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"The Spirit Says Sing" EASTER SUNDAY
The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner
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In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
(sung) You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing. You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing. When the spirit says sing you gotta sing right out loud, you’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
I’ve always wanted to start a sermon that way and now I have. In other Christian traditions that’s the way most sermons start. The preacher will start with a song, often a spiritual, or some moving song and then weave it throughout the sermon. We Episcopalians of course are known as the “Frozen Chosen” so we don’t do things like that so this is perfect for Easter for us. Although, how could you call St. Christopher’s the frozen chosen when you have ushers with bunny ears on them. I mean, that’s the spirit moving right there as well. But I just needed to start with that song because as I was thinking about Easter again this year it seems to me that the hardest part about capturing the resurrection is that there’s no words that can really capture it but music comes closer to me. Because resurrection is a song that God sings in our hearts, that God sings in our lives and whether we are aware of it or not God continues to sing that song for us. I also had to come up with a different idea this year because last year I had the best Easter illustration I will ever have in my life because that previous year I had my near death experience when was hit by a car while riding my bicycle and I had this out of body experience. I am happy to say I do not have that illustration again this year and I hope I never have one again. But I do have a cute little story, the story is told of a 3 or 4 year old girl comes home from Sunday School and she’s just learning the story of Easter for the first time and she’s kind of got some of the details right but she has some of the other cultural stories mixed in there so she’s trying to tell her parents what she has learned, what she understands the story of Easter and she says “Now I think something bad happened to Jesus and they put him in the ground and three days later he came out and he saw his shadow and that meant there will be six more weeks of winter.” Again, that seems appropriate for this year. In the events of Good Friday and of Easter, we don’t know if Jesus saw his shadow on that Easter Sunday but we do know of these events if we are willing to look, we have the ability to see into a bit of our own shadow because the events of Jesus’ death reveal the shadow of humanity, your shadow and my shadow as well as the shadow of the people back then. That when we are confronted with God’s truth when God is standing right in front of us and revealing to us the truth of God’s ways which challenge our personas and all the ways we try to create our lives the ways we think of power and relevancy. When Jesus confronted the religious and political leaders of his day and unmasked them for the hollow, powerful people they were, they killed him because they were made too uncomfortable with him. And they thought they had done away with that uncomfortable truth. And so in these events of Good Friday and Easter, if we are willing to look and we are willing to experience the power of resurrection we must first be willing to look into our own shadows.
(Sung) You have to repent when the spirit says repent. You have to repent when the spirit says repent. When the spirit says repent you need to repent right out loud. You have to repent when the spirit says repent.
Now the truth of Easter is something that we’ll probably never really fully understand, this side of the grave. In fact, somebody was asking me this earlier this week, two people who define themselves as many people do these days, as spiritual but not religious, they are not really sure they believe in the Christian faith. They were saying to me, what do you really believe happened at that first Easter? They were asking me that earlier this week. Now what do you really believe happened? And I said to them, “You know what? I don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know all the details but I do know this, I know that it’s true.” And that’s where my faith is. I don’t know exactly what happened or how it happened but I know this, I know that it’s true. What do I know that’s true? I know that what is true is that the meaning of resurrection, the word resurrection comes from the same root as the word resurgent, which obviously comes from the word surge. When you think of the word surge you think of energy, you think of a wave perhaps in the ocean surging. You think of a crowd of people surging ahead. You think of a team surging back from being behind. We use that word surge all the time to capture an energy that is unstoppable that is just getting a momentum of its own. That’s what the term resurrection means. See, resurrection is not restoration, Jesus did not come back identical as he was, he did not come back and grow old with the disciples, going fishing and hanging out with them for the next forty years. He came back in a very different form, again this is what we don’t know exactly. He was able to walk through doors it says, he was able to walk along with the disciples and they didn’t recognize him. He was able to appear and disappear. There was some spiritual, physical presence that was somewhat difference of what his life had been. And so it is in my life and in your life when we experience resurrection when we have gone through unspeakable losses, or we are in the middle of some difficult loss or difficult time the promise of resurrection is not that life will be restored as we know it but that the light of God’s love and power will continue to surge and it will resurrect our lives and it will resurge in our lives and our lives will be different. They will be changed but they will be energized again by God’s redeeming love. We don’t get to control what that’s going to look like.
And sometimes I think we are afraid of resurrection. It’s an interesting thing, I was actually identifying with the guards in the story this year. The guards are placed at the tomb and we know why they are there, they were placed there so that the Roman guards because the last thing they wanted was for Jesus’ followers to come and steal the body from the grave and then make up a story of resurrection. That would completely destroy the power of the Roman authorities who were sure that they were just killing this kind of prophetic, crazy man. And so what happens when the guards who were standing at the tomb realize what is happening? It says in the Gospel today that when they see the angle announcing the resurrection the guards shook and became like dead men. The guards shook and became like dead men. And the angel goes on to say to them, “Do not be afraid.” That’s the great paradox, is that we can be afraid of resurrection, we can be afraid of the life force that is surging inside of us and we can want to distance ourselves from it . The best example I could think of this is when my children were entering adolescence. I was trying to put a rock over the door and trying to hold back the life force from surging in my kids. All of you who are parents will know what I am talking about. The life force just surges in a more obvious way in adolescence, that life force is always surging and it threatens to undo our life as we had known it. See that’s the power of the life force, it changes everything. And so like the guards we too can be afraid of that and we stand there and shake like dead men and dead women. But the life force keeps surging, God keeps surging and overcomes our fears and brings us this great joy that we celebrate here called resurrection.
And so this year when so many people have been saying, “You know, it doesn’t feel like Easter this year." And I certainly identify with that. Let us remember that resurrection is not a feeling, primarily. It is a truth. There is a great book that was written several years ago talking about love in the same way saying love is a decision. Love is not primarily a feeling, feelings come and go. But when we are in a loving relationship, whatever the nature of the relationship it is a commitment to keep acting in loving ways perhaps even when we don’t feel it. It seems to me that resurrection is also that way; it is a decision and not a feeling. It is a decision we can make. We can decide to live our lives in fear and decide to shake as dead men and dead women trying to hold back the life force, trying to hold on to life as we have known it, being afraid that life is now going to be changed, is going to be different and we are going to have to adjust to that and we can trust in the life force and trust in God’s life giving energy that promises to continue to surge, continues to sing the song of resurrection in our hearts again even when we are not aware of it and even when we have forgotten the words.
And now we are going to close today by inviting you to sing this song. You hopefully will have picked it up by now we are going to sing it through. It goes like this:
You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
When the spirit says sing you gotta sing right out loud,
you’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
You’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing.
When the spirit says sing you gotta sing right out loud,
you’ve gotta sing when the spirit says sing
Amen.
