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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
Easter: 8 April 2007Luke 24“Breaking News”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
Every day or two, an email arrives on my computer from the news channel, CNN. The email consists of a sentence of what CNN calls, "breaking news." The subjects of these tiny bulletins vary widely, from overseas battles to natural disasters to celebrity divorces.
For me, the advantage of these free bulletins is that I always feel up-to- date. The vast corps of CNN journalists is out there, keeping track of everything that happens and letting me know what's going on.
Today, it's possible to feel so well-informed that we use a contradictory expression, "old news!" With computers and all-news radio stations and cable TV, the headlines are always changing; what happened a few hours ago quickly fades out of our minds.
Now, this instant availability of news is particularly interesting yo Christians. For Christians believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And the term, "Gospel" is a Greek word that means "good news."
We believe that the life and teaching of Jesus brought a message from God to human beings. This message tells us that there is a God who loves us and who will help us bear our fears and our sorrows.
The Gospel even tells us that we will be free from the threat of our mortality — because when Jesus rose to life from the grave, he broke the power death has over human beings.
Good news. Good news, indeed. The best news we could imagine.
And it is the particular good news of Easter: Jesus lives, and the terrors of death no longer have a hold upon us.
Christians must admit, though, that this is a strange kind of "news." For one thing, it's very far from new. A report of something that happened 2,000 years ago hardly qualifies as "news" in a world where yesterday's headlines are already stale.
But there is a way in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more up-to-date than anything else we might learn.
I also have a program on my computer that allows me to choose information that I can download onto my machine. I receive weather bulletins for New York City, for instance; I can get the latest gossip from Hollywood.
But such "personalized" news doesn't really matter much to who I am as a person. The weather might affect my travel plans; the Hollywood gossip may influence the films I see; but in general, bulletins arrive about one thing or another — and my life remains much the same.
That is not true of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. According to that Gospel, God wants to give us new life. God wants to bring us from darkness to light, from defeat to victory, from death to resurrection. God wants to lead us into a happiness we could never find on our own.
Still, when we hear this news, we may have trouble "personalizing" it. Notice that when Christ's disciples realized that Jesus had risen from the dead, their emotional reactions weren't at all what we might have expected.
In the account we heard today, St. Luke says that the women who discovered the empty tomb and who had a vision of angels "were terrified." They "bowed their heads to the ground." Not the reactions of people who have just received good news!
Of course, they might just have been startled; empty tombs and angels aren't part of everyday life.
But one imagines that their fear came from a different source. Years later, when the women told the Easter story to their grandchildren, they would have added a word of explanation — a personal story about their fears.
For they would have come to see that in order to live the new life of the Risen Christ, there were aspects of themselves that had to change.
The women wanted to be happier. But they weren't ready to test the grace of God — to let him help them to become happier persons.
They didn't see that the Easter Gospel meant that the way they looked at their lives would change forever.
Imagine getting a promotion at work. You've slaved away at your job and suddenly you're offered a new position, a better title, more money, a grand office.
You're quite pleased with this prospect — until the day comes when you move into your bigger office and it hits you that you've got to do your new job.
If the promotion is a substantial one, you'll find all sorts of fresh demands on your time. You will have to arrive at the office earlier and leave later; you'll need to take work home; you'll be watching what you say to people you work with because your opinion of them will play a major role in their careers.
Of course, you knew when you took the job that you would need to work harder. What surprises you is the depth of the changes that you have to make.
To take on the new job, you almost have to become a new person. Casual attitudes to work are discarded; what was just a job has become a career, a vocation, a mission.
Something like this is what eventually happened to the first disciples on Easter Day. Things no longer looked the same; they had been given a new life in the Risen Christ.
For some of the followers of Jesus, a literal job change would be coming, as fishermen and housewives became missionaries and leaders of the early church.
And all the followers of Jesus would find their souls touched: they would become more outward looking, as they realized other people — fellow Christians, even people they didn't know — had a claim on them.
The women at the tomb may have been terrified because they sensed that they had received truly "breaking news." For their old lives had to be "broken."
You also may experience this breaking, transforming power of Christ when you have to confront something tough: you're fired instead of promoted. Or, much worse, you lose someone in your life who meant the world to you.
You feel hurt and you feel angry. And then slowly you turn to Christ. You give him your pain — and after a while the clouds are lifted, and a new day dawns, and you realize you can go on.
When you wrestled with your problem, God helped you to become a stronger person. Broken, yes, broken in some ways forever, but stronger.
Stronger because you have learned that this breaking news of God in Christ really is good news. It's good news about how the world is, and about who you are, and about what God is able to do for you.
The power of God has broken your old, stale habits and breathed new life into your old life.
"Jesus lives" — and he shares his life with you.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.