I need to be sure that you know what a high privilege it is for those of us who are blessed to be your servants, to share in the leadership of these resurrection day services. I know I speak not only for Geoff, but for Melissa and Bill and all of the members of the staff when I tell you What a privilege to be here with you in these services today! We thank you for being here, because I know it is some work for some of you to get here. I want to honor not only the draggers but the dragees who may be present here today. We are glad you are here. And we thank God for your presence here, and I believe that your presence is a part of your witness to the resurrection. Because in our gathering not only here, but in services across this campus this morning and around the world, we are lifting up our own witness to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in our lives. What a powerful witness you are making, and how splendid you look in making it! I thank you for your work.

 

Especially I want to thank our colleague, Melissa, for her work. Not just this morning, and the choir with her, but for over the last 16 ½ years. Her ministry amongst us has been one of substance and a rich proclamation of the good news of the Gospel. And these three new basses seated up here are not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are not an apparition, though they are clothed partially in white. They are her three sons, Justin, and JB and Jared. All home from high institutions of learning. We thank God for her family gathering around her on this very special day. It’s a lot of work.

 

It’s a lot of work. But how well it’s gone. With the ushers and the volunteers, the Sunday School teachers. This glorious gift of a day from God that doesn’t have to go this way. Sometimes it could be full of glitches. The story is going around amongst pastors of last year’s Easter service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, one of the great worship centers in the United States. In that citadel of Christian worship on Easter morning, at the early service, they had decided they would follow the pattern of the Easter vigil. In the Easter vigil, the congregation assembles in silence. A group in that church of over a thousand people assemble together with all the doors closed, awaiting in the silence the good news of the resurrection, which is proclaimed by some leader, usually a bishop or a patriarch from the Orthodox church, standing outside. And out of the silence, pounding on the door, like the resurrected Christ seeking to come in.

 

This year, in their zeal for getting it right, the staff had added to the bishop a wireless microphone. I want you to know (I’m looking for Wally Wilcher), these microphones are dangerous things. He had it on, out in silence, as they were gathered in the quiet within. As he stood out there, they realized they had not decided on any cue for when he should come in. So in the silence, the congregation suddenly heard a voice come over the amplification system saying, “I sure hope somebody lets us know when this thing is supposed to get started!” Then a second time, “It’s cold out here. Let’s get this show on the road!”

 

It was an awkward moment. Maybe like the awkward moment that Mark is telling us about here. It is Gospel. When these women…Mark sees two, some of the other gospel writers speak of three, and sometimes it’s one. But it’s clear that the women were headed to the tomb. Mark remembers they were going early in the morning, just as the sun was rising, and they were going to anoint the body of Jesus, to prepare it for burial. It’s very close to our practice of embalming today.

 

Perhaps they had not been able to complete it earlier because the crucifixion had taken so long that they were not able to get Jesus into the tomb before the Jewish Sabbath started. And now, faithful after a day’s delay, this group of women are headed there to complete that task of preparing him for burial.

 

On the way, Mark says, they were worried. You see a picture very much like that on the bulletin today. Do the women on the front of the bulletin look like they are worrying? That shows you how long the community has been talking about this story. This is a painting from about the year 1300, by an Italian painter whose first name is Duccio. I can’t even begin to pronounce his last name. But I think it’s a fascinating painting. And it shows these women. I think they look like they’ve been worrying.

 

Mark says they were worried. And they were worried about who was going to roll away from the front of the tomb the great, big heavy stone that they knew would have been sealing it since the day before.

 

It’s pretty close to the kinds of things we worry about. They were worrying about how they were going to get that big stone removed. They didn’t know, you see. They did not know that God had already taken care of that.

 

That’s like the story of my life. Sometimes I’m worrying about things, too, even as I head to the end of my own life’s story. Even as you head that way, in this life. We worry about things that God has already taken care of. It’s beyond our ability to imagine them, or to know of them.

 

We ask for so little, when God is offering so much. Like these women were worrying about Who will roll away the stone for us? Worrying about some problem God has already worked out. They were worried about a small thing, a detail. God was about a huge thing. God was about resurrection.

 

They were worried about a minor detail. God was worried about saving the cosmos.

 

We worry about will there be enough seats in the sanctuary. God is worrying and putting together the creation of the resurrection of the dead.

