Morning After Preaching

I wonder how many of you like murder mysteries? I am not a gambling man, but I’m willing to guess nearly all of you. This is something I’ve noticed about church people: they love a good murder! But why are books about violence and death so interesting to us?

It might be sheer escapism. It might also be that, as Christians, we take seriously the reality of violence and death in the world. Think of the readings we hear throughout holy week. Think of Abraham and Isaac, where God demands that Abraham sacrifice his only Son. Thankfully, God relents and gives Abraham back his Son, Isaac, but God’s power of life and death is clear. Then we heard the story of the people of Israel escaping from pharaoh through the Red Sea. God brings death to pharoah’s charioteers, but he rescues his chosen people. Then we heard from Ezekiel, who also told us about God’s power over death. God asked Ezekiel to breathe life back into the bones of the dead in order to bring them to life. Death is not victorious, these stories say, if God is on your side.

In their own way, murder mysteries are based upon the same struggle of life against death. But there is something else to be said for them: something I want to talk about briefly tonight. They are good training for how to read carefully, how to see things we didn’t see before. They train us to look for the unexpected in what is in front of us. You’ve all heard of Sherlock Holmes, I hope, the first real detective in fiction. Picture Sherlock Holmes holding up what looks like something normal and everyday, and asking his sidekick, Watson, what he sees. “I can see nothing,” Watson says to Homes. “On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see.”

Somehow things in front of us, things under our noses, hide within them all the evidence necessary to figure out what happened. For those with eyes to see, what looks like nothing can, in fact, reveal everything. For those with eyes to see, folded grave clothes, an empty tomb, can reveal the resurrection of the Son of God.

A mystery novel trains us to look for the unexpected. To look at the world in a different way from the way most people look – to be a Sherlock Holmes rather than a Watson. Of course it is Watson who, like many skeptics, thinks that Holmes has lost his grip on reality. Holmes is thought by the skeptic to be eccentric and strange… right up until the last pages, when the truth is revealed. But if we look closely, if instead of skepticism we believe, then we will look as closely as Holmes at every clue. And perhaps we too will figure out what has happened before the final pages.

That was what the angel told the women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning. Luke’s gospel tells us the women went “and found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise’.” (Luke 24:2-6) Remember what he told you, say the angels. Remember the clues he gave. Look with the eyes of faith, and you will know in your heart what’s happened.

In Luke’s account, the evidence of resurrection was already hidden in all that Jesus said and did. For those with eyes to see, Jesus had trained his followers to look for the unexpected. For those with ears to hear, Jesus had told his followers the mysterious truth about himself. So, as the angels say: Why be perplexed? Why seek the living among the dead? For the truth, the mysterious and wonderful truth, is that Jesus Christ has risen. Jesus Christ is who he said – the one whom death and darkness could not defeat, God’s own Son.

Tonight is a night of great joy. The mystery of the death on Friday afternoon has revealed its truth – that Jesus Christ is God’s Son come to be among us, come to release us from sin and death. Life has beaten murder on the cross. Christ has overtaken death. And Christ’s life can overtake us too, lifting us up to God.

Back in the early days of the Church, those about to be baptized learned all about mysteries – the “holy mysteries,” or mysteries of faith. In Jerusalem, over 1600 years ago, St Cyril played the role of Sherlock Holmes, teaching those about to be baptized how to “see everything.” They learned how to see with the eyes of faith, learned how to recognize the Bible’s truths, learned how to encounter God in the world. We can still read St Cyril of Jerusalem’s words to those to be baptized.

“Already there is an odor of blessedness upon you, O ye who are soon to be enlightened: already ye are gathering the spiritual flowers, to weave heavenly crowns: already the fragrance of the Holy Spirit has breathed upon you: already ye have gathered round the vestibule of the King’s palace; may ye be led in by the King!” A bit more poetic than a Sherlock Holmes novel I will admit. But Cyril is trying to instill the sense of anticipation, of wanting to be drawn into a mystery, in a way that employs your reason. Like all good Episcopalians, he doesn’t want people to leave their brains outside church.

On Easter morning in Jerusalem, the newly baptized received the fullness of that mystery: received the Eucharist for the first time on Easter, the day of Jesus’s resurrection. They now tasted what they had been taught: the mystery that is hidden in bread and wine. For the first time they experienced what we learned on Maundy Thursday, about the gift of Jesus’s life in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

The gift that was given in that Last Supper, the gift of Jesus’s own life, was handed over late on Thursday night to the Jewish authorities, who handed the gift over to Pilate, who eventually handed it to the people, who took that life away by shouting “Crucify him!” on Friday. The gift of life, which we humans tried to snuff out on the cross, is offered to us again as Christ rises from the dead.

The Eucharist is possible only because Christ, though dead on Friday, is risen again. Risen and present still. The mystery of the empty tomb is the mystery of Christ’s life offered to us still. Why, then, do you seek the living among the dead? Today death and darkness have lost. In bread and wine is life. Alleluia!