Easter Sunday
Cycle C
March 31, 2013 7:30pm, 9:30 and 11:30am
St. Margaret Parish, Bel Air
Our Town
When
I was in high school, I remember reading the play Our Town.
Our Town was written by the American playwright Thornton
Wilder and it was required reading in our English class. The setting is a small town called Grovers
Corners in New Hampshire in the 1930s.
The
final act of the play is especially moving.
The narrator walks through the town cemetery and tells the story of each
person who is buried there.
When
the narrator finishes all the stories, he walks to the front of the stage and
looks directly at the audience. He
pauses and then says this.
“Now there are some things we all
know. We all know that something is
eternal, and it ain’t the earth, and it ain’t the stars…
“Everybody knows in their bones that
something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. There’s something way down deep that’s
eternal about every human being.
“They’re waitin’. They’re waitin’ for something that they feel
is comin’.
“Something important, and great. Aren’t they waitin’ for the eternal part in
them to come out clear?”
The Eternal -- Resurrection
Well, the narrator in Our Town makes quite a point.
Deep down in our heart, something tells us that this
life is not all there is. Deep down in
our heart, something tells us that there is life beyond this earth.
Our Scripture readings this evening confirm this
intuition of our hearts. Easter tells us
that there is a resurrected life with God.
Signals of Transcendence
Some theologians say that our life experiences give us
hints of this and they call these hints “signals
of transcendence.”
Maybe we have never heard this expression before. In truth, it’s one of those lofty sounding
expressions that has a very simple meaning.
A signal of
transcendence is something in this life that puts us in touch with
something beyond this life. It is
something like the sound on my cell phone.
When the sound goes off and I hit answer, I can talk with the
person calling me. The sound puts me in
touch with the other person.
Well, a signal of
transcendence is something in this life that tells us that there is a life
beyond. It can be something right inside
us, or something outside us that connects us with something beyond.
Signals
For example, I hope we all have some degree and even a
high degree of happiness. We might have
loving family and friends, a good job, and a comfortable lifestyle.
And yet, even with all of this, isn’t it true that we
still hunger for more and find ourselves saying if only we had this or if only
he would be like that or if only we could do whatever? Even our experience of happiness leaves us
hungering for something more.
I imagine many of us have had the experience of seeing a newborn
baby or of noticing the stars on a dark night or of being mesmerized by the
power and rhythm of the ocean. These
experiences can touch us deeply.
And don’t we sometimes find ourselves caught up in them to
the point of wonder – wonder at what lies behind and beyond them? These experiences can leave us wondering.
And then there is simply this yearning within us for
life. We want to live and we resist the
thought that life may end with physical death.
Don’t we have to ask: where does this yearning come
from? Where does our desire for life and
living and for more and more of it come from?
Conclusion
I see
these experiences as signals of
transcendence.
They
point to something beyond this life and tell us we are made for another
world. And today Easter confirms our
intuition and experience.
The
risen Christ tells us that death is only a passage to another life. He tells us that there is a resurrected life
with God that will finally satisfy the deepest hunger and wildest wonder and
most persistent desire in our human spirit.