 

We stew over have we got the parts in the anthem worked out right? God is teaching the whole cosmos to sing together at the beginning of creation.

 

Tomb-door moving is not heavy lifting for God. God is up to the tasks that we worry about. The heavy lifting for God may be your stony hearts. The big work for God may be busting through our fears and our worries. Because we are never able to imagine the good thing that God is doing, we could never quite see it. By its very nature, because it is of God and because it is of God’s goodness, it is beyond our ability to imagine it.

 

They could not conceive of resurrection, even though Jesus had spoken to them about it. At least three times before. Some of our fears and worries are based on painful experiences and past realities. Nevertheless, those pains from the past keep us from being able to look up and see the things that God is out there doing in our future.

 

Mark says they were looking at the ground, worrying about how they were going to move the door to the tomb. And when they looked up, they saw that God had already moved it.

 

God keeps reminding us, across the centuries, that God is up to the challenge of being God. Consider the evidence. Look at the day that God has given you on this day. From its very start, the beauty and the joy of this kind of an opportunity. Consider the evidence. Look at the complexity of, say, chemical and molecular structure. Or the human brain. Or the sociology of entire nations. God is up to the task, the challenge, of being God.

 

Here’s a witness of Scripture in the Old Testament. Remember in the Book of Job, a book that deals with human suffering, God says to Job at the end, “Job, where were you when I was making Creation? Were you there when I was teaching the whale to swim? I don’t remember seeing you there. Were you there when I taught the dove how to fly? I don’t remember you coaching me on that project, Job.”

 

Or hear Isaiah reporting Yahweh, God, asking the prophet, “Do you think that I am not capable of saving my people? Is it too little a thing for me, the Lord of the Universe, to save my people Israel?”

 

Or consider how the New Testament, the litany from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter eleven. “O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has coached God, for from him and through him and to him are all things.”

 

We ask for so little when God is working on so much. The witness of the Christian community before you and the witness of the Scriptures is clear. God cares about your worries and your troubles. God cares about them passionately. But God is up to larger agendas than your worries. God is working on projects that are much greater than your troubles, as a means of blessing the entire creation.

 

I have to confess that my interest in paintings of faith was particularly piqued when I was an intern at the Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, Virginia. That interest was particularly piqued, which has resulted sometimes in a different resurrection at each Resurrection Sunday. It was piqued for me, particularly, when I got to know a painter, a woman named Tiny Anderson. She was eighty-seven years old that year, in the Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke. One of my assignments as the intern was to serve on the board of the Crisis Assistance Ministry in Roanoke. They had a ministry to homeless and hurting people in downtown Roanoke. It wasn’t a big ministry. It wasn’t a wealthy ministry. It was a small storefront, and we had a problem because we had a $25,000 mortgage on our building, and we weren’t able to make the next payment. So I was going that afternoon to the board meeting, worried about this problem. On my way there, the secretary told me that Tiny Anderson, that eighty-seven year-old woman, had called and wanted to see me before I left. I said to her, “I don’t have time to meet with Tiny Anderson to talk about her painting. We’re talking about how we are going to make this mortgage payment. This is an important meeting.”

 

I remember that secretary. Her name was Judy, and she had been a church secretary a lot longer than I had been an intern. She stopped me and she said, “You are, too, going to meet with Tiny Anderson.” And I did.

 

She came in, as I fretted about spending time with her. She had this painting covered in brown paper that she wanted to show me. She said, “I’m going to show you this painting. It’s a painting of the Garden of Eden.” She took the paper off, and that’s what it looked like. She said, “I want to give this to you.” I said, “Well, thank you. Why are you giving this to me?” “I want you to sell it,” she said. “You want me to sell it?” “Yes, I want you to sell it and give the money to the Crisis Assistance Ministry that we are helping here in Roanoke.” I said, “Well how much do you think a painting like this is going to bring?” She said, “Oh, about $25,000.”

 

She missed it by five thousand. It sold for $30,000.

 

See, while I am worrying about how I am going to take care of my troubles, God is working on a big thing, much larger than my ability to even imagine it. I couldn’t even imagine that God would bless me through Tiny Anderson.

 

You are not in this life going to be able to discern everything that God is doing. But the resurrection shows you that God is out there ahead of you, doing a new thing in your life. And that should encourage you.

