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Grace to
you and Peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Recall with
me a time in your life when you were thrilled with a new turn of events… Maybe
you just found out your best friend was moving to live in your town or you had
gotten a slot in the perfect summer camp.
Maybe you were about to take your dream job, or had just learned you
were becoming a grandparent for the first time.
Maybe you just realized that you found the love of your life, or even, you
recently learned that you were, finally, cancer-free…
In those first
few days, weeks or months that you were still new to that reality. Life was totally different, and yet, exactly
the same. You knew that something very
good had happened and it probably buoyed your mood throughout the days, but… Did you ever forget? You know, in your day-to-day life, just going
about your business – forgetting about it – not remembering that a whole new world
had come to you and then… something would tug you into to the reality that
something Truly Great was happening… ?
It was like
that for me when I was pregnant for the first time, I would go about my day and
forget I was becoming a mom. Then
someone would ask me how I was feeling and it was like hearing the news for the
first time all over again – Wonderful! I
am feeling wonderful! A new life was
beginning, and not just the child, but a mother was about to be born. Each time I remembered that tiny new life that
would be coming sometime soon it was like a fantastic gift over and over again.
Now, 6 years
later, I have some significant moments completely amazed at the honor and joy
of motherhood. And I also spend – probably
more – moments forgetting what an
honor and joy motherhood is. We all know
what those moments look like… How
quickly we can forget.
It’s easy to
forget stuff. But Remembering is a
tricky thing.
We forget
stuff all the time. Simple things like
keys and phones or even big enormous things like a new baby growing or a major
life change. Remembering is a strangely passive process. Sometimes we know we have forgotten, and so we
wait around, trying to remember… but usually Remembering happens when we are
just going about our work and it suddenly comes to us. Even when we use tricks like walking back to
the spot you last knew that thing, it is up to our environment, often the
people around us, to help us remember.
What if God
designed it that way? What if God gives
us families and friends and communities to help us Remember? Because Remembering – even the most important
things – is hard. Especially alone. It is much easier to forget.
Just ask the
women in the Easter story.
“Remember how he told you, while he
was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and
be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Then they remembered his words.”
Here’s the
tricky thing about remembering. Before
that very moment, when the light shines bright and the men encountered the
women in that tomb. The women had
forgotten. So they were living in the
old reality, the one that has actually passed away but they had forgotten
because they didn’t remember! Remembering
changed their world.
These women
have been through a lot the past few days.
They woke up very early this morning remembering certain things… bleary eyed from their three days of weeping. They remembered the people’s cries for a King
that day he rode on a donkey. And they
remember their cries turning on him. The
unjust trial. And the pain of that
cross. They remembered where they saw
Joseph lay his body. Remembering, like any of us who have lost a loved one do… it
is fresh each morning, each time we drive down that same street or think we
need to check in with them, and they are no longer there. All they could remember confronted the
reality of their friend, their teacher, their beloved connection to God – dead,
on a cross, killed by Romans because his own people wanted it so. We weep with them and feel the searing pain
slicing through our hearts each time we recall it.
They go to
the tomb, because they remember Jesus’ death.
But they
have forgotten something.
“Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes
stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the
ground, but the men said to them: Why do you look for
the living among the dead?”
The women
find themselves lying on the ground as if pleading in prayer. And then They.
Remember!
The women,
frozen in fear, are stunned. They
remember. Jesus told them. This would happen. He would not be in the tomb. He would rise again.
This Remembering
rips them out of their painful reality with the hope that… he lives!
Everything
that Jesus has been teaching us about… Remember! Remember your life is not your own, but God
has saved you! Remember, you have been
given abundant daily bread! Remember,
Our God finds the lost at all costs – even the cost of his very own life. Remember, even if this is the one person you
would rather die than take help from - He has given you life. Remember, God’s
will is for a life lived in connection to God and to each other. Not even death
can separate us from God’s love. …Remember?
The women
could not do this remembering on their own.
They needed those men to show up. Those dazzling white, frightening men
who clearly knew something the women did not – the women needed those angelic “men”
to remember with them. The ones who live
with God and have experienced God’s reality.
God’s will for Life. God’s drive
that led God to let the evil one think
he had won for a time, so that God’s reality might break open the world that
thinks God is captive.
The women
show up at that tomb thinking Jesus has been defeated, and as it turns out it
was in the defeat that the reality of
God’s power over this world could be realized.
God changed
the world order. He who died – Lives.
Those women
ran from that tomb, entrusted with the greatest news of all time – He Lives! And the disciples think they speak nonsense. But it isn’t nonsense. It isn’t nonsense to believe the world can be
different than it is. “It isn’t nonsense
to believe that weapons of mass destruction are not necessary, and that war is
not inevitable. It is not nonsense to
believe that a child’s race and class and sex will not always determine their
future share of happiness and well-being.
It is not nonsense to believe that we who have been divided from each
other can, and will one day sit down together at the welcome table of God’s
love and God’s grace. These are not
nonsense thoughts. With the Easter eyes of resurrection faith, we can see that
this is hope…Hope is the door from one reality to another.” Hope is not about a feeling. Hope is action based upon faith. Hope is what happens when we Remember! The world has changed! And though the disciples think they speak
nonsense, we all sit here today because of the hope of those women.[i]
It’s a lot
to remember.
I cannot
remember by myself.
None of us
can.
But that’s
why God gives us to each other, The church.
We are a Remembering Community.
We’re here
every week. Each week, God re-members
us. Brings us into one body by
assembling us together here. Gathering
together, we remember that Easter happens every Sunday. Every day in each one
of our lives as we remember together that we have Easter Hope! Hope found
because we have died with Jesus in the waters of baptism and are raised with
Jesus to new life here and now.
Remembering
not something that happened in the past but remembering the new reality we live
in now! Together we Remember God’s
promises of life and salvation. We remember that we Easter people have hope. Hope
for the world to be different than it is.
Acting in Hope for God’s love to be made real in the world.
You are
God’s beloved child, it is for you that God has done all this – come to suffer,
die and rise again. Is that hard to
remember? Well, yes, it is. But don’t
worry, we’re here for you. We’ll help
each other Remember.
Amen.
[i]Jim
Wallis, Sojourners magazine “While the Men Were in Hiding, Women Delivered the
Greatest News the World Has Ever Known.”
