STUNNED INTO DISBELIEF

April 19, 1992

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian.Church, Chicago

Scripture
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 23:50-24:12

"...these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not
believe them." ~Luke 24:11 (NRSV)

"There once was an elderly gentleman who had a
particularly difficult time staying awake in
church. In those days a church officer, called a
warden, walked the aisles with a long hickory rod,
tapping anyone on the shoulder who went to sleep.
One Sunday - I believe it may have been Easter
Sunday - when the old man nodded off guring the
sermon, the warden sternly tapped him on the
shoulder with the rod. The old man kept on sleep-
ing. The pastor frowned and the warden tapped the -
man on the other shoulder with the rod. Still he
went on sleeping. The pastor shook his head and
frowned again at the warden, and the warden took
the long hickory rod and hit the man on the top of
the head with it; whereupon the man fell out of
the pew into the aisle, face down. He Slowly
opened one eye, squinted up at the warden and
said, 'Hit me again, I can still hear him. '"

*(see page 2)

The Easter Joke. I made a discovery several years ago that
has given me great pleasure, namely that there is an ancient
Greek Orthodox tradition about the Easter Joke. On the day after
Easter, according to that ancient custom, the people reassembie
at the church to tell and hear funny jokes - to commemorate the

"Big Joke" God played on Satan on Easter. [See Conrad Hyers, And
God Created Laughter, Pp. 25]

And. so before you conclude that this is an altogether too
flippant way to begin the most important sermon of the year,
please know that I have ancient ecclesiastical tradition on my
side. Besides, I borrowed - "stole" might be a little more
accurate, actually - that joke from one of our great teachers of
preaching, Clyde Fant, who told it from the pulpit of the Chapel
at Duke University to introduce a sermon imaginatively entitled

"The Last Laugh" which one might say is an accurate expression of

the meaning of this day. *[See William H. Willimon, Last Laugh,
Pp- 151]

Laughter, glorious music, gorgeous flowers,. lovely, new
clothes, even the return of a few. brave and wonderful hats...
All of ita hoor,..fumbling .attempt...toexpress..something..&hat will
not quite fit into words,-something so incredible that it actual-
-ly seems to be reduced a bit by too much talking.

The theologians know it. Professor Hans Kung - who has
written so persuasively about God and faith and hope - comes to
the resurrection of Jesus and Says, "lan yage is stretched beyond
its limits here." The late Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the great-
est American theologian, when he was teaching at Union theologi-
cal Seminary in New York, used to worship at Riverside Church and
listen to Harry Emerson Fosdick preach. His wife, Ursula, remen-
bered one Easter morning "engulfed by throngs of avid church-
goers, all dressed up for the occasion" that she expressed her
doubts to Dr. Fosdick. And she recalled later what Niebuhr said
to her... ."Why don't we let the liturgy: take -care of what we'want
to say and cannot say? It's better to sing these hopes."

[The Christian Century, 4/15/87, p. 357]

So we turn to liturgy, ritual - sacred and secular. The
ancient Greeks told jokes in church; the Russians stay up all
Saturday night, packed into their churches,- holding candles,
keeping vigil until dawn; we get up at dawn to shiver and huddle
together on the lake shore watching the sun rise as a metaphor
for what we believe happened this day. And we send flowers to
our dear ones and exchange greeting cards, and-color eggs and
bring new blossoms into our sanctuaries and some of it is lovely
and some of it is silly. The brunch at one of the local hotels
which is featuring a "Ninja Faster Bunny" to entertain the chil-
dren, for instance, walked away with the "Easter Silliness
Award." But all of it - sacred and silly - a ritual attempt to
express.something, some joy, some hope, some yearning deep in our
souls for which we do“Hot Rave words big enough.

It's not unlike exactly what happened 2,000 years ago.
After his death on Friday afternoon, Joseph claimed the body, put
it in a tomb in his garden. The women - the only ones who had
stayed with him throughout his tormented dying - watched the
burial and prepared spices and ointments. And then, Luke says,
- "On the Sabbath, they rested according to the commandments."
-.- They did. what they. were supposed to-do.:- When someone dies, you
can count on someone else to start doing dishes; cleaning the
house, washing the car. When things fall apart itis good to
' hold on tight to something that doesn't change. So they kept the
Sabbath and at dawn's first light, on the day after the Sabbath,
..the same women returned to Joseph's garden, to anoint the body. of
. Jesus with spices.

