© 2023 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the entire service is available here with the sermon beginning around 22:50.
I want to tell you something that I have kept quiet for a long time—something that will probably embarrass my children: I am a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, I will admit that these days, when I watch reruns of the show, they don’t always hold up. Sometimes they’re too cheesy even for me. But I grew up loving nothing more than spending Monday nights on the couch with my father watching the crew of the Enterprise explore the galaxy in every new episode.
On Monday night, March 26, 1990, the episode “Allegiance” debuted. In the first scene, Captain Piccard is kidnapped from his quarters, and an imposter takes his place. The real Piccard wakes up in a holding cell alongside a handful of other prisoners. As the episode progresses, the audience watches as the group of prisoners—each representing a different alien species—encounters one problem after another. One of them, a naturally aggressive species, is unable to eat the food that is provided by their captors. Another, belonging to a race of avowed pacifists, begins to think that he might be killed for food. Some in the group want to try to escape, while others refuse to cooperate. In one scenario after another, Piccard and his fellow captives get tantalizingly close to opening their cell door only to discover another barrier they have to get past.
Eventually, Piccard realizes that it’s all a game—that there’s no way to escape. Their captors have brought them there to test them—to observe how different species will handle one agonizing setback after another. Once he recognizes that they’re just rats in a maze, he refuses to participate, and the alien species conducting the research returns him to his vessel.
I first saw that episode when I was nine years old. A rerun came on a few months ago, and I found myself appreciating it in a whole new way. Now, as a parent, priest, and spouse, I often feel like I’m in the midst of a sociological experiment, being tested to see how I will approach an unsolvable situation. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever feel like life is just one big game in which you don’t quite have what you need in order to succeed? If you just had a little bit more time or a little bit more money, you could really get ahead. If you were just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, a little bit luckier, then things would really start to go your way.
Sometimes life feels like one unsolvable problem after another. And religion, with its unrelenting invitation to be better, to try harder, to become holier has the power to make things even worse. On Easter Day, however, we gather together to hear the good news that, because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, there is no situation in front of us that God has not already solved, and, whenever we encounter one, we know that we have already been given everything we need.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away. She didn’t bother to look inside or check around the tomb. Instead, she turned and ran, certain that Jesus’ body had been stolen from its resting place. Peter and the other disciple raced to the tomb to see it for themselves. When they got there, they looked inside and explored every inch and found only the linen grave cloths lying on the ground. They knew that the tomb was empty, but still they did not understand that Jesus had been raised from the dead. So they returned home.
Mary stayed there weeping, overcome with sorrow that not only had Jesus been killed but now his body had been stolen away, leaving her with grief piled upon grief. Even when Jesus came and spoke to her, she thought he was the gardener until he said her name. For us, it’s hard to appreciate just how impossible it was to understand what had happened. Before we came to church this morning, with the benefit of two thousand years of received testimony, we knew that Jesus had been raised, just as he had promised. But there was nothing that Mary and the disciples could do to put the pieces together on their own. Not even the empty tomb and the linen wrappings left behind were enough for Jesus’ closest friends to see and believe that he was alive—that he had triumphed over death exactly as he had told them he would.
The gap between us and what we need to solve all our problems might only be as thin as a strand of human hair, but, when it comes to fixing what is broken in our lives, it might as well be an infinite chasm that none of us can cross. Yet standing on the other side of that chasm is the risen Jesus, who sees us and calls out our name: “Mary!” As soon as she heard Jesus speak her name, Mary’s doubt and confusion, her grief and disbelief, evaporated. She had seen the Lord! And the risen Christ then sent her on to carry the good news of the resurrection to his disciples in order that their work of sharing that same good news might begin. All that was missing—everything that they needed, everything that hadn’t made sense—suddenly came clear. They couldn’t find it on their own, even when it was right in front of them, but when the risen Lord came and found them, he gave them everything they needed.
Our job isn’t to figure it all out on our own. Our job is simply to meet the risen Lord. In the decades that followed that Easter Day, the apostles didn’t travel around the Mediterranean teaching people that they should love their neighbors as themselves, giving them more impossible work to do. The world didn’t need Jesus to teach them that. That is a truth as ancient as civilization itself. Instead, the apostles took with them the good news that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead. It is Christ’s victory over death that makes loving our neighbors the way God calls us to love them possible. It is the risen Christ who gives the world everything it needs to make God’s loving reign a reality.
I know that love is the answer. I know that selfless, sacrificial love is what it takes for the world to become the place of God’s dreams. I know that love is how poverty and hunger are put to death. Love is how violence and greed are finally defeated. Love is how hatred and bigotry and jealousy are wiped off the face of the earth. Love is how I become a better parent, a better priest, and a better spouse. But I also know that there is nothing I can do to solve those problems on my own. None of us can. Like rats in a maze, just when we think we’re getting ahead, human nature pops up again, and we’re back where we started. If it were up to us, we’d be doomed from the start. But the good news of Easter is that it isn’t up to us at all.
I don’t come to church because I want to be a better person, and I don’t raise my children in the faith because I hope that they will learn how to treat other people with respect. We come to church because this is the place where we proclaim that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. This is the place where death becomes life, where loss becomes gain, where love triumphs over all. And that alone has the power to change our lives. We are here to meet the one whom God raised from the dead. We are here to hear him speak our names. We are here to partake in his body and blood. We are here to see that God has already defeated everything that stands in the way of love taking charge in the world. We are here to let the risen Christ show us that he has already given us everything we need.
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