Sermon: If Easter Had A Face - My last sermon at CUC (April 27, 2014)

Sermon: If Easter Had A Face

Text: John 20:19-31

If Easter were a human person, like any other regular human being that I could meet face to face, I would like to ask, “Hey, Easter! We meet again this year, one more time. Yet, it is not just ‘another time’. Since I have known you, every year you come to me with a different face, with a different look. Hey, what’s up?”

I imagine Easter as a human person and it makes sense to me only if she has a face, just as Jesus, the Jewish healer, wisdom teacher, Kingdom of God movement initiator, who breathed his last breath on the cross, had a human face. Easter has a human face. The communal resurrection of Christ has a human face – people. People. People who resurrect with Jesus. The communal resurrection of Christ comes after, only comes after the communal crucifixion of Jesus. Only after we communally experience and respond to and share the sufferings of another, only after we give our ears to the cries of the people in bewilderment, in pain and even in anger over the injustices that impact their lives, only after we choose to stand at the foot of the cross and go through Good Friday to cry with and for those who have no more tears left to shed, can we see the face of the communal Christ amongst our human faces. We see the face of Easter in people, ordinary, common people like us.  

It is the second Sunday of Easter, yet I still desire to meet Easter face-to-face, looking Easter right in the eyes. I am longing to hear the beat of Easter’s heart. I imagine what it feels like calling Easter and being with Easter, as if it were a friend, a neighbour, or a stranger, who has a face. A real human face:

Easter in a dying friend’s face. Easter in the tears the people of Calgary shed for the victims of last week’s stabbings and their families. Easter in the faces of the Korean people in their collective grief over the hundreds of deaths in last week’s ferry catastrophe, and in their sharing of the families’ sorrow, grief, shock, bewilderment, and even their outrage.

 

Korean people are, again, rising to ask what has gone wrong with themselves as a nation, as a society, to allow this tragedy to collapse upon these young people, and kill those who should shine like jewels, blossom like flowers. Their destiny should not end like this; entombed in the cold, cold sea when at their age, the idea of their own death should be so distant as to be unimaginable. The Korean people are outraged, believing personally and deeply that, more than ever, they must truly protest the fascist societal system that allows economics and wealth-creation to take priority over people’s safety and lives, the government which runs roughshod over the people’s rights to know the truth, and the mass media acts as a puppet delivering government’s propaganda. Easter must seem so distant to the grieving and devastated Koreans, yet I discern the dimmed light of Easter Hope getting brighter in their eager desire to see another human being’s face in the light of truth and to understand another’s pain as their own.

Through the past two years of serving Chemainus United Church, I have been so privileged to look you in the face, and witness the Face of Easter in you. We have journeyed together in a communal faith walk that has led us through the depths and peaks of life, personally and spiritually. I thank you for your openness and willingness to look me in the face, so we could see each other as we truly are.

Emmanuel Levinas says, “The idea of infinity, the infinitely ‘more’ contained in the less, is concretely produced in the form of a relation with the face.” The infinite variety of humankind, the unlimited number of ways that we relate to the world, to each other and to God, can be seen and appreciated when you look at another person’s face, and to know that there is another person there a singular being who may not be completely knowable but who is always worthy of love and respect. In the encounter of the Other, in the face-to-face encounter with another human being, the human face ordains us in the sacred relationship between I and “Thou”, not I and “it”.

These past two years has been a time for me to witness the infinitely ‘more’ that is concretely produced in the form of a relation with the face. You hugged me. You gently squeezed my hand as you encouraged me. You showed your teary eyes and said ‘Thank you.’ You expressed your concerns, sharing with me your ideas of how I can become a better minister for you and others – and here I am. I am proving that you are right! (* grin *) You let me hold your hands beside the hospital bed to pray. You asked me to say the words for your families in their loss. As we see each other face-to- face, looking each other in the eyes, as we hold one another’s hands, and share our hearts, you let me witness the infinitely ‘more’ that is your community, your lives. So I thank you.    

The infinitely ‘more’ is what we Christians call God. And in God, the duality of the beginning and the end as the two opposite poles in a linear order of time - dissolves. Beginning is going on. Everywhere. Amidst all the endings, bursting with promise. Even now. Even amidst this ending, this last Sunday service we are now having together.

Here is a piece of a poem that I like, Song of Myself, written by Walt Whitman.

“I have heard what the talkers were talking,

The talk of the beginning and the end;

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now.”

One of the Christian doctrines that has engaged our Christian imaginations for a long time is Creatio ex nihilo, meaning ‘Creation out of nothing’. God has created the whole universe – the Sun, the Moon, the stars, animals, birds, bugs, water, earth, flowers, human beings, the complicated and delicate, organic life system, every entity in it and its beauty – ‘out of nothing’ at once, in a singular event. Yet the God of Creation, God of Easter, exclaims to us that “You are created from everything!” Not out of the void, not out of  emptiness, not out of the vacuum, you are created from everything! From light as well as darkness – from the tidal waves of human experiences of loss and grief, anger and disappointment. You are created from everything - from the squalling of infants, from supernovas on the far side of the universe! You are created from everything! Your beginning is already full, flooded in the water of everything; God’s breath is hovering upon the face of your beginning, vibrating upon the face of the deep.

Beginning is still going on. Everywhere. Amidst all the endings, bursting with promise. Even now. The two polarities of the chronological order of time – the beginning and the end - dissolves.

I am standing on the promise, neither the end nor the beginning, but where the duality of the end and the beginning dissolves - and so are you. You are standing on the promise; it is our Easter hope. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to doubtful Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand, put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Some days ago, a church member knocked on my office door, and uttered an incredible comment that cheered me up. He said that he went to the Men’s Breakfast that morning. Most of them were from the other churches in the Chemainus area, yet they had known that I had been a minister at Chemainus United Church, and also knew that my term with CUC would end soon. He said, that morning, my next step was the "subject" of their discussion. I exclaimed, “Was I discussed?!” with surprise and some excitement.

“Yeah, you’ve made a good reputation around here.”

I became even a bit more playful. “Am I popular?” “Yeah, Min Goo and you, both of you. Min Goo was the first. And you were the second. You came to us. You were opening up the culture and acceptance.”

The last sentence – Min Goo and I were opening up the culture toward acceptance – was so affirming. So right. It cheered me up. Opening up is a great description to explain what the ‘beginning’ is about. “To begin” means, in Hebrew, ‘To cut open, to open up’. The beginning does not lie back, does not lie in the past, like an origin, but rather it opens out.

Thank you, everyone, for the last two years. Together we, communally and collectively, have opened up the culture and practiced acceptance, learned it and embodied it to truly see the face of another – not the colour of our skin, not the differences in how we look, what languages we speak, but to look each other in the face – the human face.   

 

 

We are  standing on the eternal now, the infinitely more. We are standing on the promise that is concretely fulfilled in our endeavour and journey to make right and authentic relationships with one another through the Risen Christ. The beginning is still going on, and is everywhere.

Chemainus United Church, I love you. You were my first congregation. My Lay Supervision Team members: Ken Graham, Gloria Cope, Lana Palmer, David Thomas. I love you. You have been a lighthouse for my journey through the past two years. My earnest prayer is that you may continue to be a warm and remarkable community that thrives with the vision and practice of acceptance, hospitality, and the love and warmth of Jesus Christ as you have shown them to me. God bless. Amen.