The other day I was talking on the phone with a clergy colleague of mine. I mentioned how, at the time, I didn’t have the foggiest idea of what I wanted to preach about this morning, for my Easter morning sermon. This friend of mine was telling me that only a day earlier he had a similar conversation with his wife. He said to his wife, “Honey, I just don’t know what to preach about on Easter morning. You know, I have to be succinct, pithy, theologically astute, inviting. humorous, evangelical in my delivery, but less than 12 minutes.” My friend’s wife, known for her droll retorts said, “Dear, I think it’d be easier for you to raise the dead!”

So hopefully by recounting this tale I can now cross ‘humorous’ off my list, right?

As the ancient hymn of the church proclaims: Welcome, happy morning!

Brothers and Sisters, I am going to pose a question to you this morning. In light of the new reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: What is your and our ‘New Normal’?

Earlier this past week, my wife put under my nose an article in Newsweek. It was a cover story about the recovery and rehabilitation of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords—the most visible victim of the January 8th assassination attempt in Tucson, Arizona.i While she miraculously gains strength each day, and becomes healthier with each passing day, doctors still wait to see what life for Ms. Giffords will be like in the future. The doctors are very optimistic about where she’ll be three months, six months, from now. Incredibly optimistic. So we don’t know what that ‘New Normal’ is going to be for her” (Newsweek, 31). The New Normal. The life that lies ahead for Congresswoman Giffords is a new journey for her. There is something appropriately Easterlike in the story of Ms. Giffords, a woman who came as near to death as anyone could ever imagine; yet, she has a new life. But with her newfound life, the doctors add a cautionary recognition that she also has a New Normal. She’ll never again be the Gabby Giffords that existed prior to January 8th of this year. Recovery for Congresswoman Giffords does not mean going back to being who she was up until the shooting. Recovery means finding and living into her ‘New Normal’.

All of the players in this morning’s Gospel lesson—Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the unnamed Other Disciple—all of them came to the tomb with an understanding of what the new normal would look like for them. If the horrors, tribulation and suffering of the previous 60 hours of their time with Jesus were any indication, their lives going forward would be sad, painful, and spent in fear. I suspect that in many ways, their understanding of what their new normal would be was an evolving one…but nothing at the time indicated to them that there would be anythingpositive or uplifting about the future they faced.

In the resurrection, we are given a foretaste of the new normal. Forever marked by the signs of the suffering of the one who died for us on the cross—yet, forever lovingly, redeemed by the gift of the cross and the resurrection.

Dear Church, you are part of our ‘New Normal’, here at Grace Church. Our ‘New Normal’ as we envision it as the followers of Jesus, is one that recognizes that the wholeness of this community is reliant upon the completeness and the fullness of this faith community. This community of Grace, made possible by God’s grace and love, is a community of resurrection. We are an evolving community of a ‘New Normal,’ glimpsing images of the Resurrected Jesus in new ways and reaching for the future. Are we the same church we were 10, 20, 50, 100, or 150 years ago? Yes in some fundamental ways, but not in many others. We live in a world thatseems to change yearly, monthly, daily, sometimes by the minute, it seems. And our church and community here at Grace reflects that.

One of my favorite poets is Wendell Berry. In 1977, Berry turned his back on his rising academic career and returned to the multigenerational farm of his youth. While continuing his life as a writer and poet, he labored daily in his maintenance of his farm, eschewing the title of  professor, for simply Mr. Wendell Berry—he sought a new normal. In his poem “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” he writes:

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it….

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest….

…Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Our daily challenge in our New Normal, the normality of living with and in Jesus Christ, is to daily practice

Mary Magdalene tells us this morning that she has seen the Lord. Despite the sarcastic retort of my friend’s wife, who challenged her husband to ‘raise the dead,’ friends, we are doing that very thing. We are shouting with Alleluia to the world, that resurrection is possible. Go and announce to the other disciples, who are waiting, hiding, or not doing anything at all—go and tell them that you have seen the Lord.Resurrection. Believe it or not we practice resurrection every Sunday when we come here together, and we practice resurrection every time we leave this House of Worship. And so I invite you all to a New Normal of Grace; and to move beyond simply practicing Resurrection, to living and breathing Resurrection all the time. Lift up and resurrect this Church, this community, this nation and the entire world in the Glorious Resurrection—shouting and showing that, indeed, Jesus Lives and we all live for Jesus.

Together, as the body of Christ, we can do something that won’t compute to a world full of doubt—love the Lord, love the world, love someone who does not deserve it, plant a sequoia…make more tracks than necessary… practice resurrection—for practice makes perfect, so they say. Make that your New Normal.

Alleluia and AMEN

___________________

i

2011 at:

Boyer, Peter J. “What’s Really Going on with Gabby Giffords?” Newsweek, April 10, 2011. Accessed on April 21,http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/10/what-s-really-going-on-with-gabby-giffords.html.

ii

Sustainable Culture. Accessed on April 20, 2911 at:

Berry, Wendell. “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from In Context: A Quarterly of Humanhttp://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC30/Berry.htm,

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