Sermon: Goodness Death Cannot Stop

[ previous | index | next ]

Goodness Death Cannot Stop – Easter, 2004

By Charles Rush

April 11, 2004

blessed almost-spring morning to you. The trees out front of the Church are supposed to all flower white for the season. I'm sure they'll bloom in the next couple months. Easter is so wonderful. Little guys in their sailor suits, Sophie MacMillan in her little tights and Mary Jane shoes… Too precious. I hope you get a few wonderful pictures. The hope of new life, the promise of young kids. It is their holiday. And we give them the Easter egg thing, a hold-over fertility ritual for teenagers from our deep pagan past, which no one can understand, truth be told. A colleague of mine had his grandchildren over after their Easter service, aged 3 and 5. They cracked open the Easter egg. Grandma cut the egg in half, showed it to the three year old, started in with her Grandma scientific observations, sensing a teaching moment. She said, "this yellow part would become the baby chick after the Hen sat on the nest for a while." The 5 year old, eager to participate, said "But, not before the Rooster does his cock a doodle doo. That about sums it up on the fertility front.

I do pray you too have plenty to crow about this spring. But… that is not what brings us to Church this morning. We come, remembering those first Christians, who watched a real torture and a real corpse, and came to a real tomb one Sunday morning to witness something from beyond death that changed them forever. We come to remember the real disciples who were filled with real despair and real disappointment in themselves after fleeing in the night, come to find real meaning and purpose, a real reason for living in the midst of suffering, even death. We come to remember the real hope that makes tall the short of courage, gives strength to the weak of character, fills the imagination of those faint of adventure. We come in search of something to live for.

Our hope, ultimately, is not in the events of this world. It is a hope in the goodness of God that we cannot stop, that even death cannot stop. We met the figure of innocent goodness in the person of Jesus. We tortured it. We killed it. But it comes after us on the other side of the grave. There is no place we can run, there is no wilderness we can hide in, there is nothing that we can do to separate us from the love of God in Christ.

If we Americans had written the story it would have been a little different. Our story of hope is still probably best seen in The Wizard of Oz. There the innocent protagonist is not so much a virtuous person that disturbs us in his integrity. She is our self perception of ourselves as a nation, a young girl, a sweet girl with a cute dog, too young to have done anything really terrible, from Kansas, where very little action ever takes place. Suddenly, for reasons as arbitrary as a cyclone, we find ourselves thrown into a confused world of Oz that we don't understand. And this world has evil witches that would do us harm, quite unlike home.

There is a pathos in this version of the story, a wistful sentiment of longing that is like hope. It sings 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. Subconsciously we are longing for a simpler time, when we were a simpler people. The song has a note of melancholy to it. Judy Garland is just the right person to sing it because we know that when she grows up her life will spiral out of control between a deep desire for the world to love her, a debilitating personal anxiety and stage fright, and a self-destructive addiction to narcotics. There she is that innocent girl, singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' already looking back in longing.

In Oz, she meets real evil in the Wicked Witch of the West, but in the end, she could always tap her shoes and go home. In the end, she wakes up and the apparent evil wasn't really there. She shook it off like a bad dream and hugs all her neighbors.

We know real evil happens. We have participated in it. Indeed, collectively we have perpetrated it. But, there is some sense in which we still don't really believe that we will actually have to suffer through it. Especially all of us gathered here… We still believe that if something really bad comes our way, we can hire people to make it go away. We have earned a layer of insulation… Most all evil and tragedy we can shake off like a bad dream. Indeed, we can much of the time.

But the gospel message is not that we can shake off evil because it isn't really real. In the last analysis, Jesus is actually abandoned by God. He is left alone to the mortal fate that we all face. He is filled with the same anxiety and dread that ordinary prisoners who are tortured are too familiar with. We don't get around suffering. We don't get any exemption because we have faith. The message of hope is that God redeems us in the midst of this suffering, that even here God is at work, even when we least feel it. Even when we least believe it.

