What Is Our Easter Vision? (9 am)

April 4, 2021, 9 am service
Reverend Timothy Hart-Andersen

Isaiah 65:17-25; Mark 16:1-8

This Easter has been a long time coming. We’ve been cooped up in a yearlong Covid-imposed Lenten-like season. A 12-month winter that would not let go, with death always hovering close, nearby.

But now birds sing and buds are on the trees. Crocuses are up and daffodils not far behind. Even lilacs are beginning to green. Something in the air has turned.

Yes, the pandemic is still with us, racism has not been dismantled, gun violence continues, but signs of Easter abound: vaccines are working, we’re finally listening to truth-telling about race in America, and public support to end gun violence may be at a tipping point.

The way Mark tells it, though, Easter is hardly cause for celebration:

So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:8)

That’s it. The end. Imagine if Mark were the only gospel, and that’s all we had. For a time, it was! Mark precedes the other gospels by 10, 20, 30 years or more.

And even Mark wasn’t put into written form until perhaps three decades after Jesus. The gospels aren’t Eyewitness News; they’re composites of various narratives and memories that eventually coalesce into coherent accounts. The stories that form Mark had been told and re-told for years around campfires and family meals, in prayers and liturgies, in markets and on street corners, in hushed tones in places of power.

Did you hear about Jesus of Nazareth? The Galilean arrested and killed by the Romans? I heard several women went to anoint the body, but it was gone. They say he was taken out of the tomb, or even that he rose from the dead. The women were terrified and ran away – and didn’t want to say anything to anyone. I can’t blame them.

If Mark were the only gospel we had, with its abrupt ending that offers no sighting of a risen Jesus, what would be the hope in that?

Maybe we’d want to try to “fix” it as the early church did. Around the third or fourth century an alternate ending was added in order to unify and control the narrative of Christian faith. Other options for a “better” ending followed, each trying to make Mark’s Easter conform to the other gospels. They wanted a compliant Jesus rising visibly from the dead, lending credence to the resurrection claim.

The church was uncomfortable with an open-ended Easter. Too many questions. Hard to control. Puts Easter in the hands of the people. We want Easter to play by our rules.

But life doesn’t work like that, and neither does faith. We can’t force it to do what it never did or become what it never was. Mark’s gospel makes room for an Easter that does not depend on a sighting of the risen Jesus. Mark’s Easter empowers us to complete it, to create a vision for Easter that fulfills God’s hope for humankind and all creation.

That makes for an Easter a little bit wilder, a little more unfettered, a little more unleashed than the Easter that fits the church’s norm. It makes for an Easter centered in the human experience, an Easter that takes the cross seriously and refuses to gloss over Good Friday, an Easter that sees God’s willingness to enter fully into the suffering of the world in order to redeem it.

This past week’s Good Friday worship service at Westminster powerfully evoked Mark’s approach to Easter. I encourage you to watch it in the livestream archive on our website. The Rev. Dr. Alika Galloway preached on three of the Seven Last Words, using the lens of the seminal book by James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

When she preached on the words Jesus’ said as he neared death, “It is finished,” she drew on Cone:

“When Jesus states, ‘It is finished,’ it’s not just about his death. It is not just about his existential reality, but it gets broadened to all things that are unjust, unfair, unequal, oppressive, messed up, tore up from the floor up. His declaration of it is finished becomes a soothing balm to our hearts, and it generates radical hope and strengthens our identity as God’s beloved.”

An Easter like that depends not on resurrection appearances long ago, but on the power of God’s love to transform human suffering in every age. A God hung on a cross and left there to die, is a God swinging from the lynching tree, a God broken by addiction and disease, a God assaulted by hatred and fear, a God killed by violent racism and demeaned by misogyny and locked up when innocent. That Easter God gets caught up fully by the world’s sin – and then breaks its grip.

“What is redemptive,” Cone says, “Is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.” (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree)

The empty tomb means all that dehumanizes us and devalues the image of God in each of us and destroys creation is finished. That is an Easter vision that releases unchecked hope into a world dying for it.

“But, one may ask,” Pastor Alika said in Friday’s service,

“If Jesus says ‘It is finished,’ why isn’t it so? That’s a good question. And I’ll tell you what my grandmother would say…’Baby, everything that is finished is not done.’”

After an allusion to a microwave in which the food never seems to be done even when the oven is finished, she went on:

“You see,” she said, “Done is a process. And some things that are finished are not quite done. So it is with oppression. We are not done with liberation.”

