Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In Thornton Wilder's play , "Our Town", Becky says to her older brother, George, "I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote her a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: It said Jane Crofut; the Crofut farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; the United States of America." George says, "What's funny about that?" "But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America, Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe; the Mind of God" -- that's what it said on the envelope.

"What do you know."
"And the postman brought it just the same."

What a good pastor! Telling a little girl (who he knew must have been feeling small, and helpless and insignificant, as we all feel when we're sick) -- telling her by the way he addressed an envelope that she was very important, that Jane Crofut existed not just in Grover's corners but in the very mind of God. That cool morning in Joseph's lovely garden years ago, when Mary Magdalene, sniffling from the dampness and in her grief, to her surprise came upon the empty tomb, concluded it had been robbed (or that the body had been moved for some reason) saw Him, thought he was the gardener, begged for the body so she could give it a decent burial.

That morning (Easter morning) was a letter from God, a letter addressed to humanity, a letter whose address tells us that men and women are very special. They are creatures of the Spirit of God. They are not merely muscle and blood. They are not here today gone tomorrow. Each one is forever, and each has a special place in the mind of God. "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me." That is one of the things Easter tells us. Mary ran back to get the others, and some of them came out to see. But the full meaning of the resurrection dawned on the disciples only gradually, in the coming days and weeks, as Jesus appeared to them and to others, and as they saw him ascend into heaven, and as they felt the rush of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. They told and retold the story of Mary in the garden, and tried not to forget a single detail, for by now they understood that that very moment was what Karl Michaelson called "the hinge of history". It was the dawn of faith. And some dawn it was!

If we are not children of the resurrection, we are children of death. That's just reality. Either there is tomorrow or there is not. If we see ourselves as mere flesh and blood, we behave badly, as we might expect mere flesh and blood to behave. We behave as people for whom there is no tomorrow, in whom there is no hope. If we are not children of the resurrection, we are children of death. The battle lines are drawn. Any neutral ground that once existed between belief and unbelief -- any grace period for us to choose sides -- is gone. The argument between faith and no-faith, between hope and despair, has left the classroom and is now being fought in the streets. Why don't we see this? Why don't we say this? We have been too long polite about these things.

Everywhere we see life's catastrophes, human casualties which (I am ashamed to say) are the direct result of our failure to speak up and speak out. Tom Kaylor, minister of Covenant United Methodist Church, in Gaithersburg, said to a group of us ministers this Wednesday: "When I began my ministry, thirty-seven years ago, people would come to me with a hurt and I could put a band aid on it, and they would feel better. But now when they come, they need open heart surgery!" He's right. People stagger into today's church out of a vicious world. They come, as one might come to an emergency room, with multiple injuries. Most have made not one mistake, or two, or three. Some have made every mistake in the book. They have been used, and abused, and abused themselves. Why is it so dangerous out there? Because God, and the law of God, and the love of God, and the righteousness of God, are absent. That's why, and let's start saying it. We've allowed for a long time(or at least we've permitted it to be said) that a person can live a good life without reference to God. That is not true. In the long run, life without God degenerates. Yet we've made God a choice, one possible entrée on the menu of life. It's a free country. You can take one from column A and two from column B, and if your choices don't include God, that's o.k. (Perhaps, you would be so kind as to tell us what you intend to live by and for.)

Look at the world we've created by our spinelessness. If we are not children of the resurrection, we are children of death. All standards are down, some are gone altogether! Life, which was supposed to be improved by a spirit of tolerance and acceptance, has become, instead, a journey without a map. And many are lost. Look at it from God's viewpoint. What is crime, for example, except God's children hurting and taking from each other? What is greed except some of God's children feasting while others, of the same household, starve? What are drugs except substitutes for the joy of true faith? What is euthanasia, or abortion, or suicide except usurping decisions reserved for God? Neitchie said "God is dead." His next words were: "All is permitted!" Are we finally beginning to see that a world where God is dead and all is permitted is a terrible world to live in? Life without God (without resurrection, without hope) isn't worth living. The casualties are arriving. The bills are coming due. Are we finally beginning to see?

I tell you today that Easter is the opposite of all that, and Easter is the center of our faith. I do apologize for ticking off such a long list of troubles, on Easter Sunday. You probably plan to go home to your family, eat some ham, and rest, perhaps even doze off. It's not seemly on such a lovely day, such a joyous day, for the preacher to list all our failures. Yet, perhaps we can appreciate Easter only if we see what life would be like without it. If people come from dust and go back to dust, and that's all there is, if we live only in Grover's Corners and not also in the mind of God, then we will take drugs (to make meaninglessness bearable); and we will steal what is not ours (Why not?), and we will kill off unwanted old people, and the sick, and babies, who are just in our way, and we will take ourselves out, as they did in California this week, when the pain gets too great. Of course people will do these things when they have no Easter. If we are not children of the resurrection, we are children of death.

But if we have Easter, we have hope. When we hear him say, "I go to prepare a place for you," that changes not only our expectations for the next life, it changes this life too, for the better. Easter hope helps us face both life and death. "Because he lives," we sing, "I can face tomorrow¼.life is worth the living, just because he lives." Oh, yes, resurrection means I will hear that trumpet sound in the last moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and I will be raised. And, yes, "though worms destroy this body yet in my flesh will I see God¼" And, yes, "Death where is thy sting?" And, yes, "Grave where is thy victory?" Oh, yes. We have that promise. But Easter changes not only how we die. It also changes how we live. It gives us hope. Tony Campaulo tells of preaching one evening in an African American church. Both Campaulo and the aging minister of that congregation were scheduled to speak, and Compaulo, beforehand, made a friendly bet with the preacher that he (Campaulo) could move the congregation more than the old man. It's was the other's home field, so Tony went first. He says he laid out every persuasive argument he could muster for Jesus Christ, all in his best English, and all in his most effective preaching style. And sure enough, the congregation was moved. You could hear them saying, "Amen." And "Praise the Lord!" But then the old man stood up, offered a few opening words, and then said, almost under his breath, "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'." A lonely voice said, "Amen." So he repeated it: "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'." And a murmur began in that church, and a couple of "Hallelujahs" were heard. "He must have said it twenty times," Compaulo says, "each time with a different inflection, and each time to more and more response, until that whole church was filled with the Spirit of God." "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming." Easter, you see? In one simple sentence the old man had caught the spirit, and the hope, and the expectation of Easter -- a spirit, and a hope and an expectation that have juvinated Christians ever since that first morning in the garden.. Maybe we are discouraged. There's good reason for that. Maybe the world seems stuck on Good Friday, maybe our lives are stuck there, but Sunday's coming. And when we know Easter is on its way, we can bear Good Friday.

Christians are children of the resurrection. Don't let this faith be only for death; it is for life, too. Every day is Easter for us. It may be Friday, but Sunday's comin'.

Not to be reproduced without expressed permission of Pastor William Boyer.