The Uprising Begins!
10 a.m. Worship at Faith UMC
Christ is Risen! He is risen, indeed!
Christ is Risen! He is risen, indeed!
Halleluiah!
Have you ever played the game Telephone?
You sit in a circle with a bunch of folks and one person begins by whispering a message – once and only once – in someone else’s ear. That someone then whispers it to the next person, and then to the next person, and so on... And inevitably at the end, what is “heard” by the last person does not necessarily resemble what was spoken by the first.
Today, you might have heard more of the Easter story in one reading than you typically do in church on Easter. It is a big story, with lots of perspectives. We tend to hear one bit of it at a time – perhaps the women discovering the empty tomb, perhaps Peter characteristically charging off to see for himself, perhaps the disciples dejectedly walking down road to Emmaus where they are met by someone they first believe to be a stranger.
But really – isn’t the story of the risen Christ just that, a collection of profound and unique experiences woven together…in the hours leading up to capture, trial, crucifixion and death, in the breathtaking waiting from Friday until Sunday, in the discovery of an empty tomb, in the centuries of miracles and encounters that continue to unfold even today, in your story and in mine, isn’t it a Seurat-kind of pointillism, a picture that takes shape through so many different points of light, points of view and experiences?
And unlike the game Telephone, the end result is not a jumbled mess – it is a fuller, more vibrant, complex and more complete, more alive and nuanced experience of the risen Christ, illuminated through experiences of so many over thousands of years.
In the first accounts, the women show up at a tomb in a garden and find the tomb empty. “Why do you look for the living among the dead, don’t you remember what he told you about being handed over and rising on the third day?”
So the story reaches back in their memory and draws out an encounter, way back in Galilee. And now here they are at an empty tomb. Somewhere in their hearts and minds puzzle pieces begin to come together.
When they tell some of the disciples, a few roll their eyes…the women’s account seems like an “idle tale.”
Isn’t that sometimes the way we receive the unfathomable, especially in the midst of grief and trauma of our own? Surely that cannot be… it is too much to believe or bear.
And then there is Peter, who after hearing from the women runs to the tomb to see for himself. He finds the burial cloths but no body…and he is amazed but wordless.
A couple of the disciples are walking toward Emmaus. Imagine the shock they must be feeling in light of the last 72 hours. They had been sitting at a table sharing a meal and it all came apart before their eyes.
Now as they walk along the seven miles of dusty road, they encounter a stranger. A stranger with whom they spend the balance of their walk verbally processing the events of the past few days – the story of the arrest and trial and death of their leader, Jesus of Nazareth.
That kind of verbal processing does something, doesn’t it…we “talk it out.” And in talking it out, sometimes things come together differently.
And talking it out alongside this “stranger”
…who was this person listening so well? But this stranger was also challenging their unbelief, their misunderstanding.
I can hear the one they believe to be a stranger begin back at Moses…talking to their confused and overwhelmed hearts, highlighting the points in shared ministry over the past three years when these followers had witnessed the revelations that Jesus was indeed the Messiah of God, a prophet walking in the tradition of Moses and Elijah.
And finally there is that moment when they sit to share a meal with this stranger who has now heard the deepest wondering and doubts of their hearts and reminded them of so much they knew, they had seen, they had heard, they had felt, they had done - and he speaks words of thanksgiving over the bread and breaks it – and in the breaking of the bread, they KNOW this man.
As he disappears from their sight, they name to one another that they had felt their hearts burning throughout the day.
The testimony of the risen Christ then, in the first hours it takes shape, is made up of the experiences of the hearts and the minds and the bodies of those who knew him well.
In the seeing and the hearing and the re-assembling of past experiences and memories, dots get connected, details get fleshed out, and revelation happens.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Halleluia!
Today, we step into that same stream of re-membering. Of putting the parts and pieces of the experience of Mary and Mary and Joanna, Peter and Cleopas, of your experience and your experience and your experience and my experience alongside one another to take the form of the risen Christ among us.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Halleluia!
And when that happens, when we begin to see the fullness of what it means that Jesus is not in the tomb, that the tomb is empty, that God enfleshed has not beendefeated by human violence or doubt, but rather God still lives, then that truth lives in and among us.
We feel it burning in us somewhere.
I think we can probably imagine that the disciples expected one thing, and had a hard time processing what it was that actually happened instead.
As they walked along with Jesus in ministry, they had developed a vision of what victory would look like, of what success in ministry would look like, of what defeat of Rome would look like. And as events unfolded from the entrance into Jerusalem, none of it matched their expectation.
But then they began to put together the pieces of their experience.
The death of a body does not crush a movement.
Alive has layers of meaning.
Jesus was with them again.
Jesus is with us today.
Fear of death is a weapon that holds us down, holds us back, keeps us from being fully alive in each moment.
Today we gather at the table and watch the breaking of the bread. We hear the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples at a shared Passover meal. We smell bread and wine. We taste the goodness. And in the deep recesses of our heart, we are met here by Christ again. We are not only met here by Christ, we receive Christ.
Into ourselves, we receive.
Our collective experience, strange in this season of COVID separation, is woven together by the work of the Holy Spirit and we are woven into a whole cloth. Together in our varying experiences, in our varying perspectives, in our varying transformations, we become part of the whole body of Christ right here. The re-membered body of Christ.
The cloth woven by our coming together is one in which each thread has a different experience of Jesus, has had different encounters with Jesus. It is a cloth in which your experience and my experience of Jesus come together to strengthen the whole.
And each time we gather at this table to meet and receive Christ, we carry Christ away from this table. We walk away called to act with Christ in our hearts and on our tongues, good news for all people.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.
Come and taste.
Come and see.
Come and be.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Halleluiah!
May it be so.
Halleluiah!
Amen.
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