Easter is a Verb by Louise Wideman

My friend, Louise Wideman preached this sermon a few Easters back.  It moved me.  May you find some value living in this post-Lenten season.

“Easter is a Verb”

March 23, 2008

The adrenaline must have kicked into overdrive as the women ran to tell their friends what they discovered.   Such a twist of events, a shock to their emotional systems.  Unbelievable!  Unexpected!  Unthinkable!  They had come to the tomb full of grief over the tragic death of their friend.  They had come to pay their respects.  They came that morning with sadness over the loss of a leader who brought promise of a new kingdom. The Jesus they had followed was now gone. Had he brought them this far only to leave them?   They came that morning with fear about how they could ever get into the tomb that was sealed with a stone.

But the sight of the open tomb and the stone had been removed – and once inside, to find only bandages … and no body … and a voice telling them Jesus wasn’t there but was risen … Unbelievable!   Unexpected!   Unthinkable!  

From sadness to terror to concern about what others would think about their news -- all within a short time frame --- quite a workout for their emotional landscape.  That first Easter began as an occasion for fear, disbelief, and astonishment … and joy came eventually … but the joy came after the more understandable emotions of disbelief and incomprehension. 

There were no trumpets that morning, no Easter lilies, no great congregational singing …the resurrection came in the early morning mist, while it was still too dark to see clearly.  It came through weeping and weariness, through fear and confusion, and through the disorientation of grief. 

And yet, in the midst of this emotional entanglement, these women bear witness to a great miracle – the unrelentless love of God that brings hope and points to life.

Such a wonderful story ---that we tell and retell every year.  But thankfully the story doesn’t end there.  Resurrection isn’t a one time event. The kingdom of God is among us – the living spirit of Christ continues to work – transforming, making all things new today.

In the last stanza of his work, The Wreck of the Deutschland, Gerard Manley Hopkins uses an interesting phrase, “Let him easter in us.”  What’s interesting of course is the use of Easter as a verb.  Easter would not have been for two thousand years the focus of Christian hope, if the word Easter were simply a noun, the name of something that once happened in the past.  Easter, rather, is a verb.  It happened.  It happens.  And it will happen.

Since that first Easter, there have been stories recounting the amazing power of God that goes beyond human understanding.  Resurrection stories, stories that go beyond reason and logic, continue to happen in life repeatedly. On this Easter morning, we are reminded to proclaim those stories of hope that point to God’s grace and mercy and love – experienced in a variety of ways, at different times, in a myriad of situations.  Sometimes these stories focus on physical healing.  

But resurrection happens in our lives not only in physical ways.  Jim Taylor, a favourite author of mine has said, “Resurrection happens anytime we are willing to let something old die – something harmful, negative, destructive.  We let it die and we begin new life without it.  We can’t predict what that life will be like – but if we are willing to take a risk, we will discover that we no longer need to fear whatever it was that died.  And we share in the hope that Jesus made reality through his resurrection.”       

I was leafing through a book called “Trancending” published in 2001 by Howard Zehr.  Howard was one of the early pioneers in victim offender mediation and continues to be involved in this work.  The book “Transcending” is a book about crime victims.  The persons included have had extreme experiences that have shaken them to the core.  Their responses are varied.  They are all at different places on their journey.   But one particularly moving story that I read comes from a Mennonite woman, Wilma Derkson, of Manitoba.  I will read a few excerpts ….

We were an ordinary family with 3 kids.  It was an ordinary day in 1984, payday, and 13 year old Candace didn’t come home from school.  For six and one half weeks we looked for her. Then on January 17^th, her body was found in a shack with her hands and her feet tied. She died of exposure.  The police still haven’t shut the case and it is still on the unsolved mystery list.  I saw it on TV just last week.

It changed our lives.  We have a BC and an AC – before Candace and after Candace.  But when I see her on TV, I don’t go into trauma anymore.  She is still a part of our lives and I’m privileged that she’s still remembered.

Even though the killer has never been found, I think I experienced justice and that was a real surprise for me.  Justice is, for the lack of better words, the healing of the soul.”  Wilma goes on to describe the journey that she and her husband went through .. the feelings, her thoughts about forgiveness and anger.  And then she writes,

“Entrenched in my Mennonite heritage is a commitment to peace.  But I know now that I could kill.  I now understand where that desire to kill comes from.  What I found in myself revolutionized my ideas about what human beings are like.  I had tremendous rage.  But when I got in touch with my own violence, I also realized I didn’t want to perpetuate “an eye for an eye” because as the trite saying goes, everyone would be blind.  It’s got to stop.  That’s the mission of love – to be able to transcend our own hurts and create more love.  Otherwise we’re going to continue the cycle of violence.

God looks totally different from this side of the murder.  I have found that God look for good things to bless but he isn’t about controlling things.  God understands the value of suffering, the value of allowing good and evil to live together.  For awhile I went through a deep abyss in my faith; but now I not only see the suffering, I see God’s blessing too.”

A resurrection story of sorts that points to the amazing power of God that goes beyond human understanding.   Since that first Easter, God has demonstrated over and over again that life is stronger than death.  Today we celebrate resurrection hope … the foundation of our faith in God whose relentless love for the world brings us hope … Easter hope – a living hope to which we are called to share with a world consumed by despair.  And while Jesus’ resurrection does not remove despair …. it means that despair is no longer the final word – hope is always present even if it feels far away. 

And so today, we have move from out of the depths and celebrate God’s abundant love set free in the world ... to take the shattered pieces of our lives and help us arise to new life … This is our hope … this is good news … news that should stir us into action … We, like those early disciples are called to proclaim in word and deed the stories of God at work … of death and rebirth, of all the times we thought God had deserted us only to discover that God was finding us anew … those experiences of God’s transforming power that has brought about new hope, new direction, new purpose.   How can we be silent, when we know our God is near, bringing light to those in darkness, to the worthless, endless worth?  How can we be silent when we are the voice of Christ, speaking justice to the nations, breathing love to all the earth?  Let us live as Easter people.