GENEralities

Easter Sunday—Year A
1999

Alleluia! He is Risen!

And that’s why we’re here this morning, an hour earlier than yesterday. It’s a plot, actually. They say, “Spring forward!” but what is really happening is that we lose an hour’s sleep. It’s really only 9.30.

And did you notice all that running in the gospel this morning? First, we lose an hour’s sleep and then there’s all this running about. Mary Magdalene must have felt a bit like us—no, worse, I would say—because it was still dark when she went to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away. And then she ran to tell Peter and John, and the ran back to see what she was on about. It makes me tired just to read it. John won the race, by the way.

So, early in the morning, after a good run—they must have felt like many of us do this morning—getting a family ready to come to church an hour earlier than usual, or to drive from Calgary—not really in the best state to take in what had happened. Not rested and able to think things through. In fact, as we heard, “as yet they did not understand the scripture.” And yet, there it was, before their tired and grieving eyes. The empty tomb. The defining moment for the Christian church.

The thing we can learn from that this morning is that God doesn’t wait on our understanding before He acts. Someone once said something like this, “God can be gotten by faith, but by understanding, never.” And that means that over and over again in our lives we’re going to come upon things like that empty tomb and we’re just going to have to believe, no matter how tired we are and how out of breath—whether physically, or spiritually. Someone else said, St Augustine, I think, “Believe, and understanding will follow.”

We’re about to witness three baptisms. Miriam, Amber and Mark are about to be raised with Christ. Do they understand what is about to happen to them? Miriam does pretty well. She is well taught. Koinonia Christian School does a good job of that. Amber does, too—more than most her age, I suspect, she’s a clever little girl. Mark not at all.

Actually, when it comes right down to it, though, none of us really understand any of this. How does God convey grace to us through the sprinkling of a little water (or even submerging in lots of water, for that matter?). How does He feed us spiritually with bread and wine? How does he heal people? Why some, and not others?

But, are we called to understand to be Christians? No. As I just said, and as Peter, the first one in to the empty tomb, says in the first reading, “All the prophets testify about Jesus that everyone who believes [not understands] in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.” We are called to believe. And so is Miriam, and Amber and her new parents, and Will and Debbie on Mark’s behalf until he is old enough to believe for himself.

Jesus met Mary in the garden early that morning and called her by name—“Mary,” He said, and immediately she knew who it was. This morning, we are here to believe that Jesus is going to call Miriam and Amber and Mark by name. We are here to believe together that they will hear that call way down deep in their hearts and that having heard it, they, like Mary, will spend the rest of their lives telling others, “I have seen the Lord.” And we are about to see Him too, in these baptisms and at His table. He is about to pass before us in all His glory.

But before we do that, these past weeks I have been pondering what my last word from this pulpit as your priest should be. What I have to say to you is a word that defines this community. It is also a word that polarizes people. They love it, or hate it. Yet it is who we are. It is the Word by which the Father called everything into existence through which He showed his great love for all the world. It is the word we shall be speaking into Miriam, Amber and Mark in a few moments. And so—hear my last word to you from this pulpit—the Living Word—the Name above all Names. It is my heart’s desire that you continue to keep your mind set on Him and your eyes fixed on Him. The last word, and the first word, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Tweet this!