Taking the Lid off of Easter

We began this service, the Great Vigil of Easter, the holiest night of the year, with this entire space in darkness. The Paschal Candle was then lit as a visible sign of the light of Christ coming into the world. From darkness, then one light, then candles fill this Cathedral in light.

I heard a sermon years ago by a preacher who said that when it comes to Easter: “proclaim it, don’t explain.” I loved it! But, in my own experience – I don’t know about you – from time to time I still need a little explaining. God, tell me again how Jesus rising to new life changes my life and changes the world?

An indelible memory of my childhood is about a popular outdoor pastime in the long hot early evenings of summer. My sisters and friends and I would run around our house and even into our neighbor’s yards in search of flying magic: fireflies. The sighting of the very first firefly of the year was as magical as the first snowflake of winter. We took it as a sign that summer had arrived. School was out. The days seemed to go on forever. The greatest hope for any child is to live without a care in the world. We know that is not always so, and it was not fully true in my own childhood, except on nights when fireflies filled the air. Our greatest concern seemed to be what to do with them after we caught and held them in our clasped hands. We would scream for someone to find an old cleaned out glass jar – and we’d poke air holes through the lid with a screwdriver and carefully slid the fireflies inside. Light in a jar. I don’t think we ever keep the fireflies in the jar over night, with guilt and sleep overcoming us. We later would let them fly again to light up the summer sky and thrill other children and other adults who hadn’t yet forgotten what is was like to be a child.

Anne Lamont, in her treasure of a book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, recalls a sermon by Veronica, her Presbyterian minister, who once said that, “you can keep bees in a jar without lids, because they’ll walk around on the glass floor, imprisoned by the glass surrounding them, when all they’d have to do is look up and they could fly away.” (pg. 128) Then I thought back to my trapped fireflies. Were they like bees? Would they have stayed in the jar without a lid? I don’t think they would. But Veronica said that it was true of bees: that they would rather walk around the sides of the jar as freedom awaited them above.

Is it also true of us? Can life become a routine exercise of walking around the sides of jars when we seldom, if ever, look up? Rarely move out to explore the vast world? Dare to engage others not like us? Remaining fairly safe by doing and being what we know works: what is known, what is comfortable, what is easy, what is expected of us? If that is the case, the message of Easter is quite clear. Believing in the power of the risen Christ is neither comfortable nor easy.

In our gospel reading, on an early Sunday morning, the women came to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. Instead of finding a body to anoint with spices, they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Two men in dazzling clothes appeared – angels they had to have been – who told them this: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

On the surface, the angels were offering the faithful women -- Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome -- a gentle way to calm their terror upon not finding the body of Jesus. They could have said: “women, he’s gone, you’re too late, take your spices and leave.” They didn’t. “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” Think about this question for a moment.

It seems to me that we all can and do at times in our lives look for the living among the dead: we look in the wrong places for our deepest heart’s desires. We look in the wrong places for happiness, satisfaction, for love. Some look to food to fill them when they are empty, drink to numb the pain, and some use drugs to thrill and avoid. They look to others to tell them that they are beautiful, smart, or important. We look to books for wisdom, though we know that true wisdom takes time, learning from mistakes and a humble openness to not knowing everything.

One of the questions we live with intensely during the great 50 days of Easter is how we as believers encounter the risen Christ in our lives and in the world. Yes we can learn a lot from studying the life of Jesus. His parables turned the world upside down, his healing made people whole again, his inclusion of the marginalized set a standard that still inspires and guides us today, and his miracles showed the world that he was far from ordinary. Yet, God took the greatest cosmic chance by allowing the son, the healer, teacher, miracle-worker to be put to death by a world that was not ready to believe, so that in some mystery, God could raise him to new life. And by doing so, allow you and me to share in his resurrection.

Living an Easter faith requires that we look at and live in the world differently. We should refuse to walk around the sides of the walls of safe glass jars. When others see only disappointment, bad news and death, will we see hope, possibilities and life? When others give up, let us find another way. Don’t ever think you are too young to make a difference or too old to change your ways or too tired to breathe new life and love into relationships. For on the first morning of Easter the stone was rolled away. The lid is off. Look up, move out, light up the night sky. For Christ is risen.