4/19/92

However, the stone was removed from the entrance, the body
was gone, and they said that there were two men telling them he
had risen from the dead. They rushed back to the room where the
eleven disciples were hiding and told..what .had: happened.

-.What is your favorite Bible’ verse? "God: so-loved the
world... The Lord is my shepherd... our father whe art in
-heaven"...? .-May I nominate a peculiar alternative, at least for
Easter Sunday - Luke 24:11? The women have hurried to tell the
disciples, have breathlessly spilled out what they experienced at
Joseph's garden tomb and, reports Luke, my nominee for verse of
the day: "...these words.seemed to them an idle tale, and they
did not_believe them." ee

I love that verse. If somewhere in you (even while you are
singing the glorious Easter hymns) there is a voice which says:
"Just a minute, now. Death is death. Life is wonderful but when
it is over, it's over. Whatever happened 2,000 years ago, there
is a rational explanation and it won't be resurrection." If you
think like that, you are in very good company indeed. The disci-
ples of Jesus didn't believe it either when someone tried to tell
them about it. -_

The first response to the news of the Resurrection - by
rational people - was disbelief. Professor. Walter .Brueggmann
writes about this day: —

"We move through the weary, death-ridden days of
our lives and come back once again to Easter to be
stunned into disbelief, and then beyond disbelief,
to“be .stunnéd to life, now filled with-fear-and
trembling." [Finally Comes the Poet, p. 11]

That's it, I think. The big mistake today is to moderate
and reduce and explain away the Easter claim as a metaphor or
symbol: to go away thinking that Jesus was a good man whose
ideals live on, that his memory is immortal and his spirit re-
turns like daffodils in the springtime. That's not it at all.
Far better it seems to me to be stunned first to disbelief, as

his dearest fFriefds were and then to wait and see what happens.
Rane RT ORS, =

The claim is that God's dear dead son did not stay dead and
that, therefore, there are somethings you and_I can be sure
about. There are. some fears we can put aside, and there are some
wonderful .hopes..and:.dreams we can haul:-out of the dusty corners

of our imagination and dress up and celebrate,

What we are here first to remember and. celebrate this morn- -
ing is not the return of Spring, but that the world has a way of
crucifying.its best;, that intolerance, bigotry, selfishness; and-
religious self-righteousness often conspire together to eliminate

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.~ - passionately love ITfé,; tts ena

love, acceptance, peace and hope. It happened 2,000 years ago
and it still happens.

The really heartbreaking thing..about the crucifixion of
Jesus was not only grief because a dear friend died, but the
crushing of their hope, their frail but growing faith that he was
right, that he was the truth, that the ultimate power and author-
ity in this world is not the power and authority of Rome, the
coercive power of military might or political oppression or even
rules and religious restrictions, but love: love that forgives
and accepts, love that embraces the unloved and unlovely, love
that reaches out to everyone. The real heartbreak of that terri-
ble Friday was the death of that lovely hope.

And so the most stunning affirmation of this day is just
this. Because he lives, we know now that love is always stronger
than death. That in spite of crucifixion, his 2,000 years ago,
or the crucifixions that happen every time hope is defeated by
despair, and justice and compassion by selfishness and greed,
in spite of crucifixion - there is resurrection - because love is
stronger than death.

We are capable of believing that. In fact, it would appear
that we are created to believe it, want somehow to believe it.
The issue is, of course, firstly a very. personal-one, is it not!
Finally this issue has to do not with life in-general but our
lives and the lives of our loved ones.

When his elderly mother died, Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen
wrote a long letter to his father. He wrote during Holy Week and
he tried to put into words, as simply and directly as possible,
the meaning of Faster in light of the reality of his mother's
death.

"When mother died it seemed as if death came for |
the first time. Why? I think because love - deep
human love - does not know death. Real love says

"forever.' Love will always reach out to the
eternal. ~ Love comes from a place in us where
death cannot enter." [A Letter of Consolation,
p. 32]

If we didn't love, death wo

be nothing. If we didn't

t be-easy. If-we didn't fall
in love with each other, the end of life would be simple. The
connection is real. The poets, the mystics and artists and
theologians express it.

Edna St. Vincent Milay, about death:

"I do not approve."

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Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gently... rage, rage against the dimming of
the light."