 

Very early on the first day of the week, Mark says, while the sun was still rising, these women were walking to the tomb. And they were worrying about how they were going to get this large stone moved. They were looking down at the ground and didn’t see, until they got close and looked up, that God had already taken care of it.

 

Claudine Knight died this spring. She was the beloved wife of Melva Knight, who has been our beloved sextant here for many, many, many years. They had been married for fifty-six years. I had known her for twenty-three years, but I only met her twice. Once in the 1980s when she stopped by the church for something for Melva, and then later toward the end of her live, when I visited her in the hospital. At the end of her life, she had kidney problems and a complication of diabetes. She died of renal failure. When she died, Wally and I went and met with Melva in her hospital room. I really didn’t know her very well, but I knew she had always been a part of his life. With several other representatives from this church, I went to her funeral service. It was held on a Saturday at the Miracle Deliverance Chapel in northwest Seffner, where Melva and Claudine lived. Have you ever been to northwest Seffner? Or the Miracle Deliverance Chapel? It’s not a big place. I guess I could have seen how you could have missed it. It’s just northwest of downtown Seffner. We found our way there, and as we sat in that chapel, listening to that service, we began to see that God had been doing something beyond our ability to imagine it. We heard powerful testimony from women, many women, who kept coming to the front. Women from all different ages, sharing what Claudine Knight had meant in their lives. They talked about what a powerful encourager she had been to them. How she had counseled them and coached them. They talked about how she would come to their homes, even when they were far away, and encourage them to be about what God was trying to help them be. And when she got sick and couldn’t come out any more, she continued to call them and encourage them to get up and start the new day. They wept tears when they talked about what the ministry of this woman, as a comfort and an encouragement to them, had meant in their lives. It was a humbling thing.

 

I used to think that Melva Knight was here to support the pastors and the staff and this congregation in our ministry. But now, this side of the service, I’m pretty clear that God has the pastors and the staff and the congregation here, to employ Melva Knight so that he could support Claudine Knight in her ministry.

 

It was a much bigger thing than I was ever able to imagine.

 

We are not able to see what God is doing. We can't discern it. But here, Mark tells us it is going to look like resurrection. Be in harmony with God’s resurrection agenda. And the way you do that is this: You follow Jesus. Mark says the angel tells the women three things. One is, he says Don’t be afraid. The second thing is Jesus is risen! And the third thing is He’s out there ahead of you already. He’s already gone to Galilee. Tell the disciples and Peter to meet him there. Don’t be afraid. Jesus has risen, and he’s already out there ahead of you, working in your life and in the world around you.

 

Why are you hearing this? Why are you here, hearing this Easter story yet one more year? The resurrection was a miracle in the story of the life of Jesus. And it was meant to help you trust the larger miracle that God is doing in each one of your lives. A miracle that you are not always able to discern. Indeed, you cannot imagine it. But this resurrection account helps you to be encouraged to know that God is about that work. “Do not be afraid,” said the angel. “Jesus has risen. He has triumphed over death, and he is already out in front of you at work in places that you can not yet possibly imagine.”

 

The Bible describes the good news of God’s work in many different place. But nowhere more succinctly than in these verses from Ephesians, chapter three verse twenty, where the apostle says, “God is at work within you.” Within you. With power. Power to accomplish abundantly more than you can imagine or that you can even ask. That’s the good news! God is at work in you with resurrection power to do more than you can imagine, and more than you can even think to ask for.

 

You cannot discern it, but here is your clue: Jesus has risen! Do not be afraid. He is already out there at work in front of you. Follow him. That is how you come into harmony with his agenda. God never lets God’s agendas be limited by our worries. The Bible teaches us that. God’s vision and purpose is never captive to our little fears. God cares about our worries. God cares deeply about our troubles. But God is always ahead of us, working on something that is larger than we can even ask for.

 

And here is the clue: It looks like resurrection. No thing and no one can contain the amazing power of the love of God. It will not be sealed. It bursts forth from the grave and rises again on the third day. Do not be afraid. Jesus is risen. He has vanquished death. He is already out ahead of you, working in your future. And that can encourage you into power. Into love. Into faith. And with that good news, you can move mountains. With that good news, you can be reconciled to one another. With that good news, you can change the world.

 

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006