Easter Sunday 2022
Amid the beautifully craggy vistas of northern New Mexico, just 240 students make up the Mesa Vista school district—not just a middle or high school, but the entire district. High schools that small in New Mexico typically play sports in the smallest division, 1A, but the Mesa Vista girls’ basketball team, the Lady Trojans, play in 2A. Until this past Christmas, they did so coached by a father-and-son basketball duo, Leonard Torrez Sr. and Jr., who were determined to reverse the misfortune of just a three-victory season the previous year.
But on Christmas morning, both Torrezes, Sr. and Jr., were rushed to the hospital by ambulance with covid-19. Less than three weeks later, on January 12 of this year, they died on the same day, just hours apart, two of the nearly one million Americans who have died from covid in the past twenty-six months.
Why begin an Easter message with death and dying? Because that is how Easter itself had begun. The female disciples of Jesus go to His tomb fully expecting to find a body—the burial had to be wrapped up before the sabbath had commenced at sundown, and so it was a very hasty job. The women were returning to the tomb to finish the work of burying the body of their teacher.
But on that first day of the week, there was no body to be found. A world of new life had begun.
The Torrezes, Leonard Sr. and Leonard Jr., remain dead, buried in in the reddish earth of New Mexico. But their students, the Lady Trojans, had to continue. Jesse Boies, the school’s cross country coach, a close friend of Leonard Jr., and the father of one of the players on the Lady Trojans, stepped in to become their head coach, a job that was as much about performing bereavement ministry for grief-stricken teenagers as it was about x’s and o’s on a basketball court.
I cannot even imagine what the first practice back in January must have been like. But then there came another, and then another, and then the games themselves. And something remarkable happened. The Lady Trojans kept winning, all the way en route to a ten-seed in the statewide playoffs where, in true March Madness fashion, they knocked off the favored seven seed before eventually losing to the high school that won the entire tournament.
But before they could have ever savored that experience, there had been the first day back after losing their coaches. Like the female disciples of Jesus at the tomb, they had to begin the work of adjusting to a new world, a new reality that would never be the same, before they could rebirth their season together.
And so it is with all resurrection. There is one day in which it begins. Call it the first day of the week rule. Because there will always be a first day after a loss or a death. It begins the journey, either to rebirth or to retrench further into death. Which of those journeys we take, well, that is up to us.
One of the best pieces of preaching advice I’ve ever received came from my college chaplain at Lewis & Clark College in Portland; after he preached a Christmas worship service he told me that he didn’t try to cram everything he knew about Christmas into a sermon like an ill-conceived greatest hits album. He told me that he tried to take one aspect of the story or the experience of Christmas and just really hone in on that one aspect. It enabled him to do some deep dives into beloved Bible stories while keeping them relatively fresh on a year-in, year-out basis and also minimizing the pressure to create a big Best Of-style sermon every time.
I’ve tried to honor that spirit in how I preach Christmas and Easter. It would be impossible for me to tell you everything I know and feel about Easter today, so I shouldn’t bother trying. But as we are about to embark on our own journeys separating in a few short weeks as I step down as your minister, I want to talk about this first day of the week rule in anticipation of our paths diverging. Because even while there will be hope of new life in that, there is also loss. There is also mourning and grieving. And it is easy to forget that this was the initial mood of Easter Sunday.
I do not say that to bring down the mood—quite the opposite. I say it to highlight just how profound a shift the Resurrection of the Lord represents. The disciples—first the women and then the men—go from trying to navigate a world completely bereft of Jesus of Nazareth to navigating a world in which Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead, the grave has been defeated, divine love has triumphed over evil, and God has ransomed us from sin.
That first day of the week in a world without Christ has become the first day of the week in a world made new by Christ. As far back as creation itself, when in the first day the earth was without form and void and God said, “let there be light,” the first day of the week changes everything. However deep your faith, imagine wrapping your head and heart around that dramatic shift in real time.
Mark’s Gospel is clear: the women couldn’t. They said nothing to anyone initially because terror, fear, and amazement had seized them. So unsatisfactory was that ending that two endings were later appending to Mark’s Gospel to try to walk that back.
But I get it. We all should. Because it is in Luke’s Gospel too—when the female disciples return from the empty tomb and report everything they saw and heard, the male disciples deem their story an idle story—a fairytale. They fundamentally did not believe the women; only Peter gets up and goes to the tomb to share in the amazement. Thomas gets slapped with the moniker of Doubting Thomas, but all the other male disciples were doubters on Easter Sunday. On the first day of the new week, the new world, the new reality, mourning and grieving still reigned to the point of dismissing the Good News out of hand.
But at some point over the course of the day, over the course of the week, that begins to chance. Step by step, bit by bit, soul by soul, the followers of Jesus step out from a place of loss and sorrow into a place of resurrection and redemption.
Which is how it so very often is for us. Dramatic life moments take place—a man named Cleopas walks the road to Emmaus, a man named Paul walks the road to Damascus, a high school girls’ basketball team loses both their coaches on the same day to covid—but what do we choose to do the first day after those dramatic moments? How do we rise to meet those moments? How do we choose to respond to those moments?
In those choices, I believe that we reveal our truest selves. We may not intend to—especially if we do not intend to—which is precisely why Christianity must be a daily work. The grave was conquered and we were ransomed today, but what we do with that freedom, every day, we are showing our truest selves. We are deciding whether we are going to be good Christians, and faithful Jesus followers, or not.
So on this first day of the new week, of a new existence brought about by the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and buried but is now risen, how will you choose to respond?
For today, in the empty tomb and the rolled-away stone, God has made God’s response to the crucifixion known.
Today, God has responded to death with life.
Today, God has responded to suffering with resurrection.
Today, God has responded to injustice with justice.
Today, God has responded to sin with restoration.
Today, God has responded to oppression with liberation.
God has made God’s response to the crucifixion known.
But how will you respond to God, and how will you make your response known?
Presented with the idle tale of a discarded shroud and a missing body, how will you respond, and how will you make your response known?
Not just today, on Easter Sunday, but on every day you will be faced with that question, and that choice. Your life is a lived response to the question, “What will I do as a result of the Good News that the Messiah, the Son of the living God, has resurrected from the dead?”
Whatever fear the female disciples must have initially felt and experienced, they overcame that fear to share what they had seen. Whatever fear the Mesa Vista Lady Trojans must have initially felt and experienced after losing both their coaches on the same day, they processed and remained a team together. The chaos that surrounded them—that emotional, spiritual, palpable loss of stability—mirrors the chaos out of which God creates light and dark on the first day of creation.
From creation to resurrection, our journeys began with a first day. A first day to adjust to a new normal, to behold what had been lost and what could still be gained, and to find a way forward when you might not even know in what direction forward lies. That was the first day. Chaos and glory, unknowingness and potential, discovery and risk all swirling around you like the wind.
And then like the wind, the Holy Spirit shows you that way forward.
Today, this Easter Sunday, is the first day of the week, of the Easter church season, of the rest of your lives.
How will you respond, and how will you choose to make known, like glory amid chaos, that not only does our Savior live, but that He reigns?
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
April 17, 2022