Sermon: But and Rebut

Text:  Acts 10:34-43; Luke 24:1-12

Date: April 8, 2007 (Easter Sunday)

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            Friday night at Family Camp on the shores of LakeCoeur d’Alene:  It’s Talent Show night.  Quite a tradition at our family camp.  It’s a variety show, with singers, comedians, dancers, thespians, storytellers and much, much more.  A lip-synching cast acts out the story-song “Cows With Guns;” Allison, Karen and Barbara amaze the crowd by narrating and acting out “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 6.3 minutes; the Hollinger-Lants get the whole audience moving their hats up-and-down, up-and-down, up-and-down in complex choreography; Rick Lander sings verse after verse of “I Like My Feet”---and the hits just keep on coming.

            While the next act is preparing, we in the audience sing songs.  Without a doubt the favorite between-acts song is “The Cat Came Back.”  Do you know that song?  It starts like this (join me if you know it):

Old Mister Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which wouldn't leave its home;
He tried and he tried to give the cat away,
He gave it to a man goin' far, far away.

But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just wouldn't stay away.
Away, away, away, away

When John leads that song at camp it’s very dramatic, particularly as the song gets into the later verses.  In order to sing it with the proper intonation, you really have to drag out the “but” at the beginning of the chorus: “buuuuuuut” with a melodic dip in the middle. 

            I never thought of this as an Easter song.  However, one of the commentaries I read this week focused my attention on the conjunction “but.”  And since my brain matter is arranged in loops, it wasn’t long before I heard our beloved family campers singing “buuuuuut” in my head.  I’ll come back to the song, but first let’s attend to this little three-letter word that features so prominently in Luke’s telling of the resurrection.

            I wouldn’t have noticed it.  Theodore Wardlaw wrote a piece for Christian Century in which he said he noticed the frequency of the word “but” in Luke 24 for the first time this year.  (That happens to us when we read Bible stories over and over; different things pop out at us in different readings.)  He notes that it’s the first word in this version: “But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.”  The account is peppered with “but” after that.  “In [the Easter story in] Matthew the word shows up once; in Mark, twice; and in Luke—in only 12 verses—that defiant conjunction but shows up six times. It's as if Luke is grabbing us by the lapels, stopping us in our tracks and forcing us to understand that no matter what we've heard, we haven't heard the whole story yet. So he begins that story in a curious way, with a tenacious conjunction. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb . . .”[1]

What, Wardlaw asks, is Luke up to with this “stubborn, defiant, relentless conjunction?”  I read that sentence, and since my brain matter is, after all, arranged in loops, I immediately heard another song in my head---this one from a TV broadcast of my childhood called “Schoolhouse Rock,” which some of you also may remember.  Can you guess what I’m about to sing?  “Conjunction junction, what’s your function?”  There was a little cartoon train engineer who appeared on the screen while the musical question was being asked, and the answer (while you watch cartoon train cars getting connected) is “Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.”
Bear with me while I continue:

}} Conjunction Junction, how's that function?
I got three favorite cars
That get most of my job done.
}} Conjunction Junction, what's their function?
I got "and", "but", and "or",
They'll get you pretty far.

"And":
That's an additive, like "this and that".
"But":
That's sort of the opposite,
"Not this *but* that".
And then there's "or":
O-R, when you have a choice like
"This or that".
"And", "but", and "or",
Get you pretty far.

I’m sure you all know your grammar; you don’t need remedial English lessons in church.  On the other hand, Schoolhouse Rock’s simple explanation of the conjunction “but” throws some light on the Luke’s story.  It encourages us to look for what is happening—the “that”—but also what is not happening—the “not this.” 

As we already noted, “But” is the first word of the reading.  What’s the “not this” that precedes it?  The Sabbath day of rest.  They were prevented by their religious tradition from finishing the work of preparing Jesus’ body for burial, so they waited out that long Sabbath, grieving, we presume.  But the third day was a day of action.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb but when they went in, they did not find the body.  The tomb—a permanent fixture in human habitations, which, once occupied we assume will always be occupied, was still there, of course.  But—no body. 

