Easter Day C’25 מהלעזאזלקורה ?
20 April 2025
John 20.1-18
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
We glory in your cross, O Lord. and praise and glorify your holy resurrection; for by virtue of your cross, joy has come to the whole world. Amen. – from Anthem 1 for the Liturgy of Good Friday, BCP p.281
Christmas and Easter are generally the two most well attended Holy Days of the Church Year. One year at Easter, someone sent me a greeting card that read “Happy Easter!” And had a photo of a priest in the pulpit. Inside the card in big letters (and this is the G rated version) the card read: “Where the Heck have you been?” Seriously it is great to see you anytime you choose to come, and yes you are welcome the other 51 Sundays of the year too!
In staff meeting this week I asked, “Easter is a wonderful story, but most folks have heard it told many times, what would you like to hear from the preacher?” Their answers were all summed up by a single question asked by Deacon Richard; again, this is the G rated version: “What the Heck is going on?”
The question focuses our worries and discontent, with the thousands of federal jobs that have been cut and careers and lives upended; with millions and millions of dollars lost in a plummeting stock market, and relationships with our allies that have been carefully forged by many years of loyalty and cooperation to be suddenly shredded and jettisoned; with unprecedented natural disasters, and wars, and on and on I could go. Indeed, Deacon Richard most of us could join with you in asking, “What the Heck is going on?” Of course, there are as many different answers to that question as there are people and news pundits. Regardless of the answers, it would seem that the ancient Chinese curse is happening, “May you live in interesting times.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to hear our deacon’s question being asked by all of Jesus’ disciples and followers, and thanks to Google Translate we can actually hear what the question sounds like in Hebrew: מהלעזאזלקורה ? “meh lazazel kora?” phonetic: Mah la zah zul Koray?
“What the heck is going on?”
Think of what all they have witnessed in just three years’ time: The rise of a carpenter turned intenerate rabbi, who created such a stir by miracles from the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish that fed thousands, to the turning of gallons and gallons of water into wine, healings from physical, mental, and spiritual diseases, to literally walking on top of the water. His teaching was like none other: Love your enemies, pray for those who deliberately use and abuse you, to be become rich, give some of your money and possessions away, to be the greatest become a servant to others,
To be first, become last, if you want to live, really live, then die to your own ego, if you want to lead then follow Jesus, his sermon on the mount where being poor and poor in spirit becomes a blessing. Jesus was God in the flesh, Love personified who refused to be politically pigeonholed and represented the Kingdom of God right smack dab in the middle of a Roman occupation and dictatorship by a Caeser. Who would have ever thought love would have gotten him in such trouble but it did – and in a perfectly sinister marriage of Religious power, Political Power – The God of Love would wind up in the hands of angry sinners and killed by the cruelest method of capital punishment. “Mah luh zuhl ko-ray?” What the Heck is going on? After three years of following and investing in this person called Jesus and this thing called the Kingdom of God His followers all scattered and ran for cover lest they experience a similar fate: May luh zuhl koray? But the devil had overplayed his hand – instead of love being killed Jesus killed the power of sin and death on contact! On that first Easter morning a heartbroken Mary Of Magdala heads for the tomb of Jesus with some additional spices to place on his dead body but when she arrives the stone is rolled away from the tomb, she runs back to the other disciples and tells them Jesus is not there! She is joined by Peter and John who race back to the tomb, and looked in see only Christ’s graveclothes and they believed and ran back to tell the other disciples, but Mary stayed and weeping bravely looked in and saw two angels – think Cherubim and Seraphim, who asked Woman why are you weeping? As she answered that she was looking for the body of Jesus she was suddenly surprised by a man she mistook for the gardener (due to the fact that he had to find something to wear all he had was a burial pall cloth filled with 100 lbs of aloes and spices and discovered the gardener’s coveralls and put them on). It was all over the minute he spoke her name – Mary! Rabbouni! He tells her to quickly go and tell the disciples what she had witnessed. When Mary catches up with them, she said: “I have seen the Lord!” and she becomes the first evangelist to the resurrection.
Muh luh zuhl koray? What the heck is going on? Death, hell, and the grave didn’t get the last word – Love incarnate could not be finally killed and now the world has been given the hope of resurrection. But that resurrection starts now – the Kingdom of God has come near to us all. Now more than ever the world needs the message of Easter hope! The Kingdom of God is what is going on!
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.1
In one of my personal all time favorite Easter Hymns when find Easter Hope and get the ultimate answer to all of our questions:
Verse 1
Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
Verse 2
In the grave they laid him, Love who had been slain
thinking that he would never wake again,
laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
Verse 3
Forth he came at Easter like the risen grain,
Jesus who for three days in the grave had lain;
quick from the dead, my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
Verse 4
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again,
fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been;
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.2
And finally these words from scripture:
Little children, you are from God and have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. I John 4.4
In the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world.KJV
1 I Corinthians 15.55-56
2 Words By John MacLeod Campbell Crum