Col 3: 1-4; John 20: 1-18

Anxiety and Fear have taken center stage in the 21st century, with Y2K, and (even then) terrorists trying to come across the Canadian border to disrupt New Year celebrations in N.Y.C. We’ve seen a rash of inexplicable church shootings and bombings, school killings and woundings, and then, on September 11th, commercial airplanes and the U.S. Mail were used as tools of terror for reasons beyond our understanding.

On another level, we’ve feared for the economy, our jobs, the welfare of our churches, and the future of our children. The world is no longer easy. It’s not just the American economy; it’s the world economy; it’s not just American politics; it’s world politics. Perhaps we’re coming to realize, however late and slow, that when a butterfly flaps its wings in Asia, the wind arising from it may be felt in Bangladesh as a devastating storm. Perhaps we’re learning that we really do need each other. Winston Churchill said, “History can be a great teacher. Yet, most of the time, we simply get up, brush ourselves off, and learn nothing at all.” (1) I wonder whether we’re going to learn anything at all about how everything we do or don’t do effects everything and everybody else – that we can’t simply live and act as if we’re on our own and “do whatever we want.”

Fear and anxiety were also part of the first century. Herod was anxious about the birth of a new King when he ordered the babies at Bethlehem destroyed. Pilate was anxious about Rome. Israel’s High Priest was anxious thap://ligious observances might be outlawed if Jesus gained any more popularity, and the disciples were afraid that the Realm of God had been crucified with the body of Christ. So, what’s changed?

Absolutely nothing. Fear and anxiety accompany the human condition. Absolutely nothing (about Fear and Anxiety) has changed since Adam and Eve first noticed they were naked and vulnerable. Even Jesus was afraid and anxious at Gethsemane when he prayed that the cup of poison would pass from him. The Scripture says he was “in agony of spirit” – so much so that he sweat great drops of blood in that very moment when he was forced to choose to surrender everything to death. Jamie R. Gustafson, in her Easter sermon, Dry Bones and Rolled Stones, refers to a story of the famous tightrope walker, Blondin. One day, he asked a man, “Do you believe I can cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope with a man on my back?” The man answered enthusiastically, “Oh, yes!” Blondin then continued, “And will you be that man?” (2)

It’s one thing for Jesus to be the champion of the lost, and a friend of the friendless; it’s one thing to admire his works, and his words; it’s one thing to believe God can raise Jesus from the dead; but it’s quite another to follow him. It’s quiet another to surrender everything we hold dear. We’re just not certain we want to be “Easter People” if it means the cross for us.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate a God who empties tombs; the same God who created everything that is in existence from nothing at all is a God who recreates new life from no life. If you start to get a hold of that, if you really start to understand that, then you start to get a glimpse of the notion that Christianity isn’t about life after death at all – it’s about life in the face of death, it’s about a life spent dying for others in spite of fear and anxiety. It’s about the way we can make ourselves vulnerable to and for others and experience the peace of the resurrected Christ in spite of fear and anxiety. Christ was willing to trust God with life on God’s terms, not his. Jesus died, just as Jesus lived, pouring himself out for others, trusting God.

Susan R. Andrews, in her sermon, “Why Are You Weeping?” suggests, “…maybe Mary didn’t recognize Jesus because she was looking for the old, not the new. Maybe, just maybe, she was looking for what she had lost, and not what she was being given.” (3)

Sometimes “we want to go back to the way things were before, before our children grew up and left us, before our husband died or our wife got sick, before that friendship was strained or lost, before our bodies began to sag and our energy dwindle, before tragedy and heartache turned us bitter, before the world changed and roles changed and families changed, before work got difficult and faith got confused and life turned sour.

Others yearn not for the way things were – but for the way things could have been. If only that child had lived, if only we had followed our dream, if only we had accepted that job, if only we had tried one more time, if only life could have dealt us a better hand. Dwelling on the past, whether the past that we had and lost, or the past we never had, can keep us from seeing who we are today…we can miss what God has in store for us now.” (4)

The empty tomb isn’t just the promise of a better life somewhere over the rainbow. The empty tomb is an earthquake! The empty tomb changes the world forever. It can let us live now, connected and connecting, without the fear of our nakedness and vulnerability. It opens us up to the reality of love that overcomes fear, and of peace that overcomes anxiety. It opens us up to the resurrection, which is the possibility of living life in the “now” – not fearing the life we lose, but rejoicing in the Christ we gain.

The Letter to the Colossians describes it as being raised with Christ. The point of the resurrection, and the true meaning of Easter, is not about the end of pain, or suffering, or even death. It isn’t a promise about immortality. It is the promise that, like the disciples, we will be with Jesus, now, in spite of pain and suffering, and forever, in spite of death. It is the promise of a continued, and deeper relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the NOW of Christ’s eternal presence with us – Christ with us, NOW, eternally. (5)

In verse 17 Jesus tells Mary not to hold on to him. What he was saying to Mary is a hard word that none of us likes to hear. She can’t cling to him as he had been, in the previous existence. What was coming from then on was not a resumption of the old life and the old relationship, not just a continuation of what had been, but a new life and a new relationship. We all want to return to the old and the familiar, perhaps most of all in the area of Jesus and our faith and our religious practice. But Jesus is always something and someone new, at every instance. (6)

The distinctive name of God in the First Testament is I am that I am. Here is the promise of a constant presence. We could also translate it, I will be who I will be. Here is the promise of a God who will be what we need, no matter who or where we are in life or in death. God is all we need.

“Set your mind on things that are above,” Colossians continues, “not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” “With Christ in God.” Here is the definition of Christian. Here is the meaning of Easter. Our nakedness and vulnerability are not removed. Our fear and anxiety are not eliminated. Yet, they are answered with the life of Christ in us, and with our life with Christ in God.

It is this meaning, this reality, which destroys the prison of the tomb. We are no longer held captive by fear and anxiety, even though they still exist. We are no longer afraid or anxious of life lived naked and vulnerable, because we are confidant that our life, which we daily surrender to the pain and suffering of Christ’s ongoing ministry as Christians, has already been returned to us with Christ in God. Here is the joy of Easter. Not that we cannot now die, but that we can now live freed from the chains of the life that was ours – and freed for the service of the life that is now ours – life with Christ in God, NOW – an abiding presence – all we need.

Do the chains of fear and anxiety still restrain you? Do you still hesitate to say, “Here I am, Lord,” when your asked to walk the tightrope of the Christian life with Christ? Then behold the empty tomb. Let the foundations of your world and life be shaken to the core, let the life of Christ in God free you, saying “He is risen! He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!”

1. Pulpit Resource, Vol. 30, No. 1, p. 60
2. Gustafson, Jamie R., "Dry Bones and Rolled Stones," in Spinning a Sacred Yard: Women Speak from the Pulpit (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1983), pp. 93-97
3. ibid, p. 36
4. Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XIII, Number 4, Susan R. Andrews, "Why Are You Weeping?" p. 37
5. Paraphrased from Emphasis, March/April 2002, CSS Publishing, Lima, OH., p. 48
6. ibid