It may surprise you to know that I don’t enjoy preaching on Easter. Don’t get me wrong. I love Easter. I have always loved Easter. Those of you who joined in the celebration of the three days tasted the joy of the drama. I’ll say it again. I love Easter.

There is a part of me that simply wants to let the music and the liturgy say it all: Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!

But there’s the other hand. The . . . well . . .  embarrassment about the resurrection. It’s almost always there for those of us who are of a more progressive bent in our theology. And it seems more acute on this day.

Let’s admit it. We aren’t sure what we know, what we think, even what we really believe about the resurrection.

One Easter morning a few years ago, I was greeting people on the way out of the service, when one woman said to me, “I was hoping you would convince me of the resurrection of Jesus. You didn’t.”

I am not sure how one would convince another of the resurrection.

We Christians are not all of one mind about it. Nor was the early church, by the way. Even the canonical gospels differ, as I am sure you have heard, so do the non-canonical gospels. The early Christians were a very diverse group, it turns out. (I find that a cause for celebration.)

I noticed this week that some of the television ministers are offering proof of the resurrection. It’s part of a package to defend Jesus (who is apparently under attack by the novel and the movie, the  Divinci Code.)

I won’t be joining in that campaign.

I am not always sure what I believe about certain doctrines. But I can tell you I don’t think Jesus needs to be defended. If I thought so, I think I would be more intent on defending Jesus against many of those who claim to follow him, but whose words and actions are so opposite from the Jesus I seek to follow. Beware of any faith that needs defending. I don’t think Christianity requires us to think the same way.

Faith is a strange thing. It can be terrible and destructive. Or it can be remarkably healing, helpful and transformative. Faith makes the world go round. We all walk by faith, whether we admit it or not. Not faith in God, necessarily.

George Bush sent our entire country to war because he believed there were weapons of mass destruction.

Suicide bombers go to their deaths because of their faith. Not the faith of Islam, by the way. Their faith is in violence as a means to an end.

People in the name of faith have committed terrible atrocities.

Just as wonderful things have been done in the name of faith. We have some choice. As one of my favorite theologians, Bob Dylan, once said, “You’ve got to serve somebody.”

Alexander Schmemann described faith in God best when he wrote:

“Faith is the touching of a mystery, it is to perceive another dimension to absolutely everything in the world. In faith, the mysterious meaning of life comes alive. Beneath the simple, explicable, one-dimensional surface of things their genuine content begins to shine . . ..  to speak in the simplest possible terms: faith sees, knows, senses . . . the presence of God in the world.”  (Celebration of Faith, pp. 59-60)

So, during this season, I can tell you this: I turn on my television set, or pick up a newspaper, or listen to the radio, and even though I can’t prove it: I want to believe in the presence of God in the world. I look for signs of it wherever I can. I can’t explain mystery. I can’t fathom mystery. But I know I don’t want to be alone in this mess.

And just in case that woman is in the pew again this morning, wanting to be convinced of the resurrection. Let me say this: I can’t convince you. But I hear your need, and I would like to invite you to wrestle with this resurrection business with me. You’ll have to make up your own mind in the end.

So, this morning, I am going to call on three others to testify to this mystery. We begin with Gregory the Great, who wrote in a sermon about today’s gospel lesson:

“Jesus said to her: ‘Mary’. After he had called her by the common sense name of ‘woman.’ He called her by her own name, as if to say, ‘Recognize the One who recognized you.’                          . . . And so because Mary was called by name, she acknowledged her creator, and called him at once ‘rabboni,’ that is ‘teacher.’ He was both the one she was outwardly seeking and the one who was teaching her inwardly to seek him.“ Gregory the Great, Homily 25

Called by name. We are all aware that we could be doing other things today. As we could on any Sunday. But we are here. And I think we are here because at some level, we feel we, too, have been called by name. Just as Mary was. And we, too, however tentatively, however half-heartedly, however reluctantly,  are here because we are seeking Jesus. Jesus – someone who died over two thousand years ago. There is a mystery.

Our next witness is Dorothy Soelle:

“The Resurrection cannot be discussed in isolation, as if it had nothing to do with the cross. As if Jesus would in any case, even if he had died of old age, have gotten the benefit of this wonder drug. If we keep before our eyes what this puzzling phrase ‘resurrected from the dead’ says, then the reality ‘cross’ belongs to it: whoever lives in love has to reckon with contempt, abuse, discrimination, even with death. In this other way of living, the Resurrection is already visible long before death. Jesus believed above all—and for all—in a life before death. The Resurrection, this spark of life, was already in him. And only because of this God-in-him were they unable to kill him. It simply did not function. Even today the powerful do not succeed in extinguishing this love of justice, this sustained interest in the ‘last.’”  Dorothy Soelle, Theology for Skeptics

Here is some more mystery for you. I know you know people with that spark of life before death. I know that because through you I have come to know Camilla Warwick     -- who died before I came here. I have heard her story. I began hearing it from members of the pastor nominating committee during the interviews. I have been given poems she has written, I have been told what she taught you, I have heard how she touched lives, and how many of you were touched by her life.

It was not her dying that was the most profound thing about Camilla – it was her spark of life. The life she embraced so fully and so well.

Here is the mystery: I feel I know her. Not knew her. Because she was not a part of my past. She is a living part of the present for me here in this place. I remain hungry to know more about her. Things she wrote and said, and did.

 Is that resurrection? Is that the spark of life before death that continues on after death? Was that the kind of thing the early Christians were trying to say?  I don’t know. I only ponder these things. I have neither the capacity nor the need to explain  mystery.  Whatever it means, I am grateful for my new friend, Camilla. and all that I am learning from her, and that she found her way to this place with you because of that fellow Jesus.

I now call on my last witness, a Carthusian novice:

“Nothing is conclusive. An apodictic proof of the Resurrection cannot be given. No one saw Christ rise from the dead. The apparitions could be illusory. The empty tomb does not prove much. One believes in the Resurrection or one does not believe in it . . . Let us not believe too easily! A dead Christ leaves the world to us – a world that does not amount to much, but is within our reach. A living Christ, present—that changes everything. One no longer knows where the limits of the universe are. It opens onto an abyss from all sides. We are no longer sufficient to ourselves. We are obliged to walk in the obscurity of faith. We are marked, each and every one of us, by the Cross. Love lies in wait for us. We are too big.”  A Carhusian, Fro Advent to Pentecost: Carthusian Novice Conferences

So, there it is.  Each Easter – each Sunday -- I come, embracing this embarrassing resurrection promise, I come. . . because I feel called by name to come.

I come . . . .because I seek that spark of life before life. 

I come because I want to believe that love and life will have the last word in my life and in the world.

Let me close with these words from Janet Morley. I will call them my closing argument:

When we are all despairing;

When the world is full of grief;

When we see no way ahead,

And hope has gone away:

Roll back the stone.

Although we fear change;

Although we are not ready;

Although we’d rather weep and run away.

Roll back the stone.

Because we’re coming with the women;

Because we hope where hope is vain;

Because you call us from the grave

And show us the way:

Roll back the stone. (Janet Morley)

Christ is risen! Alleluia!