"i thank You God for most this amazing"

I’m a great fan of bluegrass music. I like Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs, and all the old-time performers. I also like some of the current performers. I’ve actually heard Rhonda Vincent perform twice – the first time right here in the Ariel theater. One of my favorite bluegrass recordings is a two-CD set entitled, “O Sister,” which showcases some of the great women singers: Rhonda Vincent, Hazel Dickens, Maybelle Carter, Allison Krauss, and many others. If you know these artists, you know that their music is at best bittersweet. There are always a few Gospel songs, typically at the end of a CD or concert, but most of their songs, just like those of the bluesmen and the jazz singers, are about pain and loss of all kinds. In unforgettable songs like “Mama’s Hand,” Pathway of Teardrops,” or “It Rains Everywhere I go,” we hear of leaving home, unrequited love, failed relationships, loneliness, depression, dysfunctional families, even murder and imprisonment.

Loss, grief, execution -- isn’t that where we’ve been this week? From the first reminder of Jesus’ death last Sunday, in our painful last meal with him on Thursday, in walking with him to Jerusalem and in mourning his death on the Cross, haven’t we too experienced almost unbearable pain and darkness – literally and spiritually? And isn’t the pain and darkness of Good Friday where most of us live out our lives? Pain, loss, grief, death – we know that territory well. We too leave the comforts of home, our children grow up too fast, we see loved ones move away, we miss opportunities to do good, we make mistakes, we spend time in prison, we get divorced, we lose sisters, brothers, children, and spouses to sickness and death. Perhaps that’s why bluegrass music is so powerful. It speaks to who and where we are, right now, “in the midst of life.”

But here, in this place, there is another word. And isn’t that why you’re here, because you want to hear that word? Don’t you want to hope that pain, darkness, and death are not the whole story? Aren’t you looking for a different ending to the story of your life? My friends, the church offers us a very different story indeed. The church offers us resurrection. The church reminds us that, contrary to what everyone expected that first Good Friday, death was not the end of the story. The church carries us from the Cross to Jesus’ descent into hell, to an empty grave, to a risen Lord. The church tells us: resurrection happened. And happens. Those who witnessed that first Easter, those who experienced that surge of joy, those who delivered Jesus’ message to his disciples, those disciples who began to proclaim the good news to others realized that they were now living in a new reality – not the old reality of pain and death, but, because of what had happened to Jesus, a new reality of life, and hope, and resurrection.

Is that the word you came to hear? My friends, we don’t always want to hear about resurrection! Lutheran theologian Karl Barth reminded us that resurrection is “a difficult, dark truth, and a word that can scarcely be tolerated by our ears.” Indeed, Barth said, we are “threatened by resurrection,” by the very thought that we need resurrection. We don’t want to admit our own powerlessness, our sinfulness, the shortness of our lives. We don’t want to admit our poverty before God. We don’t want to admit that we need God’s merciful rescue. But God says to us, “Rise up! You are dead, but I call you to live. I have already acted, I have triumphed!” “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes,” shouts the psalmist. “Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus, “accept my gift of new life.”

That new way of living, that new plane of life, that gift that Jesus offers is truly ours. “So if you have been raised with Christ,” Paul writes to the Christians at Colossae, “seek the things that are above.” Actually, the first part of that command is declarative. And the word “above” doesn’t so much mean “up in the sky,” as “beyond this world of pain and death” So what Paul is really saying to the Colossians is “Since you have been raised with Christ, fix your minds on where Christ is now, i.e., beyond this world of pain and death.” And why can the Colossians do this? This exhortation is part of a passage that addresses the consequences of baptism. Because they have been baptized into Christ’s death and, in baptism, they have been raised with Christ, the Colossian Christians are now empowered by Christ to live a life that is in some sense already “beyond” death. They are now an “Easter people,” and they can live differently, they can live knowing that pain and death are not the end of their story. They don’t have to live as if this life were all there were, they don’t have to numb their pain with addiction, they don’t have to be bound by outmoded rules and traditions, they don’t have to despair. Because their lives are now “hidden with Christ,” because they partake of Christ’s own risen life, they can live knowing that their identity is not bound up with this perishable world, and that earthly things do not demand their ultimate loyalty. They can live with hope, rejoicing in the knowledge that Christ has triumphed over all that would defeat them, and that they are now safe from the powers of darkness and death.

And so can we. We too as baptized people are heirs to the hope that was born that Easter morning. As we reverse our own descent into hell, as we too experience the shocking turn of events that occurred in that long ago dawn, we too can embrace that life-giving hope. We too can say, with the Colossians, “Yes, there is more to life than this earthly life.” We have been to Cross and the grave this week. Perhaps some of us are still carrying heavy crosses, or are still grieving painful losses. Two days ago, it was Friday. But now it is Sunday, it is Easter, and, once again we experience the miracle. Yes, there is hope, and there is resurrection. Our lives are now hidden with Christ in God. We no longer have to depend on our own efforts. We can trust in God’s saving power for the rest of our lives and beyond. We can sing “alleluia” with true joy.

And our Easter joy doesn’t end on the other side of the red doors. It doesn’t end with this day. The church gives us fifty days to celebrate the gift of our new life in Christ: from today, through our celebration of Jesus’ Ascension, to his gift of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. But we can also celebrate Jesus’ gift of new life every day. In a sense, every day is a gift of God, and every day gives us an opportunity to praise God for all that God has done for us. Every day gives us a chance to live with the hope of resurrection.

E.e cummings is a poet whom some of you may know. I began reading cummings’s poetry as a teenager – even before I knew anything about bluegrass music. I’ve liked his poem “i thank You God for most this amazing” for a long time, but I realized only recently how well it expresses our understanding of Easter as a daily experience, how well it shows that resurrection isn’t something we experience once a year in church but is ultimately part of all of God’s creation. Hear cummings’s reminder that God is “everything that is yes:”

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

What could be more joyful news than God’s “yes” to us. This Easter day, may the ears of your ears awake to God’s promise, may the eyes of your eyes see God at work in your life, and may we all shout once again, “Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”