Ps 16

7 April 2002

2nd Sunday of Easter

“They Multiply Their Sorrows”

            “From every weapon death can wield, your own redeemed forever shield; O Lord of all, with us abide, in this our joyful Eastertide.”  Do you remember singing those words?  That’s the final stanza of our opening hymn, “That Easter Day with Joy was Bright.”  The inclusion of the word “Eastertide” speaks volumes, as they say.  It reminds us that Easter isn’t a single day, but it is in fact a season, a fifty day season—one that stretches all the way to Pentecost (which itself comes from a word that means “fifty”).

            I realize that for many people, that’s just a liturgical nicety that has no bearing on reality.  I know, because I used to feel the same way!  But that was a choice.  Even the way we look at time is a choice.  So what do we say about these days?  What do we think about them?

Is this the spring allergy season?  (Maybe not until May in this part of the country!)  Have we just begun the regular season of Major League Soccer?  (What?  Is there another sport that begins with “Major League”?)  Are these car-buying days?  Are these the days in which Jesus, after his death and resurrection, “presented himself alive…by many convincing proofs”? (Ac 1:3).

            It does take…time, but eventually the environment in which we see ourselves does begin to seep in.  Almost like sponges, we can’t help but absorb—and be changed—by what goes on around us.  That’s true about the people we meet, the places we go, the societies in which we live, and a multitude of other surroundings, including how we understand time.

            And all of this affects how we live our lives; it affects our behavior, even if it’s at a subconscious level.  So what difference does it make if we look to Christ to give meaning to our sense of time, rather than to our favorite sport, or to what the advertisers tell us, or to who knows what calendar?  What difference does it make if we see ourselves as Easter people?

            To the disciples in our gospel reading, there’s not an immediate difference.  John 20 tells the story of people who are terrified, and at least in the case of Thomas, need more proof that things really have changed.  Life after the resurrection seems pretty much the same as life before it.

            Jesus, however, seems to think that everything has changed.  To the fearful disciples, he says three times, “Peace be with you” (vv. 19, 21, 26).  Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit.  With that kind of power, they need not be afraid of the things they once feared.  They need not cringe before the powers of this world.

            The disciples of Jesus, then and today, have been given the peace of Easter—the peace of the resurrected life.  That’s not the peace of the negotiating table; that’s not the peace of positive mental attitude; it’s certainly not the peace of the graveyard.  The peace of Easter isn’t something we can just conjure up all by ourselves—it’s the gift of God’s shalom.

We often get the wrong idea about this peace.  Consider what Canadian pastor Richard Fairchild has to say about it:[1]

He tells us, “A woman by the name of Lucy Bregman relates the story of how she once went to a worship service where the entire congregation was told, ‘If you don't have a smile on your face, you've got the wrong religion and shouldn't be here.  Christianity is a religion of joy.’  [Come to think of it, I’ve been in some services like that!]

“She fled that service in tears—because she did not feel at that time like she could smile—she was having difficulties and was looking for comfort.  Instead she was told that she was not good enough for God because she was not smiling.  [If that’s the criterion, a lot of us are in trouble!]

“God never asks us to falsify our experience—our risen Lord never waits until we are already happy in order to come to us—and he never wears a pasted on smile.

“Think of this for a moment—Christ could have miraculously obliterated his wounds after he was raised from the tomb, but chose not to.  He bore the marks of his wounds into the presence of his disciples.  In the same way Christ does not ask us to banish our wounds when we come into his presence—not even at Easter when we are supposed to be full of joy.

“The risen Christ came to his disciples in the midst of their turmoil and fear.  He came in the midst of their doubt and their sense of having failed both him and their own selves and said to them: ‘Peace be with you.’"

The peace of Easter—the peace of the resurrected Christ—isn’t something that exists solely at the level of our fleeting human emotions.  It’s much more profound than that.  It affects the way we behave.  It invades all areas of life, even the strongholds of suffering and pain and oppression.  It turns us, by God’s grace, into good people—yes, even us!

Still, having said all that, if we are transformed by the Easter event, then it will leave its mark on how we feel about things.  It will give us an attitude adjustment.  I certainly wouldn’t endorse the imposition of obligatory smiles, but as I said, I know that when Jesus changes us, there is an effect.  I speak from personal experience:  from being an angry young man filled with hostility and dread to being a follower of Jesus Christ filled with joy and peace.  That doesn’t mean I’m always in a good mood!  I’m talking about something deeper than emotion.

