Sermon 4/20/2019 “Our salvation story”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Locations: Church of the Resurrection at Immanuel Chapel, Virginia Theological Seminary
with Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill
Text: Luke 24:1-12
Day: Easter Vigil 2019 (April 20, 2019)
I wonder, do you know where we are tonight? We are in the Upper Room; not just any old Upper Room, but THE Upper Room—although this room doesn’t LOOK the way Leonardo DaVinci later depicted it.
We disciples haven’t known where to go since Jesus was executed on Friday. Well, we don’t have anywhere TO go. We’ve been following Jesus for so long, putting our whole hope and trust in him being the Christ, our lives seem very empty without him. He was so ALIVE, and now he’s dead, in that tomb right over there.
And Peter! Peter’s despondent, guilt-ridden if you ask me. He had been SO SURE he would be right there with Jesus all the way. But what came out of his mouth, past his quaking knees? “I do not even know the man!” Not once, but three times. Not that I did any better; I ran away and I didn’t stop running until earlier today.
What did I find when I returned to this room? Most of the rest of us have just been sitting here, sitting here telling stories like we do at a wake. At first, we told stories about Jesus, about the incredible things he did while he was alive. But THAT got too painful. So, instead we began telling what I call “salvation history stories,” stories about when God intervened in human history.
We started at the beginning, with the creation story, telling what we know about God creating the world. THAT story made me sad, though. We were SO SURE Jesus was the Messiah and that he had been right there with God, taking a hand (so to speak) in the very creation of all that is. But Jesus is dead, HOW could the Messiah be dead?
As I thought about how the Messiah could be dead, the creation story reassured me that God was in control, no matter what.
Telling the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac would have cured my sadness by making me angry. If God had provided a sacrifice other than Isaac for his father Abraham’s offering, why hadn’t God provided something else to take Jesus’s place in death? I got over blaming God, though, when I understood that God HAD sent ANOTHER sacrifice, God had sent his own son Jesus to take MY place. THAT would have gotten my attention, let me tell you.
Then someone DID TELL the Exodus story, how God had miraculously made a way through the sea to save his people from the Egyptians. Oh, boy; this story began to break through my anger. THIS is where I was reminded that we can scream and yell at God, within reason, when need be.
You want an example? I particularly love this one: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” We at Church of the Resurrection jokingly call this space, this Upper Room, the “Wilderness.” We are very grateful to be here, mind you, but this space, this Upper Room, IS “The Wilderness” for us. The Wilderness is where God leads us away from a less-than-ideal situation (like SLAVERY) to a new place, even if we might not fully want to go to a new place. Or maybe we want to go, we go in great faith, but discover the trip takes far too long—40 YEARS, it seems. Or maybe we want to know just what’s IN this new land we have been promised, and the cost to get to the Promised Land.
What we have found in the Wilderness, in the Upper Room, is that incredible things happen here: God feeds us and sustains us, against all odds.
I’ll bet you who are here in the Upper Room tonight know the Wilderness is NOT the place we expected it would be, but God provides. And here is where we are given faith for the journey, given life along the way, as we head together toward THE Promised Land.
Is the Promised Land a new place here in this life, or new life after death? Only God knows for certain; we Episcopalians always have an answer for these either/or questions, though: “Yes!” Yes, the Promised Land is both in the here and now, and in eternal life. That’s my answer.
Tonight, though, contemplating a dead Messiah, we learn that we should not fear death; we are all living a dying life because … I’ll tell you a secret … we are all going to die someday. What we should fear is a LIVING DEATH that is no life at all.
When I heard what the prophet Ezekiel prophesied so long ago, that God can give new life even to crusty-dusty bones, I realized that God can make all things new, even a dead Messiah. What’s more, I realized that God can make ME new, too. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he told Nicodemus he needed to be “born anew,” “born from above.”
WE were like that: so BUSY with living we were the Walking Dead. Fishermen we were, business men. Eat, work, sleep, strive. Buy, spend, contend, control. Recreate, procreate, perpetrate, perpetuate. Vie, cry, fall—or simply get old—but hurt all the time at every age. Walking Dead until Jesus called us away from our nets. He may be dead today, but didn’t he SAY something to us about “rising after three days?” What do you think THAT means?
There are some women over there, preparing spices to take to the tomb. They didn’t know what Jesus meant, either, when he said he would rise again. But, asking the women, THAT’S when I began to lose my grief, began to stir to life, began to feel a new heart and a new spirit growing and glowing within me. Do YOU understand how I could be suddenly bursting with JOY when our Christ is over yonder in that grave—isn’t he?
So, here we are in the Upper Room tonight that suddenly doesn’t seem like a Wilderness. Here we are, waiting. Waiting for, WHAT?
