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Easter Sunday - 2024

Old Testament - Isaiah 25:6-9

New Testament - John 20:1-18

 

“Rest in God”

 

INTRODUCTION: Jay Parini, an American novelist, poet, and college English professor, once wrote of being a graduate student in England some 55 years ago.   

 

Doing research at Oxford, he had gone to London for the day to visit a library there. Walking back to the train station toward the end of the day, though, Parini had (what sounds like to me) a pretty big panic attack. 

 

Or as Parini described the event: “Walking back to the train station in the late afternoon, on a crowded street, I felt overwhelmed. My hands grew sweaty, and I couldn’t breathe. For respite, I found a passageway where I sat in a doorway for an hour, quite certain I would die.”

 

Eventually pulling himself back together, Parini headed for the train station only to bump into the great poet W.H. Auden, whom Parini had the good fortune of actually knowing. Noting he looked horrible, W.H. Auden invited Parini back to his house for what Auden called a “stiff drink.” And sure enough, that’s what Auden gave him - a drink of vodka in a nearly full and quite large cereal bowl!

         

Seeking to bring Parini some comfort as they chatted, Auden shared a few of the life lessons he had decided were really important in the end: “I’ve learned a little in my life,” said Auden, “Not much. But I will share with you what I do know. I hope it will help.” 

 

And one of the things Auden eventually shared with Parini actually turned out to be a bit of advice. “Rest in God, dear boy,” Auden said simply to Parini.  “Rest in God.”

 

Well, Auden’s advice to Parini ended up being a seminal moment in his life. So much so, that when Auden invited him to tag along for a worship service the next day, Parini accepted the offer and he has been going to church ever since.         

 

“The advice to rest in God,” says Parini, “…invites us to relax into the power of the universe that sustains us, that holds us up, embraces us - even to the point of death. This is, I think, the message of Easter in a nutshell: trusting God’s power to transform our lives into something better.” 

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ONE: Of course, Auden’s advice that Parini should “rest in God” is actually loaded with meaning, I think. 

 

After all, in telling Parini to “rest in God,” Auden in just three words was also giving expression to one of the central claims of Scripture as a whole. And that claim, in a nutshell, is that “the worst things are never the last things.”

 

To “rest in God,” in other words, is to rest in the idea that nothing can keep God’s good and sweet purposes from finally coming to fruition. Not even cantankerous, unwieldy, bullheaded, and stubborn humans can finally stop God from achieving God’s ends. Why, not even death can thwart God’s good purposes.                   

 

According to Patricia Kasten, during the Middle Ages it was common practice for the priest to tell an elaborate  joke during the homily on Easter Sunday leading those in the congregation to howl with glee.

 

Called the Risus paschalis, or the Easter laugh in English, the practice was actually meant to be a vocal manifestation of the commonly held belief at the time that with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, God had defeated, or tricked, death. After all, upon hearing that God has actually tricked death, what else is someone supposed to do but laugh!  

  

Of course, leave it to humans to muck up a good thing. For apparently, by the 17th century the jokes had gotten so crude and base, Pope Clement had to outlaw the practice altogether. Just like humans! 

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TWO: Some of you will recall last week how I shared that Paul’s words from chapter 2 of his Letter to the Philippians was one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Known as the Christ Hymn, it’s that passage where Paul talks about Christ emptying himself to become human and even obedient to the point of dying on a cross. 

 

Well, another of my favorites is actually our passage from Isaiah 25 for this morning. While maybe not a familiar text to many of you, I have always loved the imagery in those four short verses. After all, the passage depicts a future where God is throwing what amounts to a grand picnic for all people. Creation has been healed, all's right with the world, and yes, even death has been swallowed up in victory.  

 

There is a story about a man who was asked what he thought the kingdom of God was going to be like. “Well,” replied the man after thinking for a moment, “I guess I always thought it was going to be like a fish fry.” Meaning, I suppose, in the kingdom of God there is going to be plenty of food, drink, people, and the bright, joyous laughter of life without end.    

 

Or as Isaiah imagines that bountiful day:

 

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,

   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained 

   clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain

   the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

   the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

   Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,

    and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the        

    earth, for the Lord has spoken.

 

THREE: According to the Episcopal Priest John Claypool, many years ago Frederick Buechner surprised even himself by enrolling in Union Theological Seminary up in New York City. You see, up until that point, Buechner had hardly been a church goer. 

 

Why, the decision seemed so weird and out of character, some of Buechner’s friends and relatives even took to worrying about his mental state. Or as one family friend said to Buechner one day over lunch: “I understand you are thinking about going to seminary. Is this your idea, or have you been poorly advised?” 

 

Really delving into Scripture for the first time during his studies while at Union, Buechner came to, what for him, were two stunning conclusions. The first was that the Bible is unbelievably frank about humans and our capacity for evil. Even the heroes in the Bible, folks like Moses, David, and Saint Peter, Buechner realized, are portrayed as flawed and broken creatures in the end. 

 

But even more stunning than the Bible’s frank depiction of humans, for Beuchner, was God’s refusal to allow the worst things in life to be the last things. Or as Buechner would one day put it himself, “The worst isn't the last thing about the world. It's the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best….The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well.” 

 

FOUR: Dale Allison, a New Testament professor at Princeton Theological Seminary spends a lot of his time thinking about death. When he was 23, he was blind-sided by a drunk driver one night almost killing him. 

 

“When I was flat on a cold table in the ER,” writes Allison, “some nameless doctor told me that I might have a busted aorta, and that my odds of making it through the night were 50-50. I’ve no words for the utter panic, the abject horror that his estimate of my chances awoke within me.”    

 

Having survived that experience, Allison, as you might imagine, writes reflectively about death. He offers no trite answers, and no easy solutions. For he knows firsthand the weight and the terror that can come when staring at the prospect of death.

 

And after all his research into the matter, after writing extensively about the subject from scientific, biblical, and personal angles, Allison is, well, finally poetic in his thoughts. Or as he says in his book Death Comes,” 

 

“Some people feel that they’ve been thrown into this world. Although I don’t dispute their experience, mine is different. I feel that I was gently laid down here. Maybe that is why so much of life has seemed to be a gift...We’re all immersed in a great Wisdom that we didn’t invent and don’t control, a great Wisdom that’s been with us since birth. Hope in resurrection is the conviction that this Wisdom won’t abandon us as death approaches but will accompany us to whatever awaits us.” 

 

CONCLUSION: Well, even though writing several decades after W. H. Auden’s death, Allison, it seems to me, is passing out a similar invitation. That invitation to rest in God - “to relax into the power of the universe that sustains us, that holds us up, embraces us - even to the point of death.” 

 

For one day, some day, God is going to throw a grand picnic for all the world - a kind of fish fry with plenty of food, drink, and people. Death will be swallowed up forever and Kleenex will officially be out of business, because tears and sorrow will all be a thing of the past. 

 

So rest in God, my friends. Rest in God’s sweet promises. Why, if you want, feel free to even giggle and laugh.     

   

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how inscrutable God’s ways! For from God and through God and to God are all things. To God be glory forever. Amen.
 

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