Psalm 118:1-2,14-24
John 20:1-18
April 15, 2001  - Easter Sunday

Last month my wife and I went out one night to the movies. We decided to pass on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and chose, instead, the film, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, Chocolat. On the way I stopped at a candy store and picked up some chocolate caramels; little knowing that Dotty had done the same thing, and we were pushing chocolate at each other through the movie. That wasn’t the biggest surprise, for as the story unfolded we found ourselves in a morality play about Lent and Easter. The setting for the film was a small, quaint French town in 1959, during the Season of Lent. The finale of the film would be Easter and we would listen to an Easter Sermon given by the village pastor.

I often shrink from the movie images of the church pastor, frequently played as dull, ir-relevant, timid, rigid, or obtuse characters that give no hint of the explosive excitement of Christianity. And, once again, or so it seemed, the young, timid clergyman, Father Pere Henri would maintain the stereotype. This poor young priest was so intimidated by the village mayor, that he practiced his sermon in front of the mayor and then permitted Mayor Comte De Reynaud to edit and rewrite the sermon he would give.

So much for the liberating power of the Gospel.

If the setting for Holy Week is one that pitted Jesus of Nazareth against the controlling powers of the Temple and Rome, then the setting for Chocolat was one that pitted a young mother and her child against the controlling, repressive influence of the Mayor, who, left suddenly alone by a wife who went off on a tour of France, with no promise of return, devoted all his efforts to making the mother and child a town pariah, and enforcing all the rituals of Lent with an iron fist. The mother and daughter had arrived in the village as strangers during the Season of Lent - and had the audacity to open a chocolate shop. The mother, Vianne Rocher, the single parent of her daughter, Anouk, carries her own past with her -- strangely bound by the memory and the ashes of her deceased mother, which she carried with her in a Mayan Jar. On the voice of the North Wind she hears her mother’s voice calling her to move, to ever move, and keep alive the long heritage of the outsider, never putting down roots. The daughter, still unused to moving about like vagabonds, has created her own companion to accompany her, an invisible kangaroo. They desperately needed community, but the mayor was determined they would be banished from the town, and gone before Easter.

When Vianne opens a chocolate shop, she begins to demonstrate an ability to prescribe her Mayan chocolates like secret potions helping persons in the town to overcome their own demons and to be fully human again. Within the small confines of the shop we see a grandmother and grandson reunited – and ultimately the estranged daughter of the grandmother. We see an abused wife break free and learn to live independently of a cruel dolt of a husband. We see a dry and feeble marriage come alive with new hope, and an elderly couple find each other. All the while the mayor fumes, and the young priest, peeks in the window, afraid to enter.

Lent moves towards Easter and the lonely and controlling mayor becomes more desperate to dominate the village; he take more and more control over the sermons - so the young priest, with the words of the mayor, weekly castigates the congregation, condemning those who violated the shunning of the shop and who dared eat chocolate. By that point even I had stopped eating the chocolate and felt reluctant to offer more to Dotty. The storyteller kept pointing to the liberating aspects of the chocolate shop, but the mayor, wrapping himself in religion, told all of us we were condemned if we failed to resist temptation and partook of the chocolate delight.

Suddenly I realized that if we transported them back into the first century setting in which Jesus walked the hills of Galilee, we might have witnessed the same conflict; for Jesus urged people to embrace life and to live it abundantly. All the while the religious leaders condemned and plotted against him. After all he violated all the norms of Judaic religion. He was condemned for associating with the outcasts, welcoming the strangers, Samaritans and gentiles, lepers, women, tax collectors, and the sick. He takes it upon himself to cure them, completely abandoning the proscribed rituals of temple sacrifice.

In the film, as Easter draws nearer, a boat community of gypsies arrive, and the mayor, fearful of the bad influences of strangers, calls the town together and issues a ban. No one is to buy from them, no one is to dance at their music, no one is to offer them even a cup of fresh water. But Vianne and Anouck are not influenced by him, and they befriend the visitors. The tensions continue to mount, as the mayor plots a way to drive the gypsies and the chocolateer out of the village. And then one of his supporters goes too far, and the boats are set on fire, and the young daughter, Anouck, is almost killed. The fire precipitates the film’s crisis, and sets loose a force that will redeem everyone.

