Matthew 28:1-10

After the Sabbath, when the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Suddenly there was a great earthquake because an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone from the entrance of the tomb and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him, the guards shook and became like dead men.

But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He’s not here, he has been raised, as he said. Come and see the place where he lay, then go and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead and he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.”

So the women left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy to tell his disciples. On the way, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings.” They came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then he said to them, “Do not be afraid, but go and tell my disciples to go to Galilee. There they will see me.”

It’s always good to smile on Easter, so I thought we should start with something worth a laugh that the kids might get a kick out of, too. This little video is a portion of something that YouTube calls “Incredible Moments When Dads Save the Day.” (We didn't watch the whole thing Sunday morning, but...)

You can tell they are dads, mostly by the mothers gasping and laughing in the background. And in one of the clips I edited out for the sake of time, the dad had my dad’s uniform on – white socks and sandals. But none of that is really the point.

Seeing that little video of “incredible moments when Dads saved the day” made me realize how we can sometimes simplify the Good News of Easter to such a degree that we may only be hearing and sharing a portion of what Easter’s good news is really all about; we may only be getting “half” of the Truth, if you will, which wasn’t part of my plan, but fits pretty well with the “Half-Truths” sermon series we spent so much time with during Lent around here the last few weeks.

What I mean is, we focus a lot – if not all – of our time and energy and Easter theology on the notion that, in Jesus Christ, God the Father, saves us, like some kind of Super Dad, from the death and damnation that our sins would otherwise demand. One of my favorite hymns of all sings, “my sin, not in part, but the whole was nailed to his cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul.”

So don’t get me wrong – that is the Gospel’s good news and it is True with a capital T. But it is also only part of what makes Good Friday’s sadness and Easter’s joy True, with a capital T.

What I mean is, Jesus didn’t die on the cross just so we wouldn’t have to. We’re all going to die after all, and for many of us, it may not include a cross, but it still won’t be pretty or painless. And Jesus didn’t die on the cross just because God knew the likes of you and I wouldn’t have the faith or the courage to climb up there, ourselves.

And Jesus didn’t die on the cross because, in the cosmic math of how much suffering had to be endured in order to atone for the sins of all humanity, Jesus’ death – by way of whips and thorns and spit and nails – was the only thing that would measure up. Jesus’ dying wasn’t just a tit-for-tat kind of transaction that would balance the scales of our sinfulness.

Yes, the Lamb of God in Jesus Christ takes away the sin of the world. But there’s more. And the more comes on Easter morning. On Easter we get the rest of the story; the Full Monty; the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.

Jesus didn’t just come to die to save us from our sins. Jesus was raised, too, to show us what real living looks like. Jesus didn’t just die to save us. Jesus lived to show us a better way. God, in Jesus Christ showed up to let the world see that the ways of God – peace, humility, sacrifice, generosity, obedience, grace, mercy, love – always, always, always win.

And that’s the kind of Easter news we need as much as ever in the world these days…

Whether there was good reason or need for it, or not, our country just dropped what is celebrated as the Mother Of All Bombs – the largest non-nuclear weapon ever engaged in the history of wars. Three days after Good Friday, on the other side of the empty tomb, we are reminded – in spite of ourselves – that violence is not the way to God’s kind of victory in this world.

We live in a world that convinces us we need to have more and get more and keep more – that more money and things and stuff are the way to greater security; that our identity is wrapped up in the value of what we have. Three days after Good Friday, on the other side of the empty tomb, we are reminded that Judas and his 30 pieces of silver lost it all in the end.

We live in a culture that glorifies independence and self-reliance and the virtue of “picking yourself up by your own bootstraps” to such a degree that we pretend we’ve earned or deserve all that is ours. Even more, we’ve convinced ourselves and others that if you have less than you are less and that you just don’t deserve it until you’ve earned it. Three days after Good Friday, on the other side of the empty tomb, we are reminded that humbled by God’s grace and that humility trumps pride, every time.

God’s Church in the world still fights and bickers and pretends it can draw lines around and put up barriers against and administrate who’s “in” and whose “out” as far God’s children are concerned. Three days after Good Friday, on the other side of the empty tomb, we are reminded that God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the WORLD – the whole wide world and all that is in it – would be saved through him.

We have had our share of dying already this year around here – at Cross of Grace and in our community – and it saddens me to imagine that the year’s not over. But three days after Good Friday, on the other side of the empty tomb, we are reminded that the ways of life as believers – things like faith, hope, and love, I mean – have sustained us in the face of it, and will continue to in the days to come.

Jesus’ resurrection is a slap in the face to the ways of sin and darkness; it’s a reality check about what matters and what works and what wins as far as our God is concerned. Jesus was raised so we would know what real humility, true strength, legitimate power, and amazing grace look like – and that they triumph over the ways of sin, death, greed, fear and despair whenever we have courage, faith and love enough to put them to work in our lives, for the sake of the world.

So I like the Dad videos, because what parent doesn’t want to put on a cape and save their kids from a scraped knee or a broken bone or from even more if/when we might have to? But the other side of parenthood – the harder work of loving children – the faithful work of loving one another like God does – is the daily, obedient willingness to love one another in spite of what’s broken; to sacrifice when we’re not sure we have any more to give; to bear burdens that seem like more than we can carry on our own; to offer comfort, hope and peace in the face of so much to the contrary. In other words, to follow in the ways of Jesus and to do it trusting that the ways of God will win the day every time.

