First Reading

Mark 16: 1-6

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the tone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.

Second Reading

-from the writings of Thomas Merton

            The grace of Easter is a great silence, an immense tranquility, and a clean taste in your soul. It is the taste of heaven, but not the heaven of some wild exaltation. The Easter of the soul is not riot and drunkenness of spirit, but a discovery of order—above all (an order that lies hidden in the world)—a discovery of God and all things in him. This is the wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison hidden in it. It is life without death. Tasting it for a moment, we are briefly able to see and love all things according to their truth...

            Here is all the greatness and all the unimaginable splendor of the Easter mystery—here is the “grace” of Easter which we fail to lay hands on because we are afraid to understand its full meaning. To understand Easter and live it, we must renounce our dread of newness and of freedom!…

            Easter afternoon I went to the lake and sat in silence, looking at the green buds, the wind skimming the utterly silent surface of the water, a muskrat slowly paddling to the other side. Peace and meaning. Sweet spring air. One could breathe. The wilderness shines with promise. The land is dressed in simplicity and strength. Everything foretells the coming of the holy spring... My brother and sister, the light and water. The stump and the stone. The tables of rock. The blue, naked sky...

            We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of this dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

            For the world and time are the dance. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. No despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood. This is the life that pours down into us… this is the breath of Spirit…this is the love that quickens…

Sermon

“Rolling All the Stones Away” – The Rev. Barbara Merritt

            There are many sincere Christians who celebrate Easter as a victory party—as an exclusive event to which only the true believers are invited. Our opening hymn every Easter Sunday (“Christ the Lord has Risen Today”) is a hymn I absolutely love, as long as I pay no attention whatsoever to the words.

            Its language is all about the church triumphant, a theology of conquest. The lyrics speak of victory, declaring that: “love’s work is done”, “the battle is won”, “death is vanquished”, “paradise is open.” In the closing line, “Hail, Ceasar,” has been neatly replaced with “Hail, the Resurrection.” Hallmark cards have picked up on this theme of unrelenting glorious achievement. Curious to see how the modern-popular-religious imagination portrays Easter, I went to the grocery isle that sells Easter greeting cards and found, “Happy Resurrection Day” (I guess that’s a little like “Happy Secretary’s Day”). And the poetry!

          “In every flower that blossoms

                        In every bird that sings

                        In every tiny butterfly that spreads its golden wings…

                        Jesus reigns…”

            Before you too hastily judge “Christiandom” to be naïve and simplistic when it guarantees complete bliss and happiness and fulfillment; open any magazine, watch TV. You will find endless secular advertisements that pronounce that you only need to buy a particular new car, or a special salad dressing, or a new kind of washing machine, or go to this a movie, and then fall into a state of endless, euphoric, ecstatic, never-ending satisfaction.

            Thomas Merton observed:

                        “We live in a society that tries to keep us dazzled with euphoria in a bright cloud of lively and joy-loving slogans. Yet nothing is more empty and more dead, nothing is more insultingly insincere and destructive than the vapid grins on the billboards and the moronic beatitudes in the magazines which assure us that we all in bliss right now. I know, of course, that we are fools, but I do not think any of us are fools enough to believe that we are now in heaven.”

            So this Easter, like every Easter, I am unwilling (and incapable) of delivering an Easter sermon that proclaims that we are already in heaven—that “love’s work is done,” that we only gather today for a victory party.

            So then what is Easter about for religious liberals? For an interfaith congregation? For a beloved community that includes all of us, who are sometimes happy and hopeful, and sometimes glum and skeptical? Occasionally grateful and at times forgetful. usually confused and conflicted about what is going on in our lives, and what is going on in the world…

            This morning I am convinced that Easter, for struggling souls like us, is ultimately about grace. About the power of goodness and love and joy to break into the hardest of hearts, and the most stubbornly isolated individual. About a power greater than we are, which will show us unimagined possibilities, and which can take us to a much more spacious and gracious understanding concerning where we live, and what can happen here.

            The ancient story tellers (in Mark and Matthew) focused on an astonishing detail in their accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus, believed to be God incarnate, Jesus raised from the dead, Jesus himself could not  (or would not) remove the heavy stone that held him entombed in the cave. Jesus himself required an angel to come to his assistance. In Matthew, the angel is described in greater detail:

                        “…suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.”

            If even the resurrected Christ required the help of an extremely impressive angel, then what about the rest of us mortals? Caught in our own caves of limited understanding and often overwhelming darkness? Caught in the confinement, the prison of the mind, the self, the narrow view—the narrow space (in Hebrew, the Mitzra’yim, described in the Passover Seder). You might question, “Was Jesus (the one who told us you move mountains if you had sufficient faith) just suffering a temporary moment of weakness due to the difficulties he encountered on Good Friday?”

            You cannot believe this, if you study his teachings. He said that all of us require grace, all the time. The strongest and the weakest. He said, “I, of my own account, do nothing. It is only God who heals, who creates, who is good.” “Not my will, but Thy will be done,” could also be interpreted to mean—“What I do is inconsequential (what I know and believe is ultimately not significant). . .But there is a love that I want to move through me. There is a higher power that I trust and rely on. My small life can be used for the greater glory. In a mysterious process of which I am a part—love’s work is ongoing, and involves all of us, and the least of us.”

            God’s grace, in the form of an angel, moved away the heavy stone that blocked Jesus’ entrance into new life. What, or who, will move away the stones that block your life: and mine? We could spend this Easter trying to define grace, or developing ways to measure how much grace you believe is present right now in your life. I believe a more productive exercise is to focus on location. What are the circumstances where you might be more likely to observe grace? Where are you most likely to be surprised by an unexpected joy?

