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 Matthew 28:1-10
Easter is a breakthrough day, when the Spirit breaks through all known human boundaries. Easter demonstrates the power of Spirit over the material world and the ultimate dominance of Spirit over circumstances.
One of the first times I came across this concept, very succinctly stated, was early in my ministry, when I was still in my twenties. I found it in a book by the English spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill. I loved this book! Underhill was steeped in the spiritual life, and wrote in a language I could understand. There were two insights that really struck me. I underlined and circled them. I wanted to believe they were true, but at that point in my life I was too young. I didn't have enough life experience.
As the years passed and my own spiritual journey continued, I interacted with hundreds and hundreds of other people and their journeys. I came to the point where I could say, "Yes, Evelyn Underhill is right." It is a wonderful thing when what you want and need to believe, turns out to be true.
Here is the first one: "More and more, as we go on with the Christian life, we learn the strange power of the Spirit over circumstance." This activity of the Spirit - or, as we traditionally say, the activity of God - is clothed in mystery. We cannot predict when or how it will be demonstrated. We stand in awe and gratitude when it happens. Hardly a human being has not experienced a mystical moment when the Spirit does something extraordinary.
A number of years ago I asked a member of this church, a man named Walter, who is a prominent attorney with a brilliant mind, how he came into the faith. He responded with the following story. He said that when he was an officer in the Army in the Vietnamese conflict, one day he was assigned to take a patrol across a river and check out an opposing hillside. That night he was gathered with his men on one side of the river, planning their strategy, when a sergeant happened by and entered the conversation. He said he was certain the hill was full of enemy soldiers and counseled Walter not to cross over.
Walter said that because he had great respect for this man's judgment, he canceled the mission. The next morning air reconnaissance discovered the hillside was swarming with Viet Cong soldiers. If they had gone across they probably all would have been killed. Walter, grateful to the sergeant for his counsel, went looking for the man to thank him for saving their lives. When he found him, the sergeant replied, "I wasn't with you last night."
"You were there," Walter protested. "You warned us about the patrol we were planning. I made my decision not to go based on your advice."
But the sergeant insisted he hadn't been there, and he was able to prove he had been some place else at that time.
How do you explain this? I don't know, and yet I do know. It is the strange power of Spirit over circumstance. When God intercedes in the human scene, God does what God will do. We can order our lives rationally and scientifically. We can use perfect reasoning in the way we structure how we think and live, but in the long run the Spirit has the determining influence. The Spirit, more active than we are aware, has the ability to break through our boundaries and influence the course of our lives.
The Easter story, this incredible miracle of death and resurrection, is the movement of the Spirit, and it defies all odds. It breaks the rules. There is darkness, and yet the Easter light dispels the darkness. The most horrific act, the crucifixion of Jesus, turns out to be the most glorious ending one could imagine. The Easter story demonstrates the strange power of spirit over circumstance.
From time to time I quote the late Carlo Carretto, an Italian educator who spent the last years of his life as a mystic living in the desert. Occasionally he would write letters to his sister, which have been preserved and published. In one letter he speaks to the phenomenon of "God doing what God does."
I always end up understanding that it is much better to abandon ourselves to the mysterious action of events, beneath which it is God who is acting.
Behind the scenes, underneath, around the edges, God is acting. Always transcending reason and logic, God is at work. How many hard-to-explain coincidences are really the activity of the Spirit?
An insight from the wonderful French scientist and mystic Theilhard de Chardin further explains why it is so important for us to be alert to God's actions in our lives. When I read this idea and it finally penetrated my consciousness, it turned me upside down - or right-side up. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, he said. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. First and foremost, we are souls. For a period of time we are on this earth, and then we return home. I believe the purpose of our lives is the growth of the soul. And our growth is best served when we are open to God's actions on our behalf.
We never know how or when the normal order of things will fall away and a truly miraculous event will occur. Recently my older son Paul called, moved and exhilarated, to tell me something that had happened to him the night before.
Paul isn't a formally religious person, although he is tuned in spiritually. He sort of stands on the side with a healthy skepticism, probably because of too much church as a boy, and a father not available enough on Saturdays. He has a wife, three children, and an extremely demanding job. He is like many people - working hard to support his family, responding to the thousand daily demands of being a husband and father, owning and maintaining a home, feeling tremendous pressure to do well in a sales job without much security. Yet in the middle of this hectic life, without looking for it, he had a wonderful, miraculous experience.
When Paul called me that morning he said, "Dad, I had quite an experience last night. I woke up in the middle of the night and my body wouldn't move. It was as if I was paralyzed. And," he added, "I felt a very strong presence. I saw Uncle Bruno" (my older brother, who died a few years ago). "Uncle Bruno was looking at me with great kindness and gentleness, and he was smiling at me without saying a word.
