2008 Easter Sunday

On a good day, souffl�'s are fussy little things. They collapse, they don't rise, they look pathetic at the table as you are serving them. I usually try to avoid making them, but a few weeks ago my daughter found a chocolate souffl� recipe on the internet and asked if we could make it. That night. I was hesitant. I told her not to expect much from baking novices, and to expect to be eating a puddle of collapsed souffl�. She was game. We carefully mixed the ingredients, following each step by the book. We poured the batter into the souffl� dish, made a little cuff with aluminum foil as I had watched chefs do when I worked in restaurants, and slid it carefully into the oven. And then we waited. The recipe suggested 24-26 minutes so I paced for that length of time. I tiptoed around the kitchen, glancing at the oven, peering into the window, watching. I walked away. It began to rise, but I know it was precarious. We weren't out of danger yet. We had 5 minutes to go. Hang in there I willed. Finally, at 25 minutes the timer dinged and we opened the oven door. I gently jiggled the oven rack to see if the middle of the souffl� was done enough - ?cause you can't put the thing back in the oven once it is out!! It seemed okay. We put it on the counter and admired it's risen glory. Then we dove in and spooned up two big portions of airy, gooey, light chocolate heaven and devoured it. Aaaaah. I never have to make a souffl� again.

Risings can be painful and precarious.

Years ago I worked as an afterschool childcare provider years ago in Marin County. We had children ages 5 through 11 every day after school, about 35-40 kids in all. One week we had a training about inappropriate touching. The teachers were trained and then the children also had a session with the educator. She was teaching the children to notice inappropriate touching - she started with mild infractions such as friends grabbing you and hugging you or relatives pinching your cheeks and telling you how cute you were. The point of the training was to empower children to define their own body space and to speak up when someone touched them in a way that was uncomfortable for them. I remember one shy little girl of about 5 yrs. old who was picked to be an example. She was suppose to act out a relative she knew pinching her gently and she was suppose to say clearly and firmly, "Please don't pinch my cheeks. If you would like to give me a hug, that would be okay." She dug deep to find her words. It took three tries of pinching her to stand up to an adult. But the third attempt, with her arms at her sides with her hands clenched, she said slowly and firmly, "Please don't pinch my cheeks!" We all clapped as she sat back down in, triumphant at finding her voice.

Risings can be slow and agonizing.

John's Gospel tells us that on a morning long ago, before the light of dawn was even visible, Mary Magdalene, faithful disciple of Jesus, came to his tomb and found the stone rolled away. She assumed that during the night grave robbers had come and stolen the body of her Lord. She ran to get Peter and another disciple as a witness before she walked into the tomb. She said to them both, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." They ran back to the tomb and the men went inside to look. What they found was an empty tomb with the linen wrappings that had been wrapped around the body of Jesus and the cloth that had covered his head. The head cloth was rolled up carefully in a place by itself. Surely this was no grave robbery they realized - if someone had stolen the body of Jesus it would have looked differently. The linen cloths would have been with the body, or ripped off and cast aside in the haste most likely. The Bible says they believed but they did not understand yet the scripture and the men returned to their homes.

But Mary stands and weeps. As she wept, she bent down and looked into the tomb and saw two angels sitting where the body of Jesus should have been, one at the feet and one at the head. "Woman, why are you weeping?" She told them she was weeping because the body of Jesus had been taken away and she didn't know where they had laid him." Mary still believed that Jesus was simply dead. She turned around and saw another person who asked her the same question, "Woman, why are you weeping?" Thinking he was the gardener and might know where the body of Jesus lay, she said to him, please tell me where you have laid him; to which the man replied, "Mary!" And Mary recognized him as her Rabbi and teacher and Lord.

She must have made a step towards him to embrace him because he said to her, "Do not hold me? go to my brothers and tell them I am rising to God?" Mary Magdalene, faithful disciple, went and told the other disciples, "I have seen the Lord."

Risings can be slow and mysterious.

No one saw Jesus rise from the dead. Actually, there is one account, but it is not reported in the Bible. It is reported in the "Gospel of Peter" and is a mystical encounter of the stone rolling itself away and two soldiers going in and assisting Jesus as he stumbles out of the tomb. This Gospel story was not included in the Bible with the other stories. The Bible does report various stories of appearances that Jesus has with his close followers in the days following Easter morning. Mary encounters him in the garden; Jesus appears to two other disciples as they walk on the road to Emmaus; Jesus appears to his followers; Jesus meets them on the beach for a fish fry. People began to see and experience Jesus. Some didn't recognize him at first. Others still had a hard time believing that it was really him. But enough people encountered the Risen Christ and told others about it and the word spread.

People took risks to report that Jesus was no longer dead. People's lives changed. Only a few reported that they had seen him. Most had to decide to believe without seeing. Everyone who loved and followed Jesus as Rabbi and man of God had to make a decision - they had to decide whether or not his message died with him on the cross, or if it was alive and real and would continue.

Jesus invited people to rise up against the prevailing culture and to define themselves distinctly as the people of God. He invited people to hold the values of God, values of: Love and compassion when it wasn't necessary,

Forgiveness when it wasn't warranted,

Justice when things were unfair and cruel,

Dependence on God instead of self-sufficiency;

Jesus invited people to hold the values of God even when it meant:

Putting yourself last instead of first,

Being humble instead of being boastful,

Having a deep suspicion of wealth and its hold on our fragile egos,

Being faithful when tempted to cut corners,

Serving the least of our brothers and sisters rather than expecting them to serve us.

Now, these are not normal ways of living in the world. You won't see this advocated much on television or in our culture. It's more fun to be first, to take the bigger piece of pie, to enjoy our luxury, to surround ourselves with people just like us, to hold a grudge if people are mean to us. It's good to be the King!!!! That is mostly how our culture encourages us.

But like Mary Magdalene, we have a choice to make. We can look at the empty tomb. We can look at the funeral cloths lying there without a body in them. We can have a conversation with a stranger who seems familiar. And then we can decide what we will say and do in response.

Today, Jesus is no longer Jesus the man from Nazareth. On Easter morning Jesus becomes the Risen Christ - his "earthly ministry is over; the ministry of the exalted, glorified, ever-abiding Christ begins." (Fred Craddock in Preaching Through the Chistian Year, Year A) The resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not "a return to the past, but a movement to the future." (e-mail exegesis from B. Stofregan) Those of us who follow the Risen Christ must find our voices, speak up for the kind of world God envisioned, and be part of that vision.

Jesus the risen Christ lays a claim on our lives. He says to each of us, what you do with your lives, how you speak, how you act, and the way you conduct your life is important. It is crucial. If we are to rise with Christ on this Easter Day, we must follow his actions and re-direct our own lives, starting now. So, on this beautiful Easter morning, surrounded by glorious music and fresh flowers, and a loving church community, close you eyes for a moment and reflect on the way you are living your life, spending your time and making the choices you make. And then re-commit yourself to following the Risen Christ this Easter Day. God needs you and me to build the kingdom here on earth that God envisioned so long ago. Alleluia, Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen indeed. Amen.