Two men in clothes that shone like lightning appeared, and the women do what any of us would have done, fell down in abject terror with their faces to the ground.  The fear is the “not this” in this set.  In Matthew and Mark the mysterious men immediately say what angels usually say, which is “Don’t be afraid.”  I don’t know why that’s not included in Luke’s telling; but I assume that the question they ask is spoken in a very soothing, “don’t-be-afraid” tone of voice: “but the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’” 

The dazzling mystery men have the next “but.”  This one’s important.  “He is not here, but has risen.”  Not in the tomb.  Not dead.  Not this.  Not this.  But that: has risen.

Then the final two: The women told all this to the other disciples.  They witness; they testify.  But their words seemed like an idle tale, like nonsense.  The witnesses stand on one side of the line, and the hearers on the other.  And that might have been the end of it.  But Peter got up and went to see for himself, and returned home amazed—and transformed into a believer and a witness, as we heard in his sermon in Acts.

Returning to Wardlaw’s question, “What is Luke up to with this stubborn, defiant, relentless conjunction?”  O little conjunction, what’s your function?  It seems that it is replacing the roadblocks of conventional thinking about the way the Real World Works with a breathtaking portal into another world of Possibility.  Think of the appearances of the word “but” in this narrative as a swinging door.  Just when you think you’ve come to a locked door or a dead end, the door swings open to a bright room the believer can step into, across a threshold she or he previously thought was impassable.  In five out of six of these conjunctions, the door swings toward undreamed-of possibility; only when the women bust through the door glowing with good news do the skeptical disciples push the conjunctive door the other way with their evaluation of their witness as an idle tale. 

An idle tale.  Nonsense.  That’s the world’s view.  Wardlaw points out in his article that Luke needs the stubborn, defiant relentless “but” to counter that version of reality.  He writes, “Luke suspects that there's another storyteller loose in the world, one who preaches a half-gospel of Good Friday that cannot get past the hopeless finality of the crucifixion. I hear evidence myself of that other storyteller still trying to promote everything about our world that does not give life, but is instead cynical, oppressive and tyrannical and survives best on a diet of our passivity. That storyteller is persuasive and is in every age eager to subvert resurrection faith with premature certainties about the way things are—until, at the end of the day, we are persuaded that there was never an Easter at all.”[2]  That’s a great phrase he uses, “premature certainties about the way things are.”  There is so much of that going around all the time.  He has always been like that.  She has been that way since she was little.  He’ll never change.  She’ll never change.  They have never gotten along; they never will.  There have always been children starving to death and there always will be.  Domestic violence has been part of human families from the beginning of time; you’ll never stop it.  People of different races have always eyed each other with suspicion; we’ll never break down the color barrier.  War has been part of human culture as long as there has been human culture; universal peace is out of the question.  Premature certainties about the Way Things Are.

The Easter story takes on the Biggest Certainty of them all:  Dead is dead.  Death is death.  It’s the end.  And it answers that with a musical, melodic “Buuuuut…” 

About that song, “The Cat Came Back.”  It’s a light-hearted song that happens to be very grim and very hopeful at the same time.    It goes on for verse after verse about the terrible ways people try to do in this cat.  They put it on a train, and the train wrecks buuuut the cat came back, the very next day.  They put it in a hot air balloon, shoot it out of a cannon, put it on an ocean-going vessel, toss it into a cyclone, hit it with a brick bat, shoot at it with nails and dynamite…in most cases, the people trying to do away with the cat come to a bad end, buuuut the cat came back.  The last verse even brings out one of humanity’s worst nightmares: nuclear warfare.  “England went, Russia went, then the U.S.A.”  Do you suppose that’s the end of the song?  Nope.  BUUUUUUT….