I've been reflecting on that the past couple weeks on a personal level. My son was home on leave from the 25th Infantry. Older soldiers call his generation of enlisted men and women September 11th babies and there are a number of them that joined with that motivation. That plus, he just couldn't pay attention in school. For good and bad, he is doing exactly what he wants to be doing. I respect that. He is in good shape in every way. I called his mother when I went down to see the graduating ceremony for boot camp. I told her, 'the Army did in 6 weeks what we were unable to do in 18 years."

He is about to deploy for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. It is very anxiety producing to watch, as many of you know. You raise these kids, you let them go, sometimes you know they are in danger. You try to tell them about it but they really can't understand. They are still immortal.

I asked him what the Army does to spiritually prepare soldiers to kill people. He said, 'well, you drill and drill and drill and when you actually do it, it is no big deal.' But I know it is a big deal. I know he can come back changed.

I read a paper once on World War 2 that something like 20% of our soldiers were unable to fire their weapons when they got into battle the first time. Real battle is a very intense experience that can paralyze and overwhelm. All of us know relatives that had bad dreams for years after they came back from the battlefield. I know you can lay down some deep impressions on your soul in warfare that can't be erased. I sort of tried to tell him about it. But…

He was largely in denial. I appreciated anew just how powerful denial really is. There are so many things we could not do, would not do, if we really thought about what we were getting into in advance. Denial is an under-rated power.

Spiritually, I know in the back of my mind that we don't get any special pass, that anything could go wrong. And in some tangible spiritual way, the antidote to this possible future evil, all the unknown chaos that might happen is to live in the present, normal, ordinary humane love. So we did family stuff. We went out to dinner and mostly just spent time together.

The last night that he was here, we ate dinner together as a family. We all held hands and repeated the same prayer that we always pray when we are together or apart. Part of it says, 'bless our loved ones every where and keep them in thy tender care.'

I reminded him of a time that we were together in Scotland, visiting the Ring of Brodegar, a ring of some 36 standing stones above the Highlands. I reminded him that our ancestors used to form a circle in times of death and on other solemn occasions. They believed that we are all part of that circle, the living and the ancestors on the other side, and they would invoke the spiritual unity of the whole throng. There is an old Celtic hymn we used to sing in the South that referred to this practice. It said, 'May the Circle be unbroken, bye and bye Lord by and bye. There's a better world a waiting in the sky Lord in the sky.' I reminded him of that we are an unbroken circle.

I told him a story that my great grandmother told me (probably apocryphal). She said that when my great grandfather was in the trenches in France in World War I, the Germans were overwhelming the allied line. One night he was sure he was going to die. He called out to my great grandmother in anguish.

She was working in the fields on the family farm and heard him as clear as if he were calling her from the house. She wrote it down in her diary and shared it with him after he returned home after the war. I reminded him that we really are connected by prayer, even when we are not together and not to forget that.

We sat up late with his brothers and sisters, drinking beer and watching "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". I took him to the airport in the morning with his sister. Hugged him on the curb side. I'm watching him slouch and schlep his suitcase behind him. It is so funny the way that gait persists through many changes. He looks just like he did when he was two years old in footy pajamas, pulling his blanket behind him. He walks through the sliding glass doors in Terminal B… And just like that, he is gone.

You send them a prayer… you blow them a kiss. There are no guarantees that we will be spared heartache or tragedy. The hope of the Gospel is not that we will be spared but that God will be present with us in it, that even ignominious suffering can be redeemed, that ultimately even that which is not redeemed in history will be redeemed by God on the other side of history because God is good and just. Trusting that, we can get through quite a lot.

We don't want to get through a lot, but if we have to we can because we have hope. St. Paul was right. He was thinking about the difficulties that we have to face, how great they can be, and how easily we can become swamped. And this is what he said, "We have this treasure of hope in earthen vessels, that the power of God shines forth, not our own power. For we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, by not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed… we are delivered unto death, but the life of God is manifest in us (2 Cor. 4:7-11). We have human frailty but also the humane transcendence of the Spirit with us.

