This Wonderful World

Scriptures: Psalm 118:1; 15-24, John 20:1-18

Easter is about many things, but one of the chief things that it is all about is to celebrate this world that God has given us. Sure, we can dwell on all the negatives – the economy that has affected so many of us, health problems, arguments and disaffections that we have with friends and family. And to be sure, there have been several deaths within our wider church family these past few weeks which diminish and sadden our community. Moreover, ministers do need to point to social ills and injustices, for that is part of our calling as the community of Christ. All of this is a big part of our reality as human beings.

But…but…today is for celebrating. What a wonderful world we have been given! And even more wonderful – if not, indeed, incredible – is that it is God who has given it to us and who expects us to enjoy it and revel in it. Why? Because “God so loved the world!” That’s about as central a Bible verse as there is, and it tells us all we need to know about what kind of pleasure God wants us to feel in the world that is all around us.

There are, of course, the obvious beauties of our physical world, some of which you heard Louis Armstrong sing about and Ann and Marcus dance to: red roses, green trees, blue skies, white clouds, all the colors of the rainbow. Now, the cynic might be prone to question: what about the blind, or, for that matter, even the color-blind? How are people with those kinds of altered abilities going to celebrate with the singer and the dancers, and why should they anyway? I’m going to leave that as a teasing question for you and come back to it in a little while.

Apart from the obvious delights of nature what gives Louis Armstrong’s classic song such an emotional impact – and what really is the focal point for our meditation today – is what it has to say about relationships. “I see friends shaking hands saying ‘how do you do’; they’re really saying ‘I love you.’” The world that God gave us – the world Jesus came to save – is one in which we are to look for all the ways we can say “I love you” to one another.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Is there a more joyous, more affirmative verse in all of the Psalms or even all of the Bible? I used to love to say this verse at the start of every worship service, and it is more than appropriate for an Easter service. A footnote in my Bible indicates that, because of the way Hebrew is written with vowels left out, that last pronoun — “it” – could just as well be translated “him” – or “the Lord” – or “God”. In other words, to “rejoice and be glad” in this day is to “rejoice and be glad” in God. That’s what Easter people do: we rejoice in our God by rejoicing in the day – which means, in the world – we have been given.

The Psalm writer starts this 118^th Psalm with a word that has now become oh, so familiar to us – those of you who have been here for the past few weeks: chesed – God’s “steadfast love”, or, as Susan Blain prefers to translate this term:

“covenant loyalty”. The word chesed means to reorder life into a community of enduring relations of fidelity. God’s love for us is so loyal, so steadfast, so full of the covenant that God offers to each one of us, that we can only respond in awe and wonder.

Back in 1986 Paul Simon released an album and video called Graceland following his tour of South Africa. The opening number on that album had as its refrain:

These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long-distance call;
The way the camera follows us in slow-mo,
The way we look to a song.
These are the days of miracle and wonder;
Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry.

Many of these images have to do with technological and telecommunications wonders, but Simon was also singing about the wonders of the human spirit and how these interact with our technologies. Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the 1950s wrote in his book of poetry A Coney Island of the Mind, “I am perpetually awaiting a re-birth of wonder.” Well, guess what, Lawrence: wonder is all around us. We don’t have to wait for it anymore. And it’s not just in our modern, new gadgets – the Internet and the I-Pods and the GPS’s. It’s in the capacity of the human spirit to love out of the loyalty and the covenant that God has given us. When Paul Simon sang, “Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry”, it wasn’t an admonishment; it was a rejoicing in the reality that we can move far beyond all of the negatives in our lives.

I want to circle back around now to our cynic and her comment that the blind wouldn’t revel in red roses, etc., along with that line from the song: “I see friends shaking hands saying ‘how do you do’; they’re really saying ‘I love you.’” What truly makes this a wonderful world is the community we have in it that allows us to share with one another out of all of our alternate abilities. The sighted can describe for the blind how they experience the color of that rose. The blind can describe the incredible intensity of touch and smell of that rose that comes when one sense is lost. There’s a rather fanciful story, which I imagine you’ve heard before, about the man who dies and is given the choice of living in hell or heaven. He asks to see hell first, and upon arriving sees a long table filled with many people and a great feast upon it. But the only utensils the people have are spoons so long that they can’t get the food in their mouths. They are completely frustrated by trying all sorts of contortionist ways to pick up the food with the spoon and somehow get it around to their mouth. He asks to go to heaven, and there, to his astonishment, finds exactly the same table and the same feast and the same utensils. The difference? The people are feeding one another.

What makes our world so wonderful is the community within which we serve. And the service that we are able to offer. Last Monday Ann and I went to see the new movie version of Ayn Rand’s massive novel, Atlas Shrugged, which extols the value of individualism above all else. Service to those less fortunate is absolute anathema to the industrial tycoons of this story. It’s an ingenious philosophy, but one that, in the end, leaves the individualist so lonely and so incapable of seeing the wonder that is there when people serve each other. These people would be doing their darndest – and failing – to put that long spoon of food in their own mouths.

