God Is On the Move!
Easter 2C – April 7, 2013
Mt. Olive Lutheran Church – Mukwonago, WI
This was my first Wisconsin winter. Until last July, my family & I were in New York, but I grew up in northwestern PA, in what my sister likes to call the buckle of the snow belt just off of Lake Erie, so I'm used to a fair amount of snow. And maybe Wisconsin winters are always like this, but still, hasn't this year seemed like the winter that would never end? Never mind what Punxatawny Phil said. I keep waiting for spring to be sprung, and we're getting there, but it sure is taking its sweet time, isn't it?
It reminds me a little bit of the world of Narnia when Lucy and Susan and Peter and Edmund first stumble upon it in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the classic book by CS Lewis. You see, when they first get there, they find themselves in a world where, as they are told, it is always winter, but never Christmas. A world of snow and ice and cold winds blowing, but never the promise of the joy of Christmas. It's a world so long entrapped by the power of the White Witch's spell that the creatures of Narnia can hardly even remember, much less hope for, a time of spring.
And in a way, that is the kind of world the disciples lived in. Not a literal world of winter, of course, but a kind of metaphorical one. It's a world oppressed by the foreign powers of Rome, held captive by religious legalism. It's a place in which poverty and disease are widespread, where those in power intimidate and take advantage of the poor and the powerless, a place where people can be imprisoned or beaten or worse for daring to speak out. It is a world of winter cold looking for spring, longing for a Messiah - someone to rescue them, hardly daring to hope, especially when they had seen Jesus, the one who seemed to embody that hope, fall prey to the powers that be, sentenced to death, hanging upon a cross not very long before.
The disciples themselves are no strangers to the world of threats and intimidation, and they're not immune to them either. We see them in John's gospel, the evening of the first Easter, locked away together, hiding behind closed doors for fear of the Jews, which in John's gospel stands not for the whole Jewish people, but for the religious authorities, the guys in power, the very same council and high priest the disciples find themselves standing before in the story from Acts.
They've been warned more than once already to keep their mouths shut, to keep their story about Jesus to themselves; they've been imprisoned just the night before (and not for the first time) because they just can't NOT talk about Jesus, and just this morning, after a miraculous release from prison by an angel of the LORD, they're found in the Temple, preaching and healing in Jesus' name – then brought before the council and the high priest to explain themselves. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name...” yet here you are again!
So what's different? What changes between John's Gospel and this Acts story, between Easter night and several weeks down the road, that we get two very different stories about the exact same people?
Well, what is different is that God is on the move! God is on the move in their winter-y world, and just like when Aslan comes into the always-winter-but-never-Chistmas world of Narnia, spring starts busting out all over. “We've heard Aslan is on the move,” the kindly Beavers say to the children – and as they rush to escape from the clutches of the evil White Witch, they begin to see signs that this is true all around them. Snow begins to melt. It slides off trees, revealing the deep evergreen branches. The ground shows through and flowers poke their way towards the sun. Birds appear and break out into full-throated choruses, welcoming this day of spring that no one had really dared to hope would ever come again.
And this is what the disciples see. Of course, that's not exactly different – God has always been on the move in this world, from its very beginning. And it's not like the disciples hadn't seen it before. In the words and actions and very being of Jesus, they had seen God on the move every day. God, in Jesus – reaching out to the lost and the lonely, to the outcast and the sinner, welcoming them in, welcoming them home; God, in Jesus – moved to compassion over the sick and possessed and dying – healing them, making them whole again; God, in Jesus – teaching and preaching and sharing a new word, a new way of understanding who God is and the relationship God longs to have with each and every person – a relationship based on love and trust instead of rules and fear. They had already seen in their winter world signs of spring breaking through: flowers sprouting into bloom and trees bursting forth with new leaves and birds singing in spontaneous chorus. This is what they saw in the life of Jesus.
But even more important, what made all the difference in their lives is what they saw and experienced that first Easter. God, in Jesus, breaking through our always-winter-but-never-Christmas sentence that his death seemed to be; God, breaking the bonds of death and raising Jesus up to new life, eternal life, spring life; God, melting once and forever the snow and ice and cold of our wintry hearts and replacing it with vibrant color and enlivening song and warming weather. God reminding us again of the promise of new life, that spring always comes, that winter does not hold us in its grip forever. This is what the disciples take hold of when they meet the resurrected Jesus face to face in that upper room. This is the message that Jesus sends them to share – the message that in the end, light scatters darkness, life conquers death, love wins!
And so they go, these disciples, now called apostles, “sent ones” - sent with a message too good to keep to themselves, unable to keep quiet, unable to hold in what they have seen, because they are witnesses to these things.
People of God gathered here this morning, this is our mission too. The world around us lies in the grip of a cold, hard winter. For many around us, maybe even some of us here too, the world seems a cold, friendless place with no hope of spring. We hear of violence and bullying, suicide and homicide every day on the news. We wrestle with terminal diseases and addictions and mental illness. We worry about the economy and our personal finances, about wars and rumors of wars, and sometimes it seems like we will be caught in this winter world forever. But we have been witnesses to a different reality! We have caught glimpse of the coming spring around every corner – in every act of compassion, in every hand who reaches out to someone in need, in every voice that speaks for the voiceless, in the lives of those who work for justice and peace. We see it in individuals and congregations and organizations who make a difference – feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and housing the homeless. These are signs of spring – of God on the move, even now, to break the bonds of fear and need and death. And we are witnesses to these things! Let's go and share the good news!
Amen.
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