I was talking with a good friend of mine this week. We've been praying for her granddaughter for the past 6 years, battling cancer. The doctors tried everything we medically know to do and they have finally sent her home. She is a teenager. There is nothing more they can do. She now my friend goes to visit her granddaughter every day. You know that is tough. None of us want to go through that and none of should have to.

I asked her what that was like. She said the other night, her granddaughter asked her to get in bed with her. So she did. They lay there together hugging until she fell asleep. She needed some love from her bubby. Love can't always cure, but it does always heal. Jesus taught us that God is like that. God is like a Grandmother that loves us up as we suffer, whether we can feel it or not.

St. Paul once started to sum up the point of the gospel in his life. I think it is one of his best passages in Romans 8. He said, the good news is this, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God that we have known in the Christ." For I am convinced that neither tyrants who inflict cruelty, nor social forces that mire us in ignominious poverty, neither time, nor space, neither light years to the next solar system, nor deafening silence of family members that can no longer speak to each other in the same room, neither the lonliness of a cell cut off from all of our loved ones and friends, nor slow drip of an IV tube as the life force slowly drains out of us, neither darkness, nor being abandoned and alone, neither rejection or the fear of the unknown, neither addiction, nor low self-esteem, neither torture, nor dying too young, neither something we can not forgive in our past, nor that which we will not be able to accomplish in the future… nothing… nothing… nothing… in all of creation can separate from the love of God that we have known in the Christ.

I looked over the list of people that needed that kind of love this last year, just the people in our congregation that lost someone, who have needed that support because they have lost someone in their immediate family. I'm sure this list is not complete: Liz Marsh, Besty Naulty, Shirley Mangin, John Crosby, Leanne Wells, Keith Jones, Mike O'Sullivan, Pat Votey, Alan Dickey, Margaret Thompsett, Marin Mixon, Meredith Guida, Aaron Harris, Ron Wells, Nora Holley, Lai Loh, Steve Ring, Julie Yarborough, Doe Dunn's family, Ria Knoppers, Lura Smith…and Russ Ganner who has nearly gone to the other side and come back. He reminds me of a colleague of mine who had two heart attacks. I asked him what that was like he said, "Hell I've died twice… It just didn't take." In death, as in life, nothing can separate us from the love of God we have known in Christ.

We don't know what happens in death. The bible only gives us only poetry and metaphor on the subject. It remains a mystery as it should. The bible only assures us that God is fully operative in that realm too and that we can trust that the Almighty will take care of things. Indeed, that God will make sense of what was senseless on this side of history, that God will redeem that which was abused, heal those who were unjustly imprisoned, that God will make right that which was so deeply and obviously wrong. That is our hope.

We cannot stop the goodness of God. Our intellectual cyncism won't stop it. Our compromised character won't stop it. Our lack of belief won't stop it. It reminds me standing on the banks of the Mississippi river as a child in the springtime. You can swim across the current, you can swim against the current for a while, but eventually you are going down stream with everything else. Fortunately for us, God's goodness does not depend on us. Ultimately, God is more constant and sure than that. And that really is the Good News of the Easter story.

And once the disciples interiorized that idea that God could not be stopped, they felt an empowerment and abandon, a confidence, a meaning for living and a fearlessness. They were not cowed by the Imperial authority of the Roman Empire, nor the ravenous lions that were set loose upon them in the Collesium. They could face anything and anyone because they knew where the big story was headed, they knew who would meet them come what may. The miracle of the resurrection isn't just that one man rose from the dead. The Miracle is that these 12 compromised, frightened, not particularly educated peasants were filled with such power that they organized a movement that literally took over the Roman Empire, became the leading force in Western Civilization, set in motion practically every institution of higher learning and so pervaded Western values that nothing around us would exist today…

Real hope, real meaning, real purpose is like that. I don't know what you are going through in your life right now, something wonderful, something sad, something that is like wading through mud… but I hope for you that Easter faith, that resurrection power. The end of the story is goodness. Let is pull you forward from here. Amen.