Sermon: March 23, 2008

In January, 2002, a massive cold & wet weather system moved into Central Mexico, dropping temperatures there into the low 20’s.  This weather caused the catastrophic death of tens of millions of monarch butterflies that migrate to that region every year from the U.S. and Canada… Entomologists gathered to access this tragedy, and upon arriving in the area saw simply a thick carpet of gray, decaying wings spread over several acres of land.  They decided to measure the depth of the dead, so they began to slowly part the layers of decay.  And when they reached a depth of about 8 inches they found an amazing thing – a layer of living monarchs!  These had been protected from the freezing rain by the layers of death above them, and there were just enough butterflies to ensure, in time, the continuation of the species. 

Buried beneath layers of death, they found life and hope.

 It seemed that the crucified Jesus was buried under numerous layers of death, as well; surely enough layers to keep him securely in his grave.  There was a stone – a great stone – Matthew says, a seal of some kind around the stone, and a group of soldiers guarding the tomb.  Add to that, the layers of betrayal, denial and desertion by those who had claimed to love and promised to follow him -  Jesus was about as securely dead as anyone could be.

 And is that not how death comes into our lives, into our world - one layer upon another?  Consider how many more layers of death been added to our world since we last gathered around this story, since last Easter… 

There has been another year of war.  More of our children and Iraq’s children and Afghanistan’s children offered up to death or disability by those who stay safely out of the line of fire.

It has been another year of unspeakable torture quietly, but brutally, delivered to political prisoners around the world.

There have been more disasters – million-acre forest fires, floods, drought, earthquakes.

And there have been more deadly shooting sprees – at Virginia Tech, the University of Illinois, even an Omaha shopping mall.

Many layers of death press down upon our world...But not only on the world; also on each of our lives! 

There have been layers of grief added to your life and mine since last Easter, layers of fear as a result of illness, addiction, unemployment and shattered relationships.  Indeed, they have come down upon us like a great stone, a great sealed stone with soldiers standing guard to be sure that there is no hope of life.

 Yet, in the resurrection of Christ, God breaks through, reaches through, the layers of death to lift the crucified one to new life!  Matthew writes:  “As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.  And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it…the angel said to the women, ‘ Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has been raised…’”

Of course there was an earthquake!  The earth shifted, the tectonic plates tilted away from despair to hope, away from death to life, as God reached through all the layers of sin and betrayal and hatred – finally through rock-solid, cold death itself – to bring forth the Risen  Christ; to bring forth the One who moves among us in this world now, continually reaching through, shattering, all of the layers of sin and death that bury us in order to raise us to new life!  My friends, today is not only about the defeat of death at the end – your end and my end.  It is not only about the promise of Life at the end of this life.  This is about the Risen Christ raised and delivered into our world to shatter all those layers of death that imprison us in order to bring us to life and light!

 What the angel instructed the two Mary’s to do was to go and tell the disciples that Jesus was raised and going ahead of them to Galilee.  There, in Galilee, they would see him…Galilee??  It was a place of no account, a true “backwater” of Israel,  small villages of poor people.  But Galilee was where the disciples lived – it was their everyday world!  And that is where the Risen Christ would go to bring hope and new life to all who believe!

 Galilee is our world – this world at war, riddled by disaster, captive to violence, suffocating in apathy – this world where we live as the community of faith, as the church!  The Risen Christ is here to shatter all the layers of death that keep God’s children from demanding peace, seeking justice and showing mercy to the lost and forgotten.  The Risen Christ is loose here in Galilee to raise his church to life:  to raise us to a burning hunger for the Word, to raise us to reconciliation that will finally let all the petty bickering go, to raise us to tell others that Christ is in this Galilee for them, as well, to raise them to new life, and to raise us to embrace a larger mercy, a deeper generosity – the mercy and generosity of Christ…

Christ was raised to return to Galilee – to this Galilee – and raise God’s people to life and hope, freeing us from the layers of fear under which we have been buried for so long.

 And the risen Christ comes to our everyday Galilee’s, as well - to the landscapes of grief and loss, of fear and anger and pain.  Through the Word and the Sacraments and the love of sisters and brothers in Christ, the Risen One reaches out, grasps us, and draws  us from death to life.  And as often as those layers of death come down upon us, the Risen Christ rescues us and brings us up from death.

 Christ was raised to meet us in Galilee.  And he is powerfully present, shattering the layers of sin that separate us from God and from one another, bringing new life.

 Thirty years ago tomorrow, on Easter Monday, we buried my father.  He was plumber, had his own small shop, and he died of cancer at the age of 62. ..Our Galilee was about 100 miles north of here, and grief was pressing down hard on all of us.  I remember it as though it was yesterday – just as you vividly remember such days in your life.

Yet, true to his promise, the Risen Savior met us there, reaching into our grief to lift us, to lift the entire community, to new life…

We met the Risen Savior in the Word proclaimed by a pastor who preached with tears of love running down his face. 

We met the Risen Christ in the hymns, as a church full of farmers, laborers, and homemakers sang the words of Martin Luther:  “…were they to take our house; goods, honor, child or spouse; though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day.  The Kingdom’s ours forever.” 

We met him in the arms opened to us in love, and in the six strong men who carried my father gently home to the earth…

The Risen Christ met us in our Galilee.  And He meets you in yours.

 Under 8 inches of death and decay, layer upon layer of death and decay, there was life and hope for an entire species.

When God reached through the layers of death that had buried his Son, God raised him to new life for us;  so that today and tomorrow, here in Galilee, where sin and death weigh heavily upon the church and upon each child of God, we are also raised to new life.

 Thanks be to God.   Alleluia!  Amen!