“And he shall reign forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”

You know, the theology…and the gender message…the hierarchy… they are problematic for most of us from start to finish…King of Kings and Lord of Lords…???

Good Lord…as my grandmother used to say…

I disagree with so much of it.

And yet, didn’t you find yourself singing along? No. Be honest. At least under your breath?

Did you find yourself wanting to stand?

Or at least rise up a little straighter in your chair?

I think we want so badly to rise this Easter. I think our need to rise up has never been greater. I think we are tired. I think we are scared. I think we are lonely.

I think we desperately need the promise of Easter to be true this year.

But, I have to tell you, this is a hard year to get to Hallelujah.

You need faith in these virus times.

And faith…well, faith is just not our strong suit…most of us. We do critique…analysis…we do grievance…yes, we even do grievance…

But faith…that is a real problem for us this Easter.

You see, in a good year, when life seems predictable, even if we know it is not just, we can simply find joy in the rebirth in the earth.

“Did the sun come up this morning…and did the earth awake again…or did it not?” Victoria Safford asks.

Did you see Cassandra’s yard with the bright sun shining? Have you seen the blossoms on the trees?

Most years…the rebirth in the earth might be enough.

It is not the earth’s failing that is challenging us. The earth has done its part again. Oh, concern about global warming is playing in the back of our minds but this year the real challenge…

…is a microscopic virus and our very human responses to it.

It is the deaths and the fault lines of oppression that they are revealing…

It is the fear and the lurking knowledge that things will never be the same…

Those are the things that make it hard to get to hallelujah this year.

Good Lord…How can we get to hallelujah when it is so clear that we are in such a mess?

A clergy friend, grieving his father’s death, unable to travel thanks to the virus and not even able (he is Jewish in background) sit shiva in his father’s memory…my friend found the words of C.S. Lewis, written in England of 1939, entitled “Learning in War-Time.”

Lewis wrote: “I think it is important to try to see the present calamity in … perspective. The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice…”

War …[and the pandemic, simply] aggravate the permanent human situation…

Lewis goes on: “We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’ Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil…turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms,… emergencies.”

Life has never been normal.

The virus is just shining a light on truths many of us have been able to choose not to see.

African Americans three times as likely…or more…to die because of deeply rooted historical inequalities in health care, housing and income. Inequalities that we have at least not changed. Inequalities that are part of what has been normal.

Hourly workers have become “essential workers”…thanks to the virus…so they can travel to work in crowded buses and metros…where they stock the shelves and run the cash registers, clean the handles of the shopping carts and deliver our bags of groceries…encountering hundreds of people a day, with all the risks that entails …while some of us complain of too many zoom meetings and our isolation.

I say this not to call up guilt for those of us who are privileged…truly that is not my intention…but to ask for awareness.

Our ministry this Easter has to be a call to awareness…first. A call to be present to these truths and to remember them.

A significant part of the justice work of this congregation…not only in these virus times, but for almost three decades…has been about maintaining awareness of the cries of suffering that many of us could so easily choose not to hear.

Theologian Howard Thurman writes: “There is no need to fear evil. [But] There is every need to understand what it does and how it operates in the world. We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil.

The evilness of evil.

Our world has gotten quieter…outside…fewer people on the streets…many fewer cars… fewer planes overhead…the normal hum has given way to quiet.

And just perhaps that will help us hear the voices of those who suffer…most…

Because it feels like a Good Friday world right now. We are walking in the Valley of the Shadow. We tally the deaths every day.

What a difficult Easter season and what a difficult Easter sermon this is to preach because we have to deal with the deaths before we can find new life…before we can even think about rising.

Perhaps it may help to remember that we humans are always needing to figure out what it means to live in the presence of death.

The story of the Phoenix is not just a charming tale of rebirth. The Phoenix lives for 500 years…and it is only at great age when it offers itself to the flames…to be reduced to ashes and smoke…so that new life can rise.

The story of the Phoenix is about the truth of death every bit as much as it is about the miracle of rebirth.

I think we need so badly to rise.

The women who went to the tomb on Easter morning…they needed to rise, too. They were mourning the death of their beloved teacher, who had given them hope that the way things were, was not the way things had to be.

They were heart broken. But they were doing what needed to be done.

They rose early and bought fragrant herbs and oil to anoint their friend’s body (and a clean cloth in which to wrap him), so that his friends could gather around, could sit shiva…to say goodbye.

They come expecting to deal with death as their culture instructed them…it was women’s work that needed to be done…

They found the tomb empty and a stranger sitting there who tells them that Jesus is not there. He…is…risen.

Those women, the Magdalene and the others, ready to do the work of preparation…so much in need of rising themselves…

Find an empty tomb.

Nothing about this is normal.

He is risen, the stranger tells them.

Howard Thurman calls Easter the “glad surprise.”

“There is something compelling,” he writes,”… about the glad surprise [of Easter]. The emphasis upon glad…It carries with it the element of elation, life, of something over and beyond the surprise itself… This … has to do with the very … foundation of hope…

It is as if a [person] stumbling in the darkness, having lost [their] way, finds that the spot at which [they have fallen] is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise.

