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

There is always something odd about Easter.

And it’s not just the weather that we are having this year, it’s not just Easter being colder than Christmas this year, it’s Easter itself, it just doesn’t make sense at times.

Listen to the words from the first Easter, words that describe the reactions by those who knew and loved Jesus the best:
They were perplexed.
They were terrified.
They did not believe.

Now compare that with the usual lightness and frivolity that describes our Easter morning activities: candy and colored eggs and lilies and eternal life and Springtime all over again.

They don’t fit together, do they?

Oh, we’ll make them fit today, one way or another.

We’ll sing our resurrection songs, we’ll greet each other with joy, we’ll eat well and enjoy our pleasures today . . . but will any of it make sense tomorrow? Will any of it change the way we live our lives? Or will it all be, to us as it was to the disciples, as it seems to be most years, an idle tale?

The evidence would suggest that Easter is, for most if not all of us, an exercise in make-believe, a world that we would like to be true but that most of us have never taken seriously, a world that doesn’t make sense, an idle tale.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Or at least it doesn’t have to stay as an idle tale, idle in the sense of something that just lays around and doesn’t do anything.

You see at Christmas, when we get it right here and in our homes, we use the tale to learn to see God with us better and more clearly in our routines and relationships. And in the utilization of the tale it becomes active rather than idle.

But at Easter, aside from some level of comfort when we mark the death of a loved one, our lives, our values and our vision are untouched by the tale.

It isn’t that it makes no sense in our broad view of eternity, but it makes no difference in the way we will live tomorrow and Thursday and a week from Tuesday.

Which is exactly how it was for the disciples on that first Easter morning, however it didn’t stay that way for the disciples. They didn’t continue to reject the message.

They didn’t just go back to work and never think about Easter again until the next year.

They found sense in the nonsensical notion of a man who was solidly dead being incomprehensibly alive and with them.

In fact if you compare their lives before Easter – Peter denying he even knew Christ on Thursday night, John standing helpless and shattered at the foot of the cross on Friday, Thomas refusing to believe that which he could not touch and feel on Easter day – compare those lives to their lives immediately after Easter – look at Peter standing and speaking to hundreds and thousands of people right in front of the power brokers who would love to kill him! Look at John, the last surviving disciple, caught in raging currents of history and singing his great gospel of Love! Look at Thomas who would go all the way to India to preach about the man whom he had always had his doubts about in life!

If you compare the before and after pictures, all that I can conclude is that something remarkable happened between Saturday and Monday that overcame Peter’s fears, John’s sorrow and Thomas’ doubts.

And that is what Easter continues to have the potential for doing for the likes of us.

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

Yes it was an idle tale for them, but it didn’t stay that way for long.

And what will it do for us? Will we let it be active, not idle, in our lives?

Can we move beyond the festival and the Hallmark greetings?

Can we bring to this day our honesty, our integrity, our unblinking view of a world of fear and sorrow and doubt?

Can we bring our perplexed and terrified and unbelieving hearts?

Will we?

Or will we just bring smiles and pretty clothes and eggs and candy?

There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but we don’t need those things transformed because they aren’t real, they will fade by our second cup of coffee at work tomorrow. We will cross another date off the calendar – that much closer to some distant goal of a wedding or a birthday or a vacation or a retirement or a graduation – and life will be, for too many of us, just about what it was before.

And Easter will be – for all practical purposes – an idle tale, non-sense that has no place in life.

I say that with sad confidence for I know how many Easters have come and gone and I know how little impact it has had on my life, your lives and our life together.

We have, for too many Easters, simply wandered into the garden, marveled at the empty tomb and then moseyed back to our lives where we have been and remain fearful and sorrowful and doubting.

So how do we change it?

How did they change it?

It starts with our memories.

The angels at the tomb challenged the women to remember Galilee and the words and events of their lives.

