But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

On a cold January morning in 2007 a man, at a metro station in Washington DC, pulled a violin from his case and for about an hour played six pieces written by Bach. During that time about 1000 people passed him, most of them were on their way to work. Three minutes into his performance a middle-aged man paused for a few seconds and then hurried on.

At the four minute mark a woman slowed and tossed a dollar into his hat.

Two minutes after that a young man stopped and leaned against the wall and listened briefly before looking at his watch and hurrying on.

When the violinist reached 10 minutes a three year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along, while the boy kept turning and looking back. This would be repeated by several other children and parents: each time a child would stop, the parent would force the child to move on, quickly.

The musician played continuously and six people stopped and listened for a little while, 20 people gave money and continued walking, when it was all over the man had collected $32.17.

Not a bad hourly rate.

And when he stopped there was no acknowledgement, no applause.

Hold on to that story, I’ll get back to it.

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

In an upper room, on a side street in Jerusalem some women told a story, a true story, to a group of men who were paralyzed with grief and fear, realistic men who were so tied to their vision of reality that they couldn’t see anything bigger, they couldn’t hear the beauty of the women’s words.

We like to think, each year at Easter, that we would have been brighter than that, we like to think that we would have been more faithful, more open than that, but I’m not sure, I’m not sure we would have expected anything more than the disciples expected: a period of mourning, a licking of wounds and a return to Galilee, to once again fish and live with all of the regrets and “might-have-beens” and anger and disenchantment of, what the world calls, reality.

As I mentioned last Sunday, I, and most of us, have been struggling recently with the stories of politics in Washington and in Trenton. Struggling with the tone of the conversation, perhaps even more than the content; struggling with the impact – intentional and accidental – upon people we know and love and ourselves in many of your cases, and – one way or another - upon children and our children’s children for years to come; and, as I always tend to do, worrying always about the Law of Unintended Consequences that will have its say, somewhere down the road, when changes this big come to health care, to the economy and to education.

And as I worry I found solace this week by remembering the lessons of Springtime, 40 years ago.

The nation was torn apart, families were torn apart, Churches were torn apart. You could pick an issue, any issue: civil rights, women’s liberation, the environment, music, hair length and above all, the War in Viet Nam. The very meaning of patriotism was being debated, argued, fought over and there was no easy reconciliation, no clear middle ground for us to move to and be safe, it was all or nothing, black and white extremism in the pursuit of righteousness on all sides.

It was at that time that I was first introduced to the poetry of the Irishman, William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . .
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That’s how it felt in the Spring of 1970 and that’s how it is starting to feel in this Spring of 2010.

And then there came a turning point.

Out in Ohio, on the campus of Kent State College, on the 4th of May, 1970, protesting college students and overtired young National Guardsmen – back when the National Guard stayed home to protect the nation – confronted each other and soon four students were shot and killed and soon Neil Young, who at that time was part of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young collection of musical geniuses wrote:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio.

It seemed as if Yeats and Young were co-writing the eulogy for America.

And sometimes it feels the same lately, doesn’t it.

It is hard to get through the morning paper or the evening news without a sense that things are falling apart and the center no longer holds us together and that the worst instincts among us have gathered the deepest passionate intensity and that the best part of us can’t seem to express or act upon our convictions as we face tasks that “should have been done long ago”.

And I know that what I am seeing in the world, what I am seeing in my own life is reflected in so many ways within your lives, your jobs, your families. Life altogether seems to have become so incredibly complicated that we yearn for simpler days without so

many worries, without so much anger and fear and uncertainty. We all juggle so many fragile balls at the same time and it seems that even when we focus on the ones that we know are most important, we see other things being dropped, things that we care about but if we reach for that we lose this . . . and the center cannot hold and things fall apart.

And yet, in 1970, the center did hold and things got put back together.