Likewise, the story of Jesus Christ is very grim and very hopeful at the same time.  The world threw its worst at Jesus; he was betrayed, deserted, mocked, beaten, and executed in as brutal a manner as humanity has ever dreamed up.  It certainly looked like the end of that story.  BUUUUUT…the Christ came back, on the third day, the Life came back, they thought it was a goner but the Grace came back, Love just couldn’t stay away, away, away, away….
            One more thing about that cat song.  I was amazed to see when it had been written—way back in 1893.  There have been a lot of verses added in the folk music way since the original.  Subsequent generations have used their imaginations to add to the story of the indestructible cat.  The Easter story is like that, too.  The story of the Life that came back has played out in generation after generation of faithful Christians since the days of Jesus.   Generation after generation of disciples have encountered the living Christ and been transformed by that meeting.  Millions upon millions have found new life in what seemed like dead ends in their lives, and have attributed that new life to the powerful grace of God.  The Easter story is about so much more than Jesus of Nazareth.  The Jesus story is, for Christians, what amounts to verse one of a song of new life that goes on and on.

It is a wondrous thing to contemplate how many real life versions there are of this familiar variation on the Easter theme: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”   Just the other day a friend, knowing I was musing on an Easter sermon, wrote a few lines about the new life she is finding after her thorny divorce.  After years of being defined by what other people thought she should be, she is experiencing the death of those images, those confining expectations of her old life; she’s letting those old versions of self die.  And she is experiencing rebirth, seeing the rising of her more authentic self.  And her story is gloriously common.  

Diana Butler Bass tells the story of hearing a conversation between an old retired bishop in her congregation and another parishioner.  The other fellow had asked this very liberal former bishop if he believed in the resurrection.  Bass says she was eager to hear the answer to the question; she didn’t think he’d affirm a literal resurrection.  He answered firmly, without pausing, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection.  I’ve seen it too many times not to.”  I’ve seen it, too, in my life and in the lives of many others.  If we took the time now to talk, many of you would have stories to tell about how the door to Possibility and New Life swung open for you even in the darkest hours. 

Please, friends, don’t keep those stories to yourselves.  Sing them out as part of the great Easter song.  Use your stories and the stories of new life you hear as evidence, as witnesses, as if God were standing trial and needed you on the witness stand.  Because God is standing trial, every day, as that other storyteller blathers on about all those premature certainties regarding the Way Things Are.   You know, the certainties of despair and poverty and preventable disease and crime, abuse, neglect, war, environmental degradation, intransigent conflict, racism, sexism, blah blah blah the Way Things Are.  God needs us as witnesses to rebut that storyteller who insists things will never change and the forces of death will always win.  

Witnesses to the indestructible power of love are needed on the interpersonal scale.  One of my pet peeves is hearing, in any context, someone talk with a note of finality about how some person or event has “ruined” their life or the life of someone they know.  It’s absolutely true that we humans are subject to catastrophes that leave the life we knew in ruins.  But faithful people trust that the ruins are not a permanent state of affairs.  Even on the foundation of ruins God can build a beautiful new life.  The Resurrection story reminds us that, as Frederick Buechner put it, “the worst thing is never the last thing.”   The world needs witnesses who trust that truth, and can convey that trust to others even as they stand, stunned, in the ruins of the familiar.  Healing will happen.  Reconciliation is achievable.  The door of impossible possibility will swing open.

Witnesses are needed on the global stage as well.  There’s plenty of evidence that humans have made kind of a hash of history.  Yes, we’re in trouble, we’ve got troubles.  To witness is not to deny.  But it is to say that the power of Life is mightier than the power of death and destruction.  God is still a creative force in this world, working through the creativity and energy of those who are living as if the Kingdom of God is what matters.  Despair paralyzes; hope energizes.  The worst thing is never the last thing.

 God needs us to rebut the grim story of every worst-case scenario with a musical and melodic BUUUUUUUUT…. the Christ came back, on the third day, the Life came back, they thought it was a goner but the Grace came back, Love just will not stay away, away, away, away….Sing it.  In your own voice, with your own verse.  Sing it.

[1] Wardlaw, Theodore J. “Unnatural Event” http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=3085

[2] Ibid.