Second
Sunday of Easter
April
12, 2026
1
Peter 1:3-9
There are reasons that mainline
Protestant preachers don’t spend a lot of pulpit time speaking about heaven and
hell. Some of them are historical: there
was a time when those were almost the only topics you would hear about on a
Sunday morning and non-believers came to ridicule that. On the one hand, they said, all we do is tell
people with real problems and real pain not to worry because “there will be pie
in the sky by-and-by”. Devoted and
faithful followers of Jesus who set their minds on things above were accused of
being “too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly use”. On the other hand, emphasizing our eternal
destination can also lend itself to the notion that we (rather than God) determine
who is going where.
It’s foolish, and does the whole
world a disservice, though, to pretend that we have nothing to say about both
time and eternity. Our lives here are a
subset of our total existence, and both this world and the world to come are
God’s creation and gift through Christ, who was in the beginning with God, and
was God; and who is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end. It’s not
escapism, but hope, that reminds us that there is more beyond this world.
I say that not because this world is
a horrible place. Recognizing its fallenness
does not negate that it was created good.
Sometimes we are blessed with a glimpse of what God had in mind. For some reason, I remember going for a walk
through Kenmore Square in Boston one spring afternoon in 1983. I can’t say that anything particularly
unusual happened, or why I would remember that particular day. I can only say that Commonwealth Avenue was a
beautiful place and everything was good.
Moments like that are rare, but real.
Robert Browning wrote about such a moment of his own:
“The
year’s at the spring,
And
spring’s at the morn,
Morning’s
at seven,
The
hillside’s dew-pearled.
The lark’s
on the wing,
The
snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in
his heaven,
All’s
right with the world.”
So I know
it’s not just me.
Yes,
there is sin. People get scammed. Parents do things that scar their
children. Powerful people play games
using hunger, war, disease, lies, imprisonment, and oppression as if the millions
of people they may kill along the way mean nothing. This week there were wildfires in the Midwest
that forced the entire population of Topeka to be ordered to stay inside to
avoid breathing toxic smoke. Sometimes
the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer.
Always it is wrong to shrug that off.
But
I will maintain, and I believe that the Christian faith, based on the
resurrection that we celebrate not only at Easter, but whenever we come
together on Sunday, the day of the resurrection – I maintain that in the face
of all the destructive powers of earthly existence and the sin that makes it
even worse, God holds for us in eternity all the good that we experience or seek
for others. Even when we watch things
fall apart and fade before our own eyes, in God’s eyes that see all eternity at
once, nothing good is ever lost.
Excuse,
if you will, one more poem this morning.
This one, called “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo”, is by Gerard
Manley Hopkins. The words are
complicated and it will take two people to read it, but it’s worth hearing.
THE LEADEN
ECHO
“How to
kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known
some,
bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or
key
to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, ... from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers,
sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding sheets,
tombs
and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there 's none; no no no there 's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.”
THE GOLDEN
ECHO
“Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Oné. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and
fast
flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with,
done
away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously
sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets móre, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an
everlastingness
of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry
and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose
locks,
long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with
breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self
and
beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what
while
we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why
O then,
weary then whý should we tread? why are we so haggard at the
heart,
so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged,
so
cumbered,
When
the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder
a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with
fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—
Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, yes
yonder,
yonder,
Yonder.”
Hear again the words of scripture:
“Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given
us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead
and
into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in
heaven for you,
who are
being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be
revealed in the last time.
In this
you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various
trials,
so that
the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though
perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and
honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Although
you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now,
you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
for you
are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” [I Peter 1:3-9]