The late Karl Rahner:

"Death is the absurd arch-enemy of existence."
[Ibid, p. 70]

And Nouwen himself:

"Death is the one event we protest against with
all our being." {Ibid, p. 70]

And so, when someone stands up and proclaims that the power
of our love or God's, that the power of love is greater than the
power of death, it is stunning.

Nouwen wrote his father:
",..the love that causes us sO much grief and

makes us feel so fully the absurdity of death is
stronger than death itself."

And Madeleine L'Engle, writing with heartbreaking integrity
and beauty about the dying of her. husband, Hugh: ;

"God will not create creatures able to ask ques-
tions only to be snuffed out before they can
answer them... the joyful God of love who shouted
the galaxies into existence is not going to aban-
don one iota of his creation... so let there be no
question, I believe in the Resurrection." [Two
Part Inventions, p. 108-109]

When the women came back from the tomb claiming that Jesus
was risen, this is the stunning power of that clain.

"They seemed like idle words and they did not believe them,"
Luke reports. And so it goes. Created for love, we seem too
willing to live in despair. Created for hope, our sin is not

breaking moral rules, but the tacit willingness to live in resig-
nation.

Jesus Christ is alive. Love lives. There is no need to
accommodate to any deadly status quo in your life or in the

world. Love is the power of hope and hope is the energy which
creates all things new.

The Resurrection didn't change the world, someone noted. It
changed people who changed the world. And it still does. Death

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is the enemy — and the resignation and hopelessness that are
death's products.

Now, we know something about that, about what Paul would
call the power of death. We know. about -the.-power:of hopeless-—
ness.. We know that hopelessness is deadly, that. people who live
with despair become .violent, We know that the violence which
characterizes life in the ghetto is in direct proportion to the
depth of hopelessness.

A reporter recently asked a young man who was under arrest
for participating in what appeared to be a random drive-by~shoot-—
ing, how he could do it; how he could risk killing innocent
children? "It don't matter," he said. "We all be dead soon any-
way." He is fifteen. He knows about the power of hopelessness.

And we know the same dynamic personally, how despair ex-
presses itself in destructive behavior - chemical addiction,
eating disorders, unhealthy relationships, workaholism. Hope-
lessness is deadly.

And we also know about the power of hope. The products of
death are resignation and hopelessness, but St, Augustine said
that hope has two lovely daughters: anger at the way things are
and courage to change then. “

So be a disciple. Don't take:my:-word for it.-Don't take
anybody's word for it. Words are idle. See the power of hope;
see it wherever people struggle for justice; see it in the Ca-
brini Green mother who will not give up on her children; see it
in the teacher in the dismal, underfunded urban school; see it in
a young adult tutoring a child; see it in the churches which will
not give up; see it in the cancer patient cheerfully talking
about the future; see it in men and women who will not relinquish
their hope, not cease striving for a better world.

Don't take my word for it. Look around. Better yet, do
something. My guess is that everyone of us has allowed despair
and resignation to capture our spirit, and that for everyone of
us there are places where we need to act in love and hope and
commitment.

The friends of Jesus celebrated the Resurrection not by
sitting around arscussing its biographical probabilities but
: when. they left the room in which they were hiding and ventured

out. into the world to Start following him. And so I bia you =
today.

Follow a_risen Lord. There is power in hope. There is

nothing in this world more powerful than love - your love and
God's love in Y6UF love. “God's love which has conquered death.

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This can all be very abstract... pleasant, but not terribly
connected to the world of work and relationships and leisure, the
busy, routine life we live most of the time.

But then it becomes personal and it stuns.us.with its power.

Cc. S. Lewis fell in love in middle-age, married the woman he
loved; she fell gravely ill and diea Shortly after. The play
"Shadowlands" tells the story. Lewis wrote about it later in a
little book, A Grief Observed.

"Once very near the end I said, ‘If you can - if
it is allowed - come to me when I am on my death-
bed.' 'Allowed,' she said. ‘Heaven would have a
job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into
bits.' She knew she was speaking a kind of mytho-
logical language, with even an element of comedy
in it. There was a twinkle as well as a tear in
her eye. But there was no myth and no joke about
the will, deeper than any feeling that flashed
through her." [p. 63]

Lewis doesn't try to explain. The women’ couldn't explain
it, or even understand it. All they could do - all any of us can
do - is confess it quietly, or sing or shout it.

Jesus Christ is Risen! --And we are, once again, stunned into
disbelief... stunned beyond disbelief... stunned into life.

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