THANK GOD FOR THE WOMEN!

A Sermon for Easter Day 2008

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

"Thank God for the women!" That's what I heard myself saying days ago when I read today's Easter story out loud. Usually, I don't talk back to myself when I'm reading scripture or preparing a sermon. This time, I did. "Thank God for the women!" And I wondered, what might that mean? What do these women have to do with the Good News of God in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead?

The two Marys see an angel, and then they see Jesus. The angel says, "come and see." Jesus says, "go and tell." Both of them say, "Do not be afraid." The women come to the tomb, then go to Galilee, feeling some fear but filled with great joy. Their fear, we expect. Their great joy? Great joy is grounded in great faith, great hope, great love.

Jesus appears to the women first. In all the gospel accounts, when Jesus makes that first appearance after his resurrection, it is women who are there. It is women who respond, women who go and tell the men - the disciples and others. These faithful women in particular, women of faith in general - what might they have to tell us?

In talking long-distance with my wife the past few evenings, she kept asking, "did you see the moon?" I fell asleep last night with lunar light pouring in the window, this morning, there was the moon again. Easter is the only day of our church year fixed by the Moon. Easter always comes on the first Sunday after the first full moon that falls on or after the vernal equinox, the beginning of spring. Spring arrived just two days ago, so this year, Easter is nearly as early as it can be. It also comes at the time of year when Mother Earth starts to green. I wonder: is this all a coincidence? Aren't the moon and the earth also symbols of the feminine? What might God's creation, coming to new life, be telling us about our need to listen to what faithful women have to say?

Barbara Brown Taylor, in a sermon entitled "The Unnatural Truth," speaks of the communion of Easter and spring. "Sap rises in dormant trees, spring peepers start their peeping, and trumpet lilies spill their sweet smell on the air. (This) connection is a happy one, guaranteed to renew our faith in the creative power of God. But," she goes on to say, "it is also a misleading one, because spring is entirely natural. Buy a daffodil bulb in the winter, and it looks like nothing in your hands - a small onion, maybe, with its thin skin and scraggly roots. If you have had any experience with bulbs, however, that does not worry you. You know all you have to do is wait. Come springtime it will escape the earth and explode with color, a yellow butterfly of a blossom, shedding its cocoon. As miraculous as it is, it is completely natural. Resurrection, on the other hand," she claims, "is entirely unnatural….the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them" (Home By Another Way, pp. 109-110).

But what, might we ask, IS resurrection? What IS Good News? What gospel might these women, the Marys, and other women have to share? For me, it's not what these women say, what insights they might claim. It's what they do with what they see. The Marys face their fears, embrace their joys, and simply go, telling about Jesus' resurrection. In short, they "just do it." They don't talk about good news. They live it.

Three weeks ago Eyleen and I had tickets to attend a concert at the National Cathedral. We arrived early enough to wander around and marvel at the beauty of that magnificent space. The nave ten stories high. The great organ with its 10,000 pipes. Three rose windows. The Space Window, in which is embedded an actual rock from the moon. Hundreds of carved angels. Eyleen calls it "a fitting place for God."

There was lots of activity before the concert - the orchestra warming up, tourists snapping photographs, sound and lighting equipment being adjusted. We made our way to our seats, on the second row - so close, we could see the facial and bodily expressions of many of the musicians. The sopranos and altos were right in front of us. Nearby, the percussionist continually made her careful tunings. Finally, when all the musicians were in place, the conductor stepped onto his platform and began to prepare us for what we were about to hear. He explained that this world premier concert would be recorded. The crowd became especially silent and still.

The "back story" is this: Carolyn Bailey Argento - a native of Baltimore, the youngest student ever to receive a voice scholarship at Peabody - was married to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento for fifty-one years. He remembers her this way: "When I would go off to the university, Carolyn would practice in the studio and my notes were on the piano. When I'd come back in the evening, on the margins of all these pages would be, 'too high,' 'where does she breathe?' 'How many times are you going to ask for that note?'…In a way," Dominick says, "that's how I learned to write vocal music."

In the summer of 2005, Carolyn became ill. Doctors could not determine the source of her sickness, and even after several months in intensive care, she did not improve. It was during this time that the director of the Choral Society approached Dominick to write an original work to commemorate the National Cathedral's centennial. He turned down the commission. Repeated attempts to persuade him failed to change his mind. Dominick had neither the will nor the interest in working. He was spending every day at his wife's bedside.

Eventually she was moved to a rehab center. She tried to talk her husband into accepting the commission. 'We'll talk about it when you get well,' he told her. But Carolyn Bailey Argento didn't get well. On the second day of February, 2006, she died.

The prospect of composing held little appeal for Dominick…until it was suggested that he write a memorial to her. The result was EVENSONG: Of Love and Angels. It is a nine movement piece in which two voices speak to each other: the Angel, a messenger from the other side, speaking words of love and hope, and the Afflicted Ones, the creatures who suffer, crying out for healing and renewal. A reviewer for the Baltimore Sun wrote this about Of Love and Angels: 'Time seemed to stop in the cavernous space, where the light was fading in the intricate stained glass windows, as if on cue….The intensity of both love and loss inform virtually every measure of Evensong.'"

A wise nun once told me, "Tom, music releases feelings, so that healing can begin." Throughout that entire performance, people all around us were weeping. Some of the performers were even wiping away tears. The Evensong themes of grief and love, dread and compassion, death and life made me think of Easter. Thank God for those women who loved Jesus! And thank God for Carolyn, who embodied good news, who lived a courageous life, who inspired and brought new life to a man who still loves her.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that "Death is natural. Loss is natural. Grief is natural. But…(here is the) unnatural truth: By the light of this day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be killed, and if we can remember that, then there is nothing we cannot do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world, (make miracles)" (ibid., pp. 111-112).

All through his wife's illness, Dominick Argento wrote, "I kept . . . hoping for a miracle." My wife Eyleen, also a preacher, says this about miracles: "The real miracle, the miracle that Jesus spent all his ministry trying to convey, the miracle that (the) gospels (are) intent to proclaim, is this: God, God, makes a gift of God's very self, and we are invited, invited, never coerced, into that divine life. I like the way one scholar put it: 'Christian spirituality is neither escape from real life nor denial of its pain but a new way of living that is transfiguring, even now, by the resurrection and the life which is Jesus.'" (Sandra M. Schneiders, Written that You May Believe, p. 179, quoted in Eyleen Farmer's sermon for Lent V, "Back to Life")

Carolyn Argento's spiritual presence was palpable in the Cathedral that Sunday afternoon. God planted a seed of life in her that can never be killed. She lives forever in this living, breathing, new creation - this music, in which her husband, now in his eighties, has miraculously given her voice. In the final anthem, that miracle of new life is revealed. Here is Argento's text:

Like sleepers, we drift down Night's cold corridors,
Unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling.
Then, in the distance, a ray of light
Appears, growing into a brightness
As white as an angel's wings.
And in its celestial glow
Our lives are changed forever.

This radiance is love
And in our illuminated souls
A new knowledge is formed.
Fantastic landscapes appear;
Choirs of Cherubim intone
A music never heard before;
While compassion unveils a world
Of warmth, kindness, unselfishness, and care.

Love is not consolation. It is light.
It is a light acquired by patience and pain,
Doubt and understanding, sorrow and forgiveness.
Encircled by torch-bearing angels
Banishing the dark,
We are transformed,
Transformed and Enlightened
by these blessed guides of love.

Love is light.

Thank God for the women, who show us Jesus' resurrection.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Amen.