“Reflections on Easter”

Reverend Vann Knight

April 11, 2004

Last week we dug out an old imaginary box of family photographs of Jesus, and we saw the pictures of Jesus when he was born.  We saw photographs of his baptism.  We also saw photographs of a very crucial spiritual experience in which he got clarity about who he was and what he was about and at the same time had one of the most severe temptations of his life as to whether or not he would be true to that sense of self-identity.

Then we saw him preach his first sermon, and after the sermon, the congregation threw him out and tried to kill him.  He wasn’t much of a preacher, I suppose, with that first sermon, because in that first sermon, he said that the Gentiles were also included, that God’s love embraced everybody, and his little home synagogue didn’t much care for that.

Then we saw another photograph.  It was of Jesus and Peter, and Peter wasn’t looking too happy, because Jesus had just scolded Peter, because Peter had become a hindrance. He was a friend of Jesus, but he told Jesus, in essence, that he shouldn’t be true to his understanding of the will of God, that that was too costly.  Peter was just misguided.

And then the last photograph we looked at was of Jesus riding a little donkey.  He was going into Jerusalem.  It was right before the festival of Passover.  And we saw in that photograph people shouting and waving and saying, “Hosanna!  Blessed is our coming King!”  And yet, you know, real kings -- and that’s what they thought Jesus was, a military king, a political king -- they ride on white stallions and in chariots, and Jesus, who says, “I am king in a different way, of the spirit,” comes riding a little donkey.

And we ended our story there.  And what has happened, I have actually misplaced the box of photographs, but I want to tell you what happened in the rest of the story.  The next thing that happened after he got into Jerusalem is that he cleansed the outer court of the Temple.  Many people think, well, you cleanse the Temple, what was that about?  The Temple had different sections to it.  There was a place, obviously, for the men first and then there was a place for the women.  And further out, yet, in the outer court of the Temple, there was a place for the Gentiles, the court of the Gentiles. And this was the place where Gentiles, people who were not Jews, were invited to come and worship God. 

But what had happened over the years, the Temple authorities had allowed merchants to take over that area, and over the years, there were more and more merchants and less and less worship.  And so Jesus now comes in and sees they’ve got the people who exchange currency in there, because here in Jerusalem we don’t take the currency of those foreign lands, so they have to bring their money here, and we will exchange the currency for our currency and we’ll make a little on that, of course.  But also, people don’t bring the animal sacrifices all these many miles.  So for convenience sake, we have the animals that they can purchase here for their animal sacrifices.  And so the outer court of the Temple was now filled with currency exchange people and people who were selling animal sacrifices.

Jesus comes in and overturns the tables, runs out everybody that is buying and selling, and he says, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.”  Jesus in that act confirmed his understanding that God welcomes and includes all people, and it was this act of radical inclusion that would seal his fate.

The next big event happened on Thursday night.  It happened to be the evening before the Passover, some Gospels say.  Some Gospels say it was actually the Passover meal.  We get different reports in different Gospels.  But we see Jesus gathered for this meal with his disciples in the upper room.  We call that Maundy Thursday.  Maundy basically means mandate or commandment.  And it was on this night, this time with this special meal, that Jesus gave his disciples a new mandate, a new commandment, that “You shall love one another as I have loved you.”

This is the new mandate.  After supper and after singing a hymn, Jesus went out and he took all of the disciples out for a little way and he told them to “Stay here.” And he took with him the inner circle of Peter, James and John.  And he said, “Come on.  Go with me.  I need to pray.”  And he went into the Garden of Gethsemane, and he said even to that inner circle, “Stay here while I go a bit further and pray alone.”  The Gospels report that Jesus was distressed and agitated.  So human to see Jesus distressed, agitated.

And he said to Peter and James and John, “I am deeply grieved, even unto death.” Can you feel that coming from Jesus, Jesus, agitated, distressed, saying to his friends, “I am deeply grieved, even unto death”?  And then he went a little further, and the Gospels say, he threw himself, he threw himself on the ground, and he prayed, “Father,” “Abba,” “Daddy,” “Poppa.”  Not the formal “Father,” but “Abba.”  He knew God as intimately as his Poppa.  “If it be possible, let this cup, let this experience pass from me.  But not my will but yours be done.”

