The Great Comeback

Something big happened on this day, something really big. Newsworthy! Earth-shattering! Some call it a miracle. A new king was crowned. On this day in 1974, Henry Aaron broke one of those records that many thought would stand forever. On the opening day of the baseball season, he hit a four-bagger that put his lifetime accumulation of major league home runs ahead of the immortal Babe Ruth. Hank Aaron went on to hit a few more home runs before he finally retired. Now the quest belongs to San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds, who should set a new record sometime this summer.

I know you didn’t come out on Easter Sunday to hear about homerun records and baseball trivia, though I often wonder if those are not easier topics on which to speak than the subject of the resurrection. Let me say first of all welcome to everyone. We’ve certainly had better Easter weather in past years, but perhaps this is but another opportunity for western Michiganders to demonstrate to the world that we are a hearty and sturdy people.

I received an assortment of Easter cards this past week. Some of Hallmark’s best. Thoughtful sentiments. Encouraging notes. On the cover of the one I’m holding is a photograph of a rather stern-looking preacher wearing a black robe, standing behind a pulpit. He begins his message: “Today’s Easter’s sermon is . . .Where the [heck] have you been since Christmas!” It’s signed “Guess?” so I have no idea whom to thank.

Well, I’m glad you’re here. Even if Sunday worship is not a weekly habit, you’ve at least made evident your obvious wisdom in choosing Easter Sunday at East Church. The choir music and the singing are exceptional, the chancel a feast for the eyes, and the flowers fragrant. Enjoy it all!

I am disappointed in this weather for another reason. I was hoping to drag you outside with the assignment of looking directly at the sun for twenty-two minutes. And after your rebellion I would explain to you that studying the sun is a lot like studying the resurrection of Jesus – neither can be viewed with the naked eyed directly. More important to study its effect. This morning, I have only one thing to say about Easter. That one thing is this: The resurrection is not something we prove or disprove; the resurrection is something we put into practice. We cannot present an airtight case and argue artfully the resurrection in a court of law before a jury of our peers; all we can do is put into practice the living presence of Christ. Easter is an event we live. A lifestyle. A way of being. A mindset. A behavior. A way of looking at the world. A way of being in relationship with people.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the messengers ask the tomb visitors. “He is not here, but has risen.”All the Gospel writers agree, no one expected the resurrection. No one was looking for it. No one made plans for its arrival. Nobody on the Saturday after Good Friday was busy putting together an Easter Celebration Committee. For Christ’s sake (literally!) they came with spices and ointments to properly anoint a corpse, to do the work of a mortician. In the early morning hour, the women came to complete the work of Good Friday not to undo it. They lugged burial bags not bagels and cream cheese. The disciples didn’t arrive with balloons and a brass ensemble singing, “Jesus Christ is risen today.”

After Friday’s let down, no one expected a comeback. Not even those with an inside track were looking to see Jesus again. They came to make their peace with defeat, to tally their losses, to lick their wounds, to come to terms with it all. Their friend, their teacher, their rabbi, their Lord, their companion had fought a noble fight, had lived a good life and now it was over . . . done . . . zip . . . zero . . . finished. “Last one to leave, blow out the candles.”

But Easter changed their expectations about life’s power source and life’s meaning and the reason why they were put on this earth. Maybe that didn’t happen right away and certainly not immediately – lots of fear and trembling going on that first Easter. But over time it transformed once timid and fearful disciples -- the very ones who had denied and deserted him – into people who were compelled to live the kind of life Jesus lived, to the point that they all died for their convictions, willingly so, standing before Roman swords and coliseum lions. Martyrs they became as they changed the world.

Amazing what a single event can do to change life’s outcome, to alter a course, to set direction. Philo and his wife Irena settled down in Bethel, Connecticut, and on the 5^th of July in 1810 they welcomed into the world their firstborn son, Phineas. He was named after his grandfather, and for the honor was deeded by his grandfather a plot of land, some acreage known as Ivy Island. Phineas was constantly reminded by his grandfather and parents that he was a wealthy young boy for he was the proprietor of a coveted piece of real estate. At the age of ten, eager to satisfy his curiosity, Phineas convinced his father to show him the land known as Ivy Island. His father loaded up the buggy and headed out with a Phineas and hired hand. As they neared the journey’s end, the dad pointed to the direction just beyond the trees. And Phineas jumped out and ran to the land he had heard so much about. But when he saw it, his heart fell. Ivy Island was five acres of snake-infested marshland. The land his grandfather had called the most valuable land in Connecticut was worthless. It had been nothing but a joke, a joke at the young boy’s expense. When the lad turned toward the buggy, both his father and the hired hand were roaring with laughter. They had known all along. Phineas would later write in his journal, “I had been the laughing-stock of the family and neighborhood for years.”

Phineas never forgot that life-changing event, that painful childhood experience, even when he became a success. In fact, it was Phineas, better known at P.T. as in P.T. Barnum, as in Barnum and Bailey Circus who coined the phrase that became the catch phrase of his enterprise, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The women at the tomb and the disciples to follow were not suckers, they were not gullible rubes. Easter created a people empowered and emboldened to live in the manner of Jesus. Easter created a people who dared to serve the world as Jesus did, to be bearers of his love, healers in his name, and workers like him for justice and peace and shalom. It is in such lives given for others that we find resurrection’s proof.

I should remind you, there is nothing easy about living the resurrection, about putting it into practice. Nothing easy at all. I was reminded of that again when reading Kent Keith’s slim book entitled, Jesus Did It Anyway—The Paradoxical Commandments for Christians. The book is a quick read and a good one. It’s a book for Easter people, for people intent on putting the resurrection into practice. I share with you the ten paradoxical commandments:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

Easter of course is a reminder that some news is bigger than our ability to say it. But if we can put it into words, perhaps we could say it together with one voice. On the inside cover of our bulletin is a quote worth reading aloud. The Reverend Peter Gomes is minister at the Memorial Church on the campus of Harvard University. I invite you to read with me his understanding of Easter. Let it be our Easter affirmation of faith:

The evidence of Easter is a reconfigured Easter people, people who are no longer afraid of the dark, people who dare to live by their affections and not by their fears, people who know that they need not die in order to truly experience resurrection living . . . people who fear neither death nor life. . . . We live because we are loved; and because we are loved, we can live. (What We Forgot to Tell You)

To you and to all, a blessed Easter life.