Bazaar United Methodist Church

Bazaar, Kansas

John 20:1-18
Acts 10:34-43

Ecstasy, Can I Live Here All the Time?

Ann Weems is one of my favorite poets. She writes:
I think on Easter morning we should throw confetti in church!
No?
What about a little fanfare?
A deafening drum roll?
A three-minute standing ovation?
What? Have we had the drums beaten out of us
That we in the celebrative community can't really
Get excited
About God's aliveness?
About God's love given to us unconditionally?
Have we given Easter to the lily bearers, the bunny rabbits, the patent leather shoes?
Let's face it:
We live as though we don't believe in Easter.

We're the crowd-
Easily swayed,
Easily scared,
Easily calling for blood.
We're the good church people
Who can't believe Jesus meant love one another-
Not all the one anothers,
Not drug addicts and criminals.
We hate injustice when it's injustice toward us;
We love mercy when it's mercy for us;
We walk humbly with our God when it's convenient.
We're Babe believers who resist the resurrection.
We're Christmas Christians who are very good at
Celebrating Christ's birth.
We can cling to the Babe.
We're even Crucifixion Christians,
Agonizing, sympathizing,
Relating to the Hero of the Cross.
We can rock a Baby;
We can weep for a Dead Man;
But what can we do with a 33-year-old who won't let the story end?
Easter scares us
Because we're the people who can't believe
That God gives us abundant Life;
We think we have to earn it.
In our pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society
It's hard to remember that God doesn't buy the self-made man.
So we in the church spend our lives showing God
What good people we are,
What achievers we are,
How much we deserve God's love.
We want to pay our own way,
But Easter says it's already been paid!
Easter says, no matter how prodigal,
We can go home again!
So come to the Easter party!
Let's celebrate that amazing grace
That in Christ's resurrection
We are still loved even at our most outrageous.
The Lord has given us the music;
All we need do is dance it!
Come to the Easter party!

Now, if I was a person who wagered, I would bet that you didn't come to church this morning expecting the Hokey Pokey, a hymn that is usually sung at Christmas, or an encouragement to throw confetti and have a party in church. But if ever there was a day to party in church this is it. Resurrection!

It is, you know, the very love of God for all of humankind that brings us resurrection. God's love is the most amazing, most astounding thing. Unlike us, God does not love you better when you are good and doing the right things and love you just a little less when you are mucking up and being an idiot. God's love is permanent. God loves you just the same, no matter what. God loves you whether you're the pastor or the drug dealer on the corner. He loves you just the same. God loves you whether you're working hard to make a living for your family or letting other people shoulder a burden you should be carrying. God loves you whether you yelled at your kids and your spouse this morning and whether you used his name in vain or not. God loves you even if you used the "F" word 6 times in the last sentence you spoke before you walked through the doors of the church. God loves you. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing in the world that you can ever do to make God love you any less.

That doesn't mean that God approves of your behavior. God loves as you are. But God is unlikely to leave you as you are if you seek a relationship with him. And if you are here this morning, you have already invited that relationship by your very presence in this place.

But back to resurrection, brought to us by this amazing love of God, resurrection is not the same life that was before. It is a different life, a new or renewed life. And the thing that most of us seem to miss is the fact that we don't have to die to be raised to new life. We can experience resurrection in the here-and-now as well as in the here-after. That's why I had the children STOP when they put their whole selves in on the Hokey Pokey. When we put our whole selves into God's care, when we give our whole selves over to living life on Jesus' terms, when we are heart and soul and mind and spirit in love with God and neighbor, then we live the life of Christ right here, right now. Is it easy? No. Is it impossible? No. Does it take practice? Yes. Will we fail along the way? Yes.

But anyone who trains for sports, or learns to play an instrument or learns any new skill knows that triumph comes from practice and improvement and continued practice even after times of failure. We don't come out of the womb fully grown. It is the same with the spiritual life. If we spent half as much time on our spiritual life as we spend on our recreational life, what, I wonder, would happen to us spiritually?

Now this is supposed to be the last in a series of nine sermons on happiness. There are copies in the narthex of the Cottonwood Falls church or online at the Bazaar website if you want the others-and don't be afraid to take the last copy of any sermon, I can always print more.

Resurrection even if we don't completely get it should astound us. It should make us jump for joy. Easter says that death has no meaning any more and every time somebody dies we celebrate this truth. That is why, as your pastor, I encourage you always to close the casket during the funeral and leave it closed. Because then we end the service with resurrection. If you open the casket, you bring that person back to being a dead body in a casket rather than alive in the arms of Christ.

Resurrection should be the highest note we sing. It should be the greatest of all our joys. Yet most of us are ready to be done with Easter the day after, and when the pastor continues to sing Easter songs, you all think she's nuts. Yet there are six Sundays of Easter in which we celebrate resurrection before we reach Ascension Sunday.

The question is; can we keep a fever pitch of excitement for six weeks? What do you think? Ask the choir how much energy it takes to sing a song like "Jesus Lives! The Victory's Won!" How long can you really stay excited about anything? Let's see, even the most fervent of you football fans, hmmm how long is a game? and then even with the ride home from an away game and even if you win it's not going to last any more than a few hours tops, and during the time of the game and the drive your mood will have had a lot of swings up and down. Let's face it; the heights of happiness cannot remain the heights for very long. We can't hang on to that high, and we aren't meant to. The highs are good for a few minutes, but that is not where we live. "Chronic euphoria is not a desirable goal."

Life satisfaction, on the other hand, is a good thing. That includes living a meaningful and engaged life. We have learned in the past few weeks that the happiest people are those who look outside themselves, who serve others, at least on a part-time basis. That doesn't mean we all need to give up our jobs, become missionaries and move to Africa. What it means is that we need to reach out to others and help them from right where we are. Help your elderly neighbor with her yard, go serve a meal at the homeless shelter, reach out to people in need, go visit a lonely person who just needs someone to talk to, there are lots of things we can do right here in our own community and if you work in an office, help the person who just dropped a stack of stuff, hold doors open, be courteous. You'll not only amaze some people, you'll ease their day, make them feel better and you'll feel better too. Such simple tasks are good for any community and, as we found, they're good for our own health and happiness.

In general we have found that:
o Those who are engaged and happy at work are better workers.
o Happy people tend to have more and closer friends.
o Happy people seem to have better health and live longer.
o Happy people are more pro-social in trusting and helping others.
o Happy people have more peaceful and cooperative attitudes.

In other words happiness is beneficial to us. Small wonder the scripture uses words like happy, joy, joyful, and blessed so often. And we remember that happiness is a choice. It requires intention on our part, compassion toward others, attention to the good things that happen, interpreting life in a positive manner and remembering good times while making new memories.

Few authors have shared the good news of the Christian gospel as compellingly as C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia. In one passage the characters Eustace and Jill, and Aslan, the great lion, weep over the dead King Caspian. After Aslan is wounded with a pierced paw and his blood splashes on the dead king, the king is wonderfully revived; "his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them-a very young man, or a boy." When he turns to the children, he gives a "great laugh of astonished joy."

When Aslan is asked if Caspian hadn't died, the great lion speaks in a voice that sounds like laughter. "He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven't." The resurrection invites laughter. The kind of laughter we sometimes experience when something so impossible happens we can do nothing else but laugh.

Let's not be among the walking dead. Let's laugh and sing and dance. Let's have an Easter party. Let's be people of the Resurrection-those raised to new life in the here and now. Amen.