BECAUSE OF EASTER: A WHOLE NEW WORLD
(Preached on Sunday, April 18, 2004)
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” -Revelation 5:13
Easter is the most thunderous moment in the whole year. When Jesus was raised on Easter, the world shook.
We stand today still in the aftershock of that event.
Easter is such a huge event that even in the churches we can’t cope with it, and we’ve scaled it down to fit our little minds.
The world turns it into fluffy rabbits and chocolate eggs.
But Easter is about more than you and me and Jesus; it is about more than just our hope beyond the grave.
Easter is about the re-creation of the world, a whole new world.
The ancient church understood the impact and importance of Easter; so much that they didn’t just celebrate the feast of Easter on one day, but rather 50 days.
The church worship calendar still reflects that view.
We are in the Season of Easter and will be until the end of May, six weeks from today, when we celebrate Pentecost.
Just as the season of Lent invites us to reflect on our humanity, mortality, sinfulness, and the sacrifice of God in Jesus, the season of Easter invites us to reflect on big questions and issues.
Easter invites us to ponder the implications of the resurrection.
The scriptures understand that Easter has far-reaching consequences. Easter is not just something that happened to Jesus as he left the tomb.
Easter is something that happens to us.
In Easter the world is being remade.
This passage from the Revelation of John describes for us that it is the WHOLE world that is being remade.
Not just the human world.
Not just the heavenly realms.
But the entire cosmic universe.
This is a beautiful poetic, evocative, visionary passage.
It describes a scene of worship: songs are being sung; myriads are moving in a grand processional around the heavenly throne; everything is grand and glorious.
The book of Revelation is full of rich images and metaphors, and we get ourselves into theological glue if we take them literally, or worse, if we try to analyze them.
The glorious bougainvillea blaze in brilliant color in the spring sunshine, but if we bring them inside to dissect them, we miss their beauty — their power.
The same holds true of almost all of the passages of Revelation.
They are poetry; visions full of word pictures, attempting to describe ultimate truth, not predict future time lines or historical events.
How we read them is crucial to how we live.
Many people, including powerful people who make policy decisions that affect all of our lives, read Revelation with a literal view and listen to those preachers who use these poetic images to invoke fear and guilt.
As a result they engage in what are truly ugly public policies.
Dick Armey, the retired House majority leader, promoted the removal of all Palestinians from their ancestral land to an unpopulated desert.
Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Interior, James Watt, discouraged pro-environmental legislation because he believed Jesus was returning soon to remake the earth.
Conservative pundit Anne Coulter recently paraphrased God’s giving over of creation to human sovereignty by saying, “God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”
There are numerous religious broadcasters who insist on the impossibility of avoiding Armageddon. The end is near. Resistance is futile. Why should anyone support peace in the Middle East, or anywhere else? Or environmental conservation?
How we read the scripture does make a difference in how we understand God, the world, and how we live our lives.
This poetic vision is of a great victory celebration.
The battle is over — the battle with death, and defeat, and dishonor.
The battle is over, and guess who won?
The lamb! How oxymoronic, a standing, slaughtered Lamb provides a vivid symbol of Christ as both crucified and raised.
As a result, this vision shatters expectations and perceptions about God, the world, the future.
John is trying to convey the truth that God does not ultimately triumph by destroying those who do evil but by suffering the consequences of their evil in order to redeem them.
God’s victory comes not through overwhelming force and violent destruction, but by taking in suffering, embracing it and thus overcoming it by transforming it, re-creating it.
While this vision might all seem very weird, other-worldly and dreamlike, it takes on present, earthly significance for it conveys to us that, real as the present pain is, we know the last act, who is the victor, and thus the pain becomes bearable.
The poetic visions of Revelation are not just wishful thinking, but rather are realistic pictures of the world still being born, not yet finished.
But, a whole new world, never the less.
This gives us power for living.
In fact, it gives us power for embracing the created order.
For the vision conveys that the created order, while being remade by God, is not being done away with first.
It is all the creatures on earth, and under the earth and in the sea that join in singing and praising God in this victory celebration.
Martin Luther once commented that if he knew the world was to end tomorrow, he would plant a tree.
That is the action this vision leads us to embrace: a deeper, more loving, even more mundane dealing with God’s world.
Because of Easter we understand that we encounter God in nature, relationships, and the various events, large and small, that comprise our daily life.
There is no corner of our existence that is devoid of the Holy, no niche from which God is absent.
When we enter into life with a sensitivity to this truth, then the Holy Divine will begin to emerge from its hiding place in the ordinary and take our breath away with wonder.
For there is resurrection power throughout the natural world.
For example, there is healing power in animals.
In 1999, after the shooting in the cafeteria at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, the National Organization for Victims’ Assistance called Sandi Arrington, who drove to the school with Garth, her golden retriever.
Arrington and Garth belong to a nationwide volunteer organization called Pet Partners, which coordinates animal visits to hospitals and nursing homes.
This was the first time they had been summoned in a crisis.
Another member of Pet Partners, Cindy Ehlers, heard the news and on impulse drove to Springfield with Bear, her keeshond.
Red Cross workers welcomed the two teams into the school, where they came every day for the following week.
In the library and gym, which were turned into counseling rooms, Garth and Bear responded to petting or play. Sometimes, they went up to students on their own and solicited attention and petting.
Some students just put their arms around the dogs and wept into their fur. Other kids wouldn’t go into the cafeteria unless a dog was with them. The dogs seemed to understand that something serious and tragic had happened. Also, they contributed an air of normalcy to the situation.
The same people and dogs flew to New York after 9/11 to minister to the grieving families of victims of Ground Zero and the rescue workers.
My wife, step-daughter and I experienced their healing power first hand when we visited the New Jersey family support center.
Nature not only has the power to heal, it also has the power to transform.
An amazing story of resurrection transformation is taking place in the police academy in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Tabajara Novazzi is the chief of the police academy.
A devotee of tai chi, meditation, and martial arts, he discovered that the Japanese samurai, upon returning from war, studied flower arranging to “soothe the savage beast.”
Concerned about the intense pressures Brazilian police face in large cities like Sao Paulo, he began to study flowers with a Japanese teacher in full view of his office staff, and waited as his colleagues slowly became curious.
At first these macho-police officers made fun of him, but one-by-one they were eventually inspired to join in.
Today, he tells that Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, is a required course for all future chiefs of police in Sao Paulo and the effects are already palpable.
One policeman states: “Before, we used to hold only guns. We knew what that felt like. Now, we have discovered that to hold a flower is much better.”
Because of Easter we live in a whole new world.
God’s resurrection power is at work in nature.
And because of that we can keep planting trees, arranging flowers, and continue to share in the blessings brought to us by God’s animal creation.