Beyond Words
Easter Flowers, First Presbyterian Church Edwardsville
Easter, Gospel of Luke 24:1-12
“But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” -Luke 24:11
Hearing the Easter story – really believing it and staking your life on its claims – is no longer a given in our age. We might have a difficult time coming to terms intellectually with what the story says happened one morning two-thousand years ago. Or, perhaps we’re struggling emotionally with injustice and violence, experienced personally or in sympathy with others. I watch and hear news about the horrors in Ukraine, and frequently feel a combination of anger and sadness. Our resistance to the good news of Easter might grow in direct proportion to the bad news we have experienced.
A similar resistance can be observed in Jesus’ disciples, as recorded in the biblical accounts of the first Easter morning. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, give us different perspectives. But all agree that women were the first to discover the empty tomb, a fact given special prominence in Luke’s version.
Some commentators suggest that the message “He is risen” was poorly received because it was transmitted by women. Tragically, the religious and legal traditions of the day valued the testimony of women less than the testimony of men. That kind of injustice was present in Jesus’ time, and is perpetuated in our time, even by Christians who should know better. If you ever are tempted by such prejudice, remember that the first Christian preacher was a woman!
On the first Easter morning, the gender of the speakers may have been part of the reason for the resistance, but not all of it. Probably the news of Easter was simply too overwhelming to believe. The disciples who had known Jesus best and loved him most were experiencing the deep grief that any of us would feel if our friend and teacher were murdered. Comfort was beyond words.
We don’t have to work hard to imagine this situation, because so many similar ones are on our television and computer screens. It’s like the story of Serhiy Perebyinis, whose wife, son, daughter, and even family pets, were killed by a mortar round as they tried to escape Kyiv. He talks to reporters and holds up a photograph of his family. He says that his wife’s body is lying in a black bag in an overcrowded morgue. The company that employed his wife attempts to describe what everyone is going through, “There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain.”[1]
There are no words; people in deep pain cannot express it adequately. Nor can our expressions of sympathy take away their suffering. The cure must be something beyond words.
In the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ passion and burial, his disciples were experiencing that kind of pain. When Jesus’ body was removed from the cross on Friday afternoon, there had been only enough time for a quick burial before the Sabbath began at sundown. Throughout the Sabbath, the women planned their return trip to prepare the body properly. On Sunday, they rose before dawn, and left the walls of the city to travel to the area of the tombs. When the amazing discovery of an empty tomb was made, the women were the first of many who are invited to see a new response to such grief, an answer to death with power beyond words.
These days, it’s possible for us to fool themselves into believing that we’re the first generation to see the problems of the world as they really are. Having applied our college-educated minds to the size and scale to the size and scale of the horrors via video and sound recording, we wonder how God can really exist. If God exists, doesn’t God care? If God does care, is God powerless to change it? Is there a God at all? For some, it seems easier to deny God, and be done with religion.
A look at twenty centuries of church history shows just how limited this perspective is. Always, there have been people of faith who braved injustice and violence, and pointed toward the light leading God’s people into a new future.
I’d like to highlight a moment from this long history by asking you to turn in your bulletin materials to a song sheet labeled with the title, “The Day of Resurrection.” It’s one of the older hymns Presbyterians still sing, contained our newest hymnal, entitled Glory to God. Our bell choir will be playing an arrangement of this hymn by Lloyd Larson as today’s musical offering. We’ve included the song sheet so that you may also notice and appreciate the text that goes with it.
Our hymnal’s editors did a nice job of offering, near the bottom of the page, a few words of orientation about the writing of each hymn. You’ll notice the page says, “The roots of this English text come from a mid-8th century Greek hymn that continues to be used in Orthodox churches at the midnight Eucharist marking the beginning of Easter.” If you go to the history books, then you’ll discover what a troubled period formed the context in which the hymn was inspired.
During the time, Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of paintings of Jesus or other holy figures. These are known as “icons,” and in some parts of the church, are used as devotional aids. Leo and his supporters feared that art would lead to idolatry, and destroyed untold numbers of art works. Communities rioted, churches were stripped, and defenders of the icons persecuted.
A church controversy had begun that lasted three hundred years. It eventually resulted in a great schism between Western and Eastern Churches, a schism that has not been healed to this day.
In this context, John of Damascus , the author of the hymn I’ve pointed out, came to prominence as the great defender of art in service of Christian worship. At grave personal risk, he proclaimed the theological rationale that allowed the Eastern churches to reinstitute art without implying idolatry. He wrote, “. . . since God has appeared in the flesh and lived among men, I can represent what is visible in God . . . . I do not venerate matter, but I venerate the creator of matter, who became matter for my sake, who assumed life in the flesh, and who, through matter, accomplished my salvation.”[2]
In this era churches were looted, careers destroyed, and lives wasted in riots and murders as brutal as what we see in today’s news footage from Ukraine. In the midst of painful turmoil, John of Damascus was invited to transcend his circumstances. John heard the message “He is risen.” We find evidence in this hymn that has survived these 1300 years, and inspires its hearers today.[3]
Easter, when celebrated simply as a cultural holiday, a time of spring break and chocolate rabbits, doesn’t have enough strength to carry us through times of pandemic and war. But when we look at it as John of Damascus saw it, when we allow the person and message at its heart to shape us, the day of resurrection arrives with the power of a new reality beyond words. Its empty tomb is a sign that God cares deeply about human despair and suffering, and reveals that God is able to bring new life from death. As that reality claims us and transforms us, how different our lives are, and how much more grace-filled this world will yet become.
NOTES
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-news-perebeinis-family-killed-husband-returns-morgue/
[2] John of Damascus, quoted in “The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform,” by Roger Olson, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1999, p. 303.
[3] “The Day of Resurrection,” Glory to God hymnal, #233.
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