Easter Sunday Sermon

Sermon for Easter Sunday

None of this makes any sense. None of it. Here we are, coming together to worship God and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead….except….. we’ve never seen someone bodily rise from the dead. We’ve laid to rest many loved ones and none of them have returned to life, as much as we might have wished otherwise. We have never seen death reversed. Yet here we are, celebrating something that seems, on first blush to be impossible.

But the resurrection is hardly the only thing that would be described as impossible when it comes to our faith. We celebrate Holy Communion, which is bread and wine. Anyone coming from outside our tradition would wonder why we think that the bread and the wine are anything but what they appeared, much less the real presence of Jesus. That’s impossible! And, in the words of my colleagues, really weird. How can we believe that Jesus is present in the bread and the wine? It makes no sense.

Or what about baptism? Its just water. Why do we believe there is anything special about the water in the font? How can we say God is in the water? What proof do we have? The temperature didn’t change. The water doesn’t look any different. How do we know God is there?

Or what about the Holy Spirit? Is there really an all powerful, invisible spirt that guides us and sustains us in our life? Couldn’t we just realize that all the good we do in this world, that we normally ascribe to the Holy Spirit, is just our innate goodness coming to the surface? Why do we need to believe in something that we could never prove exists?

Our Bible is filled with stories of the miraculous and the impossible. A virgin birth. A man who washes his leprosy away in the waters of the Jordan. A burning bush. A parted sea. A child born to parents long past their childbearing years. Seven plagues. There is even a talking donkey.

Even our faith is something that makes no sense. In a world of science and logic, the things we should have “faith” in are the things that we can prove. We can have faith in gravity. We can have faith that the sun will rise each morning and set every night. We all know we need to eat, drink, and breath to survive. We know that our family needs the same so they will survive. We know we need money to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. We know we have to rely on our own strength, because in the end, that’s all we can rely on.

Those things make sense. Nothing about our faith makes sense. Not Easter Sunday, or Good Friday, or the miracles, or anything…… it just doesn’t make sense. What are we even doing here?

What are we even doing here? We ask the question, and we know that if we apply material realities to our faith, then it is hard for us to find any tangible proofs. It doesn’t make any sense. And thank God for that.

God doesn’t make sense. God isn’t one that we can stick in a box and then pretend we understand everything God is about. Theologians have tried. And in the end, the greatest theological rationale I have heard about the inscrutable actions of God is…… that God is a mystery. Martin Luther was not a fan of over-explaining the actions of God. He was far more comfortable allowing God to remain a mystery. And that included the actions of God. Did God make sense? No. Did God’s actions make sense? No. They were mysterious, ineffable. And that was an absolute blessing.

When we look around at the reality that “makes sense”, we find a reality that is consumed by violence. It is consumed by hate and by the desire for material affluence, no matter who that might destroy. Yes, there might be moments where goodness and hope peek through, but they are usually reserved for family and loved ones. The world that makes sense is destroying itself.

The reality that makes no sense, God’s reality, is filled with love, when love makes no sense. It is filled with grace, and forgiveness, when it is so much easier and makes so much more sense to hate. In God’s reality, a morsel of bread and a taste of wine is enough to connect us again to God’s forgiveness and give us new life, when in the reality that makes sense, people starve in a world of abundance. In God’s reality, a sprinkle of water upon the brow can seal you as part of a family and help you to know that God’s grace is with you forever. In the reality that makes sense, relationships shatter everywhere we look. In God’s reality, human relationships can still shatter, but God’s relationship with us is forever, and can never be broken.

In the reality that makes sense, there are no miracles. Everything can be explained away and because of that there is no awe, no amazement, no wonder. In God’s reality, every breath is a miracle. Every heartbeat is a wonder. Every smile is a thing of beauty. Every act of love is an act of defiance that makes no sense when death abounds all around us, but it screams God’s name every time love prevails.

In God’s reality, we kneel down to serve our brothers and our sisters, even if we were to find them on the streets, broken. We love all, serve all, and give ourselves away for the sake of the world. In the reality that makes sense, we walk by the broken ones because they are dangerous and dirty and embarrassing.

In the reality that makes sense, dead is dead. Jesus is cold and will soon be forgotten, his teachings a distant memory and his disciples scattered to the winds. In God’s reality, Jesus has risen, he has risen indeed. Jesus has risen. He has risen indeed. Jesus had risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia!!

In God’s reality, love wins. There is hope. There is a future, for everyone.

Nothing about what we do makes sense. Its impossible. Thank you, God, that it is!! Thanks be to God that God’s ways are mysterious, and ineffable, and true none-the-less. We can look out our windows and feel there is no hope. That is what seems to make sense. But in God, hope is alive. Christ is alive. And that is the reality that I would much rather live in.

Amen