Christ Is Risen!

Easter Sunday

March 31, 2013

Luke 24

I want to tell you about two people this morning.

To me, they are both Easter stories.

One is Spencer West, a man who was born with a congenital disease

that made his leg muscles unusable.

They removed his legs at his pelvis at three and

His parents were told that he would have no future.

that he wouldn’t have a productive or normal life.

(By the way, he just climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro this year.) 

He spoke at the ELCA youth gathering in 2009.

And another woman I have met personally.

Her name is Ronnie, 

she grew up with a really

cruel mother who abused her 

and kept leaving

her with anonymous men she knew

who did whatever they wanted with her

Then her mother finally abandoned her 

as a teenager

where she had to sleep on relatives couches

until she graduated high school and started to work.

The reason why they remind me of Easter is that

I heard something similar from each of them,

When they were asked whether they would trade

in their misfortune and change the past,

they each said NO they wouldn’t

because it made them who they are.

Spencer talked about his childhood about

being made fun of, and of physical harassment,

But he also said that he’s had great experiences in his life

that he wouldn’t have if he had legs like everyone else.

So he wouldn’t opt to be like everyone else, even if he could.

And Ronnie told me about just a few

of the many horrific experiences in her life,

I asked her specifically if she would change her past.

She said that her experiences made her strong.

And she is strong. And this strength has helped her

through illness, it helped her in raising children,

it made her who she is, but mostly she said,

she knows now that she can live through almost anything,

so she’s not afraid of anything.

Both of these people experienced suffering,

but their suffering has become a gift for them.

Their brokenness has become a benefit.

Now, I know that this isn’t always the case,

I know many people who would rather have

their dark days changed.

They would rather have those abilities they’ve lost,

or their past altered somehow.

But I do think that people who do stand like these two do,

are able to show us the power of God

and the promise of Easter.

Because this is the story of Easter.

Jesus came to this world

sharing the love of God for everyone.

And the world responded to Jesus in some terrible ways.

Jesus suffered and died it was awful for everyone who knew him.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Now God didn’t take that suffering away.

It is still there for us to see and remember

and mourn and repent over.

  

But God does do something with it.

Out of that suffering,

God makes a beautiful, glorious resurrection

a testament for the world .

People like Spencer and Ronnie

show us how God works.

God isn’t a magician who magically takes bad things away

God is a sculptor who molds the bad into something

better than bad, God makes something beautiful.

God takes these wilderness rocks

that we’ve been given, and makes them wonderful.

Think about your hardest experiences,

think about your worst times, your regrets,

your losses, your desperate prayers.

Even though you may not be like Spencer and Ronnie,

and you might  want to trade those times in,

Still, consider how God has used those moments

to shape you and mold you and make you

a better, stronger, or more compassionate person.

And if you’re still in the middle of those dark times,

know that God will do something with that.

Whenever we die, we rise with Christ.

The promise is whenever there is death,

something beautiful will be born too.

God will not waste our pain.

God will make our pain into something good.

And this promise isn’t just for Christians,

God is at work in everyone’s life in this way.

it isn’t just for the faithful or the believers.

Easter is a promise by God for the whole world.

It’s a promise for every city destroyed by war,

every country, even our own, divided by anger and politics.

Every person, place, and thing.
God will make something new again.

Easter is about hope for all creation.

The rock that was placed in front of that tomb

on that Friday afternoon was a heavy stone,

put there to put there to seal death up.

To make it permanent and unmovable.
But when those women came there,

early on Sunday morning,

and they found that rock had moved.

Now this moved rock and this empty tomb

are a testament about the power

and promise of God for us.

Christ is no longer dead, he is alive.

The tomb is still a tomb.

But the tomb is now empty.

That is the story of Easter in our lives.

With God, what is dead doesn’t stay dead forever.

With God there is life.

With God there is hope.

That is what those who draw strength

from their suffering show us.

That is what the empty tomb tells us.

That is what Easter means for you and me today.

That is why we celebrate this day above all others.

Because Christ is risen!