Easter Firsts

Christopher H. Edmonston

Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church

March 27, 2005

Matthew 28: 1 - 10

I.

One of the untold stories among most member of the North American church is that of the rise of the church in the third world, the developing world. While the church is stagnant in the U.S., and in outright decline in Europe, in Asia, Latin America, and Africa the Christian Church is growing at an incredible rate.

The Presbyterian Church, in particular, has been successful in Korea. The Gospel, brought by Presbyterians nearly two centuries ago, took deep hold on the imagination of the Korean People. The largest Presbyterian churches there now boast memberships of 20,000 people and some have 11 or 12 worship services every Sunday.

I make mention of this because by the time I arrived at a Presbyterian Seminary in 1995, our largest population of students were the Korean students that I went to class with, studied with, and learned with – and they were among the best and brightest and most talented among us.

Of particular talent was a man in his early 30’s named Woon. Woon was a good preacher, a wonderful New Testament student, and a Christian artist, a painter and a sculptor, who had a growing following in the Richmond area. Woon was also a pastoral intern at one of the Presbyterian-Korean churches in Richmond. Spring break during our second year, he took the high school youth group to Chicago to do inner-city mission work for a week.

They left Chicago on Good Friday. Arriving in Richmond around lunch time on Saturday, twenty-four hours later, Woon and his wife found a message on their machine.

“Woon,” the pastor’s voice said, “I am in the hospital, and will not be available to preach on Easter, tomorrow. You must preach for me tomorrow. Please call when you have received this message.”

This is every seminarians worst nightmare – preaching on Easter Sunday with less than 20 hours notice, after leading a trip of high school kids halfway across the country to work in less than perfect conditions for a week, and after having driven all night with no sleep, to only sit up again all night to write a first Easter Sermon – the first words a minister composes as an attempt to elevate the significance of the resurrection to the people that he pastors. But Woon, steward and minister of the gospel, slept not a wink for the second straight night and finished his sermon.

Leaving the next morning with sermon in hand, he decided he would go an hour early, review the bulletin, and practice in the pulpit. As he drove up to the church, he was amazed to see so many cars there – as he walked towards the sanctuary, he was amazed to hear the hymns being sung by a throng of voices, opening the doors he was amazed to see the worship service already begun, and looking at his watch he was amazed to by his error – in his rush to write the sermon, in his daze of sleep deprivation, Woon had forgotten about the change in time. He forgotten to spring forward, and he was an hour behind. He walked to the pulpit, glancing not at a bulletin, read his scripture, preached his sermon, and sat down.

II.

I make mention of this because each and every young minister hopes that (his or her) first Easter Sermon is delivered under different circumstances. Circumstances that are more under control than these – more predictable and more normal.

Easter is, after all, the “Super Bowl of Sundays” if you will. It is said that every Sunday for the church is “Easter Sunday,” and while this is true enough it is also equally true that if we as Christians cannot be happy today, if we can’t find cause for joy in the resurrection of the Lord and the calling to heaven for all the saints then perhaps there is nothing that we will ever be excited about. In the same light any minister who cannot come up with something joyful and compelling to say on Easter Sunday probably doesn’t have much hope or future in ministry. If one cannot preach today one wonders if one should be preaching at all!

III.

So as I stand before you wanting to do well, but also well aware of the fact that this is my first Easter Sermon – ever. Oh, to be sure I have preached about Easter, but I have never preached on Easter before – I have been an associate minister up until this calling to Howard Memorial and someone else always had the seniority to command the pulpit on Easter morn. So the words that you hear today, and the exegesis that I have done in preparation for this morning are quite literally my Easter firsts. Like my friend Woon, I am offering my first words on the subject.

So what to do on this my Easter first sermon?

Well, the first thought that comes to mind are reflection about that first Easter, the one that Matthew and the other gospel writers describe. I close my eyes and I think about those first witnesses – how saddened they must have been to have witnessed that terrible death; how disheartened they were by the angry cacophony against Jesus during the hours of the Lord’s passion; how devastated they much have been in the long silence of Saturday; and then how confused they were when the stone was moved and the body of Jesus was not where it was supposed to be; how shocked they must have been at the earthquake and the sight of the angels; how odd the news that the Lord had really been raised must have first struck their ears; and then suddenly to become aware of what had happened, to have mentally and spiritually grasped the magnitude of the event itself! To have been there as a witness to that Easter first, that first Easter and what that testimony would mean to the world as they told this first Easter story long before the first steeple was raised and the first glasses were stained; and how in a way every sermon, every prayer, every theologian, every witness stands upon their first testimony about that first Easter; about all that the church has become and achieved since then is a commentary upon their first sermons about this moment which transforms all other moments; in other words, their first Easter sermon, no matter the words or the vocabulary or the exegesis, was the most glorious of all; we preach because they preached!

