As your interim pastor, let me say that it’s been a special privilege for both my wife and me to get to know three such fine and colorful Christians as Florence, Dorothy, and George.  But I’m especially impressed by how well so many of you, including the deacons — as dedicated as any I’ve seen in ANY congregation – ministered to each of them during their final illnesses.  How appropriate it is that, when the end came, it was during this, our continuing celebration of the Season of Easter!  Yes, even though we GRIEVE at the deaths of Florence, Dorothy, and George, we also, paradoxically, REJOICE!   For, as the Apostle Paul boldly declares in our Second Lesson, today, from I Corinthians, chapter 15, read by our lector,  “DEATH has been swallowed up in VICTORY!”  -- Yes, the victory of Christ’s RESURRECTION.


    TELL me, why do so many of us – even many of us CHRISTIANS – live as if Easter never happened?  We DREAD death—and, so often, go to GREAT LENGTHS to pretend it doesn’t exist!
 
    Dr. Diane Komp is Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Yale University School of Medicine, Attending Physician at the Yale-New Haven  Hospital, and a deacon in First Congregational Church of Guildford, Connecticut.  Of course, she has to deal with dying INFANTS and CHILDREN almost every day in her work  She relates an experience when she was dining at her favorite New Haven restaurant.   The waiters and waitresses there always write the given name of the diner on the check, when they order a meal, so that they can quickly identify them when the food is ready.  Dr. Komp always gives them her nickname – “Di,” spelled “D-I.”  But, she says, at least five different waiters have mistakenly spelled it, “D-I-E.”

    One time she dared ask the young waiter why he had so spelled her name “D-I-E.”  And he became extremely nervous and replied, “"I am absolutely terrified by death. I can't even tolerate to say the word."

    I’m afraid this is, sadly, true of so MANY of us!  And yet Paul, here in our lesson, declares that, by Christ’s resurrection, “DEATH has been swallowed up in VICTORY!”  In fact, Paul goes much FURTHER.  He dares look death IN THE FACE and TAUNT it, MAKE FUN of it, JEER at it. “WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR VICTORY?” he cries.  “WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR STING?”

    I am pleased that the Session of this church recently appointed one of the elders, John Hawley, to head up a Long-Range Planning Committee, that your new pastor, upon arrival in the near future, can immediately become a part of.  That committee is charged with considering creative ways that this congregation, housed in buildings in this highly visible and, indeed, valuable location, might enhance its ministry and flourish in the years and decades to come.  One of many possibilities that I hope that committee, and you, will consider is creating a columbarium/memorial garden, beside this beautiful sanctuary, where the ashes of faithful members and friends might be reverently placed.  It’s relatively inexpensive to construct such, and the garden would be a convenient place for meditation and even Easter sunrise services and similar, brief occasions of worship for you.

    It was my privilege, during my last regular pastorate, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to help a congregation PLAN and to BUILD such a memorial garden.  One member of the congregation anonymously, with me, commissioned a sculptress in nearby Knoxville, to create in granite a glorious centerpiece for it.   Although we were very careful NOT to try to dictate to the artist what form her sculpture should take, I couldn’t help but quote to her this wonderful jeer at death by Paul, here in our lesson: “WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR VICTORY?  WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR STING?”

    And I told the sculptress,  “These bold words of Paul that MOCK death make me think of a huge, angry-looking WASP with its stinger ripped out -- a wasp doing a nose-dive to earth.  And rising triumphant ABOVE that wounded, defeated wasp is a soaring, glorious BUTTERFLY!”

    Well, imagine my delight, about a year later, when I SAW for the first time her completed sculpture which she called “Circle of Life!”  ON it she had created not just ONE rising butterfly but SEVERAL.  And ON this sculpture  wasn’t a wasp but several honeybees!