Or as Dr. King said: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Just take the first step…perhaps, for us, in this season of the virus…the first step is to be present to the suffering. To approach it, bringing our knowledge, as religious people, of all that needs to be done.

Just like the women in the Gospel.

To tell the story of the lives.

The stories of those who die but also the stories of the helpers who care for them.

And the stories of the reason for the deaths…not just the virus but the human decisions…both the good decisions and the bad ones…in plain language…so that we do not avoid the plain truth…even if that plain truth is that so many of these deaths did not need to take place.

There is a lot to grieve… but grieving together can be an act of revolutionary love.

And we know how to do that. It is one of the things we do so well in this church…in this community. That’s why it may be unusual to speak of death on Easter morning, but it is not inappropriate this year. Because being present to death and grief is part of our religious job.

As we grieve, some righteous anger will emerge…I am sure.

But our first and most important calling is to grieve…and to know all that has been lost.

And to discover that grief can become our first step…

That grief is where our rising has to begin. Like the stories of that other rising…we will rise from that focus on death into new life.

There are many things that can keep us from rising. Many things that can keep us stuck.

A yearning for normal…for a return to what was …when we know how flawed it was… That can keep us from rising.

Weariness. Yes, it is hard to rise when you are worn down and worn out.

Making a God of ourselves or our self-interest. Narcissism. Self-Centeredness. Greed…all those can weigh you down.

There are so many things that can keep us from rising.

But I think there is only one thing…really only one essential thing…that we need in order to rise.

Let’s say you find yourself at the foot of that staircase…by intention or by chance…

What lets you hear the call to take that first step? Even when you cannot see the top?

I believe that what we need most is compassion.

Compassion. That’s the critical thing lacking in the old normal. It isn’t lack of analysis. We’ve analyzed racism and inequality…we’ve analyzed pollution and our carbon footprints. We’re using our pronouns and paying attention to accessibility. We’ve got our analysis down.

But without compassion…

And the problem is that the old normal doesn’t seem to care. It’s not that the old normal doesn’t or can’t understand. It’s that they don’t seem to care..not in the same way.

The suffering that the old normal causes doesn’t seem to matter that much as the old normal makes its decisions. The problem is that the old normal places such a small value on compassion.

Compassion is what allows us to rise. Compassion for ourselves and compassion for others.

That impulse to go outside at 7 PM and applaud the first responders and those essential workers and the nurses and doctors.

That landlord who decided he would not collect the April rent from his 200 apartments. He could afford not to. And he decided not put so many of the families that relied on his buildings for shelter…in jeopardy. So no rent for April.

It is the individuals…some of them are celebrities but most of them not…who are buying food for all the shoppers in the store and delivering meals to all the kids who can’t eat at school…

Compassion. Feeling with. Caring about. Connected to.

Finding meaning in what you can give rather than merely in what you can get.

Compassion. That is where our hope lies this Easter.

Jesus said love one another. Yes. Feel with one another. Feel for one another. Care. Empathize.

Give preventing suffering a heavy weight in your equations.

Take that first step. And discover that staircase.

These individual acts of compassion point toward the qualities of justice, equity and compassion that we must begin to build into the world that will follow this crisis.

Because there will be a world that follows.

I believe we are being called to redeem that world. With hearts and minds broken open by the death and the disruption, I believe that we are being called to move rapidly toward the Beloved Community.

Called to take this time as an opportunity.

The alternative is to see our world devolve into self-protection, racism and xenophobia.

And a decision is going to be made. A course will be charted. One way or the other. I don’t think there is a middle ground.

And I believe as much as I believe anything, that the world can only be redeemed by love…by connection and by compassion.

Cameron Esposito (adapted) “I am a seeker…[we are all seekers]…still hunting down answers to the questions of why we are here and what we are supposed to do. But for now, I can tell you this…connection. Connection to ourselves and connection to others. Maybe that connection IS God. And we are our own saviors…meant to save ourselves.” [and one another]

Meant…by our choices…to rise.

This Easter does not offer a painless resurrection. Resurrection is never easy. Ask the Phoenix while the flames are burning.

But resurrection is possible and hope is not an unreasonable emotion.

Because we can choose to rise, to take that first step…to lift our vision and shift our direction toward compassion and hope.

And like the women leaving that tomb, long ago…we know that the only choice possible for us…is simply to begin.

On this Easter morning, let us begin…let us allow ourselves to rise.

Prayer: Will you pray with me now?

Spirit of Life that calls us to presence

Spirit of Love that calls us to connection

God of Easter…of both suffering and rising

God of Spring…the proof that rebirth is real

Help us stay connected even while we must remain physically distant

Let our hearts do the touching while our hands must stay at our sides

Help us find ways to support one another and those who suffer most

And let our spirits discover…once again…clarity and strength

Help us…on this [bright] Easter morning…to begin

To begin rising toward justice and equity

Rising with compassion

Help us begin…again…

Help us allow ourselves…to rise.

May that be so.

Amen

Topics: Possibility