May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sights. Oh Lord, our redeemer. Amen. Amen.
Now, I know that Easter is not really the day for gloating, but I hope you'll forgive me for feeling pretty darn pleased with myself. I've been writing a lot of stuff recently, sermons, articles, classes, and the like, and it's been really time consuming because I'm a terrible typist. But now I've discovered the dictate function in Microsoft Word.
It's amazing. I know you've all been using it for like 20 years, but please share my excitement that I've just discovered it. Now, if I want to quote a piece of text, all I have to do is, is speak it. And my word processor just types it out. I've saved hours of my life. This lent, it's fantastic, but the tech isn't as advanced as it could be, and the dictation thingy makes mistakes.
Sometimes what it types is quite different from what I've spoken. It's an accent thing. Even though I have the setting on British English, like they're some other kind.
You say tomato, I say tomato, and the dictate function, right? Turnip.
Sometimes it produces sheer gibberish. For example, I dictated from the village of Bethany to the city of Jerusalem, but my computer typed from Village of Battery to the city of Title ESCOs. Sometimes what it types does actually make sense, but not in the way I'd hoped. For example, I dictated the phrase, the theological content of the sermon.
It typed the theological content of the salmon. Can't salmon write their own sermons and just stay out of mine? Now, the reason why I'm wasting so much time complaining about the dictate function is that I must tell you what it typed when I spoke the word Episcopalians. Ready? Escape. Aliens. Seriously, escape aliens.
I can't decide if this is a warning because they've landed, or if it's a comment on us, Episcopalians are so weird that we may as well be from another planet. You know, Artemis two has discovered some Episcopalians on the dark side of the moon and upbringing them back. There's a lot of running around on that first Easter weekend, and some of it is escaping.
Escaping aliens. One alien in particular on that Thursday night, Jesus' friends spotted its shadow in the moonlight in the garden of Gethsemane, and they ran helpless with fear to escape its clutches. That alien wears not a shiny space suit, but a black hooded robe. It carries not a laser, but a scythe and an hourglass.
It travels not by flying saucer, but a hearse. It's the alien that is mankind's last and most powerful enemy. That alien eventually landed the next day on a hill outside the city wall. It came with obscene brutality, the way that death can. It had been watching, plotting, scheming for years ever since the age old Gabriel visited a young woman named Mary, 30 odd years earlier.
Sometimes it does that. This alien gives warning of its arrival, may be decades ahead of time. At other times it strikes suddenly giving no time to prep, no time to plan death, taunts each of us every day. A photograph will transport us there or a name in an email or an old melody on the radio. But our visit to that place be it as brief as a song, or as lengthy as a season, is relentlessly harsh and unfailingly cruel.
The visit of that IC alien deprives us of all we have also, it wants us to believe. One day we cheer hosanna to the coming king. Five days later, we watch nails being driven into his hands and feet. We have other aliens too, like death. They rob us of our joy, deprive us of our peace. Who's your alien? What are you running from that weekend, Simon Peter tried to outrun his past.
How about you? Those mistakes you made. Those choices that seemed wise at the time. The regrets of broken promises, hasty decisions, wasted energy, lost money. And now you feel remorse. You run, and no matter how fast you go, you can't escape. The alien of regret shadows you and sucks from you. The freedom that is God's grand gift.
The tears of Peter when the rooster crowed on Thursday night are the tears you shed in the cold light of day. Sometimes I go running my alien pursues me in the form of a little voice, and it speaks British English. No lost in translation here. No faulty dictation. Unfortunately, it tells me that I must perform perfectly if God is going to love me.
I don't work hard enough. My heart is not committed enough. My results are not stellar enough. I have disappointed God. My resources are inadequate, my intuition untrustworthy, my ideas too unworkable. I have little to offer, less to trust, and least of all to build with. I know the crippling power of that alien's lies, and it knows exactly when to whisper after a grueling day, when I've had a disappointment, when I've messed something up, when something I tried didn't work.
Or when someone who looked to me for something felt let down. But the grave shattering life, instilling truth of Easter day is this. Stop running. Your alien is defeated. Just stand, turn around and behold and empty tomb.