And Galilee is that common place, it is your home, your desk at work, your quiet time on the deck with your family when summer comes, your celebrations with your friends, and in all of those places – as you and I look back – we can trace God’s hand in our lives. Haven’t there been times in the past when we have been fearful, worrying ourselves sick over things that never happened or problems that we discovered we were able to handle? Haven’t there been times in the past when we have been devastated by the death of a loved one, wondering how we would possibly go on, only to discover that we did and so we know we can and we will? Easter is the promise that we will always be able to overcome our fears, our sorrows and our failures, just as Peter did. And our memories trigger our curiosity.

It is a small touch in the story, but Peter – alone among the disciples – after he heard the women’s story, got up and ran to the tomb and looked in and was amazed.

It may have sounded like an idle tale, non-sense in the real world, but there was enough there for Peter to wonder and to go and to look.

And his sorrow began to fade that morning.

That is what chases our sorrow.

That realization that death had its chance on Friday but the life of Christ, the love of God exposed death as a weakling, a shadow for a moment.

I may still, because I am human, I may still be filled with and even, for a time, overcome by sorrow when I am forced to be separated from one whom I have loved. But the sorrow will not define me, the separation will not cripple me. Easter is the assurance that we have nothing to fear from death, for Christ is alive and death has lost its sting, it is only a passing stage of life. We can only learn that if we allow ourselves to remember the places where God has touched our lives in the past and to be curious with Peter.

And finally Easter answers our doubts as it shows us the world not only as it is with all of the brutal, hate-filled absurdity, but it also shows us the world as it will be and as it is already becoming.

The Isaiah passage gives us a glimpse of what God’s world will look like when the creative process has finally reached its conclusion: A new heaven, a new earth, the ugly things forgotten, joy abounding, delight as a daily routine, no tears, no distress, infants who are healthy, elderly people who are full of life and energy, housing for all, food in abundance, God so close that we can never lose sight of her, and the wolf and the lamb together.

More fantasies you say?

No, these are the realities, the fantasies are held by those who think the warfare can bring peace and the greed can bring prosperity and that we can bully or buy our way our of our problems as individuals or as a nation.

It has never worked in all of history and yet we keep trying.

No, look around you with the eyes of Easter and you will see the power of Easter emerging.

Look at the ways in which we are suddenly becoming aware – again - of our role as stewards of creation, a role that was defined not by Al Gore but by the book of Genesis.

Look at the ways in which families and friends are working through their problems and realizing that the love they share is far more important than the quarrels they have had.

Look at new health measures for children and for the aged.

Look at the homes built by people like us through the guidance of Habitat for Humanity.

Look at the food that is shared through our food banks.

And look at the news photos, and there should have been more made of this it was something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, look at the news photos just a week or so ago of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting side by side working for peace in Northern Ireland and then this week Paisley shaking hands with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, that is wolf and lamb territory that gives us a vision and a hope of what is yet to be and a prayer that in Washington and in Baghdad people are watching.

These are the signs of Easter and its power and its reality and they don’t depend upon the weather or the clothing or the candy or the lilies.

These are the signs of Easter and they are not subject to rocks that get in the way or fears or sorrows or doubts.

These are the signs of Easter and they are revealed to those who will bring their honest perplexity and terror and amazement to the story and then bring the story to their lives.

These are the signs of Easter and you can search your memories, you can indulge your curiosity and you can look at the world with the expectation that you will see the signs of God’s work, or you can dismiss it all as non-sense, wishful thinking, empty promises.

If we choose the first, I can tell you by my own personal experience in life and by watching so many of God’s people in this place over three decades, that God will give us the strength and hope to face and to conquer all of the darkness that life can throw at us. And if we choose the second, we will have candy and bunnies and business as usual.

Easter may not make sense, you and I may be incapable of understanding or explaining the events of that ancient weekend, but it doesn’t need to be idle.

We can take it out there and put it to work in homes and offices, with strangers and loved ones, and when we do we will discover its power, and when we do we will discover – as the disciples did and so many others have over the centuries – that Easter has the power to conquer our fears and sorrows and doubts give to us courage and joy and faith.

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