            Each of us is on a unique spiritual journey—but I would suggest we pay attention to five locations that have proven fruitful to many; five places to look for grace.

            First, in the natural world; in the sunshine and warmth of this very day. The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton seemed to find that his best chance to experience grace was not in the liturgy of the church, but out in nature. When you read his journals, you find that while he appreciated the structure of his church and its theology, his heart really soared when he was in the woods. He saw more grace in a sunrise than in any cathedral. He actively sought out circumstances of simplicity, outdoor manual labor, and time in the wilderness as his way to connect with his God. This morning’s sunrise service brought up a shimmering golden sun; it was as miraculous as anything I have seen in a long time.

            The second location I would suggest to experience grace is in music. It speaks to the soul of a harmony that makes an all too rare appearance in most of our lives. When Noel Cary, Jim and Helen Wright, and Jerry Bellows played their instruments for the Tenebrae service Thursday night, it was grace—the music was like a healing balm on a deep wound. When the choir sings their descant, when Will opens up those pipes, when the whole congregation raises their voices in the “Hallelujah” chorus, or even when a favorite song is played on the car radio at the moment you most need to hear it, you become aware of a comfort and a beauty freely given that helps us move forward.

            Third: grace can also be located in “the service of all,” as we care for another in our need. As we attempt to live in “right relationship.” As Diane told the story this morning, one small, powerless, little boy in right relationship with a persecuted and angrily fearful dragon can change everything. A new life can begin in the unlikely soul of a creature that had known only hatred and violence and destruction.

            The fourth location of grace I would never recommend to anyone (and it is one I, myself, avoid whenever possible). But this location is, nevertheless, a rich landscape in which to mine grace. It is in suffering. I can personally attest to Shakespeare’s observation, “For there was never yet a philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.” The reason suffering is so miserably effective in taking us to grace is that when we are in pain, we know we are neither triumphant nor self-sufficient. We need the help of doctors and dentists and counselors. We need the encouragement and sympathy of friends. We come up against rocks of grief and hardship and injury that we cannot roll away with our own power. And so, we ask for help. We pray for help. We say, “I can’t do this…please help me”—and, once we have asked for help, we are still usually rather surprised when help shows up.

            The secret to understanding grace lies in the fifth location: when you figure out that the location of grace is right here while we are on earth—incarnated in these not-so-very-strong bodies.

            This is why the story of this one man’s life, the life of Jesus, is so helpful to me. It puts our understanding of religion where it belongs: with the incarnation—the  flesh and the blood of Jesus, and the flesh and the blood of every child of God. The Spanish poet, Jorge Luis Borges has Jesus himself explaining how his experience of being a human being was not all that different from ours.

                      “I was born of a womb

                        by an act of magic

                        I lived under a spell, imprisoned in a body,

                        in the humbleness of a soul.

                        I knew memory

                        the coin that’s never twice the same.

                        I knew hope and fear,

                        those twin faces of the uncertain future.

                        I knew wakefulness, sleep, dreams,

                        ignorance, the flesh,

                        reason’s roundabout labyrinths,

                        the friendship of men,

                        the blind devotion of dogs,

                        I was loved, understood, praised, and hung from a cross.

                        I drank My cup to the dregs.

                        My eyes saw what they had never seen—

                        night and its many stars.

                        I knew things smooth and gritty, uneven and rough,

                        the taste of honey and apple,

                        water in the throat of thirst,

                        the weight of metal in the hand,

                        the human voice, the sound of footsteps on the grass,

                        the smell of rain in Galilee,

                        the cry of birds on high.

                        I knew bitterness as well…

Incarnation: the only place to experience grace and Easter and joy. Your incarnation, with all of its contradictions and sorrows and challenges and occasional triumphs.

                        One thing I am absolutely certain of is that “love’s work is not done.” Not in Galilee, not now, not as long as the human consciousness goes on.

            Love’s work continues here with gentle persistence. Even when we momentarily turn our faces away, out of discouragement, or exhaustion, or anger, this love keeps coming for us. Irresistible grace. You could no more refuse this love than you could announce to spring in New England that you want nothing to do with green leaves, or flowers in bloom, or warm breezes…you’ve decided that you have gotten used to winter, and you’d rather stay in the frozen dark! Say that loud, say it long…but spring is coming…and it is coming to your neighborhood…it knows where you live.

            Easter lilies and the love they memorialize, and glorious music, and the tradition of Easter are similarly here to remind us that something at the heart of life is trustworthy. Something is powerful enough to remove the rock that sealed Jesus in a tomb. Something is powerful enough to remove all the delusions, and fantasies, and karmas that block our passage to joy. Something the wise call a “mystery;” a power that the mystics call “God;” something we call “grace.”

            I close with a poem written by a poet in our own congregation. Missy Nicholson described how the stone rolls away in a poem she wrote for our Sunrise Service in 1996:

                        The true story of Easter is in the stone itself

                        Rolling back from the dark of the sepulcher

                        To burn the light of life eternal

                        Into the eyes of the gathered.

                        Watching for a stone to move

                        Seems like a fool’s errand

                        Stones move in geological time

                        Immeasurable in our own brief emergency.

                        Moving the stone by our own power

                        Is a task with no end

                        Like Sisyphus we are destined to push

                        But powerless to keep the stone from rolling back.

                        And yet we have come here again

                        Awake in this day

                        Not to see an angel roll back a stone

                        But in our knowing this:

                        Sometimes the stone just moves.

Sometimes the sun comes up just when you need it to. Sometimes grace is as apparent as a perfect spring day. Love’s work is ongoing. The stones are moving.