April 21, 2019 - Easter - "These Words Seemed to Them an Idle Tale"

Throughout Lent and into Holy Week there have been memories and images of the death of many individuals in my individual journey. Yesterday was the 20 Year Anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings. Also, what was, for many, the calm of Easter Sunday today was shattered by gruesome bombings that killed at least 207 people in Sri Lankan churches and hotels.

Another vision of death came from our Bishop in his Synod Easter Vision 3 email. The Bishop wrote:

"Christians do not fear death. Christians see in death the door to eternal life. It is not simply that we do not fear death, though. It is actually the case that we long for the more. In Christ we know that our life today is a glimpse of a greater gift yet to come tomorrow. This is what resurrection means. It is the promise of more.

Living at the “convergence of opportunity, need and change” as we do requires that we remember the giftedness of both life and death. If we forget either, the half-life we cling to will fail us."

This vision went on to detail how we are called to die as a church. He cited the white supremacy of the traditional church must be shed, that some current congregations have grown too small for effective ministry and that faith and the way that it is expressed in the upcoming generations had experienced a tectonic shift that current congregations are no longer addressing.

Photos by Ron Houser

The Bishop's message drives home that we need to agree on what kind of death the Easter tale is addressing. Is it physical death or, as expressed in the synod's vision the "half-life we cling to". Certainly to make a case that the church as we know it is dying is not saying that this is experienced as the physical death of any of the members.

Yesterday Richard Rohr wrote about Jesus' resurrection:

 "To believe that Jesus was raised from the dead is not really a leap of faith. Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable patterns of everything. We might just as well use non-religious terms like springtime, regeneration, healing, forgiveness, life cycles, darkness and light. If incarnation is real, then resurrection in multitudinous forms is to be fully expected. Or to paraphrase a statement attributed to Albert Einstein, it is not that one thing is a miracle, but that the whole thing is a miracle!"

Should we then equate Jesus' resurrection with springtime and regeneration? This feels a little like a bait and switch scheme. The resurrection is a miracle in one sense but not in another. I understand how someone can say budding flower is a miracle bur Jesus resurrected from the dead I believe is in a different category.

Pastor Ray started his sermon with the words of the two men in dazzling clothes standing with the women in the empty tomb who said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Like the women we are left with words and the message that has not changed over time.

Pastor then quoted what the disciples initially thought of these words "Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them." In the midst of death that we all experience and when we know death is real we may think these words are an idle tale because this is not death as we experience it in life.

This is the first Easter my family experienced since my mother died. People told me to be aware that holidays would likely make her presence more apparent in my thoughts and memories. And perhaps that was the reason my Lent was attuned to death which continued through this Holy Week. Pastor Ray preached about the importance of first days today in his sermon as well, particularly with this first tale of resurrection. First days shape what will become our future.

We can think of all what seems to be senseless death around us and lose the meaning of the Easter story. How can the account be anything more than an idle tale told by others? We don't experience death in this way. How we live our lives can tell us the Easter account is not reality.

Yet this is a tale that can take on more power while we are experiencing death in the midst of life. The afterlife is not for us to comprehend but there are voices at moments within us that hold us in faith.

I heard recently about an older member of my family, one whom I deeply love, who was told tales that the place she wanted in her afterlife must be earned through believing and acting how others thought she should believe and act. My wife, my son and I all believe that who she has been and helped in this life have already firmly established her salvation. The same is true for my mother.

What we do determines whether the words in the Gospel are simply an idle tale. They can be words to live by and through. At times we are all tempted to lose track of a truth in our hearts. At those moments, at our best, we can help each other understand what lifts into a wondrous truth what could be dismissed as merely an idle tale. It is not forever achieved as a reality but rather a faith we must continually grow into.

The service included a first Affirmation of Baptism for some members and a Reception of New Members. Eric, Alison, Susie, Chris, Lloyd, Eva, Anne, Cris and Merle, together with sponsors, stood and made public affirmations of faith together with the rest of the congregation. A beautiful, important moment in all our lives that made us stronger as a congregation.

The Creator Choir sang a choir medley of Alleluia! Allelluia!, Chirst Arose, and Christ the Lord is Risen Today" The voices were strong and Jon did a great job in directing us. While we were singing what filled me with emotion was a young mother with her baby in her arms in the second row in from of the choir. In my eyes she personified all mothers with the way she nestled her baby while she was reacting with joy to the music. I didn't know who she was but she blessed me with a marvelous vision in that moment.


A unique service with the eternal message. Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Alleluia!