William H. Willimon - "Thy Kingdom Come" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 15, 2001)
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| - | The third lesson is from the Gospel | 0:09 |
| according to Saint Luke, the 24th chapter: | 0:11 | |
| But on the first day of the week at early dawn, | 0:15 | |
| they came to the tomb, | 0:18 | |
| taking the spices that they had prepared. | 0:20 | |
| They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, | 0:23 | |
| but when they went in, they did not find the body. | 0:25 | |
| While they were perplexed about this, | 0:28 | |
| suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. | 0:30 | |
| The women were terrified | 0:34 | |
| and bowed their faces to the ground. | 0:35 | |
| But the men said to them, | 0:38 | |
| "Why do you look for the living among the dead? | 0:40 | |
| "He is not here but has risen. | 0:43 | |
| "Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee | 0:46 | |
| "that the Son of Man must be handed over | 0:49 | |
| "to sinners and be crucified | 0:51 | |
| "and on the third day, shall rise again." | 0:54 | |
| Then they remembered His words and returning from the tomb, | 0:57 | |
| they told all this to the 11 and to all the rest. | 1:00 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:05 | |
| - | Thanks be to God. | 1:07 |
| - | A recent article in "USA Today" proclaimed | 1:14 |
| death is no longer a downer. | 1:19 | |
| Quote, "Death's former finality has been upstaged | 1:24 | |
| "by Hollywood's vision of the afterlife | 1:30 | |
| "where dearly departed communicate with loved ones, | 1:33 | |
| "influence events, even come back for another go around." | 1:36 | |
| The article went on to note how we've always loved movies | 1:41 | |
| that end happily ever after, | 1:46 | |
| but Hollywood has recently extended ever after. | 1:49 | |
| "Buffy and the Vampire Slayer" features Buffy | 1:56 | |
| and her boyfriend, Angel, who just won't die. | 2:00 | |
| Then there was "Meet Joe Black," an interminable movie | 2:03 | |
| about the delayed termination of a tycoon. | 2:07 | |
| In "What Dreams May Come," Robin Williams | 2:10 | |
| is killed in a car crash but is incredibly reunited | 2:13 | |
| with the family dog in a kind of German Romantic landscape. | 2:17 | |
| "Titanic," a movie that took three hours to sink, | 2:21 | |
| ends with Jack and Rose back | 2:25 | |
| on the staircase, reunited after all. | 2:28 | |
| Gerald Celente in his book "Trends 2000" | 2:32 | |
| theorizes that we Baby Boomers are watching our parents die, | 2:36 | |
| we're getting AIDS, we're saying to ourselves, | 2:41 | |
| "Wait a minute, a generation as wonderful | 2:44 | |
| "as ours just can't die, maybe we won't." | 2:47 | |
| When Meryl Streep dared to die of cancer | 2:53 | |
| in "One True Thing," it was a box office bomb, | 2:56 | |
| giving credence to James Swanson's idea | 3:01 | |
| in the "Chicago Tribune," | 3:04 | |
| that "the grandiose narcissism | 3:06 | |
| "and impertinence of the Boomers. | 3:10 | |
| "They're determined that, for them, death will be optional." | 3:12 | |
| He calls it Faith Lite. | 3:17 | |
| Princess Di's Elton John's eternal candle in the wind, | 3:21 | |
| she goes on forever. | 3:26 | |
| We may be immortal like "Jack Frost," Michael Keaton, | 3:28 | |
| in which a deceased father comes back as his son's snowman. | 3:32 | |
| Well, just one thing | 3:38 | |
| about all of this Hollywood immortality. | 3:42 | |
| It has nothing to do with Easter. | 3:45 | |
| You heard the story, Jesus really died. | 3:50 | |
| He did not appear to die. | 3:55 | |
| He was not asleep. | 3:57 | |
| He died. He died a death more cruel than can be conceived. | 3:59 | |
| He wasn't dead for a moment on the operating table | 4:05 | |
| having an out-of-body experience. | 4:09 | |
| He was sealed in the grave three days. | 4:12 | |
| The disciples did not deceive themselves | 4:16 | |
| and think that though He was crucified, | 4:20 | |
| He will live on in our memories or any such pagan drivel. | 4:22 | |
| You heard how the disciples came | 4:28 | |
| to the first Easter in great grief. | 4:31 | |
| They came to Jesus' tomb with no cheap, false consolation, | 4:35 | |
| "His message will never die," | 4:40 | |
| or "If we endow a chair at the university, | 4:41 | |
| "everyone will remember Him." | 4:44 | |
| When they saw the empty tomb, | 4:47 | |
| they didn't think, "Jesus has been raised from the dead." | 4:49 | |
| They thought, "Somebody has stolen His body." | 4:52 | |
| And yet, within just a few days, | 4:57 | |
| His disciples came to understand | 5:03 | |
| that what had happened to Jesus | 5:05 | |
| was according to the scriptures. | 5:06 | |