One significant way in which community and this wonderful world and the danger of individualism come together is in our ecological concern for this world. It was fascinating that this year, because of the late date of Easter, Earth Day (April 22) fell on Good Friday. Acknowledging the crucifixion of a Savior and the on-going victimization of a planet came together in a synergy of concern. As one Earth Day resource puts it: “Today, we remain mindful of the importance of community. With Jesus’ assurance that, ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them’ (Matthew 18:20), Christians are building sacred communities through ways ancient and modern. In the midst of cultural and economic forces that encourage and reward individualism, Christians are called to reach beyond ourselves, to embrace all God’s children and affirm our interconnectedness and interdependence.” It is one thing to affirm, as we have been throughout this sermon, that this is a wonderful world. It is one thing to affirm that wonder is found in our relationships within community. But to go the next step is to use our community, to use our relatedness, to care for this world in ways that will keep those roses red, those trees green, that sky blue.

The story of the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel of John – the last of the four gospels to be written – is filled with the wonder of those who ran to see the empty tomb. In John’s version there are three of them: Peter, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. The Beloved Disciple has historically been identified with John the son of Zebedee, but there’s no evidence anywhere in the gospel of John to specifically make this case. (Parenthetically, when I was studying this gospel in seminary I suggested to my professor that I write a paper seeking to prove that the Beloved Disciple was really Judas – an ironic twist by the gospel writer to show Jesus’ love for even one who would betray him – but that paper never got off the ground and was a pretty dubious hypothesis anyway.) We can so easily identify with the human qualities of these three. Moreover, as Jirair Tashjian of the Christian Resource Institute importantly notes, “This resurrection story tells not so much what happened to Jesus or how the resurrection took place but who were the witnesses to the resurrected.” It is these witness who were so important for the early Christian community.

And look at how imperfectly human they were. First there was the footrace between the two guys, which BD (my shorthand name for the Beloved Disciple) won, but then he was too timid to do more than peek in. Peter typically rushes headstrong into the tomb, but then he looks so tenderly at the linen wrappings and cloth. They are simply bewildered, which the gospel writer sensitively characterizes: “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” And then Mary’s sadness and equal bewilderment – until this man (who was not the gardener) very gently demonstrates who it is that is there with her. It was also very important for the gospel writer to have Jesus say to Mary, “Do not hold on to me.” Like the three disciples who wanted to build temples on the top of the mountain when Jesus is transfigured, Mary wants to cling to what she sees in front of her. But Jesus is gently telling her, as he told them, as he is telling us: “I’ve given you all that I am. Now you have all the wonder, all the joy, all the love that you need to share with everyone else in this wonderful world.”

Presbyterian minister Gordon Timbers puts it this way: “Part of the joy of celebrating Easter is the realization that resurrection is not just a strange and awesome event recorded as happening some 2000 years ago, but something that happens to us here and now and continually. Christ makes us new creatures, and with God’s help we overcome despair, make new friends, let go of old hurts and prejudices, enter new relationships, and learn new ways of faithful living.

“Again this Easter, and every day, we can know ourselves to be loved, forgiven, accepted, and included in Christ’s ongoing ministry. In that awareness we are changed, and living this new life we go with Jesus to change the world by loving, forgiving, accepting, and including, as Jesus did.” Now, that’s a description of a wonderful world.

In a few moments we’ll sing about the glory that is our resurrected one’s, but before we get to that final hymn I’d like to do what is becoming an Easter worship tradition, much along the lines of the final narration from W.H. Auden’s “For the Time Being” that we do at Christmas time.

P.W. Turner wrote a short, dramatic play back in the 1950s called “Christ in the Concrete City” which interweaves the characters from the Passion Week with contemporary commentary on them – and in the closing dialogue points us to what it means for Christ to “go before you into Galilee/Your Galilee”. You’ll recognize much of the dialogue because Turner took it from John’s gospel. It begins with how the disciples receive the news as Mary runs to tell them:

Peter! John! He’s alive! He’s alive! I’ve seen the Lord.

You must be mad! Where? When? What do you mean? Mary, what are you talking about?

Just now, in the garden. I saw Jesus.

When you were with Peter and John? But we were with you in the garden.

It’s this business of the empty tomb coming after the strain of everything else. She needs a good rest.

Wouldn’t you like to lie down, dear?

We ought to get her away for a holiday before she goes off her head altogether.

Not necessarily. Perhaps she’s not mad. Perhaps we’re just stupid. The tombstone rolled aside. Those graveclothes so – so – undisturbed. Things he used to say that we never understood. Remarks that come back after the event. Remarks about the rising of the dead. Mary, tell us what happened.

After you went away I stayed beside the grave. I was crying because they wouldn’t leave him alone even after they’d killed him. Then I turned away. And there was – a man – standing there. I suppose I thought he was the gardener. And he asked me why I was crying. And I asked him to tell me where he had taken the body. I — I wanted to go and do what I could for him.

And then he said, “Mary”, and I realized who he was. It was the Lord. It was the Lord, and I’ve seen him and he isn’t dead any more. He’s alive, and his hands and his feet bear the wounds from what they did to him.

Yes, that’s it – he said, “Mary”, didn’t he? And he said it with the old inflection of voice, — and then – she just knew.

Yes, that is how it happened.

And how it happens.

For it happens not as the plausible end

Of a religious story,
But as God’s act
In the hideous situation.
For the Word, which is Christ.
Was made flesh,
And died,
And Christ is risen indeed, and goes before you into Galilee.
Your Galilee,
The Galilee of the modern industrial city
Of the neon lights and the multiplex.
Where you jostle Christ on the pavement
Among the plate-glass windows.
Galilee Street,
The street on which you live,
And where he waits to move in,
Fulfilling his promise to be with us.
Always.
Even to the end of the world
Arise, rejoice!
Thy light is come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!

Amen,

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
April 24, 2011