Easter and Failure

Easter Sermon

1.       Traditional Christianity as practiced in the US would have fascinated Jesus

2.     misses 90% of the goodness of the Good News

3.     spend a lot of our time confessing our failures and shortcomings

1.       didn't do this

2.     hadn't done that

3.     don't think this

4.     not loving them

5.     sorry, sorry, sorry - feel like we'll never live up - God's hope for us unattainable - God's love, experience of God's love unattainable

4.     that all may be true, but that's not even close to half the truth

1.       not what we really think and feel

2.     at least it's not what I think and feel

5.     We certainly fall short at our end of the bargain, but it sure looks like God fails too

1.       all the sickness and violence, accidents and tragedy, broken relations and betrayed love, oppression and addiction, falsehood and futility, death

2.     Hitler and the Holocaust, ISIS, Boko Haram

3.     why don't you do something, God? Almighty, my eye!

1.       funny how we want an almighty God for the bad stuff, but not to keep us from doing what we want, thinking what we want

4.     Are you even there?

5.     Big loser

6.     Big faker

7.      all your big promises and this is what we get?

8.     what's good about that? I mean, taken on average?

6.     Easter begins with the truth - mutual failure - humanity failed God and God failed humanity - it didn't seem like it. It was it. we both failed

1.       humanity killed the Messiah - the whole "died for our sins" thing - we probably would have done the same thing in their shoes

2.     the Messiah ...died

7.      Easter started off not going to see the Resurrection - going to see a dead body - failure and futility

1.       who will roll the huge stone away for us? failure - obstacle

2.     just another this is how it always ends...except it wasn't supposed to this time

3.     except it did, again, big faker

8.     If they had found a body there, Jesus' body in the tomb where they saw them place it. Jesus' crucified body - if no Resurrection - total failure and futility, no point to Jesus - plenty of compassionate,moral and ethical teachers in the world

1.       the body in the tomb would have been proof of human and divine failure. would have been conviction of human and divine failure

9.     James Carrol's Christ Actually: The Son of God for a Secular Age

1.       The solidarity of the commonwealth of God is the mutuality of failure forgiven

2.     Easter is mutuality of failure forgiven

3.     no resurrection - no forgiveness - God hadn't forgiven us our failures and we wouldn't forgive God God's failures

10.  In spite of everything - God believes in us. God not staying dead is God's vote of confidence in us  don't stay dead or dying - get up

1.       power of the resurrection which we see all around us

2.     in spite of everything, let's go

3.     in spite of everything, people living in the love of God, living the love of God, loving the love God

11.    In spite of everything, we believe in God

1.       approached, stumbled into, awoken to, just noticed the presence

2.     felt the power, seen the power in others, heard about the power in others

3.     followed the compass

4.     bathed in the comfort

5.     looked to the hope

6.     the very fact that we want to believe is the power of the Resurrection

12.  here is where the truest part of Mark's Resurrectuon story comes

1.       what do the women do when they realize what has happened?

2.     they are terrified and run away

3.     we would have done the same thing

4.     we do the same thing

5.     the question is which way do you run

13.  This all sounds nice, hypothetical, yet another Easter sermon, we don't have run away, we can sort of just move on

14.  Except it's not hypothetical - can't run away, not really

15.  My baby sister died yesterday morning. Turned 45 on March 25. Got a new knee last Wednesday and something went wrong - aneurism maybe

16.  Kirsten's death at 45 looks like a failure, for her, for God

17.   Her life an incredible story of failure and resurrection, over and over life knocked her down and tried to bury her, she got up, she believed

18.  So, every Easter, we ask ourselves hypothetcially, rhetorically, boastfully becasue we're all alive here, "Where, O death is they sting?"

19.  Oh, it's still there. The sting still stings. My heart is broken. I spent yesterday afternoon visiting with my parents to tell them their baby had died.

20. Those of you who have been where I am know - life can feel unreal. The most real times feel the most unreal - like the Easter story

21.  But I know this is not the end. Because Jesus is risen, Kirsten got up all the days of her life. Because Jeu is risen I can get up. Because he got up, we can get up.

the question is which way do we run, away from death and futility, or towards life in the Gallilees of our lives. The Resurrection makes