Tales from the Tomb

Easter Vigil 2019
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I do not long for resurrection. I am generally much more comfortable with death staying in its predictable tomb. And I’m pretty sure that same sentiment was true of the spice-bearing women who came to anoint the body of Jesus on a Sunday morning so very many years ago. They knew what to do when a person they loved had died, and they knew there would be comfort in going through the familiar rituals of grieving. So I can hardly imagine the magnitude of the terror of that impelled them to drop, faces bowed, to the smooth clay floor of empty tomb. Theirs was not the awe one might feel at beautiful sunrise; theirs was the awe of discovering that the entire order of the world was upended. And then, improbably, they rose up ran to tell about it.

It would be hard to make sense of their behavior, if I had not lived it myself. On an Easter Sunday, no less, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Grinnell Iowa. As a naïve and entirely unchurched nineteen year old freshman, I was met by God in the consecrated bread and wine I swallowed for the first time. I was terrified, and I didn’t like it. Not at all.

I wasn’t, at that time, an active part of the parish: I was just crazy about the boyfriend who took me to church. And I was pretty sure that if I ran to tell my militantly atheist family about the holiness I had experienced, nobody would believe me. So I spent a lot of time the following week clinging to the ground. To the clay from which all humanity was made, according to the Genesis account. I think my body was instinctively seeking the kind of safety that causes animals to prostrate themselves to the ground during an earthquake. But it didn’t work. The very blades of grass shimmered with the words of the God who brought forth green and growing things on the third day. I could not escape the blindingly beautiful testimony of creation.

Fast forward almost 30 years and I find myself here, one in a long line of women bearing testimony to the terrifying, order-subverting love of God. The love that placed a bow of promise into the clouds, led the refugees with a pillar of cloud and fire, put a new spirit into the people, opened the graves and took away judgement. This is the love that is not bound by the second law of thermodynamics because it comes from the one who made the law. This is the love that is stronger than death.

The Apostle Paul, following the example of the woman (even if he didn’t credit them) also testified to the order-subverting terror of the tomb. Trinitarians, do you not know that you were buried with Christ? Benjamin and Lori, do you not know that you will be baptized into his death? Look around you, people of God. This may appear like a beautiful Cathedral filled with loving people, but mark my words: it is actually a tomb. It is the place where your attachments to everything that would distract you from the love of God come to die. And with it, your terror, your separation, and your shame. It is the place from which you will walk out alive. Dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.

And, I might add, walk out to share your testimony. There’s a lot of that going on around Trinity lately. I’m hearing it from the pulpit. I’m hearing it in the profound trust our Catechumens—that’s the community of learners that Lori and Benjamin have been part of for the past several months—invest in each other. They tell stories of longing and loss and forgiveness and hope. I’m also hearing it, unexpectedly, in our Sunday newcomer conversations, when longtime Trinitarians testify to the life they’ve found here.

And as much as I like to brag on Trinity and Trinitarians, I have to confess that the stories I hear from you are not fundamentally about how lively this community is. Rather, they are stories of how God triumphs over death. That’s what I heard when Don and Barbara Stevenson told of nearly losing their business to a trusted employee who stole from them. They cried, they prayed, and then decided to come back to church to heal. “You don’t think you need it when things are going well,” said Don. Bearing the spice of their grief, they showed up at this very Episcopal tomb. And 24 years later, Barbara and the flower guild orchestrate the annual floral explosion that we see at God’s altar tonight.

And on the third day, God gave the gift of all green and growing things.

What is the value of ancient creation myths? What proves the truth of the resurrection? Nothing, really, except the example of the lives of the people shaped by these stories. That includes the testimony of the ancient witnesses to the empty tomb, and the equally terrifying and wondrous stories we tell each other here every day. This Cathedral is no stranger to death: in fact, we celebrate it in our Episcopal funeral rites. Parents and lovers die. And yet, we live. Friends and colleagues betray us. And yet we live. Our bodies and our memories fail us. And yet, we live. Loss has and will visit every one of us. And yet… we live.

I do not long for resurrection, and I’m not sure I’d actually recommend that any of you do either. It’s scary and weird and it still makes no sense to my physicist father. But because we have already died with Christ, the power of coercive violence, shame and fear no longer hold sway in our lives. We don’t need another crucifixion to remind us that it is in the nature of God to bring forth life from the tomb. Listen, said Paul, and I will tell you a great mystery. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Listen to words of the shimmering people speaking from the tomb. Listen to the women telling improbable stories. If you do nothing else with the good news of Easter, listen. Your friends are telling you about resurrection.