That empty tomb is the ultimate sign of victory over aliens. When Jesus rose from death, it was not just our greatest enemy that was beaten. All the others were to your guilt, your shame, your addiction, your fear, your anxiety, your loneliness, your self-defeating behaviors, and self imprisoning thinking, oh yes, there's a lot of running around that weekend.
Men fleeing a garden on Thursday night, running from death, one of them later, running from a courtyard. The sound of a rooster piercing his ears and stabbing his heart. Another. Running from a secret meeting with religious leaders weighed down by 30 pieces of silver and a conscience so heavy that it flies to the comfort of a noose.
Sad runners, bad runners, mad runners escaping aliens. But there are others, not runners, but walkers to Marys. They have trudged to the tomb to, as Matthew puts it, merely see it. That's all. Just to see it. But their devotion to Jesus and their willingness to walk that journey is the cue for a miracle. When they arrive, it's like they trigger a sensor that turns on a light.
Only this light is actually an earthquake, an angel fainting guards, and the rolling of the stone and the angel speaks. It says in effect, you came to see. So see, he's not here. Isn't it interesting, uh, that the stone sealing the tomb was not rolled away to let Jesus out? He's already gone. No, it's rolled away so that the Marys can see that he's risen.
God is in the resurrection business. He breathed life into the dead Jesus. And he breathes life into all that are willing. Wherever there is death, there is God waiting to be invited to breathe his life into the corpse, dead dreams, hopes, and relationships. For example, here's a person who started life with great hopes of what he was going to do with life, how he was going to make a difference, change the world in some way, and now those dreams have been crucified by the circumstances of life.
The promotion that was given to someone else, the spouse who fell out of love, the active mind or body that succumbed to sickness or injury. The realization that his best days are behind him, that he's gone as far as he's going to, and it's just downhill from here. Then there's another person. Whose dreams did come true, only to discover that they were actually nightmares.
The money that has strangled her joy, the possessions that cause her anxiety, the promotion that has kept her at the office too long and drained her energy too much. The success that has made her insecure and fearful that relationships that are good are only temporary and may be choked by the demands on her time and energy.
Oscar Wilde said, God chooses to punish us by giving us what we pray for. Not great theology, but you get his point, and it's a sound one. Sometimes we feel cursed because our dreams have not come true. Sometimes we feel cursed because they have
that angel has something else to say to the Marys. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, come and see. Then go and tell. Come and see. Then go and tell. The angel tells them that Jesus will meet his friends in Galilee, the small town they called home. Expect to see him where you live.
Come and see. Then go and tell. That's where the gospel is written in the Arum mundane existence. The triumphant Hallelujah is etched in the murky recesses of our lives. The cold, dark nooks and crannies where we don't take guests, where no friend ever visits. The empty tomb is carved in the tatters of dreams now crumbled.
The rubble of relationships now collapsed. The wreckage of careers burned out. The cry of victory is proclaimed in our mess and our mistakes. It reverberates in our corridors of despair and decay. It echoes around the empty rooms of our hopes and dreams. Today, God does what God always does, walks into God forsaken places, and performs resurrection.
He takes us these broken pieces of humanity and turns us into glorious expressions of resurrection. Don't run, don't resist him. Receive the risen Christ. Come and see. Then go and tell. Come and see. Then go and tell.
Because we are Christians, we train ourselves to spot the instructions. In a passage of scripture, what's the command? What is God asking of us? So today there's come and see. Then go and tell. But it's not the only command. There's a four word instruction that occurs twice in this reading, once spoken by the angel and once by Jesus himself, four words.
Do not be afraid. Come and see, then go and tell. Oh, and don't be afraid twice. Nonetheless, in the face of an earthquake, fainting soldiers and angelic visitation and the resurrected Christ being afraid is a pretty natural emotion. So the Marys leave the tomb with Matthew says, fear and great joy. Fear, and great joy.
Is it even possible to experience those two emotions at the same time? Whatever that feels like. It sounds like another miracle Escape. Aliens. Why would we escape aliens? When the risen Christ has overcome them, he has captured them, disarmed them, and even now is leading them captive in triumphal procession.
So come and see, then go and tell. Oh, and don't be afraid. Amen.