And that’s the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth of Easter’s good news. Forgiveness of sins yes. But even more: amazing love, so great it conquers even sin and death, and inspires us to live and to love differently and in bold, surprising, hopeful ways, ourselves – like Jesus did – for us and for the sake of the world.

Amen. Alleluia. Happy Easter.

John 13:31-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I read a devotion by Peter Marty about something called “Kangaroo Care,” this week. I’d actually heard of it before…knew it was a thing…but just never knew it had a name. “Kangaroo Care” is the practice of laying a naked newborn baby onto the bare chest of its mother. And I knew it was a meaningful, successful way of establishing a connection…of promoting a very real physical, emotional bond between a mother and her child. I even knew it was something done by fathers and adoptive parents, to establish a kind of physical bond and connection for parents who aren’t the birth mother. That it is something God has facilitated through the natural way of things for eons, seems obvious.

But I read this week that it’s been noticed by doctors and nurses and the medical community as a viable medical practice and treatment, even, on occasions when medicine and doctors and therapy and other modern conventions don’t cut the mustard. The story I read came from an occupational therapist who worked in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit who talked about putting Kangaroo Care to use very deliberately when a baby’s heartbeat is irregular, out of whack, slightly off rhythm.

When drugs don’t work, and because electrically shocking a newborn’s heart is too risky, the simple, holy prescription to re-synchronize the little baby’s heartbeat is to lay the naked child, onto the naked chest of the mother. The baby’s head is deliberately turned so that the child’s ear is just above the heart of the mother, and when it works, the fix…the cure…is nothing short of miraculous, if you ask me: the less powerful beating of the child’s heart begins to pump in time with the more powerful rhythm of the mother’s heart. Their hearts begin to beat in time, together. Apparently, even outside of that, NICU nurses and therapists have found that everything from sleep and weight gain to respiration and more can be helped by this kind of skin-to-skin “Kangaroo Care."

Of course, they call it – “Kangaroo Care” – because of the way kangaroo mothers carry their kangaroo babies so close to their bodies for so long after they’re born. But it made me think about Jesus…and this new commandment to love one another…and the practice of Holy Communion, which we’ll celebrate today with a handful of our youngest ones.

But first, we can’t just read or hear these words from today’s Gospel and pretend to find any meaning in them, without first being reminded of their context. And that’s a little strange for us, on the 5th Sunday after Easter, because these are the words Jesus said to his disciples on the evening of the Last Supper – before Easter – just before he was betrayed and denied and crucified and killed. Not only was it the Last Supper, but these were some of Jesus’ last words to his friends and his family, before life and death – as they knew it, anyway – would be changed forever.

So, the short version of this already short little snippet of a Gospel reading, is that Jesus was preparing to leave, to say goodbye, to head for the hill of Calvary, to his own execution, death, and burial. And he wanted to give his disciples some final instructions, some last words, this “new commandment,” before leaving. When you see it after the fact – when you read these words as “parting words” like I do, anyway – it makes you wonder if Jesus might have had some doubts about that whole resurrection thing working out.

But these parting words… these final instructions… this “new commandment” is no less profound or meaningful, even after the resurrection, as we anticipate Jesus’ departure once again.

Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But this is hard work, loving one another, don’t you think? When I hear Jesus say, “just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another” I think, “Yeah…we’re gonna need you around a little more often. We’re gonna need to keep seeing and experiencing that kind of reminder, that kind of presence, those kinds of examples: the foot-washing, the preaching, the teaching, the healing, the forgiving, the feeding hungry people, the comforting of the lonely, the loving the outcast. All of that is gonna need to keep happening if you’re going to expect me…if you’re going to expect us…if you’re going to expect them to keep loving one another the way you’d like.”

Because when we get too far away from the source of our faith… when we step beyond the reach of our inspiration and encouragement for loving one another… when we move beyond our ability to hear the command and encouragement of Jesus to love the other… we drop the ball, don’t we? We lose our way. We fall behind. The heartbeat of our faithfulness slows to a rate that can be imperceptible from its source, or even from our best intentions.

Which is why Jesus gave this command to love one another, just after washing the feet of his disciples and just before heading to the cross where he would lay it all down for the love of them, and for the love of the world. It’s why Jesus gave this command to love one another around the table with bread and wine. It’s why he transformed the earthly bread and wine of that meal into the heavenly body and blood of the sacrament – so that we would be nourished with it, comforted in it, encouraged by it, loved through it.

So that our sinfulness, laid bare-naked in the presence of the body and blood of our creator – like a sick child, laid upon the breast of her mother – could be transformed by forgiveness and changed into new life and deep, grateful love for the sake of the world.

Holy Communion is like God’s “Kangaroo Care” for those of us whose hearts have missed a beat. It is our tangible connection to God’s love for us. It is our tactile reminder of God’s grace in our midst. Communion is our connection to the divine love of God that means to re-calibrate the beat of our hearts as disciples and the beat of our collective heart as the church in the world, so that ours – and so that OURS, together – will beat in time with grace and gratitude, with generosity and service, with hope and love, in the name of Jesus Christ, who loved us first, who loves us still, and who calls us to nothing more and nothing less than, to love one another.

Amen

"The Whole Truth of Easter"

"Kangaroo Care" – John 13:31-35