On Easter I usually preach from what one of the gospels tells us happened on Easter morning. And although this Sunday is Easter Sunday by the calendar it will not seem much like it, as only a handful of people will hear this sermon in person in the church sanctuary. The health guidelines put in place to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus mean that most people will hear it online in some way or read this blog entry. I think I'll save an Easter morning story for the day we all get to worship together in person.
But the Lord has risen, and Easter is the day we mark that. It's the foundation event for Christian reality -- Paul says in fact says if the Lord hasn't risen we're not only wrong we're pitiful. And maybe this strange Easter will give us a chance to look at some things about it that don't always get the attention. In this passage from Colossians, we're told there is a difference between "things above" and "things that are on Earth."
We have to be careful when we consider Bible passages about the difference between this world and the life to come, because it is waaay too easy to talk ourselves into the idea that since the "things above" are the things that matter most, we don't have to pay attention to things going on around us. And that does not mesh with what Jesus tells us to do for each other and for the poor and powerless we may meet.
Usually passages that draw this distinction are trying to get us to see what we might call a universal reality or maybe a real reality that's underneath the world around us.
Here we see someone who has made a host of bad choices and gotten themselves stuck at the bottom of the ladder, but the real reality of God says, "This is my child, too." Here we see an innocent man falsely accused, convicted and executed -- as complete a defeat as could be imagined. But the real reality of God says, "This is my greatest victory."
Here we see empty sanctuaries across the country and across the world, trying to prevent the transmission of a virus that is particularly harmful to weaker, older and sicker people but can harm others as well. But the real reality of God says these sanctuaries are filled with a great cloud of witnesses, and that every place Christians seek his face and praise his name becomes a sanctuary.
Do they look like that to us? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes people say that as we grow in our relationships with God we begin to see things as God wants us to see them, and so these mundane things in the world are transformed. There's probably something to that, but it seems to me it only goes so far. Even though it's filled with heavenly witnesses, this place still looks like a mostly empty sanctuary. Even though the guy who acted like a jerk at work is a child of God, he still acts like a jerk. It goes both ways, of course. If we're the jerk we may be children of God but we are still a class one pain in everybody's rear.
Differentiating between things above and things that are on Earth doesn't mean developing a kind of heavenly squint that lets us see things the way God sees them. It means seeing them as they appear to us and accepting the real reality of God anyway. Faith, as you recall, is evidence of things not seen. The wonder of the resurrection didn't erase the pain of the crucifixion -- the risen Jesus bears scars for a reason. But faith that God keeps his promise to never abandon us shows us that the worst the world can do can't touch what makes us who we are. The real reality of you and me is hidden with Christ in God, and it will be revealed in glory when Christ is himself revealed in truth.
The Christian faith doesn't try to pretend bad things aren't bad things or that hard things aren't hard. So I'll paraphrase Frederick Buechner to close. The worst thing may very well be the worst thing. But Jesus says it's never the last thing, and he invites us to say it with him.
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