Anglican Church of Canada
April 21st, 2019 Easter Sunday
Luke 24:1-12
And so we hear again the Easter gospel, the gospel of the resurrection. We hear it the way we always hear it: as news, as a story told by someone to someone else, passed on by word of mouth. I am telling you the news this morning – not just reading from an old book, but telling you something as the most wonderful news. We tell each other this news, when, for example, we exchange the Easter greeting that Christians have used through the centuries: “Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!” There is really no other way of talking about the Resurrection. We will never have evidence we can analyse or investigate, we have only the testimony of witnesses. Sure, it’s in the Bible, we might say: but what do we find in the Bible? The testimony of witnesses, running and telling others what they have seen.
And the thing about someone telling us something, is that there is a challenge in it for us: we have to decide how we will receive it. “Returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” From the very first time it was told, this news was disbelieved, dismissed as an idle tale.
Of course it was! Because it sounds improbable enough. For the eleven disciples, the menfolk, it was easy to dismiss the testimony of the women: they were emotional, unstable, not reliable witnesses. I hope we wouldn’t say that today. No, our prejudice would be to dismiss the testimony of people of another age: they were primitive, superstitious, gullible, nowhere near as scientific and rational as we pride ourselves on being. It is easy to dismiss this as an idle tale. There is nothing easier.
It seems that the Easter gospel, the news that passed from mouth to mouth down to our own times, is not just a proclamation. It is also a question asked of us, every time we hear it. And so this morning it asks us, every one of us: what do we make of it, how do we understand it? Is it news that can change our lives, or is it . . . an idle tale?
In reflecting on what I would say this morning, I kept thinking about a poem, by the German theologian Dorothee Sölle. It is a poem that has spoken to me over the years, but never more than I find it speaking to me today. It is the voice of – well, I always imagine it as a woman, perhaps because the poem was written by a woman, but it could just as easily be a man – an older person, somewhat embittered by life, a little cynical even, a person done with illusions, perhaps because they have been disappointed too often:
You ask me about the resurrection.
Well of course I’ve heard about it
that a person is no longer
racing towards death
that death can be behind you
because love is ahead of you
that fear can be behind you
the fear of being forsaken
because you – I’ve heard of it –
have become so whole
that there is nothing left
that could get up and leave you forever.
Oh, don’t ask me about the resurrection
an old fairy tale
you’ll forget that soon enough
I listen to those
who shrivel me up, who cut me down
I am making my arrangements
for the slow task
of getting used to being dead
in my heated apartment
the big stone in front of the door.
Oh, ask me about the resurrection
Oh never stop asking me.
The thing is, a large part of me identifies with the voice in this poem. I know the doubts, the defensiveness, the cynicism in myself. Perhaps some of you have heard these voices too. Let’s listen again, more carefully.
You ask me about the resurrection.
The poem begins with the question about the resurrection, the question it confronts us with: does this have anything to say to our lives?
The answer the voice gives is casual, distant:
Well of course I’ve heard about it
There is a dismissiveness here, a keeping the question at a distance. But then the voice goes on, and we discover some surprising depths:
that a person is no longer
racing towards death
that death can be behind you
because love is ahead of you
that fear can be behind you
the fear of being forsaken
because you – I’ve heard of it –
have become so whole
that there is nothing left
that could get up and leave you forever.
Clearly this is a person who has thought long and hard about the promise of the resurrection, a person for whom that promise has had great meaning. But there is more than a hint in these lines that that hope has brought disappointment. Something in this person’s life, it seems, has got up and left her forever, left her hurt, forsaken, and betrayed in the hope she once had. And that too is part of the human condition – it could happen to anyone.
And then the bitterness breaks through:
Oh, don’t ask me about the resurrection
an old fairy tale
you’ll forget that soon enough
“And it seemed to them an idle tale.” That is always a possible answer to the question of the resurrection. It is a place we can so easily end up. Especially if we have been disappointed, especially if we have had hopes that have betrayed us. Because then this cynicism can feel like freedom, like a clean break from entanglements: if we refuse to ever hope again, then we are invulnerable, then we can’t be disappointed again. That is the temptation of a life without hope, without faith: a cool, skeptical distance that keeps us in control, keeps us from ever looking like a fool.
But this distance, this invulnerability, comes at a heavy cost. Because a life without hope is no life:
I listen to those
who shrivel me up, who cut me down
I am making my arrangements
for the slow task
of getting used to being dead
in my heated apartment
the big stone in front of the door.
It is that last, chilling image that speaks most powerfully to me: the fear that a life without hope is already a getting used to being dead, an empty existence that is not really living. If death is final, if the violence of the cross has the last word; if the strong and the arrogant always triumph, and the innocent perish senselessly, then there really is nothing left in life but to wait imprisoned in the tomb of whatever selfish comfort we can find.
Out of the horror of that kind of hopeless, senseless life comes the cry of longing to hear again the challenge of the resurrection gospel:
Oh, ask me about the resurrection
Oh never stop asking me.
This is not yet faith. Certainly the questions remain, and the doubts, and the disappointments. But with them remains the longing, the discontent with a half-life, the stubbornness that insists that we have been made for a life that is full and joyful and meaningful. And so we keep coming back to this story, to its promise and its question, to the hope it holds up for us. We keep letting it disturb us, and entrance us, and seduce us into hope in spite of ourselves. And maybe that is faith, after all; maybe that’s all the faith we need.
If this poem continues to speak more powerfully to me, it is because I think the voice it lets speak is the voice of our age. So many around us seem to be living with disappointment: disappointment with the faith; disappointment with the promise of the good life; disappointment with themselves; disappointment with those around them. So many wrestle with hopelessness, and can so easily slip into the resigned cynicism that there is no point in trying, because nothing we do will make a difference.
And this voice of our age is not other people, it is us too. I suspect that all of us have wrestled with at least some of these demons in our own heads. As Christians, we are not exempt from the doubts and despair of our time. The difference is only this: we are the ones who keep going back to these promises, the promise of a love that lies at the root of the universe, a love that is stronger than death and violence, a love that can move even our lives forward into paths of blessing. We hear these stories, these promises, sometimes with full acceptance, sometimes with skepticism, but we hear them. We let them challenge us, waken us, heal us, open up a little space in our lives.
With these stories, these promises, we are guardians of a treasure that our world, despite its cynicism or indifference, needs, longs for, in its heart of hearts. It is our job to keep those promises alive in our community, to celebrate them, to hold them up as a challenge and comfort for others. Oh, never stop asking about the resurrection.