| According to the scriptures, | 5:10 | |
| Israel believed that there would be a day when God | 5:12 | |
| was going to solve the problem of Israel's suffering. | 5:15 | |
| And while God was at it, God would solve the problem | 5:20 | |
| of evil, injustice, death in the whole world. | 5:24 | |
| The scriptures promised a day of divine victory, | 5:28 | |
| and on Easter, Jesus' disciples | 5:33 | |
| discovered that day in the resurrection of Jesus. | 5:37 | |
| The cross, which they thought would be the end | 5:43 | |
| of their relationship with Jesus, was its beginning. | 5:46 | |
| Easter was God's answer | 5:51 | |
| to the deep question, | 5:55 | |
| what is to be done about the world? | 5:58 | |
| In "The Green Mile," when something good, | 6:03 | |
| something spiritual is about to happen, | 6:08 | |
| this glitter started falling from the sky | 6:11 | |
| and the camera got out of focus. | 6:15 | |
| Everything turned blue and fuzzy. | 6:16 | |
| That's the way Hollywood does God. | 6:20 | |
| Well, note that the Gospels go to great lengths | 6:25 | |
| to demonstrate that what happened to Jesus on Easter, | 6:27 | |
| while strange, happened here, it happened now. | 6:32 | |
| They're details, it was still dark, | 6:39 | |
| there was this linen cloth is rolled up, Mary weeps. | 6:41 | |
| These are mundane details from everyday life. | 6:46 | |
| This is where we live, where people weep. | 6:49 | |
| And people get confused about life, | 6:53 | |
| and things end in tragedy, | 6:56 | |
| and it doesn't always work out in the end. | 6:58 | |
| These are details from daily death. | 7:00 | |
| It is resurrection of the body, | 7:07 | |
| not immortality of the soul. | 7:10 | |
| In a way, it's not even life after death. | 7:13 | |
| There is life after death, | 7:17 | |
| and God's people can expect it. | 7:19 | |
| But it will not be Hollywood's version. | 7:21 | |
| Christians don't believe in the immortality | 7:24 | |
| of some disembodied soul. | 7:27 | |
| We believe, as we will say in the creed, | 7:29 | |
| we believe in the resurrection of the body. | 7:33 | |
| Not resuscitation of the body, | 7:37 | |
| a corpse brought back to life. | 7:39 | |
| Not immortality of the soul | 7:41 | |
| in which some divine spark just goes on and on forever. | 7:43 | |
| That only happens in Hollywood. | 7:46 | |
| We believe dead Jesus was raised by a loving God | 7:48 | |
| whose purposes for the world | 7:53 | |
| will not be defeated by death, here, now. | 7:55 | |
| The disciples found the grave empty. | 8:02 | |
| Jesus' dead body gone. | 8:05 | |
| When the risen Christ appeared to Mary, | 8:08 | |
| He didn't appear as some disembodied ghost, | 8:10 | |
| a spirit, but His body. | 8:13 | |
| Sure, it was a changed body. | 8:16 | |
| She didn't recognize Him at first, but it was His body. | 8:19 | |
| Later, the risen Christ would appear | 8:24 | |
| and be touched by His disciples in His resurrected body. | 8:26 | |
| So we Christians really do believe that, | 8:32 | |
| as sometimes people say, when you're dead, you're dead. | 8:36 | |
| Death really is death. | 8:42 | |
| It is cause for the some of the greatest grief | 8:45 | |
| we will ever know. | 8:47 | |
| But we also believe that in the resurrection, | 8:50 | |
| God decisively acts, defeats death, | 8:52 | |
| makes a way when we thought there was no way. | 8:56 | |
| And this is much better than Hollywood. | 9:01 | |
| The resurrection of the body, Jesus' or yours, | 9:05 | |
| means that this world does matter now. | 9:10 | |
| We may not know exactly how | 9:15 | |
| our resurrected bodies will look. | 9:17 | |
| As Paul says, "It does not yet appear what we shall be." | 9:19 | |
| But we believe that just as Jesus' body was raised | 9:22 | |
| by the love of God shall we be brought along with Him. | 9:26 | |
| And this means that the matter of this world matters. | 9:33 | |
| We're not bound for some disembodied, | 9:38 | |
| fuzzy never-never land. | 9:41 | |
| God has in the resurrection made a decisive bridgehead | 9:43 | |
| against the onslaught of death, here, now. | 9:47 | |
| You will note in the scripture, | 9:50 | |
| and in the hymn that is to come, | 9:52 | |
| there are these battle images. | 9:54 | |
| This thing is very political. | 9:59 | |
| That's why we pray every Sunday, | 10:01 | |
| Thy kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven. | 10:02 | |
| Resurrection, it's about God getting, at last, | 10:07 | |
| what God wants, here, now, on Earth, in the body, | 10:11 | |
| that which God will one day | 10:16 | |
| have completely in heaven, forever. | 10:18 | |
| It's not just that there's some cushy afterlife in store | 10:25 | |
| for those of us who make the grade some day. | 10:28 | |
