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| The Gospel reveals a pattern in life: bad news, then good news. |
April 3, 2021—Easter Vigil
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red
Sea]
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]
© 2021 Seth Olson
I have good news and I have bad news. You may already know this, but with the lights coming on, the Gloria being sung, and the water being flung it’s officially Easter!
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
This is good news, right? HEAVEN’S YES, IT IS! Easter emanates good news. I imagine that’s part of why you are here—to see the most dramatic moment in all the whole Church year when darkness is vanquished by Christ’s eternal light! This is good news.
However, someone wiser than me once wrote, “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.”[1] So, a minute ago maybe I should have said, “I have bad news, then I have good news.” Don’t believe me—that the Gospel is bad news first? Think back to yesterday (Good Friday) and the night before (Maundy Thursday) when Jesus was betrayed by his friends, denied by his followers, and executed by the powerful. You do not even have to go back that far. Earlier in this service, we heard this pattern repeatedly in our readings. Thank you to our youth for reading tonight!
Throughout those passages we heard bad news, then good news. In Exodus, God’s people wished they were still enslaved in Egypt (bad news) before God delivered them through the Red Sea on dry ground (good news). In Isaiah, God’s people were hungering and thirsting in exile (bad news) before God announced through the prophet a feast of free food and drink (good news). In the first Ezekiel passage, God’s people were disconnected throughout the nations (bad news) before God gathered them and sprinkled them (good news). Y’all know all about sprinkling with water! In the second Ezekiel passage, God’s people were like dry bones (bad news) before God breathed new life into them (good news)! And in Mark’s words tonight, the followers of Jesus believed that the Son of God was dead (bad news) before well, we will get to this good news in a bit. Now, I want to jump ahead to today.
Frederich Buechner is that wise one I was quoting earlier—his belief is that this bad news into good news is still a pattern now. All of us distort our relationships with God and with others made in God’s image, and we all experience this bad news happening to us.
News corporations—maybe they should be called “bad news corporations” love this. If you turn on 24/7/365 news networks, visit their websites, or stay informed via algorithms on your social media account, you will discover, if you haven’t already, that the news is mostly just a constant stream of bad things happening. We appear to be addicted to bad news. If you lean left, your news tells of the evils that the right is doing. If you lean right, your news tells of all the evils that the left is doing. If you are in the middle, the news says it is all evil!
We so clearly see the speck in our neighbors’ eyes. All the while, we neglect to examine the pressure treated 2”x4” piece of lumber in own eyes. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus used sawdust and wood to describe our collectively obscured vision because usually when we see it in another, we have it in ourselves. My wife calls this tendency, “You spot it, you got it.” So, when we distort how we see our neighbors, haplessly addicted to all the bad news, hyping up the sawdust in everyone else’s eyes, it is not just bad news—it is tragedy.
A lot of this last year has been this tragedy—seeing the faults and flaws and foibles in our world and in ourselves. Pandemics of illness, hatred, and exhaustion have made it easier to be consumed by this catastrophe. Plus, endless transitions, painful isolation, job loss, burnout, and continuously feeling like we are working twice as hard to accomplish half as much has left us in sad state of heartbreak. If this were not enough the cherry on top has been that the well-worn rituals that accompany both grief and gratitude have not been fully available like in the past. We have been in an endless loop of bad news. We’ve been stuck on the hamster wheel of tragedy.
If this was all there was, if life was merely the first half of the movement that Buechner described (just the bad news), if tonight’s stories stopped before making a turn, then what would our lives be like? We would be like God’s People stranded on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, or like ones starving for God’s rich food, or like a family disconnected throughout the whole world, or even like those dry bones laying lifelessly in the valley. If bad news were all there was, we would have just stopped the service in the dark.
In that bleak obscurity we might get by for a time—working hard to promise “I will,” but without help. However, the glorious truth is that the bad news is not the end—it is just the beginning, or maybe the middle! God reveals this truth to us tonight in this powerful liturgy: in prayer, song, and story. This is the night not about the failings of us or our forebears. No, this is the night, which exemplifies God’s pattern throughout all time and forever. And, Christ Jesus most clearly embodied this truth that God will transform even the worst news into the best news.
Our Gospel story for tonight—see I told you I would come back to it—focuses upon God transfiguring bad news into good news. Some women went after the Sabbath at sun rise to tend to Jesus’ dead body. They went even though they were consumed with the worst news—their Lord was dead. They worried about the heavy rock and the stench of death, but what they found at the grave was wholly unexpected. These women who on Good Friday saw Jesus’ lifeless body laid in the ground now returned, but he was not there! The rock was out of the way. The fragrance was their own spices. And inside they saw no body, but instead a white robed messenger. The women’s response?
They were terrified. It was how we might respond. Even the ultimate good news comes as a shock on the heels of utter tragedy. The last words of Mark’s story tell us that they went away not skipping in glee but seized in terrifying amazement.
So, the women left in fearful astonishment; however, their mere presence portrays the great gift of showing up—they were the first heralds of this best news. They also outshone the other disciples who hid, denied, or ran in Jesus’ hour of need. And yet, when we gaze upon this constellation of believers what we see will surely give us pause, as it is another example of the bad news coming first.
All the wrong turns, stumbles, and falls that Jesus’ disciples took—even the faithfulness of these women—help us to arrive at a most important truth: we cannot turn bad news into good—not alone. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot make all things right. God is the one who loves us, heals us, and makes us whole, which is the ultimate good news enveloping the bad news. It is the “Yea!” that comes after the “Opps!” It is the balm that attends the wounding. And, we see this chiefly in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus!
Oddly enough though, Jesus never appears in tonight’s Gospel lesson. Strange, right? We spent so much of this Easter Vigil hearing all these readings without Jesus being in any of them. Why is that?
As the young messenger put it, “He has been raised; he is not here… He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Now Galilee is 6,531.2 miles from here. Geographically Galilee stands far away, but in another way, it is intimately close. Galilee is not only a physical place—it is also a spiritual one. Galilee long ago was a place of suffering, strife, and pain, so Christ Jesus went there. Now, Galilee is any place where bad news persists, and I believe that Christ goes there!
This last difficult year has already taught us: Jesus is not just here in church. Christ Jesus goes ahead of us. Christ is everywhere, especially where there is bad news, and he tells us to meet him there in the proverbial Galilee, so that we might bring good news of salvation: feeding, uniting, even resurrecting alongside Jesus. This Easter we will find Christ where healing is mending woundedness, love is transforming sinfulness, and resurrection is swallowing death.
Through the love of God and the power of the Spirit, Christ transforms bad news into good news—this is what we celebrate on this holy night. And, to all who still dwell in dominions of bad news know that Christ Jesus is there and the best is yet to come: Alleluia, Christ risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale (San Francisco: Harper, 1977).
