A Sermon for Easter
I shall not die, but live,and declare the works of the Lord…
This morning, we join Mary and the disciples at the threshold of the tomb.
As we poke our heads into that dark cave in the hill country outside Jerusalem, we brace ourselves for the stench of death,and find it empty.
In the long hours after Jesus died, we were trying to be strong. But the absence of a body finally breaks us. Our worst fear already came true, when the man who promised he would save us, died on the cross. But now, Jesus is really gone, and it feels like a second death.
Now, hope is dead. And there is no possibility of closure, only the bodily ache of despair.
But, just as we are hit with a fresh wave of grief, we turn our faces toward the blinding light of the morning as a mysterious messenger beckons us:
“Do not be alarmed! Do not weep! The longing you have held in your body, the fear and the hope, the promises you were foolish enough to believe – all of it has been redeemed! All of it has been transformed!”
Against all odds, Jesus Christ was dead, and now he is alive.
Here we are again, this Easter morning, standing at the threshold of the tomb, gazing into an empty burial chamber in amazement. Daring to believe in resurrection.
We stand at the doorway between darkness and light, fear and hope, death and life. Here, at the threshold, our perspective is broadened. We finally have the vantage point to understand the truth of all things: Here, in this space between all we thought we knew, and all that Christ is making new, the way we order the world breaks down. The dichotomies no longer make sense. In view of the risen Christ, “even the darkness is as light.”
At the empty tomb, we see everything with new eyes. NOW, we live in the ambient light of the Savior, the living Word, who created all things and redeems all things.
There is no need to fear the future. Because Jesus Christ is risen, and all things grow toward his light. In fact, there is no need, even, to hope. Because what our ancestors have hoped for since Eden has already come true.
We’re not yearning for the old days, or waiting for better ones. Heaven has come to earth, and paradise is here!
New life bursts forth at the threshold of a tomb in Judean hill country.
Here in Austin, we are intimately familiar with thresholds, in the geological sense. That’s because we quite literally live on a fault line. The city is built on a geological landmark called the Balcones Escarpment.
As Austin resident Stephen Harrigan put it in a 1987 article for Texas Monthly,
“The Balcones Escarpment…is geology’s most fateful mark upon the surface of Texas, a bulwark of cracked and weathered rock that extends in a pronounced arc from Waco to Del Rio. It is the Balcones that creates the Hill Country, that sets the stage for the Edwards Plateau and the High Plains beyond. The cotton economy, for our schematic purposes, ends at the base of the escarpment, where the rich blackland prairie…runs literally into a wall. Above that mass of limestone there is only a veneer of soil, and the country is hard, craggy, and scenic—cowboy country. The distinction is that sharp: farmers to the east, ranchers to the west.”
On the east side of town where we are right now, you can still see traces of fertile farmland. Each day when I come home, I have to be extra careful not to track fine, black dirt into my living room.
But just a few miles west, the landscape suddenly transforms into hill country. The ground rises up in stops and starts to reveal red clay and rocky passes.
The first time you drive west toward Lake Travis, you might find, like I did, that “amazement seizes you” at the sudden shift in perspective.
Like the Psalmist, maybe you’ll exclaim:
“This is the Lord’s doing,and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
The landscape here, not unlike the culture, is a juxtaposition of abundance and want, softness and hard living, simultaneously quaint and exhilarating.
But you should know that the Balcones Escarpment isn’t the only interesting thing about the fault line. The result of a violent collision of earth that occurred 20 million years ago, the Balcones Fault Zone also produced the Edwards Aquifer.
Basically, when the ground was pushed up into hill country, it was also pushed down into deep ravines and caves. Rainwater flooded these hidden caverns, forming underground springs that provide water to local waterholes, the Colorado River, and the households of most of Central Texas.
These aquifers are literally what make life possible here.
So, if you’re having trouble finding the fault line, just look to where green things grow and people gather. Amid the tumult, and against the odds, life is nurtured and sustained, right here, at the threshold.
Like so many who settled here before us, the perspective of this place might grip you.
Living here, at the site of a geological wonder, you are living proof of a bigger truth: that the ways we sort the world, into good and bad, salvageable and broken, safe and dangerous, habitat and wasteland, no longer make sense in view of the fault line.
From this vantage point, we see things differently: All of it is redeemable. All of it holds hidden possibility. All of it can be made new.
At the fault line, you realize you no longer need to let yourself down easy. You no longer need the old stories or the doubted promises. Things can be bigger, and better, and more beautiful than you imagined.
Here at the threshold, life is bursting forth.
Today we worship in a church, formed at a geological threshold. And we stand with the disciples, at the fault line of the resurrection.
We have held the black earth of the east while gazing up at the red hills to the west. We have drunk the pure water from aquifers borne of violent shifts below the surface.
We dare to proclaim that the old things can be made new. We insist that life is persistent, growing in crevices and dusty hills, against all odds.
We have seen with our own eyes how the death of an old world can create the conditions for abundant life.
And if all this is true, just about the ground we stand on, how much more is in store for us, who proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the redeemer of the whole world!?
On Easter, we declare that, even in darkness, life is bursting forth!
And so, we proclaim: Alleluia!
“O death, where is thy sting?O grave, where is thy victory?”
Christ swallowed up death and shifted the tectonic plates. Resurrection is here.
Two thousand years after the disciples peered into the empty tomb, we still bear witness to the Risen Savior.
We still dare to be faithful, in a fickle and distracted world. We still dare to believe in the reconciliation of all things, and all people. We still dare to see the bigger picture.
A dead man crossed the threshold of a tomb. Now, we know that life is always possible. Even death carries the seed of resurrection.
I shall not die, but live,and declare the works of the Lord.
Amen.