And he got up and he went back and he found Peter and James and John asleep.  But they were awakened because Judas and the guards and the police came, and it was then that they took him into custody.  They arrested him and immediately started trials late that night and through the early morning. 

And Jesus was sentenced to die by crucifixion.  Crucifixion is a slow, painful way to die where death actually comes by asphyxiation, suffocation; because hanging there on the cross, one tries to support one’s lungs by pushing up by the feet, whose feet are nailed to the cross.  And the pain is so agonizing, you do that for a little bit, but eventually you wear out.  This is why one of the Gospels says, this was the day before the Sabbath, and they certainly didn’t want people hanging on the cross at sundown when the Sabbath would begin.  And so they sent guards to break the legs of those who were being crucified so they could not hold up their weight, and they would suffocate.  And when they came to Jesus, they found that he was already dead.  And so one of the guards, rather than breaking his legs, took a spear and pierced his side.  The water and the blood came out.

Did you know that crucifixion still happens?  Crucifixion still happens.  How many times I’ve seen it, people dying slow, painful death in jobs that they describe as just suffocating.   I can’t tell you how many people have come to me and said, “I’m in a relationship that is just suffocating.”  I see people in the crucifixion of addiction, dying this slow, painful death to addiction; some dying this slow, painful death to poverty, while others are dying this slow, painful death to affluence.  Anger is one of the common ways of crucifixion in this day and time, that slowly and gradually we crucify ourselves with anger that just suffocates.  And many of us die from infection from old wounds, old pain, old grudges, and we just suffocate. 

The story of Jesus comes back, and it says that after they crucified him, that they came and put him in a tomb.  But they really didn’t have time to prepare the body, because the sun was just about to go down and the Sabbath was here.  And so they quickly put him in the tomb with the plan to come back after the Sabbath and to do for his body what was customary to be done.  And so they kept the Sabbath, but early on the next morning, the women came, and they were wondering, How are we going to roll back the stone that’s in front of the grave?  And the beautiful story of the resurrection, that he is not here. 

Did you know that resurrection still happens too?  I am convinced personally of the reality of life after this body.  I do not see me as this body or this mind or my senses, but that there is something else that is me.  And whatever we may call that, it is that which I do believe lives after this body is dead. 

But all the resurrections that I have witnessed, I have seen people experience resurrection because they have died, their spirits have died, and they have come back to life.  I have seen people go through a divorce, to lose their spouse, to lose their children, to feel that they have lost every bit of life energy that they have in them.  And they go into the grave, but thanks be to God, there is resurrection.  And I have seen husbands and wives of many years together lose one or the other, and it feels like life is over, there is not hope, there is nothing more.  Amazement beyond amazement, I meet someone and life starts again.  How many people have come to my office on the afternoon of being fired from a job and say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.  I can’t support my family.  I love this job.  My whole heart was in it, and it’s gone.”  And for many of us in this country our whole identity gets tied up in our work.  It’s dead, and tears come out of our eyes, because we have lost that which has become so important to us, and we can’t do it any more.  And then a year or two later, somebody comes back and says, “You know, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I found my place.  I’m doing what I always wanted to do but was afraid to try.”  How many people I have seen be active in middle age and have an accident or stroke, and it feels like death.  And then there is new life, new beginning where it seemed that it absolutely could not be. 

It is my sense that God has created this universe to start again, and that when we see the cycles, we see a sign of the way the universe is and that we go through the seasons. and a part of that season is dying.  But you know what?  Resurrection never comes to those who are just real sick or to just those who are real scared or to just those that are hanging on by their fingernails.  Resurrection only comes to those who are able to breathe their last and say, “God, into your care I surrender myself.”  And in the depths of death, there is resurrection.

The message that I really want to give to you on this Easter is two:  There will come a time when we face our own mortality.  I cannot tell you what is, but I can tell you that in this religious tradition of Jesus and in others, there is the conviction that this is not all there is, that there is another time, another place, and that resurrection is real.  The other thing that I want you to hear is that resurrection is not just about that time in your life, but that resurrection is about today and facing the challenges and the difficulties of this day, and how do we come to the place where we can turn loose and trust ourselves to God, believing that we will be empowered for the living of a new and different kind of day.  May it be true.