Easter Sunday
April 16, 2006


Are you a good Easter Egg finder?

Growing up in a family of 5 boys and 1 girl, that was a coveted trait. There were only so many eggs that the Easter bunny had hidden, and the better you were at finding them, the richer your hoard would be at the end of the day. And, like my birth order – 4 of 6, I probably fell somewhere in the middle in terms of my Easter egg finding ability. It got me to thinking – what are the skills needed in finding Easter Eggs? The willingness to go on the hunt – that’s the sine qua non. Quickness and energy never hurt. If you can run fast, you can get to the easy ones before your siblings do. Thoroughness probably gets rated second most important. When you could look through potential hiding places with more attention to detail, often time you would be rewarded. But the most important skill in egg finding is the Zen-like ability to let the eggs find you. (It’s the same way I find golf balls in the rough [not mine, of course…] – you walk in the right place, and they just make themselves known to you. – My last two rounds – I’m plus 9 on found verses lost golf balls…)

What I want to propose, though, this Easter day, is that those same skills will also serve you well if you want to experience the resurrection more deeply and profoundly this year.

· You have to be willing to go on the hunt. Unlike the three synoptic gospels, John records this interesting line: Mary came to the tomb, while it was still dark. The other gospels have the women arriving ‘early in the morning.’ But it is ‘still dark” for Mary. She went, not expecting to find anything but a body. Death seems to have won, but Mary finds she must go to the tomb, if to do nothing more than be close to the body of her Lord. And when she found it empty, she runs and tells the disciples. Peter and the beloved disciple join in the hunt. . . Not knowing what they would find, ‘while it was still dark’– they set out. Resurrection faith invites us to set out.

· Quickness never hurts. Excitement, energy, the willingness to get back on the horse, however you want to call it is a good thing. To demonstrate what that energy is like, I need some help. I need all of the children who are too young to receive the gift of gifts, Jesus in the Eucharist to stand up. Now, wait till I say go. (Picking up a basket of plastic Easter Eggs) When I say go, I will give two Easter eggs a piece to the children who get here the quickest. GO! … That’s the energy of Easter that is available to each one of us. That is the power that you and I can tap into at every moment of our lives. Living the resurrection presumes that there will be life for us, even in our sufferings, even in our difficulties. And like Peter and the Beloved disciple, we have to run into life, lungs bursting, heart aflame. Living into the resurrection calls me to have that same breathless energy

· At the Newman Center Twilight Retreat this lent, we were asked to look at a situation where there was a struggle or a difficulty. But rather than play the blame game, we were asked to uncover the gifts already present in the situation. Resurrection living taps into the MORE that God has woven into this story, this system. Resurrection living has a thoroughness to it that doesn’t stop on the surface, but rather seeks deeper and deeper to find the grace within. Peter and the Beloved Disciple peer into the tomb and there they study the wrappings, the linens. The beloved disciple “sees and believes.” In whatever situation of life you find yourself in, the seeds of the resurrection will be there. You have but to live into that truth.

· Finally, let the resurrection find you this year. Too often the story of our Christian life is a kind of moral palagianism, a self help lecture gone bad. “Clean up your life. Fix your past and get your act together.” Even our experience of the resurrection becomes a kind of ‘reward for living lent well.” But the truth of the resurrection is that it is less a matter of finding, and more a matter of being found. It is less a matter of what we do, and more a matter of what God does in us. And if you don’t trust that, then I need to tell you one more story.

Between the time when Fr. Vic was confronted about his alcoholism on the Thursday of the mission, and the time he decided to submit to the treatment recommendations, he was really struggling. Where is God, where is grace, where is life in this for me? At the fish fry the next day, Bummer Barry brought a ton of Frisbee’s to the event. Why, I’ll never know. But God used those Frisbees to turn Fr. Vic’s life around. You see, as he walked from the garage to the Parish Center kitchen, one of the rugrats had grown very frustrated with his inability to throw a Frisbee. Vic, growing up in the 70’s, had one attached to his hand. And so he showed the kid how to grip it and how to toss it, and when the kid tried, the Frisbee went exactly where he had thrown it. He looked at Fr. Vic and said simply: “Gee, Fr. Vic, you’re great.” In that moment, the walls of resistance came tumbling down, and the resurrection found him. “I knew I had to go for him and for all the people who look to me for guidance and love.” And if God can accomplish that movement of grace by a frisbee – imagine what he can do when we give him our lives. Let the resurrection find you this Easter. Amen. Alleluia…