Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

March 23, 2008 - Easter Sunday

The Rev. M. Jonah Kendall

As you may know, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella tragically died last week at age 54.  Most know him for his films The English Patient and Cold Mountain.  But his first film was Truly, Madly, Deeply.

In the movie a young widow meets a suitor.  Yet, despite his looks, his health and his potential, she cannot respond to him because of her grief and loyalty.  She is trapped in the past, reliving memories and unable to welcome the possibility of new love.

Well one day a strange thing happens.  She returns home and astonishingly enough, her husband’s right there, home again.  In great excitement she abandons every care just to relish his presence once again.

But here’s the thing.  He’s a ghost.  And ghosts have limitations.  He is tender and loving, but he cannot leave the house, he cannot sleep and he is tormented by always being freezing cold.  And, more than that he is joined by other ghosts – all pale and cold themselves – who end up lounging in the front of the TV watching reruns and sharing tired stories from their past.  And with every passing moment the widow's elation and peace turns more and more to irritation, frustration and boredom.

At the end of the film, she’s seen going on a date with the other man, the man who’s not her husband, but has the benefit of being alive – a man who can join her in discovering the joys to come.  Pausing only to pack a toothbrush, she rushes from the house … never to look back again.

Now, whether we’ve met a ghost or not – whether we even believe in ghosts – many of us, I think, know what it is to entertain spirits of the past.  To get stuck in things that have long since gone – times we think were better, people who have died, sins and wounds of old that afflict us still.  The past can be powerfully seductive.  The problem is, the past is limited, because the past is gone.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t relive old memories, cherish times come and gone, learn from mistakes previously made.  It’s just that when we start believing we are defined by the past we run into trouble.  Held back from welcoming the opportunities – the love, the joy, the forgiveness, the peace before us.  Focusing on the past can make us ghosts ourselves.

Standing before Mary in the tomb, Jesus says,

Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.  But
go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your
father, to my God and your God’ (John 20:17)

And with this, he’s saying, “Mary, I am risen.  I am alive in God.  I will be with you and you with me.  Yet, not as I was.  This hasn’t happened to trap you in former things – the times we shared, the conversations, the love we knew.  I am the Spirit of Life going forward with God.

Mary, let go.  Let go of me so that you can find me in life anew.  Live for the promise of God before you.  Be alive to the things yet to unfold.

Easter is the revelation that a new life with God is ever before us and that the promise of heaven – of hope, love, redemption, salvation – is renewed each day as we literally let former things fall away.  To be raised with Christ this day is to be enlivened by the possibility of God in each new moment we face.

How does it go?

Christ is alive! No longer bound to distant
years in Palestine, he comes to claim the
here and now and conquer every place and time.
(Hymn #182, The Hymnal 1982)

Can we then let go of our distant years?  Can we let our ghosts fade?  Can we move forward with Christ – living for the promise of today and tomorrow?  What’s stopping us?  Fear?  Uncertainty?  Doubt? Vulnerability?  Judgments, you know – I’m too old, I’m unworthy, things will never change, I deserve something first, I will never know love again?  Is it death?

I imagine the disciples wrestled with such things in the wake of Good Friday.  Yet look what Mary found when she risked it by venturing out that early morning of the first day of the new week.  Think Genesis here. Seven days. A new week.  A new creation.  And what did she find?  That it was good.  In beholding the wonder of a new beginning, she saw that it was good.

 At this point the sermon took two different paths:

 At the 8:30 a.m. service, I reflected on the last words of the Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s before his execution by the Nazis for high treason:  “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.”  He was led to the gallows after leading a service for fellow prisoners on the second Sunday of Easter.  His sermon was about “the living hope of the resurrection.”  The wonder of Bonhoeffer’s life, as is attested by his final words, was his faith in things.  This is the gift and the power of resurrection.

 At the 11 a.m. service: I spoke about the patch of land on the South East corner of the church, at the corner of Main and Dillard.  On Holy Saturday several parishioners were out there tilling the soil – preparing it for things to come.  Bruce Olive even brought his tractor.  I said that although we don’t know what will become of this land, what we do know is that it will be a new creation!  I asked parishioners to do two things:  Sing the Easter Hymns loudly and stop by that plot of earth on their out from church and see themselves in it.  For on this day, we celebrate that we are the new creation.

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