| If that were the case, then Christianity | 10:33 | |
| could be justly accused of being | 10:34 | |
| some kind of pie in the sky, by and by, | 10:36 | |
| rather than Thy kingdom come on Earth | 10:39 | |
| as it is in heaven sorta religion. | 10:42 | |
| If Easter is just Jesus exiting the tomb | 10:45 | |
| to some ethereal, spiritual bliss, | 10:49 | |
| leaving the body in the tomb to rot, | 10:53 | |
| well, where's the hope? | 10:57 | |
| Go on and make movies that do death as only apparent, | 10:59 | |
| spirits taking off for pastel skies. | 11:05 | |
| But resurrection is more than | 11:09 | |
| some vague spiritual inclination. | 11:11 | |
| It's about Thy kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven, | 11:16 | |
| a new heaven, a new Earth, first hinted at | 11:20 | |
| in the resurrection of Jesus, one day come in fullness | 11:24 | |
| when God does Easter for the whole creation. | 11:30 | |
| God faced evil and death on Good Friday, | 11:34 | |
| and on Easter, God triumphed. | 11:37 | |
| And now God intends to do for the whole world, | 11:42 | |
| through us Easter people, what was done for Jesus on Easter. | 11:46 | |
| I've noted that in Hollywood, when people die, | 11:52 | |
| things tend to get kind of fuzzy and vaporous, pink. | 11:57 | |
| You will note, here in church, | 12:02 | |
| we do Easter with things of this world, | 12:05 | |
| flowers and parades and people, | 12:08 | |
| and above all, with music. | 12:11 | |
| Yes, music, it's like a world | 12:13 | |
| having gotten out of tune, | 12:16 | |
| marching to the dirge-like beat of death, | 12:20 | |
| finally gets back its intended song, | 12:22 | |
| as if the whole creation once faded | 12:27 | |
| for futility now soars, healed, | 12:30 | |
| reclaimed by a God who is powerful enough | 12:35 | |
| not to leave us in death. | 12:38 | |
| Karl Marx claimed that Christianity lulled people | 12:42 | |
| into political complacency. | 12:46 | |
| Christianity's just got heaven on its mind. | 12:48 | |
| Something that removes you from experience of | 12:51 | |
| struggles, here and now. | 12:54 | |
| John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave, | 12:56 | |
| but God, oh, God goes marching on and, no. | 13:00 | |
| The first witnesses to Easter knew something happened. | 13:05 | |
| Their world had been entered, | 13:10 | |
| encountered, wrought, reformed. | 13:12 | |
| Easter wasn't God saying, | 13:16 | |
| "Now, let me take you out of this deadly, tearful world." | 13:18 | |
| Easter was God saying, "Now, let me show you | 13:21 | |
| what I am doing to your world, here, now." | 13:24 | |
| Take away the resurrection of the body, Marx is right, | 13:29 | |
| Christianity is some kind of vague wish fulfillment, | 13:32 | |
| some sort of inner feeling of our own creation. | 13:36 | |
| But you take the resurrection of the body seriously, | 13:41 | |
| or maybe to the point of disservice, joyously. | 13:45 | |
| And responsibility is laid upon you | 13:49 | |
| 'cause if you dare to sing "Alleluia, Christ is Risen," | 13:53 | |
| you're saying that Jesus Christ really is in charge. | 13:58 | |
| He is Lord, and all other little lord-lettes | 14:02 | |
| of this world are not. | 14:05 | |
| When we sing the strife is o're, the battle is won, | 14:09 | |
| it's an invitation for us to join in the mopping up action | 14:14 | |
| wherever evil still dares to challenge the reign | 14:17 | |
| of the One who now sits on the thrown. | 14:21 | |
| The Jesus seminar of a few years ago | 14:25 | |
| said that at Easter, what happened was | 14:28 | |
| the disciples of Jesus had this experience. | 14:31 | |
| They sat around and said, "You know, it's just like | 14:37 | |
| "He almost was still with us, we've had an experience." | 14:40 | |
| No, that just won't lift the luggage. | 14:45 | |
| The resurrection was not some inner spiritual experience. | 14:50 | |
| It was God's outer act in Jesus, | 14:54 | |
| bodily, physical, a rising of the sun | 14:58 | |
| that puts all other suns to shame. | 15:02 | |
| Today, that great master of defeat, | 15:05 | |
| death, has been defeated. | 15:08 | |
| Saint Paul says that in the resurrection, every ruler, | 15:13 | |
| every pompous politician, every presumptive power | 15:17 | |
| is now in big trouble. | 15:21 | |
| "For He must reign until He has put | 15:24 | |
| "all of His enemies under His feet, | 15:27 | |
| "and the last enemy to be destroyed is death." | 15:30 | |
| This day, a great battle has been fought and won, | 15:35 | |
| and the kingdoms of this world shall be the kingdoms | 15:39 | |
| of our Christ, and He shall rule forever and ever, | 15:43 | |
| amen. | 15:48 | |
| (soft trumpet music) | 15:54 |