    And then it DAWNED on me:  “How much BETTER is a bee than a wasp to depict the pain of death!  For, UNLIKE a wasp, bees not only can HURT us by their stings, but they produce sweet honey.  Indeed, though death is painful, under certain circumstances (as all of you know), death can bring RELIEF after much suffering!  Certainly that was the case of both our good sisters Florence and Dorothy and our brother George!       One of the greatest of the old German Lutheran chorales, immortalized by the incredibly beautiful contrapuntal arrangements of J.S. Bach, is about Christ’s dying on the cross. And it’s called, Komm, Süsser Tod!  --”Come, SWEET Death!”

    Yes, friends, to a victim, to a patient, who is suffering (and to those who love him or her) death can come finally as blessed RELIEF.  Nevertheless, it is still a FOE.  Indeed, in the words of Paul, here, earlier in this chapter, “The last ENEMY to be DESTROYED is death!”  That’s why the EASTER GOOD NEWS is so crucial to us.
 
    Tell me, have you experienced Easter? Has the risen Christ appeared to YOU? -- NOT in some mystical vision, such as Paul’s blinding encounter with the Lord, on the road to Damascus, that our lector read us about in our First Lesson today.   But in the resurrection MIRACLES, in human lives, that we can see ALL AROUND us?    --For example, in the 12-step groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, that you generously allow to meet in the church buildings almost every night of the week.  Go sometime to one of their open meetings—listen to the miraculously stories of lives turned from death to life, transformed by God’s miraculous power.
           
    Christ’s resurrection is the VERY HEART of our faith.  It turned the defeated little band of followers, in Jerusalem, into a powerful force that soon conquered the whole Roman world!  It TRANSFORMED them.   And they were NEVER THE SAME!

    Friends, WITHOUT faith in the resurrection, you and I can NEVER reach the HEIGHTS of faith where God intended us to soar!  For WHAT YOU BELIEVE makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE!

    Awhile ago I mentioned Dr. Diane Komp, the pediatric oncologist at Yale–New Haven.  She tells us about one of her child patients, “Eight-year-old Jason Gaes,” she says, “has been through surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy for a lymphoma, but he doesn't let the risk of death from ‘cansur’ sting: "Every bodys godda die sometime." Jason says.”  And he would tell all of us who are so frightened by the death, “to ‘get a poster that says 'Help me to remember Lord that nothing is gonna happen today that you and me can't handle together.'”  Jason would further advise us, she says, to “hang it in your room and read it at night when your scared.’”

    Yes, friends.  CHRIST IS RISEN!  HE IS RISEN INDEED!  HALLELUIA!

PRAYERS:
    God of new life, hear our joyful noise to you as we come into your presence with singing, for Christ is risen!  On this morning we gather together, brothers and sisters in Christ,  continuing our celebration of Easter, and remembering that first Easter morning when Mary Magdalene and others sought the living among the dead but were astounded to find an empty tomb.
    Help us not only to proclaim newness of life to ourselves this glad day but also to others, that we may speak the resurrection to them and roll away the stones that entomb ALL who are imprisoned –I n body, mind, or spirit.  Particularly bring peace, freedom, comfort, and deliverance to EVERYONE who suffers from conflict and pain, and remember specifically those in grave danger and those who are injured and grieving in the Middle East.  We praise you, O God, for last week’s nuclear summit, in Washington, and for the fact that, led by your grace, the nations of the world are beginning the long process of beating “swords into plowshares,” “spears into pruning-hooks.”
    O God, bless your Church as she seeks to tell the whole world of the risen Christ, and particularly this congregation of your people, and those represented here this morning.  Heal the sick.  Comfort those who mourn, especially the families of your servants Florence Owen, Dorothy Simmons, and George Boorsma, who are now at rest and at peace in your eternal presence.
    And receive our praises for the Easter victory that Christ has won for ALL our brothers and sisters, including Florence, Dorothy, and George, who, having walked with us in this world, now experience the fullness of his presence in heaven; for we make all our prayers in his name. AMEN.