No idle tale—Sermon for Easter Sunday (April 20, 2025)
Sermon for Easter Sunday (April 20, 2025) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
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Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.
Mary Magdalene and Mary and Joanna and the other women who were at the tomb told the disciples what they had seen. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
And yet here we are. Ron, how many people are here? One hundred forty-seven? Oh! So somewhere along the way, somebody started to believe these women.
But at first… he is not here. He has risen. Death couldn't hold him. He burst from the tomb and came to life again. They did not believe them. These words seem to them an idle tale. And you know what? I get it. I get it. Don't you get it?
Every year—so that my husband Christopher, is used to this at this point—I go around all of Holy Week and I'm like, have you been listening to the news? Have you heard what's going on? I don't know how I'm supposed to preach about the resurrection on Sunday. How could we possibly stand here and have the gall to proclaim that love conquers death when every time I turn on the news, I see grief, I see violence, I see dehumanization, I see injustice. I see everything that I see in the Passion Gospel. So every week during Holy Week, I'm ready to preach Good Friday, a kangaroo court, an execution of an innocent man, a crowd crying out for blood, saying, crucify him. Crucify him. I can get behind that. I can preach that. That feels true. That does not feel like an idle tale to me. E.
But the triumph of love, the bursting from the tomb, forgiveness and mercy, overcoming violence and dehumanization, peace. The wolf lying down with the lamb and the lion and the bear eating grass. This feels like an idle tale. Now on Holy Wednesday, I was walking around and I was complaining to God exactly about this. How might I proclaim the resurrection? How could it be? I don't know this year if I have it in me? And as I was walking along with my head down, I was walking past the church and something very blue, right as I was complaining to God, something very blue burst across my vision. And I looked up and on the church lawn in the middle of the green grass landed this perfect little bluebird.
And I said, oh, is that your answer? But I said to myself, how can that be enough? How can that be enough? I said, God, that's not enough. Because not everyone gets a bluebird. It's true, right? I mean, we go through grief, we grow through pain. Not everyone gets the little sign. I said, God, you have to be testing me. And I went through my day and I kept worrying about it and worrying about it. And later that same day, I was in Kingston. I took a walk around the block and I was having my little argument with God again. And this time, right as I was saying, God, where is the resurrection right now? Where is it? And there on the lawn that I was passing of the house that I was passing were these two perfect children. I'm sure they weren't perfect to their parents, but to an outsider, it was like idyllic. Five or six years old, they had little kites with tiny strings with little birds on them, and they were running and laughing in their yard. And their grandmother was leaning there and she was watching them. And I smiled at the children and the grandmother saw me smiling, and she looked at me and I looked at her and we both smiled at each other. And I kept walking. And I said, is that your answer? Oh, that was a good one. God. But it seems like still too light a thing, because not every child everywhere is running around with a kite, right?
Look at these women. They too, they see the signs. They are getting these answers. They go to the tomb in their deepest grief. And they were probably complaining or crying out to God far more deeply in their hearts than I have been this week or that you may have been here. Jesus, their Messiah, the one who was to deliver them has instead been crucified and he really did die. They stood at the foot of that cross and they watched it happen. And then they followed him to the tomb and they saw his body laid there and they saw the stone rolled over it.
So that morning when they come and they see that the body which was there is not there, and all that's left are some strips of cloth, maybe they said to God, is this your answer? Because it's true. He's not here. And maybe they said to him, it's not enough. It's not enough. The little miracles, the glimpses of hope that sustain us every day, I'll tell you what, they are good, right? Think of where this week did you see your little miracle, your bluebird or your children with kites or your daffodil or somebody smiled at you in the supermarket or gave you a compliment. You didn't feel like you were having such a very, very bad day anymore. You know these signs of hope. But I tell you on their own, they are too light a thing. In a world that feels so often, like Good Friday, in a world that feels so dominated by sin and death, these little glimpses of goodness aren't enough on their own.
What they need is a story to tie them together. They need testimony. They need testimony. That is what God does. It is not only that God raises Christ from the dead. It is that he sends to these women messengers who remind them women. There is a story here. There is a testimony here all through from generation to generation. God has been coming after us when God came into the world and we tried to push God right back out of the world time and again, God returned to offer us love, justice, and mercy. And even the crucifixion cannot push God out of the world. But we need to be reminded of that. And that is why the angels say women, do you not remember what he told you? What he himself told you? And what you as women of faith have known your whole lives, that God is good, that God's mercy endures forever. That refrain in Psalm 1: 18 that we read this morning, God's mercy endures forever. God will open the gate of righteousness that you may step through. God will open the gate so that you may step out of death into life time and again, God will return to us and bring us to new life.
But those angels had to remind those women, they had to give them a context for the little miracle that they were seeing that on its own is not enough. On its own the empty tomb and some strips of cloth are not enough, but bracketed in the story of God's love for you, I want you to know that your little miracles are enough. They will be enough.
Those women took the testimony of the angels, a direct gift from God to take that little miracle and take their testimony and take it to the disciples and the disciples in their own time. At first, they said, it is too small a thing. Did you not see what happened? Do you not see the world around us? But in time, just as Jesus tells them, the testimony by the power of the Holy Spirit is passed from one to the next, to the next, to the next from Jerusalem, where these things took place, to Galilee and the surrounding countryside, to all Judea and to the ends of the earth across space and then across time. The story, the testimony is passed from one person to the next, one generation to the next.
So now here you are and God brought you here for a reason just as God brought those women to that tomb early in the morning. If you feel some kind of stirring in your heart on this day, and I tell you, the world will very, very soon tell you that stirring in your heart, it is too light a thing. It is not enough. Well, it isn't on its own, but you're part of a story and you're part of a community.
St. Peter says, in this reading, we heard from the acts of the apostles, I truly understand now that God shows no partiality, but in every place, every people, every generation, Christ is proclaimed. Love rises again. You now are part of the gospel proclamation. You stand in the legacy of Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles. You stand in the legacy of James and Peter, and John, and Luke and Mark. You stand in the legacy of those women at the tomb and of the apostles and the faithful of every generation who are taking the little thing, the miracle that it's on its own seems not enough, and transforming it by your testimony into the reality of the resurrection. You do this not only with your lips.
When we say Christ is risen, we mean it. We do it with our lives. We do it the way we live. We live with love, peace, ministers of reconciliation, people who thirst and hunger for justice. It is your turn now. The testimony has passed from one generation to the next for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years. There is no place where the good news that love and mercy are stronger than hatred, violence, and degradation. That love is stronger than death and all the forces of evil, which would corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. There is no place where this good news has not been proclaimed. And now, by your lives, with your lips and with your lives, you become the disciples, the apostles, the proclaimers. Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.