The mayor and the mother, Vianne, each react differently to the crisis; Vianne decides to listen to her mother’s voice in the North Wind and flee again, despite the desperate pleas of the daughter to let them stay and put down roots. The mayor, in genuine anguish over the fire that he helped cause, still focuses on the chocolate shop as the source of the trouble. He goes in the night, and breaks into the shop desperate to destroy it, and accidently tastes the chocolate he trying to destroy. Upstairs in the living quarters the mother and daughter argue, the mother throwing clothes into the suitcase, and the daughter finally obediently submissive, but as they begin to leave, hands full of bundles, the Mayan Jar, continuing the grandmother’s ashes, falls to the floor and shatters... and the spell is broken. The grandmother’s ashes are swept out in the wind where they can blow where they will, and the mother and daughter are free to stay with their new found friends.

The mayor, having tasted the chocolate he had forbidden, and overwhelmed with shame over the near disaster with the fire, crawls into the store window, devouring everything in sight – and there he is discovered asleep, and covered with chocolate, on Easter morning, by the priest, again, peering in the window.

Everything has changed - pretense is dropped, the mayor’s obsession for control, the fear of community by Vianne. It is Easter.

As the townspeople gather for worship, the timid priest, Father Pere Henri finally is able to deliver his own sermon. And here is part of what he says:

The narrator in the movie, who is the daughter, Anouck, says that after the Easter Sermon and the chocolate festival in the town square after church, Mayor Comte de Reynaud was "strangely released"... and so was the town – for the battle of Lent was over and a bright sunny Easter day brought the hope of new life. And that is the power of Easter.

We have seen all of these themes in the original Easter Story.

Both Vianne and Comte de Renaud were prisoners of the past, held back from the future God intended for them; the one grieving over past and re-enacting it through flight, time after time; the other yearning for a reunion with his wife, and believing that if he was only strict enough, and stern enough in making the village observant and faithful, all would be well, and his wife would return. The Jews of the First Century bought into a similar fantasy, believing that if they were only pure and sufficiently devout the "Christ" would come to deliver them from oppression. They saw Jesus as a spoiler, one who violated the purity laws, destroying their perfect system and, in their view, making it impossible for the kingdom ever to come. Those forces are still not gone, and haunt us even as they judge us. Easter is meant to liberate us from that past.

The Timid Priest who finally overcomes his timidity and declares the Gospel describes the disciples on that awesome morning, after fleeing from Calvary, hiding behind locked doors in the home of Mark’s mother, and even after confronting the evidence in the empty tomb – it took another 50 days and the gift of the Holy Spirit to break them out of their timidity so they could boldly proclaim the new life that came through Christ’ resurrection.

Mayor Comte de Renaud might just as well have been in Jerusalem where everything was done to maintain control, to preserve the status quo, to rid themselves of this nuisance called Jesus. But love can never be vanquished. They were doomed to fail, as are all the forces that would hold us back from union with the Loving Creator that made us.

The story of Easter declares that nothing can come between us and the love of God – not

even the ultimate enemy, which is death. Father Pere Henri was right on in his Easter message:

"We must measure our goodness, not by what we don't do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, or who we exclude. Instead, we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include."

The clues are scattered all through the Easter story. It is women who are entrusted with the eye witness accounts – and, of course the men discount their story. Luke tells us simply, that the disciples did not believe them. Should we expect them to act differently? God most certainly did. The prime eyewitness is a woman who was accused of immoral behavior, or severe mental illness – Mary Magdalene. The Gospels describe her as having been healed by Jesus. Of all the followers of Jesus she is the one to whom Jesus personally appears in the garden and is called by name. Consider that if the disciples are to be considered outsiders from Galilee, she is certainly the most shunned and outcast in that legalistic, purity conscious community. And it is to Mary Magdalene that the good news comes! Later, the Peter realizes what is going on and confesses to a gentile soldier, "I now know that God shows no partiality!" And the Story of Chocolat makes the same point. It is our prejudices and our worship of the past that holds us in bondage. All of that was carried by Christ to the cross – and put to death – so that we too, on this Easter Day might rise victoriously, free from our past, full of hope for tomorrow. That struggle goes on within us, and all around us. The Presbyterian Church, and most other religious communities as well, are struggling with this message. Who do we include? Who is welcome? What kind of society are called to create? As we celebrate life, and proclaim that God loves us – what walls have we erected? Who do we count in and who do we count out? And what about our family life? Who have we shut out of our homes? Who do we welcome?

Here is how Bruce Jenneker, editor for the Liturgical Conference, puts it:

Amen

JRS.