SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
EASTER DAY 2006
"Who will roll away the stone for us?" (Mk.
16:3)
Last week, on Palm Sunday, I preached about Judas.
After the service, several parishioners said to me, "When
I read about the Gospel of Judas in the newspaper on Friday,
I knew you would preach about it on Sunday." Well,
I guess that after ten years, everybody has my number.
Everybody knows my m o. As the Psalmist said, "Thou
knowest my downsittings and my uprisings." So I suppose
that many of you are now thinking, "I bet the Rector will
preach this morning about the article in The New Yorker. For
those of you who may have missed it, or who did not receive a
telephone call or an e-mail about it, the article, entitled "A
Church Asunder," gives a fairly accurate depiction of the
current state of affairs in the Anglican Communion in general,
and the Episcopal Church in particular. The predictable protagonists
in the story were "the usual suspects" --- the Archbishop
of Nigeria, the Bishop of New Hampshire and the Bishop of Pittsburgh.
The predictable issues were human sexuality, biblical authority
and so-called orthodoxy.
Well, I am sorry to disappoint Calvary's pundits, but I will
not preach about the article this morning. While,
as you know, I am hardly averse to politics in the pulpit, I
refuse to allow the ongoing preoccupation about who's sleeping
with whom, who's on first, and who's in and who's out, to encroach
upon our Easter joy. In recent years, it has been our penchant
to rise above the fray ---- in the words of Rudyard Kipling,
"to keep our heads when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you," --- by welcoming all in the name
of Christ, by worshipping the Lord in the beauty of holiness,
and by preaching the Gospel with conviction. We shall certainly
do no less on the feast of our Lord's Resurrection. That said,
I will admit that the article does help to remind us of the kind
of world --- and the kind of church --- to which we must bring
Easter joy.
Look at this morning's Gospel. I've always felt, by the way,
that being a Biblical angel must be a pretty cushy job.
There are only a few lines ---- first a word of greeting, like
"Behold!" or "Hail!" or "Lo!" (perhaps
angels in modern-day translations of the Bible would say "Yo!")
After that there are only a few stock lines, and one of them
is "Do not be afraid." This was the angel's line
to Mary at Jesus' conception, his advice to the shepherds at
the birth of Jesus, and now it is his word of reassurance to
the faithful women who come to the Tomb. Why is it our
human nature never to be satisfied? The women's greatest
problem is that they couldn't get into the Tomb because it was
sealed shut. They ask "Who will roll the stone away
for us?" In answer to their prayer, the stone is rolled
away. They get what they want --- entrance into the Tomb,
but they are still confused and afraid. But in their defense,
the reason for their fear and confusion is that they had to shift
gears --- they had to come to grips with the fact that they were
no longer looking for a corpse.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, like the women, we need
to make a paradigm shift, from focusing on honoring a dead Christ,
to worshipping a living Christ --- or otherwise put, from being
a Good Friday Christian to being an Easter Christian. How
do we go from A to B? How do we go from yesterday's failures
and grief to see the Risen One standing before us? In order
to make the transition, if we are to be witnesses to the Resurrection,
if we are to spread Resurrection joy --- we need some help in
rolling away some stones, and a little "blessed assurance"
to assist us sharing the good news of Christ's resurrection.
Who will roll away the stone of fear? For it
is fear that impedes our spiritual progress. For it is
fear, in one form or another, that causes us to lord it over
others, or to keep others at a distance --- physical, emotional
or theological.
Who will roll away the stone of indifference? It has
been said that the most serious "ism" in our society
is neither racism nor sexism, but somnambulism. It is our sleepwalking
through life, oblivious to the issues and even the people around
us that indicts us. Do you remember the story of Dives and Lazarus?
Dives wasn't an evil man; he didn't actually do anything to the
poor man at his gate. But the problem was that he didn't do anything
for the poor man at his gate. He just didn't see that
there was a problem with his "faring sumptuously every day"
while poor Lazarus made do with the crumbs that fell from the
rich man's table.
If you want to better understand this parable, think of its
modern-day counterpart, the Enron scandal. We have recently
learned that while the company's rank and file lost their jobs,
their life savings and their pensions, the CEO, oblivious as
Dives, was being compensated to the tune of more than one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars per day!
Who will roll away the stone of contempt? We know
what contempt is. It is treating others with scorn or disdain
because we find them to be vile or worthless. Does this
not describe the proposed legislation regarding illegal immigrants?
If enacted, it would become a criminal act to offer, in the words
of Jesus, "even a cup of cold water" to "the least
of these my brethren." Emma Lazarus would roll over
in her grave. Whatever happened to "Give me your tired,
your poor/your huddled masses yearning to breathe free?"
Is it a fear that those masses will eventually outnumber the
dominant culture? What is happening here is that an administration
that prides itself on its Christian principles is asking its
people to forget the role of the Good Samaritan who cared for
the wounded stranger and took him to an inn and provided his
American Express card to cover all costs of his recovery, and
to emulate instead the priest and the Levite who walked on the
other side, leaving the mugging victim for dead. There
was a cartoon in The New Yorker recently which just about
summed it up. Native Americans on the beach see the Pilgrims,
with their funny hats, tall boots and starched collars and lace
around their necks, arriving in their big boats. "One
says to the other, "They sure look like undocumented aliens
to me." How soon we forget that but for Native Americans,
we are all immigrants, who either came to these shores
of their own volition or who were brought here in chains.
My friends, the problem with the women at the Tomb is that
they were in a Good Friday rut. They got the good news,
but didn't receive it as good news. They cling to their
prejudices and preconceived notions. They can't get on
with life. We've all been there at one time or another.
So on this Easter morning, I issue my annual invitations to methodical
Methodists, pragmatic Presbyterians, catechetical Catholics,
quiet Quakers, and yes, even epistemological Episcopalians (who
will be forever be thought of, thanks to President Clinton, as
"God's frozen chosen") to roll away all the stones
that impede us from participating fully in the joy of the Resurrection.
I want all of you to take all your Good Friday baggage, the fears,
the trepidations you are carrying around, and leave them in the
tomb, so that you may be free to be Easter people, free to do
what the women could do --- to go and tell the great news, that
Christ is risen indeed!
Let us pray:
Come, ye sad and fearful hearted, with glad smile and
radiant brow!
Death's long shadows have departed; Jesus' woes are over
now,
And the passion that he bore --- sin and pain can vex
no more. (The Hymnal 1982, 180)
AMEN.