Sermon: Easter - Hope on the Horizon

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Easter - Hope on the Horizon

By Charles Rush

March 23, 2008

[ Audio (mp3, 5.8Mb) ]

ster seems a little early this year doesn't it? It is. The last time, Easter was this early was in 1913. How many people here remember that Easter? Not many, you'd have to be 95 or older to remember it. And the next time Easter will be this early will be 2228. That is 220 years from now.

Since I am the only Minister, my extended family treats me as the resident theologian and I got the job of explaining the resurrection to my two nephews Henry (aged 6) and Charlie (aged 5). Their mother told me she would take care of the Easter Bunny if I would just handle the religion that they weren't learning at the Episcopal Church where they terrorize Sunday school teachers week after week.

I sat them down and said, “Okay boys, the Church has always taught that Jesus died and on the third day, he was raised from the dead. And that means…- hand in the air. Question. ‘Yes Henry, do you have a question.' ‘Uncle Chuck' said Henry, ‘you mean like Elvis?' I said, “No Henry I do not mean like Elvis'. I could hear his mother from the kitchen, “Houston, we have a problem”. Basic explanations are sometimes the hardest, like ‘what is the Lord's Supper?' or ‘Why do we sing hymns?' Rest easy, we aren't explaining this morning.

And appropriate that we don't, since our scripture this morning is the earliest, pared down version of the story. The women come to a tomb find it empty, are confused, and they leave saying nothing because they were afraid. Whatever happened, it wasn't crystal clear. But within a very short time, when they had a moment to gather their wits about them, they were changed. What was it that they experienced? Hope.

Real hope, lived hope is an expectation on the edge of the horizon. It is the hope of things as yet unseen. I remember reading the diaries of Sir Walter Raleigh after he set out to find the new world. They set sail across the vast Atlantic in their little boat, completely unsure of where they were headed, worried, concerned, anxious. And after weeks of the same dark skies above and the same dank seas below, the sailors up the mast reported scents that were ever so faint. The air smelled different. They had never smelled this exact scent before but they knew what it was the fragrance of land, of trees and plants. Even though they were a couple hundred miles away from the coast, even though the sea around them didn't look any different at all, they were filled with the hope that they were on the right direction and they could press ahead in expectation. And no hunger, no strife with each other, could stop it. And their anxieties, real though they were, were contained in this bigger hope.

Sometimes the world shifts like that around you, like the beginning of ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'. All of Narnia had been pitched in Winter because of the Wicked Queen of the North. Her icy control had kept the world in perpetual cold and hibernation. The people had grown used to it and simply stopped hoping for the return of spring. But, one day they hear rumors that Aslan is returning to the land, the great Lion of love, who can defeat the Queen of the North. People talk, no one is sure. But one day, the Queens wicked wolves are enforcing are persecuting her subjects like usual when they meet resistance, to their astonishment. What has happened? The local people feel the air warming. They see the snows just barely beginning to melt. Almost nothing has changed, but everything has changed. Suddenly they know deep in their heart that things can be different and they act as though the new world is here already.

That is what I hope for you. And you may say, ‘Yes but that was back in the era of legends and dragons… That doesn't happen any more.' Oh but it does, and you know it does.

Those of us that are of a certain age have lived through it. In the late 80's I was part of a small group named CREED (The Christian Rescue Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents). It was founded by a friend of mine, Dr. Ernest Gordon, the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University. Dr. Gordon had been a prisoner in Japan during World War II, and had written a book called Miracle on the River Kwai about surviving a Japanese concentration camp in World War II. (You might have seen the movie “The Bridge over the River Kwai”. Dr. Gordon's own account of those events was made into another movie called “To End All Wars.”) Most of the Prisoners of War around him in WW2 died from starvation. Dr. Gordon was ever changed by that, came to God through the experience of surviving those experiences. And when he was able, he founded a group of Christians to reach out to other Christians imprisoned around the world that have been forgotten by the rest of us.

At that time, the biggest group were in the Soviet Union, which had a brutal crackdown on Christians since Communists were atheists. We would hear stories about people that were imprisoned from business men that traveled to Russia and from other academics and Ministers that were occasionally permitted to go to Russia. We would collect as much information as we had, publicize it as best we could, write letters to the State department, write letters to our Senators, and we would have a couple of public meetings every year. We did it because it was the right thing to do.

But I have to tell you, we changed almost nothing at all. We never had any money. We barely covered our costs for these meetings. People would hear these stories of ordinary men that were arrested for having a simple bible study, sent to the Gulag in Siberia for 10 years, completely cut off from their families, starved, almost completely isolated. And then they would say, ‘But you can't change anything in the Soviet Union… how many people have you gotten out of the Gulag?' And we would have to say, “Well none yet.” And they would politely say, “When you can show me that some charity money will make a difference, call me back. Until then…” Who could blame them?

Sometimes, we even wondered why we were continuing to do what we were doing. We couldn't get the State Department to answer us, except for some polite letters that we were doing a noble thing. We couldn't get a Senator to meet with us, except if one of the staffers went to Princeton and then they would send a nice little note. The only thing that kept us going was the knowledge that some things are not only true, they are eternally true. Human dignity, the freedom of worship, the fundamental meaning of being human… This is so basic, so important, that it is always worth being involved with.

