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Larry R. Hayward
April 11, 2004
Easter/Resurrection of The Lord
To Cancel or Not To Cancel
Luke 24:1-12
Let us pray: Almighty God, as we celebrate Jesus Christ rising from the dead — "standing up among us" — may the words of my mouth and the music of our hearts move us — through the Holy Spirit — from hopelessness about the future to hope for the future. In the name of the tomb leaving, "Emmaus Road" — appearing, and Upper Room inhabiting Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
Kevin Brockmeier lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. He writes short stories and novels for a living. One winter day, a few years ago, Little Rock was hit with a snowstorm. Like nearly everyone else in town, Kevin turned on his television set to see what was canceled and what was not. In Little Rock, there is a childcare center called "Hope for the Future Childcare." Kevin watched, as scrolling along the bottom of the screen were the names of schools, church activities, and sporting events that had been cancelled. Suddenly, across the screen, came these words: "Hope for the Future - Cancelled."[1]
These words reminded Kevin of a story he had written a few years before in which a man's hope for the future is cancelled.[2]
The man is thirty-something. He loses his wife, Della, to an unexpected death. He is left with their fifteen-year-old son, Eric, with whom he has difficulty communicating. As the man tries to pull himself out of his grief, he finds himself talking to his late wife, telling her what he fears in her absence.
I am afraid, Della, that…the things that I know of you will slip quietly away from me.
I am afraid that as the glass of my life falls away, I will forget you…
I will sit on the porch steps one brisk fall morning… and I will try to call you to mind, and I will fail.
I will walk into the living room and find that your face has become just a photograph on the mantel, your name a signature on a yellowed envelope…
I will not remember the timbre of your voice or the cast of your body.
I will not remember the breadth and measure of your stride.
I will not remember the hunch of your shoulders as you walked against the wind or the set of your elbows as you knotted a scarf…
I will forget it all, everything that matters: your laughter, the contour of your face, the tuck of your lips as you arrested a yawn…all these things I will not remember.
Hope for the Future — Cancelled.
**
We know what it is like to cancel our hope for the future.
We consider our aging bodies.
We consider our failed relationships.
We consider our longtime spouse, seated in a wheelchair in a care center, beyond the reach of our ability to provide physical care.
We consider dead ends we face daily in our work.
We consider our lack of work.
Last week marked the tenth anniversary of genocide in Rwanda — in which 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in three months by Hutus[3] — the worst genocide since the Holocaust — while world leaders dithered and wrung their hands. The same horror is unfolding in the Sudan even as we speak and sing; and, again, nations are slow to react.[4] Richard Holbroke, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said last week: "The catchphrase…is always the same: Never again. Yet time after time, it does happen again."[5]
We come to this place, this Easter, with this question: "To cancel or not to cancel" our hope for the future?
**
In profound grief, the man in the story tries to share with his son a childhood memory Della had once shared:
When [your mother] was a little girl, [he tells Eric], she kept a flashlight by her bed. She told me that she would stand by her window and point it into the sky at night. She would find a spot without stars and shine it there until she went to bed. She thought that the light would reach a planet one day, someplace without a sun. The people there wouldn't be able to see where they were going and suddenly — light. She wanted to help. She told me that.
The story captures Eric's interest momentary, and then he retires for the night. The man resumes his conversation with Della:
The pulse of your flashlight is thirty years gone [Della]. Such a long time it's been sailing past moons and planets, past stars and dark matter and stray comets…It passed Alpha Centauri as you dressed for your first dance, Sirius as you left home for college. It passed the faint white glove of Tau Ceti as you lifted your veil, touched me with a kiss, and braided your fingers through mine…
One fine day, it will burst through the sky of a black world…Turtles will poke from their shells and bears will stumble from the mouths of caves. Men and women will throw open their windows, trembling and blinking as they step through the doors. On that day there will be banquets and celebrations. The people will dress in their finest robes. The feast will be grand, the conversation merry, and everyone will watch the sky.
The man moves from the fear of not being able to remember his wife to the memory of a hope she harbored as a child. His memory of the rays of her flashlight lead him not to cancel hope for the future.