After Kent State there was a change in our nation, slowly almost imperceptibly we backed away from the danger, we lowered the temperature, we subdued the language and we began to speak to, rather than about, each other again. And I know and I believe that we will again, on health care and on education and on the economy and on the war that never ends.

And after the disciples encountered the living Christ they were ready to put their lives on the line for him, and they did, their world came back together in a new and unanticipated way.

But on that first Easter morning, it was just an idle tale.

As we come together on this Easter morning, if I could administer a truth serum, I suspect that more than a few of us would confess to being just like the disciples and hearing the story as an idle tale.

It’s a nice story that Luke tells, but it seems so disconnected from our lives.

And our problem is, like the disciples, we don’t see the big picture, we are too focused on the little details. We have such small – precious, but small – understandings of Jesus that we can’t bridge the gap between his world and ours and so we leave him in his, don’t we?

We see him and love him as an infant, we honor and respect him as the humble teacher and healer of scripture, we are touched by his sacrifice for us on the cross and we are obviously aware of his resurrection, but we don’t spend enough time holding these things together as a continuum, a full life. We don’t realize that Easter is the continuation of Christmas, we look at snapshots of Jesus while God is calling us to view and to participate in a 3D spectacular that hasn’t ended yet.

That’s what was going on with the disciples on that Easter morning, hiding in the Upper Room, grieving, wondering if they were next to be arrested and executed.

They didn’t connect the words that the women told them to the songs of angels on that night in Bethlehem when “peace of earth” was proclaimed and God-With-Us was injected into the world.

They didn’t realize that the stories of a prodigal and a Samaritan were the realities of what was now possible in life. They didn’t even think that Friday’s words “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” were now being spoken to them. They let their sorrow and fear and knowledge of a false reality keep them from believing the women.

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

But we need to, we need to believe.

For when we believe the words of the women we discover the serenity that exceeds our anxiety.

I don’t want to diminish the stresses that so many of you are feeling, the stresses that so many people in our nation and world are feeling, they are real.

But we can endure them and we will conquer them when we discover all of the connections that Easter brings to us. You see everything is connected: Bethlehem, Galilee, Jerusalem, Clover Hill, Heaven, they are all part of a single story, a single concert that is being played today in great cathedrals and humble sanctuaries.

But it is just a passing, idle story if we don’t learn to expect to hear the music of heaven in our homes and at our jobs and where we shop and sturdy and play and live.

The center does hold, for the center is Christ, his things are not falling apart.

I’m sure there is much wrong with the new healthcare bill, but somewhere in there we can find a link between it and God’s vision for a society where, as Isaiah put it, no more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.

I’m sure that there are changes that are needed in the tax and education systems, but in the changes we need to be finding a link to a society of shared prosperity where, again from Isaiah, my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord and their descendants as well.

The question this Easter morning is do you and I expect to encounter the Living Christ in a healthcare bill or a tax and education plan? Do we even recognize him when we do? Or are our expectations as low as the disciples who were so lost in their sorrows that they couldn’t hear the truth that was being told to them?

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Oh, and let me go back to that itinerant violinist in the Subways of our Capital City.

His name is Joshua Bell, he is one the premier violinists in the world today, the music he played is considered some of the most beautiful music for a violin and his instrument was a Stradivarius worth several million dollars. Two days earlier he played at a sold-out theater in Boston where the average seat price was $100.

I am sure that you can think of any number of questions and implications that flow out of this story, including what I hope are the obvious ones today: what things of God do we rush by without even noticing? What things of beauty do our children or grandchildren recognize and try to show us and we tug them away to important things?

It was all I could do this week to not insert “Joy to the World” as a hymn this morning! We desperately need to remember that what came into the world at Christmas could not be banished from the world, not even by death and so:
Joy to the World, the savior reigns,
Let us our songs employ,
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!

That is no idle tale, that is the story that can change our lives, over and over and over again, that is the truth that can transform our sorrow into song, our fear into laughter, our despair into hope and all we need to do is to believe it and to trust it and to live with confidence!

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.