Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. David Williams; Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012
Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 25:6-9; John 20:1-18
We really think we’re open to new things.
We do. Here in the second decade of the first century of the third millennia after all that Jesus stuff went down, we’re convinced that we human beings are really open to getting some change on. Our whole world is change, after all. Everything around us seems new and different, and we’re sort of used to it.
We like new stuff, the bright and the shiny and the glistening. We’ve learned to expect new stuff, and new stuff we get, quaffing from the continuously cascading cornucopia of capitalist consumerism. That form of alarmingly alliterative newness sometimes seems so inescapable that we want to flee from it, to hide under the bed as the ghost of Steve Jobs hovers in the hallway, his turtleneck faintly glowing.
But Steve, you say. I don’t really need a phone that can beat me at Jeopardy, Steve. “What is Siri for 1,000,” he intones. I don’t need a phone with a screen so refined that I need an electron microscope to see the pixels, Steve. “But it’s MAGICAL,” he whispers. So we walk right through him and his magical screens, and bump right into the Spirit of Google Future offering us big super happy fun augmented reality glasses. Those are, as of last week, the latest and newest thing, so new that they technically don't even exist outside of a few "you-know-you'll-wanna-buy-'em" prototypes.
Really. Have you seen these things? In a few years, our apps won’t just be on a screen in our hand. The screens will be before our faces, and they’ll seem to float in the air in front of us, like visions of sugarplums directing us to the nearest Starbucks, although given how easy it is to clutter up our desktops and smartphones, I can see augmented reality mostly augmenting my ability to walk directly into streetsigns and parked cars.
Still, we’ve gotten used to that kind of change, the bright sparkly shine of next year’s model and version two point oh.
Because for all of the constant ever-surging rush of progress, humankind has stayed more or less the same.
Where we struggle is with real change, the change that comes as the things we take as the fundamental constants of our lives shift beneath our feet. Those changes are much, much harder to adapt to.
Like that moment when our knees inform us in no uncertain terms that we are not 18 any more.
Or when we realize that the tiny little baby who used to squeal delightedly in a tiny little voice as he pulled out chunks of our beard with his tiny little hands now is a man a voice deeper than our own. Or when we realize that a relationship that seemed like the very bedrock of our lives has crumbled into ruin. Or when we awake the morning after a surreally hard day and realize that that other human being, that soul that was so much a part of us, is really and truly gone.
Those new things, the new things that shake our foundations and assumptions, those really new things are hard. We have difficulty processing such things, have trouble wrapping our minds around them. Even if that change is sitting right in front of our faces, we have so much trouble grasping it that sometimes we can’t even see it.
From chapter 25 in the Book of Isaiah today we hear a story of new things. It’s a lovely little story about a meal, and the end of suffering. It’s the promise that tears will be wiped away, and that God will make everything alright for the people of Israel. What we have not heard is chapter that came right before it, because that’s a bit harder on our ears.
Chapter 24 of Isaiah is one of that 8th century prophet’s many oracles against the people of Israel. Speaking from the comfort of royal Jerusalem, where he was well regarded by all and had the willing ear of the king, Isaiah doesn’t spin out pretty words that will keep people liking him. Instead, he tells out a story of how the whole world will be ended. What gets broken? Everything gets broken. Everything is ended. Ever see the movie 2012? Well, it’s not quite as over the top as that, as no limos are driven straight through collapsing buildings, but it’s pretty close. Isaiah tells of the terrible newness that comes with the end of all that we know.
Following this comes a Psalm, a poetic song of praise that fills the 25th chapter. In this, Isaiah proclaims that with the collapse of the life we had known, something truly new and more gracious and more promising will arise. All will not forever be wreck and ruin.
It’s God who truly makes things new. It’s God who rebuilds temples. It’s God who creates new cities. It’s God who recreates each of us, every day, every moment.
That message is the same as the Easter message we’ve heard in John’s Gospel this morning. The message is one of a powerful transformation, of a shift from brokenness to grace, from ruins to a new being. It’s a hard thing to see and move towards, because it seems beyond even our most impossible yearnings.
Even if it’s right there in front of us, we struggle to see it and understand what it means. Faced with the return of Mary Magdalene, shouting out that the tomb was empty, Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb. They found it empty, but had no idea what it meant, not really.
Mary, who stays, knows only the newness of loss. When angels appear, she can’t see them, feeling only loss. When Jesus himself is suddenly with her, she can’t see him. There seems to be so little room in her reality for such a thing. She’s still struggling to come to terms with the death-newness and the broken-newness. Even seeing the possibility of resurrection, of new life, of hope, well, that’s beyond her.
Until she hears her name, spoken in a familiar voice.
And then, suddenly, see can see. That impossibility becomes real, and things are different, new in the way that God intends, new in the way that we can only faintly comprehend.
Where there had been death, there was suddenly life and a restoration. Where there had been weeping and sorrow, there was incredulous joy. In the resurrection promise we proclaim this morning we bear witness that things can be made new.
That change is not something we can build ourselves. It doesn’t come to us from the secular culture around us, which offers us whirl and sparkle and next years model but nothing deep and lasting and really new.
Instead, our renewal in body and spirit comes from God, who we know through Christ and his teachings. It comes from God’s own Son, living a life filled with God’s own Spirit. In the hopeful wonder felt by the Beloved Disciple, and in the joy felt by Mary we have a taste of what that truly new life is like.
It’s not just a materially successful life, not as the world defines it. It’s not wealth. It’s not power. It’s real newness. It’s change that transforms our view of the past, alters our actions in the present, and sets a bright hope to guide us towards our future
It’s a recommitment to newness of joy, and a renewal of our life, every day. It is the hope of restoration, of a city that rises from the ruins in which the only tears are tears of joy. It is the hope of transformation, of a stone rolled away and a life made new.
On this Easter morning, hear this joy with new ears.
On this Easter morning, live this joy with a new heart.
He is risen. Alleluia, AMEN.
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