And so it is with Easter. We are not done with resurrection. Mark’s Easter goes nowhere unless we get up and take it with us, and join with others and the Holy Spirit to make it happen.

What is your Easter vision? Is it anything like Isaiah’s?

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth. It’s a chance to start over, and who among us doesn’t need that?

No more shall there be…an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. It’s healthcare and nutrition and loving support for young and old alike, and who among us doesn’t need that?

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. It’s a place to live and a livelihood that gives meaning and sustenance, and who among us doesn’t need that?

They shall not…bear children for calamity. It’s a society that cares for those most vulnerable.

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord. It’s a world without violence and war. (Isaiah 65:17-25)

What’s your Easter dream? What’s our Easter vision? For Mark it starts in Galilee, a lowly backwater, far from centers of power and privilege. A place where people fish and tend sheep, harvest olives and crush grapes, and somehow manage to scrape by. A place that cannot make things happen. That’s where the mysterious young man at the empty tomb says Jesus has gone, to be with those who are poor and forgotten.

What Easter vision do we have for the human family, or for the whole creation? Is it political freedom, as in the struggle in Myanmar today? Is it safety for your family and a future for your children, as in Central America? Is it to stop the threat to the earth from fossil fuels? On the 53^rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, is it finally an end to violence against black bodies in America, as is being sought right now in our city?

Jesus shares his Easter dream with us – when he preaches that those who are meek shall inherit the earth…when he comforts those who mourn…when he says that the greatest two commandments are to love God and love neighbor…when he says to love your enemy…when he declares that he himself will be the one whom we cloth and feed and visit in prison, as we serve those in need.

Easter is rooted in earthly reality, in the here and now, not in some heavenly time to come. That’s the gift of Mark’s open-ended gospel.

He’s telling us to work Easter into our daily lives, to bring it into the streets, into our schools and workplaces, our politics and neighborhoods, so the world will know the power of a love that will not be stopped by anything, not even death.

The women running from the empty tomb are not running from Easter, and neither should we. They’re afraid, but they’re also amazed. When the fear subsides, the amazement is still there, the wonder is still there and that’s when the Easter story begins, when we can dream our way into a future that had once seemed impossible.

“When day comes,” poet Amanda Gorman writes,

“We step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

This Easter has been a long time coming. Now that it’s finally here, it needs us to take it up and run with it, as the women did that morning long ago.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

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December 23, 2018
Reverend Timothy Hart-Andersen

Michah 5:2-5a; Matthew 1:18-25

Samantha. Ronald. Rebecca.

This week the annual Homeless Memorial was held in Minneapolis. A parade of people marched from the Hennepin County Government Center down Nicollet Avenue to Simpson United Methodist Church in south Minneapolis. They filed silently past Westminster, carrying signs.

Brian. Leah. Antwanika.

The names of 196 individuals – the most ever in our state – were held aloft and remembered in the glare of lights on the streets where some of them had lived. It was a solemn Advent procession through the wintry city night. I wondered if any of those named had been among the many we have welcomed through our open doors at Westminster.

Sandy. Rene. Cubby.

The names personalize what is so easily made into “an issue” or a “problem.” They’re real people, with names, names given by a mother, a father, grandparents. Perhaps family names, passed down through generations. Maybe names of a favorite friend or mentor, someone the parents wanted to honor. Names given with high hopes for long, full lives, now cut short by hard realities. Their average age was 46. To say their names was to affirm that their lives mattered.

Names are undeniably particular. We love individual human beings known to us by name; we cannot love the abstract concept of humankind. That’s why incarnation happens, and it comes with a name.

Kyle. Brenda. Nick.

Anyone who has had or adopted a baby knows the challenge of selecting a name. It’s quite a responsibility. The child, this new person, comes into the world and will bear that name all their life long. The parents want so badly to get it right.

In some cultures babies are named for the day of the week they’re born. Our son’s childhood friend, whose father was from Ghana, was named Kwesi because he was born on a Sunday. Kofi Anan was named Kofi, being born on a Friday. Other cultures give a name based on a value the parents hope will flourish in their child’s life: Peace, Grace, Blessing, Purity, Love.

Alex. Kerry. Kelsey.

I remember how we consulted naming books when it was our turn, hoping that among those long lists from around the world we would find just the right one. In the end, we went with biblical names, as did my parents. My name, Timothy, is from the newer testament, timo-theos, and it means, honoring God. It was apparently something of a vocational predictor!

