Easter Day

April 8, 2007

The Rev. David R. Hackett

The Lord is my strength and my song…”
Psalm 118:14

What are some of the things you think of when you think of Easter?  Now before you start thinking of what you should be thinking, like Resurrection and Redemption, what do you really think about when you hear the word Easter?  Maybe Easter eggs, or chocolate bunnies, or Easter dinners with family?

I remember so well hiding Easter eggs inside the house on rainy Easters and finding the forgotten one a week later by its smell.  On this cold Easter morning I’m reminded  of a March Easter Day when we had 6” of snow on the ground and my father laughing at my mother because she insisted she was going to wear her new spring hat to church.  It looked great with her galoshes in the snow!

What are you thinking of?  Are you thinking the things I’ve mentioned are too childish?  It’s ok.  We’re all children.  And we are children of the good God who created us and loves us with a love which cannot be calculated; a love which even death can’t stop.

This is a day for a least three things:
it is a day for singing;
it is a day for joy;
Easter is a day for laughter.

Notice how much singing we do on this great feast day?  We are blessed here at St. John’s with a wonderful choir.  As an interim I’ve experienced a great number of choirs.  St. John’s choir is exceptional.  But you don’t have to be in the choir today to sing out.  We all like to sing, well, at least most of us.  I read recently that something like 80% of people sing while alone in their car listening to music on the radio, people who might not ever hit a note if someone else were around.  Most of us like to sing, even if we sing poorly.  Why?  Because sometimes our hearts are so joyful that words alone are inadequate.  And so, music allows us to reveal our souls.  And we Christians certainly have a lot to sing about.

Church is the only place I know where we get the chance to sing with other people.  How wonderful that is.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, Life Together, wrote, “It is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song.  Thus all singing together must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian Church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the Church.”

The Church Universal this day raises its voice in song.  Think of it.  All around the world on this day Christians are joining us in song.  Ours is the joyful song of thanksgiving for what God has done for us in Christ.  The song is Alleluia to the Risen Lord!

This day, this Easter, this Feast of the Resurrection, is our day of joy, our day of Holy Laughter.  Admittedly, mixed with our joy is bewilderment.  Just as those women who found an empty tomb were bewildered.  They had come there to embalm his dead body.  They didn’t understand, but they experienced.  They experienced the joy of knowing that he was risen.  Understanding is good, but entering into the resurrection mystery is better.  I long ago decided that Easter Day is not for explanation (who is audacious enough to attempt that?).  No, it is for proclamation: for telling out the good news of Christ’s victory.  This is mystery.  The mystery of life which is eternal.  The mystery of love which is indestructible.  The mystery of a God who enfleshes himself even to death on a cross.  And entering into that mystery is pure joy.

That crusty old puritan hell-fire and damnation preacher, Jonathan Edwards, in 1722 resolved, “never to utter anything that is sportive or a matter of laughter on the Lord’s Day.”  Well, I’m thankful that Episcopalians were never Puritans.  Oh I know the difference between the laughter evoked by some crude joke and profound joy.  Great joy is apt to be silent and dwells more in the heart than on the tongue.  But joyfulness is our lot!  Express it as you will.

I like the way the composer Joseph Hayden expressed it.  His music is joyful and alive.  During his lifetime he was sometimes criticized for the gaiety of his church music.  To that criticism he replied, “When I think of God my heart is so filled with joy that the notes fly off as from a spindle.”  That is our kind of joy this morning.  We hear the Lord of Life speaking to us, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Our music, our joy, our laughter are signs of victory.  The great truth we celebrate today is not just that we are to have new life after death.  That is not the greatest thing.  The greatest truth is that we are to, and may, live life fully, nobly, completely in the here and now.  We can truly live now because we are to live forever.  We sing and laugh and have joy today because we who were dead, dead in hate and dead in sin, are given eternal life now.

The Church, on this most holy day, calls us to rejoice.  And reminds us that despite so many appearances to the contrary, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all manner of things will be well.”  That there is indeed a peace beyond our understanding  which comes from God.  That our incompleteness will be made whole.  That our torn relationships with other will be healed.  And that nothing will separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Risen and Living Lord Jesus Christ is our song.  He is our joy.  He is our laughter!     

Amen.