Whom do you Seek? (Easter C)

Whom do you seek?   
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Easter C
27 March 2016 8:00 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharists

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;1 Corinthians 15:19-26 ; Luke 24:1-12

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

A few weeks after Easter last year, I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with my Anglican religious order, the Society of Catholic Priests.  I was moved again and again by the various sites we visited, dozens of them. It was all very meaningful, but I always had the haunting question of how many of the sites were identified by 4^th century pious imagination or actually had real claims to be where events took place in the first century.    

The most certain of all, I think, were the sites associated with the night of Jesus’ arrest.  Gethsemane still has 4 trees that were alive when Jesus prayed and was arrested there.  From the garden, it is about a 45 minute brisk walk down the Kidron Valley and up a long flight of stone steps from the first century that have been excavated and are still extant to the site of the High Priest Caiaphas’ palace: on a promontory across a valley looking out onto the Temple Mount and the Roman governor’s palace.   At the top of that flight of steps that a bound Jesus was forced to march up, there now stands the Church of Gallicantu, the Church of the Cock’s Crow.   In the stone plaza between the Church and the stairs there stands a statue of a rooster singing the morning and of a weeping St. Peter, where almost certainly that sad tale is set.  In the crypt of the Church, four or five stories down through 2,000 years worth of built up dust, rubble, and dirt is a warren of 1^st century cells carved out of the stone beneath the now long-lost palace.  When archaeologists excavated the crypt caves in the 1800s, they found 2^nd and 3^rd century Christian graffiti, still visible, crosses carved into their walls marking the site as one of early Christian special devotion.  Almost certainly, it was in one of these cramped, unlit, and forgotten pits that our Lord spent his last night before his death.

Standing in the lowest cell, I felt the claustrophic and pressing fear that the lights might be extinguished.  I could only imagine what fears beset Jesus there, knowing almost certainly what awaited him in the morning. 

We talk here at Trinity a lot about the Celtic idea of thin places: where the veil between this world and the spirit world is so thin that it is almost transparent.  We feel awe and inspiration in these glorious mountains around us and the nearby ocean, and realize that there is something deep beneath all this. We often feel it in places like the isle of Iona or Skellig Michael, or in the great cathedrals.  Many of us feel it in small intimate churches like Trinity.  It is thin places that give most of us the kernel of our faith, make us willing to listen to stories like those we heard today. 

But there are other thin places, places that touch the darkness rather than the light:   Vimy Ridge, in France, where hundreds of thousands died in trench warfare in 1916; Auschwitz, in Poland; the Road of No Return (for Slaves) in Benin; the Choeung Ek "Killing Fields" in Cambodia; Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan; the Pearl Harbor monument; the Memorial to the Victims of the Rape of Nanjing in China. That ancient little cell in Jerusalem, in its dark, dank way, participates in such dark thinness.

Our lives, as wonderful as they are, can be haunted by such darkness.  Just as the bright thin places give us glimpses of the joy and love beneath creation, these dark thin places point to the pain of human existence: war, hatred, famine, selfishness, abusive power, and ultimately death, the great leveler of all.   Think about this last week with murders in the name of God:  Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast; Brussels; Nigeria and Iraq, again. The U.S. political season sinks to ever-new lows:  fear and hatred of the alien, boastful pride, almost exultant bullying, lying, and willful disregard of demonstrable facts seem the currency of the realm.

The reality of that cell, of the unjust arrest, torture, and execution of Jesus touched me as I was in that dark, thin place.    In it I recognized an old acquaintance:  fear of meaninglessness, of random ugliness, and horror.  Fear that might makes right, that looking out for number one in the here and now is the only reasonable life strategy in a world where death is the final destination. 

I never felt quite the same connection to the events at the sites of the crucifixion, resurrection, and burial.  Perhaps this is because the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located on sites identified only in the 4^th century by St. Helena, mother of Constantine, and have been politically controlled and contested hot properties ever since.   Perhaps it is because the actual stories of the crucifixion and resurrection in our Gospels include many elements that seem to be later meditations on and legendary narrative additions to the earliest apostolic preaching. 

Such preaching, dating only 20 years after the events, is found in St. Paul: that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he was raised from the dead, and that he appeared to Cephas and the Twelve, more than 500 believers, to James and the apostles (1 Cor. 15:5-7).   

So I ask myself, where can I find a thin place that connects me to the resurrection like that cell connected me to Jesus’ death?  

Here in this theater town, Ashland, it is worth noting that today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke was the basis of one of the earliest precursors to modern theater.  One of the great liturgical texts of the Middle Ages was the core of the Miracle Plays performed in public spaces outside cathedrals in that era.   It is a dialogue between the Marys who come to the tomb and the angels who interrupt them: 

Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae?

The angels: Whom do you seek in the tomb, O dwellers in Christ?

Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae.

The Marys: Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, O dwellers in heaven. 

Non est hic; surrexit, sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchro.

The angels: He is not here; he is risen, just as he foretold. Go, announce that he is risen from the tomb. 

Another Gospel and other forms of the Miracle Play add the line “why do you seek the living among the dead?” 

Quem quaeritis?  Whom do you seek?  If you are a dweller in Christ, why seek him among the dead?  We are no longer talking here about the historical Jesus, but the Cosmic Christ.   Do not seek him in his tomb. 

I think the thin place here for us in the Table that Jesus invites up to, where he said his body and blood, life-giving nourishment, are to be found.  It is found in the coming together of his followers to pray, encourage, and eat the gifts offered on that altar-table.  It is found in communion. 

Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said in his Easter message a few days ago: 

This week called Holy, the season called Easter, the remembrance of death and the realization of resurrection, this is not a fairy tale, but the revelation of ultimate reality.  Now the truth is it’s easy to dismiss or discount …  this as naïve, nice, but naïve.  It’s easy to dismiss it whether consciously or unconsciously as a great hope, a wonderful ideal, but not realistic in a world like this.  Maybe, parts of us I suspect wonder, maybe [only] the strong … survive, maybe might does make right, maybe you better look out for number one. I suspect we all share those feelings once in a while.

But, I have to ask myself a question.  …  “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”  How’s that workin’ out for the world?  The truth is, the way the world very often operates is not working out.  It’s not sustainable.  It’s not the way to life.  Jesus has shown us the way.  He has shown us that unselfish, sacrificial love, love of God, and love of the other, is the way to life.  That, my friends, is the ultimate reality.  And that’s not a fairy tale.

… Jesus … showed us what love looks like.  That’s what we call the Way of the Cross.  And that Way is the way of life and hope.  And when He died, His closest followers feared that maybe the strong do survive.  Maybe might does make right.  And maybe we better look out for number one.  ‘Cause maybe the world has won.

But three days later, something happened.  Unexpected.  Undreamed of.  Unheralded.  Three days later their world turned upside-down which is right-side up.  God raised Him from the dead.  And you could almost hear God thundering forth in that resurrection.  Love, in the end, love wins!  Love is the way!   Trust me!  Follow me!  Believe in me!  This resurrection is real!  This is not a fairy tale!

Sisters and brothers:  Christ died for our sake.  He was buried.  One and a half days later, he came forth again, and he appeared to his disciples. He appeared in such a way that they knew he was no resuscitated corpse no ghost, no dream, nor wish-fulfillment.  It was wholly unprecedented and the disciples clearly had problems finding adequate language to express what they had seen, felt, and experienced.  The details in the later stories only underscore this process.    

He was more alive than he had ever been, and more lively and free as a subject and actor.  This is why they quickly hailed him as Lord and God.   

Christ is raised.  And this changes everything in our world.   

In the name of Christ,  Amen.