James Weldon Johnson adds: “This Great God, / Like a mammy bending over her baby, / Kneeled down in the dust / Toiling over a lump of clay / Till He shaped it in His own image.”[ii]
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb looking for death. She was found by the author of Life itself, the Light that danced on the first day, the Gardener whose creative vision endlessly delights and sustains, the God who pats us into the very shape and image of divine love. Mary came looking for death and was met by the Alpha and Omega, the one who proclaims, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last…I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever and I hold the keys of hell and death!” (Rev 1:8, 17-18) Mary had been correct about the hellish, killer instincts of the world devouring Jesus. But, those sinister powers couldn’t stomach Love. Love began to destroy their stranglehold on the world so they spit Jesus out. With the divine Light and Master Gardener in the belly of the “Beast,” the darkness couldn’t remain dark, chaos and pollution couldn’t maintain their destructive energies. In a famous 5th century Easter hymn, John Chrysostom says, “Our Savior…destroyed Hell when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh….Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.”[iii]
Today, Easter day, while the powers of darkness still think they’re winning, the light of God’s love shines. Today, in the mess we’ve made of the garden, the loving gardener appears to tend, to sow, and to plant. Today, in the places of death, resurrection is stirring. The whole of creation is being renewed. We may not see it. But it is precisely in the moments when we think that all hope is lost, when we find ourselves in tears like Mary at the tomb, when we find ourselves completely at a loss, when we find ourselves exhausted of all reserves, when we struggle to keep faith, when we are crippled with grief—when we stumble into a place that feels dark, polluted, and fearful—that we need to receive the Easter proclamation.
Because Christ is alive, the story is not over. God will not stop working to bring resurrection, renovation, to restore the divine design, will not stop working for good in the world no matter the resistance. // The divine design is not kill or be killed. We are not Cooper Hawks or snapping turtles. We are human beings created in the image of a God who is Love. Love is the divine design. We are not made for cruelty and callousness and fear and brokenness and Us vs. Them. We are made—designed—for loving connection and care. Jesus shows us that design, shows us who we are called to be, reveals to us our own capacity for compassion, patience, mercy, and love. And even when we think we know better, even when we continue on the path of fear, refusing to let down our guard, persisting in attacking the One who loves us best, clinging to the loves that hold us hostage, even then, God’s love for us does not falter. In the face of the very worst the world can do, God’s love won’t go away, won’t be destroyed, will not die. Ever.
The new creation has begun…it isn’t finished and it’s not up to us to get it done. (probably the best news of Easter…) Finishing the new creation is the work of God. But God’s love is knit into our DNA, it is what we’re made of, it’s what we’re made for. And that means that through God’s love, we have creative power, the power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression, the power to trust that there is more to life than what we see, the power to face the future unafraid, the power to give hell indigestion, the power to be patient, merciful, loving and wise. Because of God’s love, we live in resurrection power, we die in resurrection power, we live again in resurrection power. All we need is love. Not just any love. The beautiful, creative, passionate, powerful, life-giving, all-loves-excelling love of God. And of that, thanks be to God, we are mightily, eternally assured.
[i] Mary Oliver, House of Light, Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Kingfisher reference, p. 18, snake reference, p. 42, owl reference, p. 79, turtle lines, p. 22.
[ii] James Weldon Johnson, “The Creation,” http://www.poetry-archive.com/j/the_creation.html
[iii] John Chrysostom, The Easter sermon of John Chrysostom (circa 400 AD), http://anglicansonline.org/special/Easter/chrysostom_easter.html
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