Have you ever come to a complete dead end in your life? A time when everything you thought you knew, everything you thought you had, or maybe someone whom you thought loved you lies in tatters all around you? At some point in our lives – probably at many points in our lives – this has happened to each of us. A job is lost. A loved one dies. The love of our life leaves. An investment goes sour. A friend betrays us. And suddenly the world as we knew it comes to a crashing end.
There are many deaths in the course of each one of our lives. We all know what it is, how it feels.
On Friday night, Good Friday night, I watched the story of one person’s life falling apart. Perhaps you saw it too. Jim McGreevey, then governor of New Jersey, was everything a rising young politician should be. Handsome, articulate, passionate. Fire in the belly and a real up-and-comer. He had caught the attention of the power-brokers in his party and his future seemed dazzlingly clear. There was even talk of an eventual run for the White House down the road.
And then it happened. A former male staff member threatened a lawsuit charging McGreevey with sexual harassment because they had, in fact, had an affair. His secret was exposed and Governor McGreevey had no choice but to come onto national television and share his truth with the world “I am a gay American.” Perhaps that wouldn’t matter today, but when it happened almost ten years ago that moment ended his career. His dreams were shattered, his life seemed over. What followed was a messy divorce; he became fodder for the tabloids and the subject of late night talk show hosts’ jokes.
This may seem an odd and maybe even depressing way to start an Easter sermon. In his powerful meditation two days ago, Fr. Stowe reminded us that Good Friday makes no sense without Easter. The Cross is meaningless without the Resurrection. The corollary is also true: Easter is meaningless without Good Friday; the Resurrection makes no sense without the Cross.
When Peter, John, and then Mary Magdalene each came to the tomb that first Easter morning, their lives as they knew them had been shattered. Their friend, teacher, mentor lay dead in that tomb and with him all their hopes. Had they not believed that he was the long-expected Messiah, the one promised to their people for so many centuries? And yet two of them had seen him nailed to a cross and die an agonizing death just two days before. His burial was rushed because of the approach of the Sabbath at sundown that day, so the only reason to come to the tomb now was to complete the proper anointing of his body. Other than that, their lives were now at that dead-end point where hope has died and everything lies in tatters.
We know the end of the story, but at that point neither Peter, nor John, nor Mary Magdalene did. They did not yet know that the tomb was empty, that it wasn’t their lives that were shattered but rather death itself. They didn’t know that Jesus had risen from the dead. They didn’t know that death’s hold on us had been irrevocably shattered – death with a capital “D” as well as all the small “d” deaths that try to stake their claims on our lives. They didn’t know that – yet. But when they walked into the tomb and saw it empty, saw not their lives but Jesus’ burial cloths lying tattered all around them, when Mary heard her risen Lord call her by name, then the new reality dawned in their hearts. Christ is risen – death no longer has the final word. Neither death with a capital “D” nor all the little “d” deaths that try to stake their claims throughout our lives.
What does the resurrection mean to you? Does it inform your life in any meaningful way? What does resurrection mean to you?
For Jim McGreevey resurrection became the lens through which he viewed the train wreck his life had become. Without the resurrection, what? Unresolved anger, bitterness, hatred, revenge? Without the lens of the resurrection, where do you go? How do you climb up from the bottom of such a very deep pit?
In McGreevy’s case, viewing his life through the lens of the resurrection led to transformation and new life. Not the life he had imagined for himself, but ultimately one which has become far richer, far more meaningful. He now works with incarcerated women, drawing from his own experience of death and resurrection to help them turn their lives around, showing them in a real way that with God there is always a second, and a third, fourth, fifth – one hundred and fifth – chance. Maybe not the acclamation and power and prestige he had once yearned for; instead a life of real meaning making a real difference in the life of others. But without that lens of resurrection, what…?
Does the resurrection take away pain and sorrow, heartbreak and disappointment? No, fortunes will still be lost, loved ones will still die — as ultimately some day so shall we all. The world will still continue to be a troubling and a challenging place. But in the resurrection we are given not just the hope but the promise that those are not the end of the story, that that (point to crucifix) is not the end of the story. It was not the end of Jesus’ story and therefore it is not the end of ours. Throughout our lives those little “d” deaths will still occur, but the lens through which we see them, the lens of the resurrection, changes everything.
May this Eastertide be a time for each one of us to find and be found by that lens once again. May the hope given to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead be renewed in our hearts today and carry us forward in the days, weeks, months and years to come. Alleluia! The Lord is risen! AMEN.
Easter Day Year C
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