If the Easter experience—if being Easter people—isn’t about simply feeling good, then what is it?  Our psalm reading, number 16, helps answer that question.  This is the psalm that Peter quotes in Acts 2 when he explains why it was impossible for death to contain Jesus.  That’s one reason why the psalm is read on this, the Second Sunday of Easter.

Psalm 16 is usually classified as a song of trust.  The author, probably David, expresses faith in God’s power to deliver.  That’s a power that delivers even from death, as we see in verse 10:  “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit.”  If the speaker is David, we can think of circumstances in which he’s been able to dodge the grim reaper.  (Incidents involving Goliath and King Saul come to mind!)  This is also the verse Peter reinterprets to say that there was no way that Jesus could stay dead.

But in explaining the experience of Easter, I want to focus on something else the psalmist says.  Verse 4 reads, “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.”  The psalmist, understanding the benefits of following Yahweh, the Most High God, reflects on the misfortune of those who worship another god.  They multiply their sorrows.  The Revised English Bible says, “Those who run after other gods find endless trouble.”

I know that there can be problems in making an Old Testament psalm fit into a New Testament Easter context.  Still, I don’t think I’m too far off base by saying that the psalmist is stressing the problems needlessly faced by those who reject the one true God—the God of life.  As a Christian, I would join with Peter in speaking of the God who resurrected the Messiah (Ac 2:31).

Jürgen Moltmann has reflected on the Easter event, as I’ve been calling it.  “The Easter faith,” he says, “recognizes that the raising of the crucified Christ from the dead provides the great alternative to this world of death.”[2]  Again, there’s the element of choice.  What…time do we see ourselves in?  What god do we serve?  Moltmann goes on:[3]

          “Weary Christians have often enough deleted this critical and liberating power from Easter.  Their faith has then degenerated into the confident belief in certain facts, and a poverty-stricken hope for the next world, as if death were nothing but a fate we meet with at the end of life.  But death is an evil power now, in life’s very midst.  It is the economic death of the person we allow to starve; the political death of the people who are oppressed; the social death of the handicapped; the noisy death that strikes through napalm bombs and torture; and the soundless death of the apathetic soul.”

            That’s quite a laundry list of death.  It can seem overwhelming, even paralyzing.  It’s what prompts the often-asked question, “What can one person do?”  Actually, one person can do a lot.  But we don’t need to even ask that question.  We aren’t alone.  Our congregation isn’t alone.  As the church, we have each other.  As the church, we have the risen Christ in our midst.  Look at how many of us there are here today.  Revolutions have been started with fewer people than what we have here today!  And “revolution” is an appropriate word, since no one has demonstrated the revolutionary, counter-cultural ideal better than Jesus, whose new life is what Easter’s all about.

            Quoting the 4th century church father Athanasius, Jürgen Moltmann says, “The risen Christ makes life a perpetual feast.”  Then he asks, “But can the whole of life really be a feast?  Even life’s dark side—death, guilt, senseless suffering?  I think it can.  Once we realize that the giver of this feast is the outcast, suffering, crucified Son of man from Nazareth, then every ‘no’ is absorbed into this profound ‘yes,’ and is swallowed up in its victory.”[4]

            So what does that have to do with us?  Maybe you really did look around at who’s here today, and maybe you thought, “This is the revolution?  Is he nuts?”  We so often focus on our deficiencies—on what we can’t do (or at least, what we think we can’t do).  But we forget the meaning of Easter!  Our God is one who has been human, and not only that, but a human who has known weakness, who has suffered.  And what’s more—and this continues to scandalize the world—our God has known death.  In Jesus, our God has died!  You can’t get any weaker than that!

            “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows.”  In forgetting what Easter means, we choose the gods of worldly power.  We choose the economy; we choose our own abilities; we choose our friends; we choose any and everything except the God who says:  “I know you are weak; I know you have failed; I know you are afraid.  Now come to me, and let me help you.”

            We multiply our sorrows by choosing the old gods, the gods of death.  The God of Easter is the God of life, indeed the God of new life—the God who shows us that what lies behind is nothing compared to the glory that lies ahead.  This is the God of whom the psalmist concludes, “You show me the path of life.  In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (v. 11).

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