Christ is Risen! [Christ is Risen Indeed!] Alleluia!

During the Lenten season that has led up to this day of celebration, we have been exploring the theme Living Ink – a theme that reminds us that God’s story is told in and through our living. It is a theme that has opened us up to story; God’s story and the stories of encounter with God that each of us carry within us. We have heard stories of encounter each week during children’s time. We have shared stories of joys and concern with each other during sharing time. We have listened to stories of scripture, and a few weeks ago we wrote short, 6 word stories together as we reflected on the journey of the prodigal son. When you limit a story to 6 words, you have to get right to the heart of the matter and so I suppose if we were to offer a six word story about Easter it could come almost directly from scripture and say:

Jesus isn’t here; Christ has risen.

There is plenty to ponder in those six words – we as Christians have been doing that for almost 2000 years. And many of you would probably be fine if I left my sermon at that and let us get back to singing. Instead of doing that quiet yet, however, I am going to stick with the theme of the past several weeks and take the opportunity to offer yet another story of encounter.

When I was in seminary I had the opportunity to take an educational immersion seminar. My course included travel to southern Minnesota where we stayed for several nights at a retreat center that was practicing prairie restoration. Each morning of our stay there I would get up early and take a walk on a path through the growing prairie grasses, watching as the morning mist lifted off the land.

One morning as I arrived back at the retreat center after my walk, I joined in conversation with a group of my colleagues waiting for the breakfast bell to ring. They were talking about the symbolism and meaning of different animals according to various cultures. I wasn’t super caught up in the conversation, having only joined in after it was already underway and so I didn’t pay deep attention to what was being shared. I heard something about how there was a special meaning if a certain type of bird came across your path on the prairie – something about it being a sacred message sent directly to the individual it encounters. [and this was way before the little bird infiltrated the Bernie Sanders rally this week and was given symbolic status]

I will be very honest and tell you that I still don’t know what the actual story was, or the bird in reference, but I am pretty sure it was related to some type of hawk, as hawks tend to have messenger meanings for a variety of cultures. I will also confess that, as much as I admire birds and I do admire them greatly, I am not well versed in bird characteristics. I can tell a cardinal from a robin, or a hummingbird from an eagle. I can identify a blue jay, a heron, egrets or swallows (although only in general – not in specific types) well, you get the idea – I am a general bird enthusiast but I do not carry deep knowledge.

So it was with this vague story of sacred messenger birds in the back of my head and a lack of bird identification knowledge that I set out on my prairie walk the next morning. Once again I found myself admiring the droplets of dew on the edge of the path and letting my eyes linger on the morning light as it rested on the still grasses. All of a sudden a very large bird shot out of the tuft of grass right beside me and flew right over my head. Startled and stunned I stopped in my tracks and took a deep breath. I was terrified from the suddenness of the encounter and I was also secretly excited about the possibility that this had been a moment of sacred encounter with the messenger bird that my friends were just talking about the day before.

When I regained enough composure to start moving again, I was exhilarated. It felt like my heart and eyes were opened in a new way as I finished that morning walk. I felt wide awake and was alert to a deep sense of connection with myself and all that was around me in a grounded and yet uplifting way. I hadn’t received an explicit message from the encounter, but I knew in my being that something had shifted.

Something also shifted for the women making their way to Jesus’ tomb that first Easter morning. They too were on an early morning walk, not to breathe in the beauty of a sunrise over rolling prairie land, but to visit a tomb and anoint their dead friend with ritual spices. Their startling messenger wasn’t a bird shooting out from a tuft of grass. It was at first an empty tomb, the body of their beloved was not where they had seen it laid only two days before; and then while they are still at a loss over what to think about the situation, two figures in dazzling garments suddenly appear standing beside them. This is where their shock and terror kicks in and they bow down to the ground in front of these dazzling messengers.

Their messengers are assuredly sacred messengers who bring this message:

“Why do you search for the Living One among the dead? Jesus is not here; Christ has risen.”

This message doesn’t immediately make sense to the women. There is hesitation to grasp what the messengers are telling them. Yet, as the messengers continue to speak, their memories are stirred and the women begin to remember that Jesus himself had tried to prepare them for this moment even though they were not able to comprehend the message he offered them at the time it was offered.

The dazzling messengers disappear from the story and the women head back to where the disciples of Jesus were gathered together to tell them of their findings at the tomb.

I wasn’t as quick to go share my perspective shifting encounter with friends after my morning walk. Instead of joining in the pre-breakfast conversation when I got back to the retreat center that morning, I made my way to a small reference library on one wall of the lobby. I pulled a bird field guide off the shelf and tried to nonchalantly flip through it in an attempt to identify the bird that had just scared the wits out of me on the prairie.

I say nonchalantly because, as excited as I had been on the prairie that I might have just encountered a sacred messenger, I was also secretly terrified that I hadn’t. Maybe I had misidentified the bird that flew over my head. Perhaps it was just an ordinary bird and not a bird of special meaning. I wanted to find the bird I saw in that field guide and confirm that my experience was real and valid. Only after confirmation would I feel comfortable sharing it with others.

This is more like how the disciples who hear the account of Jesus’ resurrection from the women who had been to the tomb that morning respond.  The story sounds like nonsense to them and they refuse to believe what they have been told. Peter is there with the gathered group. He too is hesitant to accept the story the women are offering but instead of simply writing if off as nonsense he, at least, is willing to go to the tomb and learn for himself what was going on and how he might respond.