Anything I have to say then is built upon what they said, as every Easter sermon, the first or the last in a life of preaching, should be.

IV.

And so I have been thinking about this sermon for many months. What to say as a first word about Easter in a first church during these first years of ministry?

The largest temptation (and perhaps it is the temptation every Sunday – though I think it particularly scrumptious on Easter) I think is to be very topical and very current and seem very smart and prophetic in this moment blessed by the alleluias of Easter Morning and a sanctuary packed full of believers. Aren’t God and the Son of God worth the most exciting treatment, as well as best and the most convincing words that I have to offer?

Take for example the War in Iraq. Many of you have asked me, and quite appropriately I might add, when I was going to preach on the war. Is it right? Is it just? Too expensive? The right move according to the Biblical witness or the classical criteria in Christian just war theological thinking? Or wrong on all those counts? The temptation is a large one surely to talk about this today – it is an important topic, perhaps none more critical in our world and nation.

But, I was a History major in college and I know that wars take decades to fully grasp and understand. We are only now beginning to understand World War II, and as you know this country still struggles with Viet Nam, and there are some quarters that are still coming to grips with the Civil War – if you don’t believe this then I suggest that you visit Richmond or Charleston sometime or think back to a visit there. No – anything I say will be premature at best and misguided at worst for we won’t know the effects and results of this conflict for many years to come. The jury is not coming in any time soon.

It does suffice to say that war is always terrible and the innocent always die no matter how correct and careful the soldiers are. I think it is safe to say that in every conflict there are gains and losses and that God would choose that we gain and lose by raising arms to embrace instead of hands to strike. Finally I think it is right to say that we think that peace is the opposite of war but that is incorrect. It is the bohemian 1990’s musical Rent which (I am quite sure borrowing from something else) first struck my conscience with the idea that the true opposite of war is creation. War always means destruction. The resurrection of Jesus is a virtual and literal re-creation of life where there is death and it strikes me that the cross should serve as a symbol to end all wars as it was the symbol and the means by which God ended the tyranny of death.

A good direction for a first Easter sermon – the war in Iraq? A good sermon, perhaps, but not the right direction for this Easter first.

V.

Maybe the way to go would be to seize a headline, to get in step with CNN and talk about life and death and life again – the quality and quantity of life. Maybe the thing to do is to talk about Terri Schiavo, the woman who, brain dead or brain damaged to at least some degree for a decade and a half has captured the imagination of this country.

We could discuss and argue the New Testament merits of her story and her case, from both sides mind you, and how medicine and Christian ethics don’t exactly mesh on each and every technical interpretation. We could talk about how what should have been a very private and very painful internal family matter has taken on a life of its own. We could consider the complicated questions about life and death that her life raises; how she might make us reconsider disability and change the way we think about everything from the death penalty to abortion. We could openly speculate about the limits of human reason and the bounds of human understanding and we could honestly confess what someone in Florida ought to confess before they prance in front of the cameras: we never purely possess the wisdom or the knowledge that we think we do in matters of life and death. Perhaps on Easter, a day in which life and death are wedded by the miracle of Christ, we can talk of these things. Perhaps that is the first Easter sermon I have been searching for….

VI.

Maybe on Easter I should talk about my first ACC Basketball game (I don’t think that around here I would be the first minister to ever do this!) – the Carolina/Duke game that I went to two weeks or so ago. I could wonder out loud about the power of sports.

At the end of the game thousands of fans, and young college students with bodies painted blue rushed the court in a veritable frenzy of ecstatic glee in the victory. I have rarely seen people so happy.

As they rushed the court though, I could not help but wonder precisely how the church is supposed to compete with sports – what can we do to get people that excited? Few of us paint our bodies blue on Sunday mornings, and many Americans instead of coming to worship the God of heaven and earth instead worship with the NFL and on the golf tee. Please don’t paint me a hypocrite just yet – I will confess to you that I will be watching the games this afternoon just as all of you will be watching them. But I equally want to confess that the problem strikes me as a real one – the church does nothing to get folks so excited as our devotion to our teams, and yet the teams and the fans are not going to show up in our sweet hours of prayer and in the very personal (yet universal) moments when we will each pass from this life and fall into the gracious arms of Christ. In a world where the church possesses this most blessed of news, what do we do when the news is outright ignored – due to ignorance, apathy, or redundancy?