We collected more and more names, but if we ever made a difference in the lives of one of those prisoners in Russia, we never heard about it, except some occasionally effusive letters of thanks from the families of those prisoners still in Russia that were smuggle out for us to read.

One day, Dr. Gordon calls me on the phone. He says, “Lad, we have a difficult decision to make. God is at work in our midst. Come to my office now.” I came over to see him. And he told me that he had just gotten off the phone with the White House. I thought he was kidding me. No, a staffer had been on the phone with him. I asked how the staffer knew to call us. Sure enough, he had remembered our group from seeing posters on campus when he was in college. Oh, so he is just trying to be nice. We've been down this road. He said that we were asked to come up with 5 names that we wanted to be released, that the President was going to Russia in a month and he would ask Mr. Gorbachev to release 5 prisoners. I was still incredulous. This just couldn't be happening. It just can't be true.

Dr. Gordon welled up with emotion at the prospect. He said, ‘what do you do if what you've wanted for years suddenly comes true? We have hundreds of names. How do we pick just 5 out of this list?' We were dizzy, literally dizzy. We couldn't believe that this might really be happening and we had this sudden weight on us that the balance of real people with real families and real lives were depending on us. I honestly no longer remember what the process was that we used to make that decision, it all happened so fast. I do remember thinking that somehow, someway this wouldn't work out in the end anyway. Real politick is just too powerful. The forces out there are just too great.

But one day Dr. Gordon called me again. He said, “Lad, I just got off the phone with… and there was a long pause… the President of the United States.” He called in person to make the same request that his staffer made. 5 names. We were just faint, confused, like those ladies at the Tomb, full of ‘fear and amazement' wondering what all this might mean. Dr. Gordon wrote a short note on his stationary, put the 5 names on it, had it sent to the White House.

This meeting between President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev was a big media event. All of the major TV stations were covering it- way back before there was Fox and CNN wasn't even in most households- but a group from our organization gathered around the TV. I couldn't be there. But it was Dr. Gordon, a couple of Russian émigré's, a couple supporters… And the TV cameras showed President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan getting off Air Force One, walking down a red carpet. At the end was Mr. Gorbachev and Raisa his wife. They exchanged greetings and hugs, as is the Russian custom, and then President Reagan reached into his coat pocket and handed Mr. Gorbachev a note. Mr. Gorbachev took it, put it in his coat. And they went on.

That night, we had a little party for our group and we had a little celebratory drink at our good fortune. Over and over, each person told me the same story, again and again and again. ‘Then President Reagan handed him the note.' We just couldn't believe it. It was like the world had suddenly changed and even though no one else in our little town knew the difference and everyone acted like things were just status quo, we had that heart thumping, blood pumping hope that the world was all new.

I think it was a day later, maybe two days later, I went to see Dr. Gordon. He had gotten a call that said, “We thought you might like to know that the 5 men on that list are free men.” An answer to prayer…. This was so big, we couldn't really speak. I can only imagine what was going on in Dr. Gordon's mind, reflecting on his life and now to be part of something that healed others who had gone through what he had gone through. But, sometimes you just have to say, ‘With men and women alone, there is no way, but with God, there is a way'. If God is in it, you don't need to be immobilized by the Giants around you because it is not about you. You are just part of it. That is how David must have felt standing before Goliath. That is how Moses must have felt addressing Pharaoh. You just give thanks in deep gratitude. Dr. Gordon just led us in one of his simple, old school prayers, “We give thee thanks, O Soveriegn of the Universe, for the manifold ways that Thou dost guide and override our will, that Your increase might remind us of Thy grace in our lives, and our place in Thy plan.”

Fast forward, many months, perhaps a year or more… The night that the Berlin Wall came down. To us in the West, it seemed like it happened out of nowhere. None of us could have predicted it. Very few even predicted it. To us in the U.S., it felt like the whole world just stopped and watched people with sledge hammers up on top of the wall, drinking champagne and chipping away at this huge, miles long, huge hunk of concrete. The cameras were just on, just filming all night long, these ordinary people taking turns whacking away at another hunk of concrete. No… not just in the era of legends and dragons, it can happen now.

My brothers and sisters, practice the resurrection. Live the things that we know to be eternally true: Compassion, kindness, humility, honesty about your gifts and your limitations, patience, forgiveness, love which binds everything in perfect harmony, peace, and a life that exudes gratitude and grace in whatever you do. This life is always true, in season and out of season, whether it is popular or ridiculed or oppressed. This way of living is eternally true.

This is what God wants us all to become and we will all become it as this is the direction that God is headed. It is like swimming in a huge, very slow moving river. You can swim upstream for a while, you can swim across the river at cross-purposes, but eventually we all find ourselves moving inexorably downstream where this great destiny takes us.

Commit yourself to one strand of hope, one thing that you can pray for, work for, one thing you can lift up, take on, and make a difference in your family, your community, your world. Write it down, give it to God. Give thanks for all small changes that you see around you. Pray that they multiply. May you be blessed to live to see a tectonic change in the ground beneath you. God is at work, even in you. Amen.