Rise Again!
An Easter Sermon Amid COVID-19
RCL Easter A
12 April 2020
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
I have seen the Lord.
She rose early that morning surrounded by the pre-dawn darkness and the darkness of the memories that flooded back as she moved from sleep to wakefulness. She remembered the trial and the tortured journey to the place of his execution. She remembered the agony of watching him die even as she remembered every word he spoke from the cross. She remembered the moment of his death and the hasty way Joseph and Nicodemus arranged his burial in a nearby tomb.
Now that the Passover feast was over, Mary of Magdala was determined to go to Jesus’ grave. With all the pent-up emotional and political energies of the past week still seething throughout Jerusalem, it was not safe for a woman to go out alone, but she was willing to take the risk. It would give her a little comfort just to sit near him even if the stone of the tomb intervened.
As she walked through the deserted streets, the few people she did see hid their faces or slipped quickly through the doors of their homes. The Roman soldiers and the Temple police who were patrolling the streets took little notice of her. Perhaps they saw that she was a woman on a mission and that she posed no threat to the good order of the city.
But they were wrong. Mary of Magdala would soon be the first witness to an event which would eventually shake the whole world. Nothing would ever be the same. Jesus of Nazareth had not stayed in the tomb. God would not permit it. Those who witnessed the empty tomb would not keep silent. those who experienced his risen presence through the message of the Resurrection as proclaimed by the earliest Christian missionaries could not be suppressed by any government no matter how extreme the methods used to quiet them.
Five words from Mary’s mouth would come to be our message to every generation: “I have seen the Lord.” And nothing would be normal again.
Can these bones live?
The streets are not as crowded as they usually are and commuting to work is less onerous. People are keeping their distance except for those who must be living in the same household. Some folks hide their faces with one kind of mask or another, while some go barefaced. Some people are walking in a hurried almost furtive way as if they dread every moment they’re out and about. They rarely make eye contact and greetings go unanswered. There are folks who seem to take the moment in stride, physically and emotionally. Their heads are held up, eyes meet and greeting are returned.
True, we are surrounded by the signs of the present danger. Billboards and other electronic signs remind us to keep two metres apart, to stay home as much as possible and to wash our hands frequently. No matter which media we watch or read, there is only one story worth reporting and it goes by the acronym COVID-19. A new phrase has entered our vocabulary --- ‘flattening the curve’. Medical doctors and other health experts have become media celebrities.
But things are not ‘normal’. All places of worship are closed. Many of the social ministries exercised by our faith communities have been suspended. Even our halls, where we have hosted twelve-step groups, ESL programs and coffee hours are idle. Like the dry bones of the prophet Ezekiel’s vision, our buildings ask the question, ‘Can these bones live?’
Rise again!
When Paula and I first came to Canada almost thirty-three years ago, Paul and Valerie Borthistle, then a student family at Vancouver School of Theology, took us under their wings. They became our guides into the world of Canadian culture, a world that at first seemed familiar but then proved quite strange.
One night at a shared dinner, I told them about a story on CBC I had recently seen. A mariner had found himself adrift in a rough and stormy sea after his ship had sank. He was able to find a half-swamped lifeboat and pulled himself aboard. But the ferocity of the sea led him to believe that he was soon to die. Just as he reconciled himself to this, the refrain from a song came unbidden into his mind:
Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end.
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Then like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!
Within seconds Paul pulled out every Stan Rogers’ CD he owned and I was hooked. Rogers sang of joys and sorrows, of disappointments and lost futures, but he never sang about hopelessness. Often I choke up when I sing one of his songs, no more so than the chorus to ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’.
My friends, these are extraordinary times. The waves caused by COVID-19 will continue to buffet our world for months and years to come. We have and we shall suffer loss. Whatever ‘normal’ we return to in the near future, it will not be the ‘normal’ we knew before the pandemic.
But we share the same message that Mary shared with Jesus’ frightened and disheartened disciples two thousand years ago --- ‘I have seen the risen Lord.’ And now death, whatever guise it may take, has no more power over us.
We have seen, more times than we may be able to number, the valleys of dry bones that the prophet Ezekiel saw. And we know the answer to his question --- ‘Can these bones live?’ ‘Yes,’ we can say, we dare to say, ‘yes, they can live and new possibilities will take shape as the Spirit puts new flesh upon them.’
My friends, wherever you are, whatever you fear, however rough the seas that threaten to swamp this boat we call ‘church’ may be, we can face the wind and the waves and dare to sing
Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end.
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Then like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!
We shall rise again because we have seen the Lord. We shall rise again because dry bones can live. We shall rise again because Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
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