Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Text: Luke 24:1-7, 36-48
In my humble opinion I think that the greatest rock band that was ever put together consisted of: Ricky, who played lead guitar; Nick, who played drums; Paul, who played a base guitar; and for the rhythm and the lead vocal, me. In fact, I think we were so awesome, so magnificent, that we couldn't wait for our debut performance. We had been rehearsing in a garage in a manse in central New Brunswick and we were ready for our great big debut, thinking that of course all the great managers in the world would want to sign us on!
It was a high school performance, “The Battle of the Bands” and we were so convinced that we were going to win that we even suggested they engrave our names on the trophy before the contest ever took place. Here we were, four incredible musicians, making wonderful music, covers of BTO, April Wine, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Kansas - we did it all. We rocked hard and we rocked well. So we thought.
In the building adjacent to the garage was the manse. The manse is where my father, my mother and I lived. My father was the local minister. He came around to the garage and he stood on a bench listening to us perform: these four boys with great egos, but absolutely no rhythm! He listened for a while, and finally he had the courage to enter the garage. Naturally, we looked to him for affirmation - one, last confirming statement that we were the great band that we thought we were. He did not agree. He said we were terrible. We were to rock music what the Maple Leafs are to play-off hockey these days. We thought we were good, but we were not really.
My father, who was in his late fifties, a minister with a clerical shirt on and who you would think would have absolutely no credibility in such matters, to his great credit was a lover of Pink Floyd. He did say, “You know, your problem is you need a conductor. What is happening is that the four of you are all looking down at your instruments, playing away your pieces, but you have no rhythm. You have no tune. You are not even playing together. If you want to perform, you need someone to conduct you and lead you properly.”
He phoned a gentleman in the town who was classically trained, who himself had just conducted The Flight of the Valkyries in Fredericton - a wonderful piece of music - and this conductor came and listened to us. He concurred with my father. “You are dreadful,” he said, “but I can make you better and this is what I want you to do. Never mind looking down at your frets and your bases and your symbols, look up, follow me and you will be just fine. Actually, you are not bad at playing your individual instruments but you need me to conduct you.”
Lo and behold, to our great astonishment, causing my father to nearly have a heart attack, we played well. We suddenly made lovely music. The conductor brought out the best in us. When the night of the great performance came and “The Battle of the Bands” began, he came and sat in the front row of the auditorium, right in front of the stage and he just moved his fingers and we played - and we finished last. You wanted to know, didn't you? At least we made the song sound like the song we were playing.
We complained of course afterward that it was way too difficult for us and next time we would be able to do it fine, but we knew in ourselves we were pathetic. I sometimes think that we all feel like that at Easter a bit. It is like we are living in our little worlds with our eyes down, and we come to this majestic moment of Easter and we are not really sure what it is all about. We sing our praises, we go to church, we do the alleluias, but we are not totally convinced that is the powerful thing that some say it is.
We are even concerned, as the Apostle Paul said in the Book of Corinthians that we might seem a little bit foolish if we were to go into the streets and tell people that we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. We sometimes think that nothing actually has changed as a result of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And finally, we go to work on Monday or maybe for some of us Tuesday, and we go back into the same rituals and the same wheel we get on, and it is as if nothing really has changed. We are just not quite sure what to make of Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
We are not alone. The very first disciples were equally full of doubt and uncertainty. They too were looking down and they were remorseful. After all, they had committed their lives to follow Jesus: they dropped their nets, they dropped their work and they had left their families to follow him as the Messiah. They had watched him crucified and placed in the tomb and everything was now over. The last time they saw him he was a dead man being put in a stony grave and they looked down and they did not know what was happening and they were confused and concerned.
How did they make sense of this? And, what happened to them that they were so transformed? It is because that in finding out what happened to them we find out what can happen to us as we encounter Easter in 2012. I would like to suggest to you that there are two ways we can look at this.
The first is by affirming that Jesus loves Sundays. It is as if the great conductor has suddenly appeared on the scene. The disciples however, are so terrified that they send three women into the tomb to prepare the body with spices, for after having been dead three days a body would need such preparation. And sowe are told in the Gospel of Luke that three women went and they were the first to experience the Resurrection. They went - Joanna, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James - to put in the spices and to say farewell to Jesus. It was the last thing that they were going to do.
When they got there something spiritual happened to them. It was like an angelic power came upon them and said, “Why are you looking for the living amongst the dead? Don't you know that he is risen? He is not here.” The women were confounded. They couldn't believe it! This was beyond any experience that they had ever had in any other realm. Then the angel told them, “Don't you remember what Jesus said that he would be crucified, but on the third day, Sunday, he would rise from the dead? Don't you believe that? Don't you know that is what has happened?” They were blown away! They couldn't imagine that this thing had happened. It is beyond their experience.
It is as if they are being told that this is now the vindication of Jesus' ministry. This is now the victory over death. This is now the vanquishing of evil. This is now the voice of truth and they are there to witness it, and they are in awe. But now they have to go back to tell the Apostles that this has happened and they are terrified to do this. They go back and they tell the disciples what they have seen and we are told quite concretely the disciples did not believe.
I think it is fascinating that even secular, scholarly literature writers make a couple of observations about these stories in the Gospels. One of them is that they are very restrained and that the language used is not flamboyant. It does not go into great detail. It just gives a very matter-of-fact account of the appearance of Jesus and the empty tomb. It is restrained. Many secular writers of literature say it is incredible that the Christian Gospel is based on something that is actually, from a literary point of view, so small.
Others look at this philosophically, “Isn't it amazing how it addresses doubt head-on?” There is no sense in which this is a triumphal piece of literature or a triumphal story with no doubt involved. In fact, the people who are responsible for the sources of the writing of the Gospel actually are the disciples and they make it abundantly clear that they doubted. There is room for doubt in the Christian faith.
