Stephen Baldwin
NT: Luke 24.1-12
An Idle Tale
We live in
anxious days. We’re anxious about our
jobs, our community’s safety, and our family’s security. We’re worried about shrinking budgets and
rising prices. We’re nervous about too
many too many bills coming due on the same day.
We’re deeply concerned about violence and terror across the globe. We live in anxious days.
Like the
Israelites who wandered through the desert--unsure when their next meal would
come, unsure when they would arrive at their final destination--we need peace
of mind from our anxieties. Like the
women who arrived at the tomb, expecting to prepare Jesus’ body for burial,
only to find that he wasn’t there, we worry.
This
morning, I have Good News for anyone who is anxious: The stone is gone! Jesus is risen!
The women
who went to the tomb expected Jesus’ body to be there, expected to prepare it
for burial, expected it to be difficult moving rolling away the stone, expected
it to be another depressing day in what had been an unbearable week. Then they saw that the stone was gone. And their anxiety quickly turned. They became terrified. Where was he?
Who had taken him? And why?
Jus then,
they were told by people shining so brightly they could only be angels, that
Jesus is risen! Risen? they must have
thought. Is that what he was trying to
tell us about being handed over to sinners before being risen on the third day? And…isn’t this the…third day? Their terror quickly turned to absolute joy,
as they realized what was happening.
They had no reason to worry.
Jesus was alive! Death could not
destroy him! Violence could not control
him! A cross could not kill him! So they went to the disciples and shared the
good news. Easter is a day for sharing
good news, especially when you live in anxious days.
I’d like to share a story of good
news with you on this Easter. It’s a
story about Robyn and her daughter Millie.
Robyn was my seminary classmate, and she now serves a church in
Iowa. Last year, she and her husband
welcomed a baby girl, Millie, into their family.
Robyn runs marathons, but that
could not prepare her, she said, for 24 hours of labor. She endured, and Millie came into the world,
an answer to her parent’s prayers.
Quickly, though, their joy turned to anxiety. Doctors told them something was wrong. Perhaps an intestinal blockage. They would have to do surgery. “Nothing to worry about,” they said. “It’s minor.”
But little Millie, a mere three
days old, endured a heart attack and a stroke during surgery. She suffered brain damage. And two months after Millie came into the
world, she died.
So this Ash Wednesday, Robyn wrote
a letter to Millie in hopes of making peace with these anxious days. She wrote, “Oh my darling girl, when you passed
my world shattered. People told me that it wouldn’t always be this way, but
when you’re entombed in such sadness, you can’t see anything beyond it. My head
knew it wouldn’t always be this way, but this isn’t something you think
through; it’s something you feel, you live, you breathe and fearfully walk one
step at a time through it all.”
“But my love, as the nausea
subsided, and my sadness remained, something else began to happen. Somehow
light, and joy, and laughter began to shine through.”
She says she now knows that, “God sits with us in
the ashes and sorrow. And through those painful moments, even if we ourselves
can’t feel it, others remind us that morning will come, the light will break
forth, again, and we will all vibrate with the singing of the whole world. On Easter
Sunday we celebrate that Christ rose, that Christ is rising today in our very
lives, and that Christ will rise again.”
Easter is about sharing good news,
not in spite of the anxiety that surrounds us, but because of it. On Easter, Christians stand and proclaim in a
world full of anxiety, death, and terror, that God is not subject to those
limitations.
After the women told the other
disciples the good news…“The stone is gone!
Jesus is risen!”…they didn’t believe it.
Their minds were too anxious to have any room for joy. But later, Peter went to the tomb himself,
and he saw the burial cloths which has wrapped Jesus’ body mere days before,
lying on the ground. For Peter, that was
the moment when anxiety turned to joy, when he realized that light will break
forth, that love does always win, and that Christ was indeed risen.
I told you Robyn’s story was a
story of good news. At the end of her
letter, Robyn tells Millie that she will have a baby sister later this
year.
What can we
do…what should we do…in the midst of these anxious days? We should keep our eyes on the Lord, we
should savor every minute of this beautiful life, and we should do our very
best to make this world a better place for the day when Jesus rises again. Amen.
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