All Things New
A Sermon of The Rev. Dr. David A. Killian, Rector
All Saints Parish
Brookline, Massachusetts
Easter Day
March 27, 2005
Text: John 20:1-18
I
Today is a special day and our church seems especially beautiful: the flowers, the bright vestments, the stirring music. If you are a newcomer, you might ask, "Is it like this every Sunday?" Well, to those who only come to church occasionally, I want to say, We don't have the lilies every Sunday, but you will find this same joyful and reverent spirit, and we'll give you a warm welcome every time and help you to feel at home.
Easter is the greatest Christian feast in the year. It expresses what our faith is all about. It is a day of new life, new hope. No matter what your life has been up to this point, Easter is an opportunity for a new beginning. It is a time to start over, to begin anew. You do not have to have your life totally together to be here today; in fact, all of the people here today do not have their lives totally together. You can have doubts, questions and confusion. The wonderful message about Easter is that God wants to work a resurrection in your life. God cares about you and will help you to change.
Some times we don't know how God will help us to change, but it begins with a willingness to search and seek for the truth. Like Mary in today's Gospel passage, we need to go looking for Jesus. Very early in the morning, when it was still dark, she went to the tomb. She sees that the stone has been removed; the body of Jesus is no longer there. She runs to tell Simon Peter and other disciple, who race to the tomb and go in; they see the wrappings, but not the body. They did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.
I like the tentative nature of today's Gospel. It invites belief and doesn't hit you over the head. It honors the truth that faith is a process, a journey. Mary, Peter, and the other disciple have questions, they don't know yet what has happened. Like them, we do not understand it all at first. We may never understand it. That's all right. God accepts us where we are and invites us to take the next step.
This morning I would like to reflect with you about how Easter asks us to tell it like it is; honor the wounds; and sense the possibility.
First, Easter asks to tell it like it is. Christianity is a very realistic religion. Christian faith calls us to affirm reality, not wear rose-colored glasses or say something is other than it really is. During the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates almost 150 years ago, after a long and puffy speech by Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln asked the audience, "How many legs would a horse have if you called his tail a leg?" "Five," called out some of the onlookers. "Four," replied Lincoln. "Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it true." And, so Christians are called to prize the truth as a gift from God and to tell it like it is.
Therefore, even on this beautiful Easter Sunday, with all the glorious hymns and beautiful flowers, I am very mindful of Good Friday -- the first Good Friday when Jesus was put to a cruel and unjust death, and the ongoing Good Fridays in our modern world of war, famine, poverty, AIDS, betrayal, and cruelties of every kind. If Easter calls us to "tell it like it is" then we must speak about the false arrests, the unjust trials, the imprisonments, the scourgings, the cross, and the crucifixion in our personal lives and in the world. Easter faith does not blind us to the reality of Good Friday.
II
Second, Easter asks us to honor the wounds. If you look at the yellow insert page in your worship leaflet, you see an illustration of the risen Christ. Please note the wounds on his hands and feet. The wounds are marks of what he endured and what he triumphed over. The risen Christ bears those wounds as a sign of his love for us. Henri Nouwen, the great spiritual writer, says that we who follow Christ are "wounded healers." We each have some disability, some wound. But the good news is that our wounds can be healed and may become the instruments to heal others.
III
Third, Easter calls us to sense the possibility. The illustration on the yellow insert page shows the risen Christ holding a banner that proclaims, "Behold, I make all things new." Easter is about new possibilities and God's power to change our lives.
Sabriye Tenberken lost her sight at age 12 through a congenital degenerative retinal disease. A native of Bonn, Germany, she studied and received a master's degree on the culture of Tibet. Her study led her to discover that there was no Braille alphabet for the 42 characters in the Tibetan language, so she developed one -- in just two weeks.
Although regarded as a mountain paradise, Tibet has twice as much blindness per capita as the global average, due to high altitude and sun exposure. Treatment there has long been hampered by the belief that blindness is a punishment for misdeeds in a previous life. And so, beginning in 1997, Tenberken traveled the mountain country on horseback with a Tibetan health counselor, crossing treacherous passes and sleeping in yurts, which were often visited by rats. But the hardest part was not the physical rigors of her journey. "We met kids who had been tied to a bed for years so they didn't hurt themselves. Some couldn't walk because their parents hadn't taught them." Appalled, Tenberken disentangled reams of red tape that the Tibetan authorities threw at her and finally, in 1998, opened a boarding school for visually impaired children. "We faced lots of prejudice," recalls Sabriye. "Sometimes it was hell, but I enjoy challenges!"
Fifty pupils have been made welcome at the center, where they learn to read and write Tibetan, Chinese, and English, and also receive vocational training. But their most important lesson is self-reliance. "We want to show the kids that they don't have to be ashamed of their handicap. We want them to stand up and say: 'I am blind, not stupid!'"
So, on this glorious day, Easter calls us to "tell it like it is" in this all-too-often Good Friday world, to honor our wounds, and to sense the possibility, so that we, like Sabriye Tenberken, can be wounded healers giving hope and new life to others. For the risen Christ proclaims, "Behold, I make all things new."
Alleluia! Amen.