If you wish, you can hear the sermon as it was preached from the UCJ pulpit. Simply click the play button below:
Delivered at The United Church of Jaffrey
(and earlier at The Cathedral of the Pines)
Easter: April 16th, 2017
Sermon by Reverend Mark Koyama
Photography by Robin Turilli
John 20:1-18 | Excerpt from Cry, the Beloved Country
A Reading from Cry, the Beloved Country
Sunrise on Easter morning
— This world is full of trouble Umfundisi.
— Who knows it better?
— Yet you believe?
Kumalo looked at him under the light of the lamp. I believe he said, but I have learned that it is a secret. Pain and suffering they are a secret. Kindness and love they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. There is my wife, and you, my friend and these people who welcomed me, and the child who is so eager to be with us here in Indotsheni—so in my suffering I can believe.
— I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering Umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered not to save us from suffering but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.
Kumalo looked at his friend with joy. You are a preacher, he said.
His friend held out his rough calloused hands. Do I look like a preacher? he asked.
Kumalo laughed. I look at your heart not your hands, he said. Thank you for your help my friend.
— It is yours whenever you ask, Umfundisi. Stay well.
— Go well, my friend.
(Sung)
We are out in the open!
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh sometimes, it makes me tremble tremble tremble
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
We are out in the open…
Beneath the wide open sky.
The sky stretches above us into the distance, where the great mountain describes for us the gentle swoop of the horizon.
Only moments ago, the darkness of night lifted, and with the rising sun, our hearts also rise, trembling with the hope of a new day.
Sunrise!
At sunrise we gather, to worship God, and remember Christ’s resurrection.
Some of our religious traditions seem random or awkward.
The danger is that the tradition can 
sometimes seem more important than the God we worship.
But the Easter sunrise service, is not like that.
The Easter sunrise service is an elegant way to worship!
(If you are sleepy and cold, you may not agree with me…)
But what, I ask you, speaks to us of renewed life more eloquently than the rising sun?
What, I ask you, brings us out of the darkness more quietly and perfectly than the rising sun?
This miracle occurs each day!
The immensity and the essential beauty of God’s creation appears without effort when, each morning, the sun touches the hills and the valleys with light.
Chickadees and finches chatter and sing, darting across our backyards to our feeders.
Out on the lake a loon pops its head above the surface of the water, sees the light, and dives again.
There’s an old man down at the shoreline, placing his bait and tackle down into the ribbed belly of his canoe.
Morning has broken…
And every green thing beneath the dome of sky begins, once again, to absorb energy from that distant star.
All we have to do is wake up in time, and it occurs before our very eyes…
The astonishing miracle of a new day.
There is nothing virtual about this reality.
No 64-inch flat screen required.
No helicopter drop necessary.
Here. Now…
Life awakens.
And we, dear friends, are here to witness it.
When we worship outdoors, under the sky at sunrise, we experience an essential beauty…
…and if we truly allow this awakening of the life that God gives us to touch our souls… we tremble.
We tremble with the joy of resurrection.
And we tremble with the memory of darkness.
*
(Sung)
Were you there when the sun refused to shine?
Were you there when the sun refused to shine?
Oh sometimes, it makes me tremble tremble tremble
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
The song that I have been singing is an old slave spiritual.
It is a song filled with wrenching soulfulness.
Singing such a song makes me feel the blood in my veins.
Singing such a song tells me that suffering is unavoidable…
But so is beauty.
When this old slave spiritual, entitled “Were you there” was included in the Episcopal Church’s 1940 Hymnal, it became the first African American spiritual to be printed in a hymnal that was “not specifically designed for African-American congregations.”
In this sense it is a historic song.
And there is yet another, more organic reason that it is historic.
Like most slave spirituals, long before it ever made it into any hymnal “Were you there” lived for generations in the oral tradition of the black community.
You see, unlike us, this morning, slaves were not allowed to worship together in the light of day unless the white slave owners were there to oversee it.
