New World

New World
Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Sunday
23 March 2008

I almost decided not to preach this morning. This wasn’t because I wanted to stay home and eat Easter candy, though there were at least two people in my family who would happily have done just that. It’s just that I wasn’t sure I would be up for preaching today.

You see, on Thursday night, not long after we got home from our Maundy Thursday service, I learned that my 24 year-old cousin had been killed in an explosion on my uncle’s farm. It has been a devastating loss, and I have been wrecked over it. So I wondered how I could possibly stand up here, three days later, and proclaim good news, when the news and the images swirling in my head have been anything but good. My heart is a graveyard.

But here is also the truth: the best news I ever heard came from a graveyard. If the good news of Christ’s rising can’t be proclaimed in the face of death, then where on earth can it be proclaimed with any truth at all? If we cannot stand in our grief and announce through tears and gritted teeth, “Our Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!” then how can we say it any other time, with any relevance at all?

Some of us come this morning with fresh and terrible grief. There have been losses sustained in this congregation, through death, and illness, and injury quite recently, and there is good reason to grieve. Whether or not your grief is fresh, all of us have behind us a string of tombstones – losses stretched out over the years of our lives as testimony of the sure sadness that comes with loving. And when we look ahead, we can count on seeing more tombstones in that direction as well. To live is to lose. To love is to lose.

Death is natural to life. And yet the fact of it feels cruel and unnatural. I have heard people who have lived very long, very good lives say at the end in the face of the grave, “Why? Why is this happening to me?” Few of us go gently. And yet death – our own and that of everyone we love – is a fact, a certainty. It’s the one thing we can count on.

And so it was that when the stone was placed at the mouth of Jesus’ tomb that Friday evening, what was sealed was a certainty. Death. Jesus was dead. Just one of a million billion deaths in the span of human history. Life goes on. Death goes on.

What happened next, though, was the least natural thing of all. When we try to get our minds around resurrection, we use familiar natural imagery. It’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly! we say. It’s like a flower shooting forth from a dead-looking bulb! we say. It’s like winter turning into spring! we say.

Only it’s not like any of that, is it? I mean, have you ever seen someone get up out of their grave and start living again? If you had, you surely would not compare it to a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, would you? It is not what is supposed to happen. That caterpillar wasn’t dead. That bulb wasn’t dead. We know that spring always follows winter. But real life after real death is simply not in the natural order of things. And what Jesus went through was a real death. What his friends went through was a real grief. With no expectation of its undoing.

With puffy eyes and broken hearts, the women go to see his tomb. Only what they find there defies all the facts. An earthquake, an angel, the look of lightning, the stone rolled back, emptiness. And then a new word, which will mean a new world: “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly, and tell. He is going ahead of you, and you will see him.”

From a graveyard, from a tomb, a new world is spoken into being. He is not here. He has been raised. But do you hear what the angel’s invitation is? Come, see the place where he lay. In other words, look at death, it is real, no denying it. See where he lay. But then, go, and tell – he is not here – then you will see him. Out there, in the new world he has made by his rising.

His resurrection is not the denial of death – it is its undoing. It is not the denial of grief – it is its answer. Grief? Yes, you will face it. A lot of it. Come to the graveyard, see where he lay. He knows grief and death, too. But then? See this too: he is not here. He is not in our graveyards. He has sprung the lock of all our certainties. He has rolled back the stone that sealed all our facts. Those facts include not only death, but sin, betrayal, denial, deceit, despair. All our old realities are now part of the old world. But he has gone ahead of us, off the old map, into a new world.

What does this mean? We can scarcely imagine or understand. We have often spoken of it as having to do with heaven, an afterlife. But surely his rising means more than that. Even pagans believe in an afterlife; they see it as a natural next step in the cycle of life. Jesus means more. He always means more. His rising does not mean only an afterworld. It means a new world. For you, for me, for anyone willing to look for him beyond the graveyard.

It is hard to see his new world, or even the signs of it, because the old one fills our vision so much. We are accustomed to its ways – the ways of force, and manipulation, and self-reliance, and death. The way of Jesus takes us off that map. A new world charted by his way, and lit by his light. We recognize it sometimes, when startling reversals happen, when things that aren’t supposed to happen do, and they are good. We recognize it when hope lights on us when we least expect it and most need it. We recognize it when comfort comes, when peace descends, when love flows, and all of it from beyond ourselves. We recognize it in each other.

And when we cannot recognize it, or see any sign of it, we try to trust, and we help each other trust. He has gone ahead of us, he is up ahead still, and sometimes the best we can do is see not where he is, but where he has already been. See where he lay? He is not here; for he has been raised. So we stumble forward, in fear and great joy, and in hope.

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It used to be that this continent we live on was considered a new world. The New World. At first, people in the Eastern Hemisphere didn’t know it existed. Then some people said they discovered it, which is to say that they found something that was already true and real. But some people still didn’t believe it existed. It was not the kind of thing easily proven, except for those who encountered it themselves.

In the late 1500s, Sir Walter Raleigh, an explorer and adventurer, went on multiple expeditions to the Americas. In the movie, Elizabeth: The Golden Ages, a fictionalized account of that era, he gives a compelling speech to Queen Elizabeth, who has never ventured beyond England’s shores:

Can you imagine what it is to cross an ocean? For weeks, you see nothing but the horizon, perfect and empty. You live in the grip of fear, fear of storms, fear of sickness onboard, fear of the immensity. So you … study your charts, watch your compass, pray for a fair wind, and hope. Pure, naked, fragile hope.

At first, it’s no more than a haze on the horizon. So you watch. You watch. Then it’s a smudge. A shadow on the front water. For a day. For another day. The stain slowly spreads along the horizon taking form until on the third day, you let yourself believe. You dare to whisper the word: Land. Land. Life. Resurrection. The true adventure. Coming out of the vast unknown, out of the immensity, into new life. That, your majesty, is the New World.

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Did you know that one of the ancient symbols for the church is a ship? It’s true. We are in this boat together, holding onto our fragile hope, scanning the horizon for the new world Christ has already brought into being by his rising. It is there. It is already true. Many before us have already set foot on it, have already embraced the great adventure of faith.

That adventure is ours, too. We huddle together in the hull of this old ship, trying to follow the course he charted by his living, and his dying, and his rising. There are times we cannot believe it is true, that his New World exists. We find it hard to see it, to trust it, to take hold of it. But listen. You may not be able to see, but can you hear? Can you hear it? The witness of the angel, and the women, and of all the other explorers before us? Sometimes it’s just a whisper. Sometimes it’s a shout. Sometimes it is said in defiance, or through pain, or with faltering voice. Sometimes it is sung. Always it is said with countless others, including those on another shore. In the darkest night, its truth still holds. It is the one true thing. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.