It makes me think of an Irish priest on day outside of an NFL game, preaching to the crowds leaving the stands, preaching to me as I walked with friends back to my car late on a Sunday afternoon. Quoting from Deuteronomy he was warning us against the worship of idols and we walked right on by – some folks making grotesque finger gestures at him and others jeering with profanity, but most like me, simply ignoring his message. Did I do the right thing that day?

Perhaps that should be my first homiletic offering on this great day of Christ….

VII.

Maybe I should do one of those scientific sermons. Trying to prove the resurrection to you. Talk about how Jesus became the Christ and about the confession of the early church. Seize headlines and sell magazines like the Jesus Seminar or Time and Newsweek who ignore Jesus the Son of God 50 or so weeks out of the year and somehow manage to put him on the cover every Christmas and Easter. I could begin to carve my name in this moment as a great defender and apologist of the faith – that would be a good first Easter for me to be sure!

VIII.

Maybe I should take the science of religion or philosophy of religion approach and deliver a long and rambling sermon (I know some of you are thinking – he passed rambling and long some time ago!) about the power of the resurrection and the bending of all matter – the molding of space and time and life and death and past and present and future there in that tomb somewhere in and around Jerusalem 2000 or so years ago. How all of reality is altered from that moment forward and we are called to live in the great congregation of those who believe that all things have been changed for the better.

Maybe I could do all of that – indeed, perhaps I have just done it. After all there is great power in suggestion itself.

Well, I didn’t really want to do any of this (or that), this first Easter morning of my ministry with you. Instead I think I’ll tell you the truth as Matthew sees it.

IX.

Eugene Peterson, perhaps the most respected Presbyterian thinker of our day has written, “The gospel message says: ‘You don’t live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don’t live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible.”

I am not sure I can say anything any better, any more faithful, or any more complete than this. For nothing after the resurrection is the same again: not because of physics; not because of the bending of time; not because ours is an era and a reign of technological wonder and chaotic terror. No, nothing is the same because God has chosen to renew the world by grace – behold all things are made new by the love of God in Christ our Lord!

John 3:17 (which is on the heels of 3:16 that most famous of verses) says: “God did not send the Son into the world to be its judge but to be its savior.”

Good words about good news – Easter news; the best news! From Exodus to Easter, dear sisters and brothers, God has broken bonds and loosed chains. You are set free from death and sin; you are set free from spiritual pain and the grief(s) that have marked your lives. Jesus Christ, the Savior, is risen!

By the power of the resurrection our lives and the world are made new and life is saved and preserved and quite literally, resurrected, from now on forever and ever and ever and ever. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! Amen!

X.

Now – that does not make wars stop. It does not make the end of life any easier. It does not mean the church has an easy task or is an easy sell as it makes demands on believers of every ilk. The resurrection will never be easy science either – we could ask good critical questions about it all day long and still never have our modern, scientific and mechanistic minds satisfied.

The resurrection does not erase all of our wonderings and doubts – our fears about the state of the world or the future of this planet. But because of it, because of Easter, we are still able, even in the face of the doubts of our day, to say with confidence that God will do things in us and for us that we never imagined possible.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Jesus has forced open a door that had been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he has done so.”

XI.

Years ago, about four weeks later, I got the courage to ask Woon what he had preached that morning. “What could you have possibly have said on that short notice?,” I asked.

He said, “I was short and to the point – Jesus Christ is risen today and he is the Savior of the world.”

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Easter, and the Spirit of life and resurrection, I proclaim to you sisters and brothers in faith that not even death itself separates us from the love and life of God. Because Jesus the Christ lives, we also will live! Thanks be to God!

XII.

Now, that is and was, my first Easter sermon, and I think it fitting to be sure. I pray that its theme and its faith would mirror that of the last sermon I preach on some Easter morning yet to come. For no matter how much more I know, or how much more eloquent or polished I should become, may I never be so arrogant as to forget to place the faith of Easter in my words about Easter. May every Easter be a grand reflection of the first Easter and may the faith of that first Sunday be kept all the ages long.

In the name of God we offer our words and our lives. Amen.