An Easter Sermon

Easter Sermon The Dover Church
April 8, 2012 – Easter Sunday Scripture: John 20:1-25

This Easter I'd like to tell you some good news about the Good News. We all know the Good News, that Jesus, who his disciple's thought was the Messiah, God's anointed, the Christ, the one who was going to save them, save them from the Romans, save them from their failed politics, economics and religion, save them from themselves, this Jesus was killed by the Romans. After three days in the tomb, this Jesus was resurrected by God, raised back, into life. He is risen! Alleluia! Praise God! In conquering death, Jesus works our salvation. That's the Good News of Jesus in a nutshell. That is Christianity in two really bad sentences. That’s the Gospel in all its enormously dense, compact, and frankly almost impenetrable to the uninitiated thick code language… and I have preached it any number of times. The problem with all of that is, however, what if we are too emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, psychologically, or any other way removed from this news for it to be any good to us at all? What if we're too jaded, too cynical, too doubtful, too self satisfied for it to reach us? What if we just cannot even begin to imagine this Good News having any practical application to our real lives? What if all the ideas, concepts, phrases and world view just seem too far fetched, too otherworldly, too cerebral, too just plain unbelievable since I cannot even imagine what that would look like? Are my questions resonating with any of you yet? If so, that's why I wanted to give you some good news about The Good News.
Before you get too excited, however, my good news about the Good News may not sound like Good News because it's not some instant miracle, quick fix, lose 30 lbs in 30 days without doing anything, the sort of "never fear, Jesus is here! Simsalabim!" and something happens, we're not sure what, but it's going to feel really good and well, that's Easter. Nope. I'm not going to soft soap you.
I just finished a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers. The Story of Success. Hardly what you were expecting in church on Easter perhaps, but bear with me. Gladwell wanted to know why the Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and other enormously successful people were so successful while other, just as gifted people, were not. Gladwell found a number of surprising reasons for success: Canadian boys born in January were disproportionately more likely to succeed at hockey not because they were naturally better than all the others but because they were the oldest and strongest starting out; one decade produced the most successful business tycoons (Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockelfeller, Morgan, etc.) in our nation's history because everything came together to make their success possible; and the one that I found most encouraging, as I am neither an aspiring hockey player nor a guy name Rockefeller. Gladwell calls this the threshold of 10,000 hours. In addition to being in the right place at the right time, the Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and all the rest put 10,000 hours of serious effort into the thing they were passionate about and they became enormously successful. Those who didn't put in 10,000 hours weren't as successful. It's partly that simple.
Wait a minute, Max. Are you telling us that if we put 10,000 hours into our faith we can really not just understand but live the Good News of Christ’s Resurrection in our very real lives and not just in our minds? Yes. That's both exactly what I am telling you… and not quite. On the one hand, I am quite confident, based on my own personal experience and just about everything I have ever read about other people's faith journeys, that if you put in 10,000 hours following Jesus, amazing things are very likely to happen. The "not quite part" is where the grace comes in. This is not works righteousness where you can pull your way up by your own boot straps into another spiritual dimension. Faith always depends upon grace. It will be by the grace of God if you actually get started and keep at it, but you still have to walk the walk, there will plenty of ups and downs and there will be plenty of excitement along the way to keep whetting your appetite for more…the good and the bad, all by the grave of God.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus' ministry lasted for only three years, from the moment he walked up to Peter and Andrew on the beach to Holy Week. Why just three years? Why not more time? Jesus didn't read Malcolm Gladwell and he hadn't heard of the Beatles, Bill Gates or even Steve Jobs, but he had his disciples put in 10,000 hours so that they could succeed when he was gone. 3 years, 52 weeks of 64 hour weeks of constant companionship equals 10,0000 hours. That still leaves time for 8 hours of sleep every night and 6 hours a day for other things, which is a lot more relaxed than most of our jobs. Mary, Thomas, Peter and all the rest of the disciples had put in 10,000 passionate hours and they, for lack of a better word, succeeded. And the good news about the Good News is that you can too.
I wanted to bring up Gladwell's 10,000 hours is because I know that you know that 10,000 hours is true and real. You have done it. I am certain that every one of you here who has succeeded at something has put 10,000 hours into it: your professions, your sport, your marriage. I know that most of you are raising your children to put in their 10,000 hours. You may not call it that, but you are. And just so this doesn't get too sidetracked into other areas of human experience, have you ever wondered why some elderly people seem so spiritually wise and mature? Quiet simply, because they have put in 10,000 hours.
But why wait? Why not get cracking now? Why wait until you're an old man or woman, if then? Why bother? What's really in it for me? Well, talking about Easter without using churchy words like Resurrection would be about change. Something changed…everything changed. Death is normally the end of the line, but not any more. Life came out of death rather than the other way around. Possibility came out of impossibility. In short, being an Easter person is about believing that change is possible.
That's huge for starters because I would bet many of you here have already fallen back into the thinking of impossibility. "10,000 hours? It's impossible!" And while we might be impressed by the seemingly limitless future possibilities of technology, most of what I hear about the really important subjects, war and peace, the environment, population and sustainability, food and starvation, is about impossibility.
But Easter's about believing that not only is change possible, change is desirable. Change is what God wants for you and God is going to do what needs to be done to help you through those changes, if you allow God to go to work on you, direct you and empower you. When you really think about it, the only things that do not change are very dead. Life is always change. To resist change is to kill or die.
Now Jesus had a specific name for this change: the Kingdom of God. According to Jesus, the kingdom is not just possible and desirable, it’s already happening all around us. The real question is can we see it and are we going to be part of it? And you find answers to those questions as you work your way to your 10,000 hours.
Change is not just possible, desirable, already happening, is ultimately going to be completely victorious. The big change towards which all these little changes are pointing, the big light of which these little sparks are flickers, what the Apostle Paul called “the complete,” well, that’s going to happen. Guaranteed.
Ah, yes. Change. There. I said it again. Change. One little word that gets so many folk's backs up in the air with resentment or defensiveness. Are you talking about me? I have to change? Well, yeah. You. But not just you. It’s you and the church for starters...change the church???? Yes, but everyone and everything else top, so don’t take it so personally, even if it is personal too. If I were a psychiatrist I would turn that question into my own: “it sounds like this talk about personal change disturbs you. Let’s talk about that. Why do you find change so upsetting?”
I joke, but it is at least kind of ironic if you ask me. How so? We Easter people, call us Christians or Church folks, have gone out of way to make Easter as unchanging as possible by celebrating it in exactly the same way, singing the exact same songs, year after year for as long as I can remember. You want to know about impossibility? Try changing the music or liturgy for Easter Sunday and you'll come face to face with impossibility. But maybe life out of death is so very wild and undomesticated that we need to look at in a familiar box, just to be able to even remotely get our minds around it. If we can't get our minds around it, how can we possibly leave here believing that change is possible from here on out, that there are no more ends of the line, that death isn’t the only inevitability, that new and abundant life is the ultimate inevitability. Which is the whole point as far as I'm concerned, that we leave here ready begin giving it a passionate try. This morning is as good a time as any.