In the lobby of the retreat center, I flipped through the bird field guide until I found it. I found a picture of that beautiful bird that had popped out of the prairie grasses and flown over my head. With nervous anticipation, I looked from the picture of that bird to the words written below it and read: Ring-necked Pheasant. A Pheasant. My self-proclaimed mystical spiritual encounter that morning had been brought to me, not by some rare and meaning infused species of hawk, but by what some might call the squirrel of the prairie – a common pheasant.

Grateful that I hadn’t yet shared the experience of my morning walk with anyone else, I quietly made my way into the breakfast room and joined my friends at the table to eat with them in a state of secret disappointment. I was disappointed because I really wanted to have received a sacred messenger – I wanted some assurance that a message was out there waiting to be received. I wanted to believe that there was something bigger calling me into participation with life in a new way. But all I could see as I sat at the table that morning was the clunky illustration in the field guide with the word pheasant resting beneath it.

In a daze of disappointment. That is part of what I imagine the women were feeling as they headed to the tomb that Sunday morning. They were heading to finish the burial ritual of their beloved one, their teacher, their messenger of hope who was now laying life-less in a tomb. As they made their way to the tomb I imagine that they were immersed in the hollowness that life takes on when tragedy and grief are close at hand.

The Gospel of Mark account of this story says that, on the way to the tomb, the women were busy wondering and worrying who would help them roll the stone away once they arrived at the tomb so that they could get inside and anoint Jesus with the spices they were bringing. This is not mentioned in the Luke text, but it doesn’t appear to give the women pause when they find the stone rolled away from the entrance. It isn’t until then enter the tomb and find Jesus’ body missing that they start to wonder what is going on.

The rolled away stone wasn’t a symbol of meaning in that moment. That stone was going to be rolled away that morning – that was an unspoken expectation. What wasn’t expected was a glimpse of life found in a place prepared for death.

Finding life in the midst of death, that is the message of the resurrection. It is a message we celebrate and honor in a special way on Easter, and it is also a call to action in our faith all the time. We are called to seek, honor and create life-giving space for all people and particularly for those experiencing places of death in their lives.

And death comes in so many different forms. Death in the way I have been thinking about it this week isn’t just about the moments when bodies cease to function and last breaths are taken. There are many kinds of stones that entomb us while we yet live, breathe and have being. Death is that which inhibits the fullness of life and it can mean something different to each one of us.

For some death takes the form of anxiety, for others it is finances, it could be illness, or chronic pain, bitterness, addiction, broken relationships, loneliness, ego, or fear. To name these doesn’t even begin account for what inhibits the fullness of life for us as individuals. Nor does it measure the reach of death as it stretches its fingers across us, our country, and global communities through daily acts of terrorism, cultural racism, transgender phobias, oppression disguised as security, and perpetual war.

Much to the disappointment of many of us, the resurrection doesn’t magically make all of this death-dealing stuff just go away; that is not the gift of the resurrection. The gift of the resurrection is the assurance that stones of entombment can shift and allow life to spring forth in unexpected ways, even in the shadow of death.

Take for example the work of CARE, the organization we have been raising money for through our Lenten offering. Our special offering funds are designated for the work of the Gender and Empowerment programs, but CARE does many different kinds of work to support people in need around the world. Their efforts started towards the end of WWII when there were many displaced people across Europe. One of the organization’s first projects were CARE packages of food, goods, and letters sent to refugees who had fled the violence of that war. [One of the original CARE package senders was a Mennonite family with seven children from Pennsylvania and were able to write their letters in what I would guess was Pennsylvania Dutch – an old style of German with some English words mixed in. The use of some form of a familiar language was a comfort to the recipients of those letters.]

Now some 70 years later some of the recipients of those original CARE packages are writing letters of love and support to a whole new group of displaced individuals who have been forced to flee their homes in Syria. These letters are a rich example of living ink offering words of hope, support, empathy and encouragement. They are letters from one refugee to another saying: I have been there, it was death. Life can still be found. Sixteen year old Sajeda said that she has often told people that it feels like the most precious thing she left behind in Syria was herself. To receive a letter from 87 year old Helga validated her current experience and has allowed her to once again feel like she exists. The connections created through these letters is the resurrection in action.

This is the power of the risen Christ: life-giving connection – with God and with each other.

A connection that can shift our perspective on the stones that surround us and offers us the chance to encounter and embody the living Christ with and for each other. The empty tomb doesn’t hold meaning on its own. It is through encounters of connection with the risen Christ that the rolled away stone becomes imbued with meaning.

On this Easter morning, whether you already hold the joy of encounter and connection through the risen Christ or you are still perplexed and full of questions about what the rolled away stone might mean, I offer this: I once encountered a common pheasant on a prairie in Minnesota. For a brief moment, that pheasant unexpectedly broke my heart open to the presence of the Holy surrounding me and invited me into participation with life in a new way. I have never again looked at pheasants the same way, they are now sacred messengers for me, imbued with meaning. They serve as a reminder that everything that has come into being carries within it a well of living ink waiting to share its piece of the grand story of God’s love with those open to connection and encounter.

In the midst of life we are surrounded by death, in those shadows of death, by the light of the resurrection, may we seek life.

Christ is Risen! [Christ is Risen, Indeed]