"It didn't last more than a minute, then my body could move again. It was a very powerful experience."
Paul and I talked it over for awhile, trying to decide what to make of it. As we spoke I remembered Evelyn Underhill's phrase "the strange power of Spirit over circumstance." Paul came away from that experience feeling peaceful, strong and reassured.
It was God saying, "I am." There is more to life than the rational, physical and material. God is saying that we have nothing to fear - that God is!
The several mystical moments I have had were, for me, are an assurance of the existence and activity of God. I am in awe of it. And as I trust it, my life is strengthened and blessed.
If you are not sure of what I have been saying, I encourage you to at least be aware of the movement of the Spirit, how it moves in and around, behind and before, and penetrates, always unannounced. Have faith, and trust that the Spirit is going to be there for you when you need it, even when you don't ask for it.
A few weeks ago, a long-time member of this church and a very dear friend, Carolyn Rogers, told me of an experience she had recently. She had broken her arm and for some time it was in a sling, and healing very well. On this day nothing special had happened. She had visited some friends, come home feeling very happy, and gone to bed. She was about to go to sleep, when, as she said, "All of a sudden I had this overwhelming feeling that everything was all right, that I never really had to worry about anything, ever, that the future was going to be fine. I found myself completely bathed, surrounded, in a very bright light, and as that light arrived the pain in my arm left me.
"When I was in the midst of that light I thought of my father-in-law, who had had a near-death experience, and how he had described a light and the sense of God's presence. It was like that for me."
"How do you read this, Carolyn?" I asked.
And she responded, "If anybody ever doesn't believe in God, what I experienced that night says definitely that God exists."
In how many other lives, every day, does God enter, unannounced, gently, dramatically and memorably?
All of this Easter sermon is saying that God is not only loving, caring, forgiving, and generous - but is exciting. We can ask, what next? And how will the next appearance bless, enhance and change my life?
What has happened to me in the last twenty-five years is the excitement of seeing God as bigger, more compassionate, more accessible than the relatively still, stilted, judgmental God of my childhood and younger years. I once saw God as the wise old man who sat on high with stern control of the world - thank God I have grown beyond that thinking!
God is more relevant, more dynamic than I had ever experienced. And God is in charge. We often think and act as if we are in charge of the universe, but God is - absolutely.
No matter what happens to us, we are living in God's world and, although we cannot always understand why some things happen, when we are open to the presence of God in our everyday lives, we can live with a sense of hope and comfort.
The second insight from Evelyn Underhill perfectly describes the reach of God's power and protection. It is: "The universe is safe for souls." No soul will ever be destroyed. Nothing that we do will ever destroy the essence of the soul, because God takes care of the soul. If this life hasn't gone very well and we didn't do a very good job with it, on the other side God will nurture the soul, and keep nurturing it, and honing it, and building it, and blessing it. We continue.
The other day I was in conversation with a woman from Vero Beach, Florida, whose husband died six months ago at the age of sixty. "He was in perfect health," she said, "and in our neighborhood he was known as the healthiest one.
"He went into the hospital for a minor operation on his foot, and something went wrong, and his heart stopped. By the time his heart started beating again eight minutes had passed and he was brain-damaged. He lived, crazily, for the next few days and then he died.
"After his death a friend went back with me to our house in Vero Beach and we stood there looking out the picture window, which faces the ocean. And we saw an extraordinary rainbow that arched from one part of the ocean all the way across and down to the ocean on the other side. My friend and I simultaneously had the same feeling, that God was telling me my husband was okay, that there was something beyond, that he was continuing on and he was in good shape.
"Later that afternoon," she went on, "the doorbell rang. But when I went to answer the door, nobody was there. Several times over the next three days, the doorbell would ring, I'd run to the door and there was nobody there. Finally I called out to my husband, 'Okay, I know you're all right. Will you leave me alone? This is beginning to bother me,' and he stopped."
But, with tremendous confidence and assurance, she said, "I know my husband is all right." God does things in strange and wonderful ways. God's communication is there again and again to let us know we are a special creation, that God ultimately is in charge, the Spirit ultimately is in charge, and that, no matter what, God is going to take care of us, and our loved ones, and one day when we cross the bar we'll be on the other side in a safe place.
Easter is wonderful. The Resurrection is hope. Let us celebrate it and be thankful. Let us pray.
For the glory of the day, for the wonder of Your presence, O Lord, for the way You embrace us and lift us up and care for us, for the power of Your spirit over the circumstances of our lives, for Your movement and for Your promise of life in the hereafter, we give You thanks, and we celebrate. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen |
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