Easter – April 4, 2010

Isaiah 65:17-25 & Luke 24:1-12

A storyteller is loose in the world … a storyteller who goes only as far as Good Friday … a storyteller who says the Jesus epic ends with crucifixion, that death is the last word for us all, and that fear, intimidation, and unbridled power are the sum total of what we are entitled to at the close of the day.

A storyteller is loose in the world at this very moment, trafficking in tears and half-truths … promoting everything in sight that does not give life … a storyteller drawn to all that is cynical, oppressive, unequal, or demeaning … a storyteller who thrives on a diet of our passivity and silence.

A storyteller is out there, and will succeed … as long as no one in this room (or any other church) does or says anything to the contrary.

This crazy storyteller rode a crowded subway car in Moscow last Monday … flew two planes into twin towers in New York nine years ago … danced on the wave-whipped levees of New Orleans in 2005 … stood guard at Auschwitz … takes food intended for the children of Darfur … heaves up houses in Haiti … cuts down 35 million acres of rainforests a year, eradicating 35 God-made species a day … drinks too much, then drives too fast … and chortles under his bad breath in doctors’ offices while pointing to the ugly spot on the X-ray and saying the “C” word.

There is a storyteller out there who cannot wait for each story to end – and the messier the better – because there’s always one more like it … spoken by a loose-lipped, lily-livered lout, who shirks responsibility for whatever happens while sticking someone else with the blame.

* *

Today, however, Luke rises to refute that storyteller and his tall tales. Jesus rises too, as if to say, “Our stories don’t have to end that way forever. God won’t let them!” And the church rises with them, with Luke and Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, lending a witness in word and song to their minority report.

On Easter, we offer uncompromising dissent from the stories that end in silence and death. We speak today in opposition to that mindset. This is our time to set the record straight.

Oh yes, death and silence and sadness are real. But they aren’t all we’ve got.

In this room (and on all seven continents) we gather – strong and weak, old and young, rich and poor, sinner and saint – to nullify, contradict, and correct the evidence that heretofore was laid on the table … and give a fierce, unwavering rebuttal to the old storyteller’s message.

Maybe I should say: Luke does all that. Starting with the very first word of the passage, he gives a rebuttal: “But,” he says against the finality of death … “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb …”

With that initial “but” he begins to fill in details that the other storyteller skimmed over. Then Luke offers five more “buts” in rapid succession – “re-buts,” if you will – a total of six in twelve verses.

Against death, he proclaims life. Over the “no,” he pronounces a “yes.” After three days of painful separation, a reunion. Where the other storyteller sees endings, Luke points to a beginning. Instead of injustice, a chance to make amends. No more unrelenting sadness, anxiety, or strife … but sudden and unexpected joy!

Luke brings an antidote to the stories of closed tombs, closed doors, closed minds, closed hearts and closed options. All that stuff exists. We deal with it every day …

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb …”

A rebuttal … and the start of a new story.

* *

Does it sound strange that anyone has to argue in favor of resurrection? Many of us grew up believing that Easter is as guaranteed as grass coming up green, or robins returning to their nests, or buds on the trees this time of year.

Not so, though, if you lived in first century Israel. There was talk of resurrection back then, but no one had seen it. Even today, more people live as if it were not so than that it is.

So let’s admit: it’s not exactly “normal.”

Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian of the 20^th Century (once on the cover of Time magazine – how many theologians can say that?) once said, “The gospel is not a natural “therefore” but a miraculous “nevertheless.” It defies common logic.

Barbara Brown Taylor adds that, “It was the one and only event in Jesus’ life that [took place] entirely between him and God.” No one else saw it. We were looking the other way when it happened. She says it in wonder and amazement.

However, Celsus, the second century Greek philosopher and critic of Christianity takes that same thought in a skeptical direction, saying that, “Everybody saw Jesus die, but only a crazed woman and a few fanatics saw him alive again.”

* *

I’m not sure it would have mattered, though, if the whole world saw it. God does a new thing at Easter – something without precedent, analogy, or vocabulary to describe it.

Walter Brueggemann sums up God’s capacity for newness, by asserting that, “God does not simply extrapolate newness from what is [already] given in world. [The] creator [is able] to work completely ex nihilo (“from nothing”) in order to do something … that is not derived from what was before” (Renovare Bible, p. 1077).

He’s talking about the reading from Isaiah, but doesn’t it also apply to resurrection? The creator works from nothing in order to do something that never existed before.

For Isaiah, the “new thing” looks like “new heavens and a new earth … Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight …”

Isaiah offers a prophetic rebuttal to weeping and cries of distress that result from injustice and indifference. He voices God’s opposition to infant mortality brought on by a failing health care system … and God’s opposition to adult lives cut short by violence. And he vouches for an alternative to uprooted, transient lives, and meaningless labor.

Isaiah rebuts the storyteller of death by singing the details of God’s purpose for life. And the New Testament sums up that whole vision in one word: resurrection.

Resurrection is the unplanned turn of events. It’s the audacious surprise that catches us off guard, a chapter that begins after the old storyteller insists on saying, “The End.”

Resurrection is our story, too, and we tell it in many ways.

• Whenever old adversaries come to Christ’s Table, share the same food, and reconcile with each other, we tell a new story and rebut the old one.

• When Easter “Alleluias” are sung at full throttle, the new story is proclaimed and the old one rebutted.

• When we extend the table beyond this gathering – to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, visit the sick, teach the children, stem the tide of foreclosures in Milwaukee that leave people homeless and neighborhoods blighted, and when we form networks to help people find jobs – we nullify the old story and give legs to the new.

* *

But the old storyteller is loose in the world still, telling the same wretched story in a thousand variations. But we have our story too, our rebuttal, which gets told, not just today, but week after week, day in and day out. It’s a story about life, not death. Joy, not sorrow. Forgiveness, not loneliness. Bread and not hunger.

A fellow I overlapped with in seminary writes about inviting a Pentecostal preacher to come to his church. The local Presbyterians were used to ending the scripture reading with the phrase, “This is the Word of the Lord.”

But the guest preacher didn’t know that. Instead he ended the reading by saying, “May God bless you and protect you from the enemy that would try to steal the Word from you.”

He knew from experience that we need help proclaiming Easter. He knew that another storyteller wants to cut short our blessed story. But he also knew that we aren’t alone. We have help. And we have the better story. It starts like this:

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb …”

A rebuttal – the part that the other storyteller leaves out.

So use it.

And “may God bless you

and protect you from the enemy that would try to steal it from you.”

That’s the good news for today, and my prayer for you.

To the glory of God.