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It was a challenging Holy Week. Its days were filled with questions, and accusations, desertion and betrayal, helplessness and confusion, and death; joy always at a distance.  It was a necessary week of prayer and meditation, contemplation and yes, hope.  You see, our Holy Week experiences, challenging as they may have been, can lead us to life lived wholly—fully.

The events of this last week are what have brought us to this very day called Easter! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Natalie Sleeth wrote a song called, “Every morning is Easter Morning!”  We know this! Every day we encounter the risen Christ, it is Easter. And we are invited to enter that experience day after day.

The tomb where Jesus’ nail-driven body once laid is empty; it has remained empty for thousands of years. We know this. And yet, not many of us, if any of us, are ever ready to encounter Easter, that is, until we have spent some time in places where hope cannot been seen.   

Each of us has had an experience of hopelessness or two, haven’t we – perhaps a health challenge we face or we face with others, an unexpected job loss, or in marriage or committed relationships. Broken promises, broken too, too often, the death of someone we love, someone who dies much too soon. Many, in the context of one task or another, spoke up on someone’s behalf only to have the words spoken taken out of context and misunderstood—causing unnecessary harm.

We all know the power of sadness and grieving about what could have been, should have been.  So, alongside Mary Magdalene, we walk to the tomb to weep and mourn. All she wants is someone to give her Jesus back. All we want is justice and resolution, for Jesus’ sake. When we arrive longing, what we want most to find appears absent. It’s not there!  Or is it?

Historically, Christians have yet to come to a common understanding about what happened on that first Easter morn. What really happened to the body seems to be the unquenched question. To this day, the concept of resurrection is an intellectual hurdle. — Especially when trying to make sense of the separation of body and soul. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that resurrection is entirely unnatural! She says, “When a human being goes into the ground, that is that… you say goodbye. You pay your respects and you go on with life as best you can.” [In a cemetery, new life grows on the ground, not in it.]  What did happen to Jesus’ body?

We could question, ponder and argue about the exact nature of the resurrection until the cows come home. However, when the barn door closes, the questions will continue to linger. Science, psychology, rationalism and common sense cause us to wrestle with the impossibility of the resurrection—and its reality.  No matter what, these things do not change that fact that on that first Easter morning, when Mary arrived, the tomb was empty!

What truly matters is how we experience the tomb emptied.  Its vastness has the power to cause profound change, personal transformation. Mary knows this, she experienced it in the moment she entered the vacant tomb and heard Jesus call her by name. Today, and every day, Jesus calls us by name reminding us that when we breath in Easter grace, we ourselves outgrow the tombs of life that confine us to sorrow, disappointment, fear, confusion and anger. Recognizing Christ’s presence, we can let go of what makes us weep and cry out so that we can experience life restored. 

If every morning is Easter Morning, every week is holy. Holy weeks lead to our living whole-ly. Jesus is forever alive!  In us—through us!  Happy Easter!

The Good News of the tomb emptied, Jesus’ resurrection, has been entrusted to us, you and I. Each time we embrace the resurrection, we become stronger, wiser, kinder and more daring.  All of this is meant to be shared—throughout the world—in all that we do, in all that we are, not only as individuals but most especially as the body of Christ, the Church.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have experienced our church, the United Church, a church at the center of a political controversy and debate centered on racism in America and the voices who speak about it. At the heart of this moment has been one of our largest and most faithful churches, Trinity, United Church of Christ on the south side Chicago.

Trinity is a church that proclaims itself “unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Its roots are in the Black religious experience and tradition and its focus is on their neighborhoods. Each member of the congregation has been nurtured by their community and their experience of the living Christ who calls them, like us, to be Christ’s presence in all that they are; in all that they do. Worship and prophetic witness are central to their mission. 

When needed, members hold one another accountable, pastors included. We witnessed an example of this, this past Holy Week Tuesday when Senator Barak Obama, a member of Trinity and one of our own, spoke so eloquently about the impact racism has had on every American, including himself and his own family.  His words challenged us to face each other’s truth in ways that move us beyond the cross while encouraging us all, whatever our political or racial views, to walk together to the tomb so that by faith we and our nation might be set free—at last!

We, Christ Congregational Church, proclaim ourselves “Welcoming.” Each Sunday we remind one another that we honor and celebrate the identity and life experience of every person who comes to worship with us.  A few Sunday’s ago, I told you this sanctuary is like Jacob’s well, the place where people come to be known and embraced, warts and all. Here, everyone has the opportunity to find and experience the presence of Christ in another and then be refreshed.

I would also say this sacred space is like an emptied tomb, not a place of death but a sacred place where we are known by name and sent forth into the world. No matter who you are, no matter what you are going through, you can come, be known by name and be embraced with hospitality. In the naming and embracing—together all our lives are transformed.  This is what Church rooted in Christ’s Redemption is about.

According to John’s gospel, Mary is not the only one who comes to the tomb that first Easter morning. Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, came too. When they saw the linen wrappings but “no body”, they believed. But John tells it, they had not yet understood. They simply went home.

We do not hear anymore about the one who remained nameless, but I imagine he went out and preached to anyone who would listen to what he had to say about what he witnessed that day—in perfect inerrant detail. Peter, I suspect, on the other hand, went home to ponder just how to deal with the newest controversy; how he might manage the news most are not ready to comprehend or experience. Shall he keep denying the truth that is right in front of him—you know, keep the waters calm?  Maybe this time, just maybe, this time he will claim his faith openly that we all might believe.

Three of Jesus’ followers came to the tomb that day, each having had their own individual Holy Week experience, challenges, questions and all. And each left the empty tomb, proclaiming Good News in a similar but not uniform way. Yet, together, they become the church, in their own way proclaiming good news to the poor, giving sight to the blind and freedom to those imprisoned. 

Christ Congregational Church, UCC and Trinity, UCC have spent holy days, holy weeks and holy years, facing challenges, which have kept God’s people entombed in poverty, hunger and homelessness. Each church, in its own setting and in its own way has sought to speak the truth in love so that everyone’s holy week truly lead to all God’s people lives lived whole-ly.

Yes, Each sanctuary, each congregation, past and present, is made up of imperfect people.  who come together day after day, week after week to tell the story of individual and collective holy week trials that together we might live more wholly—authentically as one body in Christ.

We are two separate congregations, but still the Church. We each understand that we are not rooted in rugged individualism, but stand and walk together in covenant, so that one day; all might truly be one.  Christ Congregational Church, or for that matter any other congregation within the United Church of Christ, could no more disown Trinity or for that matter, our conservative partners in covenant, than we could disown imperfect, denying, clay-footed Peter, the foundation upon whom the church is built and then called to be the resurrected body of Jesus Christ.  We, individuals who often believe ourselves to be small and insignificant, individuals who find ourselves on the margins, culturally and economically; we, individuals who sometimes feel we don’t have a voice, or that our voice does not matter at all. We, who are enlightened and high minded, wise beyond our years sometimes more outspoken that we ought to be, we who doubt and deny, or run towards the comfort complicity, we, individually and collectively, are the church. We are the ones to whom God has entrusted the small ones, whom God has entrusted with the reality of the emptied tomb, Jesus alive and well.

We know that the cross and the tomb are not the final answer.

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