The two stories we have read from the Bible this morning are news
not only in synagogues and churches this week but the secular press, as well.
Major news magazines always feature Jesus in some manner on their covers at Easter.
They know thousands of people will buy their magazines to find out whether anything new
has been learned about what really happened at Jesus' resurrection.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times ran an article on page one dealing with the story we
read from Exodus. Judaism has been celebrating Passover this week, the season when it
remembers and celebrates God's liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. So it was
front page news when a rabbi in Westwood told a congregation that for nearly two decades,
scholars and archeologists have grown increasingly doubtful that the Israelites were
really slaves in Egypt, wandered in the desert for 40 years, or conquered Canaan in the
way their Bible and ours say it happened.
Judaism is now invited to deal with the ramifications of a question raised half a
century ago by the great Christian theologian, Rudolf Bultman regarding the resurrection.
The question is: If you had been there with a camera, could you have taken a picture of
the slaves leaving Egypt and does it matter if the answer is really "no"? As
spiritual descendants through Jesus Christ of those who consider God's liberating them
from slavery to be the foundational event of their faith, it is a fascinating question for
us to ponder as well.
This morning we remember that Exodus and Easter are linked together not only because
people question their historical factuality, but because they are the same story, two
sides of the same coin, two variations on the same theme, Easter a dramatic re-make of an
earlier version. They speak of the truths of God we know already in life: that God leads
each of us from slavery into freedom, from death into life. God conquers suffering,
injustice, loneliness, lies and evil with life and justice, love and truth and good. God
has the power to break us free from whatever holds us captive and bring us into the
Promised Land.
According to Exodus, God says, "I have seen the misery of my people who are in
Egypt; I have heard their cry. Indeed, I know their sufferings and I have come down to
deliver them from slavery and bring them into a land flowing with all good things."
The power of the Exodus lies in its profound and timeless message of freedom and
liberation. "The story of liberation from bondage into a promised land has inspired
the haunting spirituals of African American slaves, the emancipation and civil rights
movements, Latin America's liberation theology, peasant revolts in Germany, nationalist
struggles in South Africa." (Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2001) It is personally true
for those Jews who fled the Nazis during World War II, and the Islamic revolution in Iran.
The Exodus has always been a metaphor for a greater truth. As a member of that Westwood
congregation told a reporter, "We all have our own Egypts we are prisoners of
something, either alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, overeating. We have to use [the story] as a
way to free ourselves from difficulty and make ourselves a better person." How the
story inspires us to get free of our Egypts and "in some way to work for the freedom
of all this is what matters, not whether we built the pyramids." (Los Angeles Times,
April 13, 2001)
Easter is the Exodus event when God sent Jesus Christ to liberate us from the tombs of
our life that hold us captive. Frederick Buechner writes that we are captive, "if
only to the shadows and shallowness of our life" (The Eyes of the Heart). We are
captive to patterns of behavior established long ago that hold us still in their grip. We
are captive to grief so deep it feels like an ocean, fear so great it paralyzes. We are
slaves to addictions we do not even recognize, from alcohol to drugs or food or shopping,
from busyness to relationships or conflict or chaos. We are held prisoner by a lack of
hope that the clouds will ever part to show us a blue sky, that injustice will ever be
overturned, that the lonely corners of our heart will ever be touched by love; a lack of
hope that guns can be turned into plowshares and peace will ever come; captive to a belief
that bigotry will win and truth is not worth fighting for. We live, each of us to lesser
or greater degrees at various times of our life, in bondage to the belief that we are
ultimately powerless in the face of evil and death who will have the final word. We want
to believe that God's way is worth living for, but as with the disciples on that Saturday
between what we now call Good Friday and Easter, the evidence seems to point in the other
direction.
Jesus' disciples, too, were certain that he was dead, and he was. Christ died on that
cross on Good Friday, and no one knew that Easter was coming. The capacity for evil that
lives within the human heart thought it had finally won the day. No wonder Jesus'
followers are full of despair. If someone as close to God as Jesus has been beaten by
evil, what hope is there for any of us, or for the world? Those disciples know they are
held in bondage by despair and death and by the evil of the world just as surely as if
they were slaves in Egypt. There is no hope. They know nothing of Easter yet.
But then, Sunday dawns and as the sun rises, the power of God breaks free. Easter is
the Exodus event that sets us free, that liberates us from all that holds us captive. Like
horses bursting from the gates at Santa Anita, like a mighty river crashing through a mere
human dam, like a parent bursting through the door to welcome a long-lost child, like
tears of grief and joy tumbling down when a dear one is freed from suffering, like an
earthquake that splits open the hard crust of the human heart, the earthquake of Easter
happens. The stone is rolled away and the tomb is empty. Christ is risen! Evil is
conquered! We are set free!
Every other truth about Easter springs from this: that death and evil did their best,
but God overcame them, hands down. God blew the walls off the prison in which evil had
tried to contain Christ. We dare to live in faith because we know God has already won. We
dare to fight against injustice and cruelty and evil because we know God has already
vanquished them. Pain and suffering, injustice and exclusion, oppression and violence
bigotry are still a terrible part of the world and I will never deny the agony they cause.
But on Easter, we also know that God is stronger than they and calls us to join forces for
good with the Christ who was willing to take on evil in his own body all the way to the
cross, so that good and God would ultimately win. Easter is the story of liberation from
evil and suffering, anguish and oppression, bondage and violence in every manifestation in
our life and in the world.
Exodus and Easter. They are more than words on a page or historical facts that may
sometime be disproved by archeological evidence. Exodus and Easter. They are eternal Truth
that has reached into the prisons of our life and our world, and gives us hope of freedom.
Do I believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead on Easter morning? Do I believe
in the resurrection? Absolutely, I do. I can no more explain exactly what happened on that
first Easter than has anyone else through the centuries, including the gospel writers, who
each give a different story, but I know its truth.
I preach Christ crucified and risen because like many of you, I know the truth and
power of the resurrection in my own life.
I know what it is to feel myself fully loved and forgiven by the God whose Christ would
die on a cross.
I know what it is to send a loved one across the great divide that we call Death, feel
them welcomed into the eternal presence of God, and know that they are safe.
I know what it is to be willing to die for the sake of good, and to receive my life
back again.
I know what it is to be held captive and to be set free.
I know what it is to feel absolutely powerless in the face of evil and discover that
God's power is greater than any evil the world can put against it.
In the words of Job, "I know that my Redeemer lives," for over and over again
I have seen:
Despair replaced by hope,
Prisoners set free,
The blind who see,
The deaf who hear,
The unlovable loved,
The tragic redeemed.
Over and over again I have seen resurrection in:
communities changed for the better,
addictions overcome, grief relieved,
frightening times turned into new life,
marriages restored when there was no hope,
hate-sealed hearts warmed open over time.
Over and over again I have seen Easter as:
Love overcomes hate,
Justice finally overcomes injustice, and
Good overcomes evil.
"Peace be with you," says the Risen Christ. The Exodus has come and God has
the final victory. Freedom and good are worth fighting for, worth living and dying for;
for Easter is true and Christ is already risen.
Alleluia! Amen!
