Rev. Daniel E. Somer+
Saint Andrew’s Church
Sermon
April 12, 2020
Easter – God Is Love
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20: 1-18
Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
This morning, I will belabor the obvious. We will have a word about Easter, a word taken from one of the great Eastern images of the mystery of the resurrection, an icon that has been a part of the Christian vision of what the Resurrection is all about since around the year 600.
One is powerfully drawn to this icon. Our august screen-master Henry has it on your screen. A similar icon hangs by our baptismal font. Let’s examine it. Remember, icons are about the theological meaning of people and events; they aren’t representative art such as we might typically encounter. Icons are never depictions of exactly what happened. They’re pictures of what things mean. So, an icon of the Resurrection doesn’t show what the resurrection might have looked like back then—an icon of the Resurrection shows what it means now. In a proper icon, one communes directly, spiritually with the depicted image. Examples abound in our beautiful church.
Here, the risen Lord stands triumphant on the broken gates of hell while Satan at the bottom, bound in chains, hog-tied, looks helplessly on. Instruments of hellish torture are strewn about. Some of the heroes of the Old Covenant—David, Solomon, Moses, John the Baptist—frame the scene, showing that all of God’s dealings with humanity have led up to this moment, and are fulfilled by this moment. But Jesus doesn’t just stand there and look smug; he doesn’t bask in the glory of his victory. Instead, he’s reaching out with wounded hands, grabbing Adam and Eve and raising them from their own death—which is symbolized by the coffins they are standing on—toward new life with him. He’s pulling them up. It is the conquest of original sin!
As we discovered last night during the vigil, Jesus harrowed hell. He was locked in mortal combat with Satan himself and prevailed, albeit battered and bruised. Small wonder that Mary Magdalene mistook him for the gardener and Cleopas and his fellow disciple on the road to Emmaus had difficulty recognizing him.
The resurrection story is at the core of Christianity. Without it, Jesus would likely have been primarily remembered as a revered rabbi and shaman-like healer. His reappearance is celebrated in all four of the gospels. It defies, however, the laws of physics as we understand them. The accounts nonetheless, as Diarmard MacCulloch writes in his tome simply entitled Christianity, galvanized the early apostles and adherents to the new religion. They would proclaim that Jesus lives still, that he loves us still, and that he would return to save the faithful from destruction at the end time.
But I am not going to dwell on the resurrection account, which offers so many parallels to the account in John of Lazarus being raised from the dead. This time it was God the Father who commanded Jesus to arise and ordered the angels to unbind him. Jesus had asked Lazarus’ sisters where had they laid him? Now it is Mary’s turn to direct the same question as to Jesus’ body’s whereabouts.
No, let’s have resort to that old curmudgeon, Jeremiah, the one who bequeathed to us the word jeremiad, to grasp the full import of Easter and the resurrection. So, why in the world would an Episcopal cleric give any attention to a passage from a seventh-century BCE prophet with the crusty reputation on the holiest day of the Christian calendar? In his forty years of active ministry, he strove to relay the challenging and hopeful words of Yahweh to a people who were undergoing the greatest crisis of their nation’s history: the decline, destruction and exile of ancient Israel, the end of the Davidic kingdom.
No event in the Old Testament, except the Exodus, rivals the Babylonian Exile in significance as a landmark in Jewish history. Jeremiah witnessed the collapse under the Babylonian onslaught of Solomon’s temple and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, the murder of King Zedekiah’s sons and the blinding of the grieving father, and the forced march over hundreds of miles of the rebellious but utterly defeated people of Judah to Babylon. The raw emotions of the Exile are captured in Psalm 137, by the waters of Babylon. I invite you to read it. It can be found in your Book of Common Prayer at page 792. That Jeremiah could live through such a time and retain the hope of a future with God can teach us much in our own perilous, fraught times.
He had prophesied the downfall of Judah, that it would share the fate of the Northern Kingdom Israel at the hands of the Assyrians a century and a half earlier. The land promised to the descendants of Abraham is no more. How could anyone believe, in the face of the death of all expectations, all hopes and all dreams, that “we shall be God’s people?” But in today’s lection chosen for Easter, Jeremiah speaks of a chance for the Jewish people to renew their vows, their covenant, with God. They had broken their covenant with God made centuries earlier by engaging in idolatry and other breaches of the Ten Commandments. They had betrayed God’s trust. But does God forswear them? No! He responds to their plea, which we sing at Advent: “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile.” God carves out a new covenant with the same people; he loves them. He will not give up! Verse 1 of today’s lection echoes the promise in Revelation 21:3:
See, the home of God is among mortals,
He will dwell with them;
They will be his people,
And God himself will be with them.
That promise comes to full realization in Jesus Christ. God is the faithful one. God does not quit us, although we may deserve it. Even though “we like sheep have gone astray” in the words of the prophet Isaiah. God promises to rebuild you, “O virgin Israel!” You shall again “go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.” You will enjoy again the fruits and vineyards of Samaria and be called again to worship on the hills of Zion, God proclaims through Jeremiah. God is eager for a renewed relationship with humanity. As Jeremiah declaims at 33:8, 10-11, I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. … There shall more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thanks offerings to the house of the Lord:
“Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”
To be loved with such a mighty love is truly beyond our understanding. We can and should be thankful that such love does not depend on our understanding. It rests on the saving grace that we receive from our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. This is the true message of Easter. It is not about the resurrection of a body; it is about the God who has loved us with an everlasting love for all of eternity. It is about our ability to stare at life’s hardships and disappointments, its horrors and ugliness squarely in the face, knowing that God will never, never forsake us. His love is that perpetual, that constant. That is the truth that sets us free. That ancient prophet has something to say to us after all, two and one-half millennia later.
Christ is risen, alleluia. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