And worshipping God beneath the watchful eyes of the slave owners did not feel like worship.
And so, after the long brutal days working in the fields, slaves would gather together when the lights in the big house went out, and make their way to hidden ravines or secluded clearings deep in the woods where, together, they would worship God in their own way.
These places – these secret places of worship were called “hush harbors” – and it was here, deep in the woods, under the moon and stars, that many slave spirituals were born.
These spirituals were not composed on manuscript paper.
The lyrics were not printed in bulletins.
A hush harbor
These songs were not written.
They were born.
Born from longing.
Born from fatigue.
Born from fear.
Born from courage.
Born from hope, that burned as embers in their hearts.
The song itself is deceptively simple.
It is built upon six questions, and a repeated refrain
The six questions lead us deftly through the stages of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.
And while each question confronts us with the horror of Christ’s death, the repeated refrain does not, as one might expect, remind us Christ died for our sins.
The old slave spiritual is interested in the Christ, but it is not interested in the idea that Christ’s sacrifice paid a debt for human sin.
What then, is the old slave spiritual interested in?
Since the old slave spiritual grew out of suffering,
it recognized suffering.
Owen Houghton reading from John’s Gospel
And when it recognized suffering… how did it respond?
It trembled.
If you see a man hanging on a tree, with nails through his hands and his feet, …and you see that he is dying, there is only one response.
You tremble.
When you see a man tied to a tree and whipped to death because he ran for freedom, there is only one response.
You tremble.
When you go into a gas chamber at Auschwitz, and you think of all the people who perished there, you can have but one response.
You tremble.
And when you come upon the body of a young Syrian Refugee washed up on the beach… there is only one response…
you tremble.
*
(Sung)
Were you there when they rolled the stone away?
Were you there when they rolled the stone away?
Oh sometimes, it makes me tremble tremble tremble
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
As John’s gospel tells it, Mary Magdalene was the first one to go to the tomb after Christ’s crucifixion.
Mary went to the tomb where she “saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”
The United Church of Jaffrey Choir
In one of the more peculiar moments in the Bible, Mary sees Jesus but does not recognize him. For a moment, she thinks the risen Jesus is a gardener!
How odd! This is almost comical! Why would she think he was a gardener?
Now let us keep in mind that Mary Magdalene has very recently witnessed her beloved LORD dying a brutal death on the cross.
She has not yet emerged from the shadow of the cross.
Her soul is in the hush harbor
Because… she was there…
She was there when they crucified her lord.
Having seen the dying man
She is unprepared for the risen LORD.
She does not recognize him
She does not recognize God until God calls her by name.
*
Worship happens in in the depths of the night in hush harbors…
And worship happens in the open, beneath the broad awakening sky.
There are two kinds of trembling –
We tremble when we recognize suffering,
And we tremble when we feel the awakening of joy.
Easter trembles at the intersection deep suffering, and unexpected joy.
Jesus meets us at this intersection, calling us by name.
Easter, then, is the essential moment of the Christian faith.
It is on Easter that we finally recognize the truth with unmistakable certainty…
The truth that…
Somehow,
Jesus is both the man who suffered, and the God who returned, to call us by name.
On Easter morning the light peaks over the horizon and reveals to us a miraculous reality that we live within, but do not notice –
That God is with us in our suffering
And God is with us in our joy.
To pretend that Christianity is a feel good religion is to ignore the cross.
To pretend that Christianity is an easy, and entertaining way of life that gives us all the answers…
Rev. Mary-Lu’ Esposito offering the prayer
Is to ignore the reality of the hush harbors…
As Christians, we tremble in the shadow of the cross.
But it is equally true that Christianity does not end at the cross.
Just as the sun awakens the world with light…
Christ returns to call us by our name.
And when you hear your name called by God
There is only one response.
You tremble…
Amen.
More pictures of the Easter Sunrise service can be found HERE.