**
I am moved by this story. I take heart anytime anyone finds hope for the future from any source available:
A childhood memory
Human love
An act of kindness
A novel
A walk in the woods
The return of spring
A round of golf
A week of skiing.
I believe any source that leads a human being to hope is gift from the Holy One.
As a Christian, as a minister of the Gospel, I have the privilege of sharing another source of hope, enacted centuries ago, passed along to us. It is a source of all sources of hope. You know it well. You came today to hear it once again.
On the first day of the week,
When dawn was at its deepest,
They came to the tomb,
These women,
Mary Magdalene,
Joanna,
Mary the mother of James,
And other women who were with them.They came,
Carrying in their robes and pouches
Spices they had prepared,
Not for cooking,
Not for feast making,
But for the preparation of a body for burial.They came at deepest dawn for a funeral.
When they arrived at the tomb
They found the stone rolled away,
Yet not even that discovery gave them hope.
When they entered the opening to the tomb,
They still expected to find a body,
Though a body they did not find.Inside this body-less tomb,
At deepest dawn,
Two men appeared to them,
Dressed in dazzling clothes.
The men stood right next to them,
Invading their personal space as they stooped down
As if they were examining vegetables
In the bin of a crowded market.The deepness of dawn,
The rolled away-ness of the stone,
The nearness of the men
Combined to fill the women with fear.
They bowed their faces to the ground,
As women often do in the presence of men
They fear or worship or both."Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
The men demanded to know;
And before the women raised their heads or answered,
The men spoke again:
"He is not here, but has risen.
Remember how he told you…
That on the third day he would rise again."[6]
**
This word translated to "rise again" can also be translated to "stand up." The word literally means "coming to stand in the midst of" or "coming to stand throughout."[7]
When Jesus Christ arose from the tomb,
He "stood up" so as to "come to stand
In the midst of us."He "stood up" not simply to return to life,
Not simply to return to God,
Not simply to overcome death.Rather, he "stood up"
So as to "come and stand in the midst of us,"
Represent God in the world,
Be present in the joys and struggles of our lives.
When we gather — seeking not to cancel our hope for the future — the idea that Jesus was raised to God helps us hold onto hope. The idea that Jesus triumphed over death helps us not to cancel our hope.
But the idea that when Jesus "stood up," he stood up not just to triumph, but also to be present with us, takes our uncancelled hope to an even greater height.
Our uncancelled hope is not just like a stirring victory in a championship game, forgotten once ESPN moves onto a different story, tossed away like Sports Illustrated once we have read it.
Rather, our uncancelled hope is like a victory whose power and feeling lingers with us forever.
Jesus rises to stand in the midst of us.
He rises to stand in our moments of despair.
He rises to stand in our moments of prayer.He rises to stand in our home and our work.
He rises to stand in the surgery suite,
The neonatal intensive care unit,
The rehab room where we re-learn to walk and talk
After a stroke.Jesus rises to stand where a grieving man
Struggles to remember the face and touch
Of his wife,
And takes comfort in her childhood memory
Of beaming light to a distant planet.He rises to stand where nations meet, deliberate,
Do battle against genocide.
**
"To cancel or not to cancel?" - that is the question.
Because Jesus "rises to stand in the midst of us," I choose not to cancel hope for the future.
Amen.
1 The Best American Short Stories 2003, Walter Mosley, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 328-329. go back
2 Kevin Brockmeier, "Space," in The Best American Short Stories 2003, Walter Mosley, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 288-296. go back
3 Guy Lawson, "The Rwanda Witness," The New York Times 4/4/04. go back
4 See Nichholas D. Kristof, "Will We Say 'Never Again' Yet Again?" The New York Times 3/27/04 and "Ethnic Cleansing, Again," The New York Times 3/4/04. go back
5 Richard Holbroke, "How Did 'Never Again' Become Just Words?" The Washington Post 4/4/04. go back
6 Luke 24:1-7. go back
7 Peter Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 269-270; quoted in K. C. Ptomey, "Easter - Year C," a paper presented at The Moveable Feast Preaching Seminar, January 2004. go back
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