Luke 23:44-49, Luke 24:1-12

Easter, 2003 Manistee

O God, at Easter we remember the great hope of eternal life which you have set before us and feel in our hearts the longings for goodness and for you. Grant that nothing may hinder the hope of eternal life from coming true, and the desire for goodness and for you from being realized in us and for us. Amen.

There are some people walking around who are dead. That is the blunt reality that rises from Jesus’ words. Some people are living who have already chosen the way of death. Of course, in most cases, they don’t think so. They think they have life the way it should be or are living life the only way it can be lived. But what they do and how they live is slowly, surely destroying them. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Jesus was worrying about those people as he came to the end of his life. Throughout all of his life he had wanted them to notice what was happening around them and in them, too. He wanted to draw attention to what was happening in all of human life. And he told them it no longer had to be that way. Life did not need to be a place of death, as many had made it and lived it. In his life and in their lives they could glimpse eternity. If they listened, dared and obeyed, they did not have to wait. They did not have to wait for a day of resurrection. They could see and find resurrection in their lives now. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Then they remembered his words….

Before we can truly celebrate Easter, before we begin to worry about death and wonder about life beyond death, we must face the fact that death occurs within life. We must worry and wonder about those around us who are dying as they try to live. What leads people to live that way? Why, if given the choice to live in life, do some choose to die? And let’s bring it closer: what holds us back in our lives? Why do we keep from risking in love and daring in faith? Why do we fail to live the life we want to live? I’ll venture this guess: because we believe we are all alone. Poet Matthew Arnold wrote:

Yes! In the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild

We mortal millions live alone.

Jesus saw the same people. He saw people living alone. He saw people living by themselves. And he saw them living for themselves. And as Jesus saw, we can see, because that is the tone of our time, too.

One woman I know described her life this way: "I do think it is important for you to take responsibility for yourself. I mean, nobody else is going to do it. People do take care of each other, people help each other when somebody’s sick. But in the end, you’re really all alone and you have to answer to yourself." And I have heard many people say what one man expressed with these words: "As kids grow up, they have to go their separate ways. So now I’ve become more separate from my family. I think that’s needed. The way I’ve done it, I pick my time to get together with them."

There are inescapable truths in those statements. But there is also an underlying truth that is terrifying. There is a reality that says our communities are not truly communities. They are collections. Our families are barely families spread about, separate and served. As a result, people feel alone. When they are alone, there is only one left on whom to depend: their own self. I have come to see that we are not so much a selfish and materialistic society as we are a desperately lonely people. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see, is the way John Newton put it in the familiar hymn. And those words have risen from that same sense of loneliness that cries out from the hearts of countless people. We choose the way of the self, the way that depends upon ourselves, the way that depends only on ourselves, because we cannot see any other way. Without ties to others, we have no responsibility or accountability to anyone. We do not need to consider anyone else’s values or the values that ask us to consider them. No wonder there is collapse after collapse of financial and political and religious institutions. No wonder there is a feeling of traditional, family values and foundations being washed away. No wonder there is rampant greed and political manipulation. No wonder there is a sense of personal defeat and abandonment. People believe they are all alone. We make W. H. Auden’s words ring true: "We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die."

When I was ten I couldn’t wait to be twelve. When I was twelve I couldn’t wait to reach that magical age of thirteen and when I was thirteen I couldn’t wait to be sixteen when I could drive and when I was sixteen I couldn’t wait to be eighteen when I would be out of high school, have learned it all and all the wonders of life would be mine. "Stop wishing your life away," my grandfather would warn. At some point I did stop wishing. But some people never do. The pain of living is so intense that they keep wishing away their lives, hoping for it all to be over. That is a life-negating and death-inducing way to live. But we are afraid to do anything else. We are afraid to look at what may be wrong, because if we are alone, there is nothing we can do about it. We are afraid if we risk and reach out to those around us and take responsibility for what is happening around us there will be nothing to hold us if we fail and fall. So we deny that anything is wrong and feel more and more at ease in our illusions.

But we are claiming that Christians can live differently. It is not that they are smarter. It is only that they have listened and dared a bit more. They have heard the words of Jesus and dared to believe that he is right. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. If you want to believe you are not alone, and there is an Eternal One who can be sought and who relentlessly seeks, then you can cast off loneliness and dare to admit that you need not live only to yourself. When Jesus placed his life in God’s hands, he was near death. He was nearing death but he was not denying his life. He did not give up all he had been and said. He acknowledged that he could not live depending solely on himself. To place our lives in God’s hands is to give up thinking we have to have all the answers to the problems of life. We no longer have to come up with all the solutions. We are not the only arbiter of right and good. Yes, we also give up having everything the way we want it and when we want it, but we also can give up believing we must come up with all those answers ourselves. We are not alone.

Christians could, and can live resurrected lives now. They have turned away from themselves and found themselves living the life they always wanted to live. They have found courage to give up addictive relationships and substances and begin to live reborn lives. They have stepped out after the death of one supremely loved, to claim a new kind of life. They have gone back to school when it seemed silly to others, and started new careers when others thought they were all washed up. They have found courage in the worst of times, patience when others gave up and joy in serving others.

It is not, of course, that everything is easy. Far from it. Father into your hands I commend my spirit. We can place ourselves in God’s hands, but we also can stop running from the problems and questions and struggles in our own hands, because now we realize there is someone else to give us some answers, and if not the answers, then a good dose of hope. I am comforted by this vision of being a Christian because that is how I keep living that faith that was offered to me years ago. I still drag along a cross. I keep hauling my baggage that really doesn’t do me much good, but is part of me anyway. All the funny, peculiar ways, all my paralyzing fears and incapacitating worries, all my questions and lasting doubts, all my defenses and shoulds and oughts. You and I can be Christian and go after Christ and still bring along all those things. And as we go after this Christ we find we collect more crosses. There are demands made: calls for sacrifice, when others seek ease; justice and peace, when others cry for war; admission of weakness, when others always want to appear strong; struggles for rightness and goodness, when cynicism and despair are more popular. That is not an easy life. We still have our baggage and we carry many crosses, but this time there is a difference. We have the strength for our journey because we know whom we follow. You know what I mean. As long as we can see where we are going, it makes all the difference. It is when we live and move in darkness without light or hope or firm destination that we grow anxious and tired and discouraged.

Let the voice of one in our congregation speak to you of that continuing struggle and abiding hope. With permission, I share these words with you:

Father into your hands I commend my spirit. Those are grace-filled words of commitment. They recognize and reach out to God’s amazing love for us. They are full of the open-armed welcome of Christ, in which all of our sorrows and self-seeking come to an end. But it is also a commitment that is very clear. We are not just on any way. We are on Christ’s way. We are not just any people. We are Christ’s people. No longer belonging to ourselves, never again alone, but for all time and for all time to come, people who have finally seen sadness and our lives of death come to an end.

Who are you? Alone and stranded? Dare to believe Christ is there. Who are you? Overwhelmed and frightened and suffocating? Christ is calling to you today. Who are you? Filled with doubts, bursting with questions, wounded with struggles? Christ stands with you. Who are you? Confused by direction, drawn in more ways that can be counted but in few that matter? Listen, the word of Christ is spoken for you. Who are you and what of you? Commit your life to God. Commend your life to God’s hands. Come to the One who is life, now, this day, and live in the power of the resurrection forever more. Amen.