SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR

CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

EASTER DAY 2010

“But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

 (Lk. 24:9)

              The secular press is normally silent on matters theological.  Maybe religion, faith, church-going, acts of mercy and the like are considered innocuous pastimes tangential to, but not really connected with the so-called real world.  There are two types of occurrences, however, that cause newspapers and magazines to get interested in religion.  The first is when scandal rears its ugly head in church circles, which gives the press an occasion to point out the existence of hypocrisy among the ranks of believers; and the second are major religious holidays, when religion editors become theologians, and find the need to weigh in on what makes the American religious public tick.  The convergence of these occurrences this week has given the press a field day.  If it’s all the same to you, I’ll skip the scandalous stuff and zero in on one publication’s take on the religious pulse of the nation as the Christian community celebrates Easter.

              The current issue of Newsweek, as its contribution to the theology of the Resurrection, offers the reader ample excerpts from a new book, entitled Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, by Lisa Miller.  The excerpts are so ample, in fact, that they convince us that there is absolutely no need to buy the book.  Ms. Miller tells us that Easter celebrates Jesus’ rising from the tomb three days after his execution (her word, not mine) “to reside in heaven with God.” (I don’t think that was the primary purpose of the Resurrection, but I’ll let it slide for now.)  Pointing out that an Episcopal priest friend of hers (no one here present) cited Jesus’ eating barbecued fish and walking through doors as proof of the Resurrection, “this rising,” she continues, “remains at the center of the Christian faith, the narrative climax of every creed. Jesus died and rose again so that all his followers could, eventually do the same.”  And then her punch line: “This story has strained the credulity of even the most devoted believer. For truly, it’s unbelievable.”  As proof that the jig is (or soon will be) up, the author informs us that according to the latest Harris poll, the percentage of Americans who believe in the Resurrection “has dropped ten points since 2003 to 70 per cent.

              Perhaps we should remind Ms. Miller that her shocking and revolutionary statement about the incredulity of the Resurrection is neither.  If she had bothered to read the 24th chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel, she would have noticed that the very first reaction to the news of the Resurrection was that it was deemed unbelievable! After Mary Magdalene and the other women inform the disciples that Jesus is risen from the dead, St Luke tells us: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  Jesus’ followers, his closest friends, the people who were with him 24/7 witnessing his teaching, preaching, and miracles, including more than one in which he raised the dead to life --- these guys found Jesus’ Resurrection difficult to accept.  Now it is often said that the source of their unbelief was the gender of the messengers.  According to this theory, women, whose testimony was unacceptable both in Jewish law and in the Roman courts, were dismissed as babbling idiots, not to be trusted.

              But the story was not dismissed because the women were the informants. It was questioned by the disciples because the news was too good to be true.  It didn’t conform to their understanding of the world; they couldn’t accept the idea that Jesus’ promises would come to fulfillment.  But if they searched their minds, this was not the first idle tale of which they had heard.  The Israelites surely dismissed as an idle tale the idea that the Red Sea would part, enabling them to flee from Pharaoh’s army.  Mary clearly dismissed as an idle tale the news that she would, by operation of the Holy Spirit, conceive Jesus.  The idea of Jesus taking the form of a servant and washing his disciples’ feet would have been greeted by some as an idle tale; no less the idea that he would consent to a criminal’s death on a Cross.  Nor are idle tales confined to Scripture. Eugene Allen, whose obituary was in the Times yesterday, was a black man who served as White House butler under every President from Truman to Reagan.  He said that he would never have even been allowed to dream that an African American could become President.  And a month ago, many would have classified as an idle tale the idea that a health care bill could be passed.

              I have met Lisa Miller --- well not exactly, but I have met people who subscribe to various versions of her theological persuasion.  Perhaps I told you the story of the party I attended more than 20 years ago, incognito, in a natty bowtie, when a 20-something young woman approached me and declared that she was “into” crystals, before giving me a brief overview of how chakras and healing stones give direction to her life.  Then she asked, “What are you into?”  I responded that I was an Episcopal priest, and therefore “into” the Holy Bible. The retort was sharp: “You believe all that stuff?”

              I’m afraid that Ms. Miller, who by the way, believes that the increasing number of cremations is further proof of a waning belief in the bodily Resurrection (go figure!) and all the other Ms. Millers, just don’t get it.  The writer to the Hebrews [11:1] said that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  If we could prove such articles of Faith as the Parting of the Red Sea, or the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection by demonstrating that they took place according to universally accepted rules of science (if such things exist) then they would --- duh! ---cease to be articles of Faith.

              I happen to believe all of the above, and a number of other “unbelievable” things as well.  I don’t cross my fingers when I recite the Creed.  And I believe them because I believe that God isn’t called “Almighty” for nothing.  God can do whatever God wants to do, especially when it comes to the work of salvation --- simply because God is God. But when all is said and done, our faith is not dependent upon assenting to certain beliefs, tenets or commandments.  The proof of our faith is in what we do, how we act. When the men at the Tomb told the women that Jesus had risen from the dead, they didn’t say, “Thank you for sharing.”  They immediately ran and told the disciples.  They knew, as the tomb-guards had told them, that they mustn’t look for the living among the dead.

              But that, I’m afraid, is an occupational hazard of many of us who profess and call ourselves Christians.  We look for Jesus in the dead past, a great man, but now dead and gone, frozen in time in first century Palestine, rendering him unable to speak to the problems facing his followers for the last two millennia.  No, we find Jesus, and we witness to his Resurrection, when we learn to listen critically to and learn to believe those idle tales, told by a God, who after all, as St Paul admonished the Corinthians, “chose foolish things of the world to confound the wise” [I Cor. 1:27].

              I ask all of you to listen to and spread abroad these idle tales of a living Jesus --- whether you are steeped in the faith or struggling with it, whether wet behind the ears or, as the Prayer Book used to say, of “riper years,” if your family paid pew rents in this church or if you don’t even know what pew rents are.  And I issue this invitation, in the ecumenical spirit, to predestined Presbyterians, quiet Quakers, bashful Baptists, catechetical Catholics and methodical Methodists, as well as home-grown epicurean Episcopalians.

              For what we all have in common is that we are on a journey.  A journey in which Easter is not the destination, but the starting point.  Each year we “come to glad Jerusalem” for a fresh start.  And each Easter, we enter the empty Tomb, but we do not stay there.  Instead we go forth, armed with the faith contained in an idle tale, an idle tale that saved the world.

              Let us pray:

                            He is risen, he is risen!  Tell it out with joyful voice;

                            He has burst his three days’ prison; Let the whole wide earth rejoice:

                            Death is conquered, we are free, Christ has won the victory

              AMEN. ALLELUIA.