There is room for questioning, like we do in our lives, but in that questioning there is this great affirmation: Jesus likes Sundays. He had gone through the hell of Good Friday: he had gone through the persecution, the ignominy of having his clothes torn and sold and of being nailed to a cross. He descended, as the writers of the Bible say, “into hell.” He had gone to the dark places in the night. But now it is Sunday and all that he promised has come true! The story doesn't end there.
The disciples liked Mondays. It was now the evening of the Sunday and two men were approached by Jesus on the walk to Emmaus, these men are encountered by the living Jesus. They do not recognize him but when they sit and have dinner with him, they realize who he is: he is Jesus, their Lord. They are so overwhelmed by what happened that they went to the eleven who were back in Jerusalem in an Upper Room and they tell them the good news.
Not only had the women borne witness, but two others on the way to Emmaus bore witness: Jesus was alive! Still we are told they did not believe. This is now the second time they don't believe. Their eyes are down. Monday is about to come and it is late at night. Monday is bringing with it all kinds of tragedies and difficulties and fears. They are going to have to go out into the streets of Jerusalem at some point, and you can imagine how frightened they were of the Romans and of the religious leaders now that their Lord and Messiah was dead. They didn't like Mondays!
I think if they had known Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats (now I am really showing my age!) they would probably have got together and sung something like this from I Don't Like Mondays:
...No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat.
They can see no reasons
Causes there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?
Tell me why?
I Don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I want to shoot
The whole day down.
...With the problems and the how's and the why's
And you can see no reasons
”˜Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die?
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I want to shoot
The whole day down.
That is exactly how the disciples were feeling!
Just when they were looking down as it were at their own instruments, the Great Conductor appears and he waves his arms and says, “Peace be with you. Shalom.” “Why are you terrified?” says Jesus, “Why are you frightened?” The joy and the bewilderment had got to them. They had no idea what to make of this. But, he doesn't only say “Peace be with you” to give them that sense of solace that they so desperately needed, but he says, “Look, touch my hands. These are not the hands of a ghost. I am raised from the dead. Give me something to eat.” So, they give him some fish, and he eats it.
This is not an apparition or a spiritual vision. This is the bodily Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. They are overwhelmed. They can't imagine what they have seen. Then he starts to open the Scripture up to them and he reads from the Psalms and from Moses, the Torah: the law. He reads to them from the Prophets, and then they understand who he is. They realize what he had predicted when he said that he would crucified and on the third day would rise from the dead and then they believed. From that belief came the entire Christian Church. From that belief arose what we do here today, two thousand years later. Finally, the disciples could say, “We like Mondays, because Jesus is here.”
Do you like Mondays? Do we like Mondays? There are many people who are terrified by Mondays. Those who are in palliative care don't like Mondays - another day of suffering. Those who have been tortured, and as some of you know, I met a man who had been tortured in Iran who came to this church, and keeps coming for help. His story completely and utterly devastated me. He doesn't like Mondays. For those who are waking up in Syria this morning and are frightened, they don't like Mondays. For those who are prostitutes, who are being forced to work inside or outside - it makes no difference where they are, they are abused - they don't like Mondays. For those who are bullied and depressed and pushed around, they don't like Mondays. For those who are affluent and find that their affluence is not enough to revive their souls, they don't like Mondays. For those who are feeling the pain and the anxiety of depression, they don't like Mondays.
There are a lot of people who don't like Mondays, but they should like Mondays. And they will when they realize that those Mondays are not something that they enter alone: they enter it with the Risen Jesus right beside them, right in front of them, sitting at the right hand of God above them, and from below them lifting them up.
We have become so distracted by the things of life that we forget the power of this Resurrection and so we go about our daily work and our daily lives on Mondays as if nothing has changed. But, it has! The Great Conductor has come and he wants us to sing and he wants us to pray and he wants us to live the joy of the power of his Resurrection.
On October 18, 1991, something amazing happened in Chicago. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was celebrating the end of its year-long centennial celebration. They brought together all the great conductors that had been there, and they brought in many of the great pianists to play the piano. It was going to be an amazing evening. But then just before the actual performance there was a reception. All the major donors and supporters of the symphony over the years were given magnificent gold carriage clocks as a thank-you for having supported the symphony.
Everyone took their clock and joined all the others in the auditorium where there was going to be a magnificent performance by David Baramboin, and Georg Solti was conducting Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. What a piece of music! All of a sudden, Solti waves the wand and the music begins and the piano erupts into sound, and Tchaikovsky lifts everyone and there is this magnificent cacophony of sound. At nine-fifteen, there is a series of beeps: one beep, then another beep, then another beep, then another beep, followed by dozens and dozens of beeps!
Solti had to stop the performance. What is going on? The music is dying! The problem is that the carriage clockmaker had set all the clocks to ring at 9:15 p.m. so they could hear how wonderful the chimes were for this clock that they had been given. These little clocks became the biggest nuisance that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had ever heard, and one-by-one they were removed from the building, and Solti waved his baton and the concert went on, and Tchaikovsky is played, and the music is restored.
That is like our lives. So often we become distracted by inane and silly things and we forget everyday that Christ is with us. We leave this place on Easter Sunday, we go back to our work on the wheel on Monday morning and we forget that Christ is risen and Christ is with us. We forget the power of the death, the vindication of good over evil, and that the power of love over the things that bind us has now been reaffirmed, because now Jesus of Nazareth is raised from the dead.
This is not some mystic idea. This is the power of the Risen Christ, who waves his baton and says, “If you want to like Mondays as much as I love Sundays, then just look up and follow me, for I am the Risen Lord.” Amen.