Homily: Easter Sunday, Yr C, March 31 2013, St.
Albans
Readings: Isaiah 65.17-25; Ps 118.1-2,14-24; Acts
10.34-43; Luke 24.1-12
“You’re freakin’
out of your minds!”
Now that’s a
better translation of what the men said to the women on that first Easter
morning. Our reading this morning says “these
words seemed to them an idle tale.” But
believe me, at that very moment when the women returned from the tomb and
blurted out their story, the men thought they were delirious.
You see,
some things are hard to believe. If you
tell someone that a dead body didn’t stay dead, chances are they’re not going
to believe you. Because it’s hard to
believe things that go against our usual way of thinking. Give me the facts. I want to see it with my own eyes. I want proof.
Faith means
believing, trusting in things for which we don’t have proof. It might seem hard. It might go against the wisdom of our
age. It might go hand in hand with
doubts and questions. But it is
essential. Faith is essential to life.
Now I’m not
talking specifically about Christian faith or even religious faith more broadly. I’m talking about the faith that underpins
the life of pretty much everyone on this planet. For all of us, from the most fervent believer
to the most hardened skeptic, most of the important things in life we take on
faith.
I believe
that my wife Guylaine loves me. Now, I
can’t prove it beyond doubt. I certainly
wouldn’t ask her to prove it to me, that would only get me in trouble. But I believe it. I have faith. And I base my life on it. Now some might argue
that love is an illusion, that it’s simply a trick our brain plays on us based
on electrical signals and chemical reactions, and they say I can’t prove
otherwise. And the truth is, they’re
right, I can’t. But I believe it. I believe it not because I can prove it, but
because I experience it to be true and it helps me make sense of my life – no,
it doesn’t just help me make sense of my life, it actually enriches my life,
makes my life better.
We have
faith in a lot of important things. We
believe that there is good and bad, right and wrong, and that at some
fundamental level these things aren’t just preferences or social conventions. We believe, or at least we long to believe,
that our lives matter in some sort of ultimate way, that our lives have meaning
and purpose. For the philosophers among
us, you know that we humans believe that we have free will, though we can’t
actually prove it. For fans of the Matrix
movies and quantum physicists, you know that each one of us believes that there
is actually a world out there that corresponds to our experience of it.
None of
these things can be proved. All are
taken on faith. And we believe them
because we experience them as true, because they enable us to make sense of our
lives and most importantly because they enrich our lives.
Of course,
after a while, we tend to get into a comfortable pattern, where these things we
believe in kind of all hang together and make sense, and eventually we take
them for granted and even forget that our lives are based on faith.
But what
about when something new happens? When
an event takes us by surprise, when someone makes a claim that we find hard to
believe? Well, often we respond as
follows:
“You’re
freakin’ out of your mind!”
After all,
if the dead won’t even stay dead, what can we count on in this universe?
Today we
report once more the claim made by those first witnesses that on that first
Easter, the tomb was found empty, and that by evening, risen from the dead,
Jesus had appeared to a small number of witnesses, to Peter, to the women, to
the eleven apostles.
And when we
make that claim, don’t be surprised when some people tell us we’re freakin’ out
of our minds. Some won’t want to hear
another word. Some will ask for
proof. Others will want to see for
themselves.
But some of
us will believe. Why will we
believe? Not because we don’t have
doubts and questions, we do. But we will
come to believe for the same reasons that we believe other things that underpin
our lives. We will believe because we
experience God as alive and real and present with us and active in our lives. We will believe because our faith in the
resurrection helps us make sense of our lives.
And perhaps most importantly, we will believe because we find that our
lives are greatly enriched as a result.
Faith
changes everything.
My marriage
is hugely enriched because I have faith that my wife loves me.
My life is
so much more awesome because I believe that I matter and that what I do has
meaning and purpose.
Easter
changes everything. Go and see for
yourself the way Peter did and be amazed.
Easter will
enrich our lives beyond our imagination.
It will let us dream dreams the way that Isaiah did, dreams of a day
when there will be no more weeping, when everyone will live out a lifetime,
when there will be no more violence or war, when the wolf and the lamb will lie
down together.
Easter will
let us do the unthinkable the way Peter did when he walked boldly into the home
of Cornelius, the Roman soldier, his sworn enemy, and proclaimed to him the
Easter story and welcomed him as a brother, in total violation of the rules and
conventions of his day.
On the first
day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away and Jesus’
body missing. They were perplexed. But suddenly they had a vision of angels who told
them that Jesus is alive. And the women
remembered what Jesus himself had said and they ran to tell the apostles.
The apostles
responded, “Are you out of your freakin’ minds?”
But what if
the women’s testimony was true?
Easter is
coming.
May your
lives be enriched beyond imagination and may the joy of Easter be yours, today
and always.
Amen.