When the shepherds of old left their fields and made their way that night into Bethlehem, to the birthing suite in the garage behind the local motel, among the first things they would have said, after cooing over the infant, would have been, “What is his name?”

And with that question the shepherds would have unwittingly opened a subject that had been under consideration for ages. This was no simple matter. For centuries different names had been proposed. Micah suggests “the one of peace.” That was also a contender in Isaiah’s mind; only he elevated it to the Prince of Peace – and then for good measure he threw in other possibilities, declaring that his name could also be, “Wonderful Counselor,” or “Mighty God,” or “Everlasting Father.”

It’s complex. In the midst of the dazzling story of incarnation 2000 years ago the mundane suddenly inserts itself, and becomes important: what shall we name the child? There seems to be a difference of opinion, as there often is when it comes to naming a baby. In the Christmas story several names surface that could be logical possibilities. David, after his royal ancestor. Or Joseph, after his father.

Austin. Lori. Mark.

The angel Gabriel – there’s another naming possibility – gives clear instructions to Joseph in a dream, but the directions soon get muddled. First Gabriel declares that Joseph is to name the child Jesus, the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua. Both names mean he who saves. It was Joshua, after all, who brought the people Israel into the land of promise after wandering in the wilderness for forty years. And it would be up to his namesake Jesus to save God’s people once again.

But then the voice of Isaiah confuses things. The ancient prophet tells of a young woman who would give birth to a child and name him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

So Mary and Joseph have a problem. If they consult the first-century equivalent of a baby naming book, they would probably go with a family name. But the angel says to call the child Jesus because he will save the people. And then Isaiah says to name him Emmanuel, because he will be God with us.

It’s the first complication in the life of Mary’s boy. I can imagine his mother resolving the matter when Joseph recounts his dream to her. She knows God has something salvific in mind for her child, so she tells Joseph to pass over the old prophet’s proposal and go with the Angel Gabriel.

Jesus, it is – the one who saves. Joseph would have been too predictable. Emmanuel, too passive. Jesus, the one who saves. It’s active. Dynamic. Purposeful. This one born of Mary will be the Savior of the world.

Maybe Emmanuel was his middle name!

Seth. Monty. Khaleed.

One hundred years ago the Church of the Open Door began holding services in downtown Los Angeles. High atop the building they erected a massive sign that could be seen from freeways and hillsides and streets all over LA. Jesus Saves, the sign declared, somewhat redundantly. Five years later, as if to offer an alternative vision of salvation, the massive HOLLYWOOD sign was set up in the hills nearby. The two competing markers became architectural icons of 20^th-century Los Angeles.

Can you imagine if the church had chosen instead to put a huge neon Emmanuel on top of their building? Or God with Us?

It had to be Jesus. There is, as the old gospel hymn says, something about that name.

Today the Church of the Open Door has moved out of the city, but the sign’s still there – Jesus Saves, now atop a trendy hotel in downtown Los Angeles, reminding people of Mary’s fateful decision long ago when she named her boy.

Cooper. Amir. Timothy.

As the march honoring those who died on the streets this past year reached Simpson Church everyone entered quietly and filled the pews. A string quartet played. Prayers were offered, and the ritual began.

Each person’s name was reverently pronounced, and a candle was lit, 196 of them. Every individual named had been, at one time, the particular incarnation of love for some Mary and Joseph of another era. Some were remembered with comments about their lives. Laughter mixed with tears. Thanksgiving was offered.

It was a kind of Christmas in reverse, a Nativity at life’s end, reaffirming the sacred in each life at its conclusion, rather than its beginning: Bethlehem connected to Calvary, and back again, in one seamless circle.

Kendra. Cami. Jason.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Mary’s child. He is Emmanuel, God with us, but his name is Jesus because he saves. He does so not by staying aloof, in some faraway heaven, or by occupying a place in some dusty old creed, but by entering fully into our world in the most humble way.

That child will become a man, and he will find himself abandoned in the streets one day. He will suffer indignities and humiliation. His life will end out in the open, a victim of the hard realities of his time.

But with Jesus – and this is the true and lasting joy of Christmas – the story doesn’t end there. God’s love is not so easily stopped. In Jesus a light comes into the world that no darkness can douse. That light is the light of all people everywhere, the God-given spark of life found within every human heart.

Jeremy. Cheree. Luke.

320 And Mary’s boy, the one who saves, was there, as well.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.