SERMON, EASTER VIGIL, C

Cracks.

What do you think of when I say that word? Weakness? Unsafe? Defective?

The HMS Titanic hit an iceberg one cold, April night causing a crack that eventually sank the ship killing some 1500 people. A dam in Idaho developed a crack, failed, and sent millions of gallons of water downstream wiping one town almost entirely off the face of the earth. A crack in the hydraulic line of an airplane caused it to lose control and plummet into the ocean killing everyone on board. And this very building developed a crack on its northwest corner after an earthquake many years ago.

Cracks come in all shapes and sizes -- from a cracked tooth to the Titanic -- and are rarely positive. At least that's how we view them.

When we build, we work to keep cracks at bay. We don't want cracks in our ships or planes or buildings or ourselves. Think about building a house. Some of you have done that. You make sure that the walls are flush and the doors are sealed properly. All of that work helps keep the bugs and wind out.

I haven't built a house, but I do remember when I was working the graveyard shift and sleeping during the day. Among other things, I tried to make sure the drapes covered every inch of the window so I could have it as dark as possible.

We strive for perfection in all of these things, don't we? We want the plane to be perfect. We want the house to be perfect. We try to seal off the window so we can sleep in perfect darkness. And it's not just these things we try to build perfectly.

Sports teams, for instance, are built to succeed. Owners want to get the best pure athletes they can, playing the right positions, so that their team can win. The 1997 Florida Marlins are a perfect example. They were built to win a World Series. There was no crack in that team. After they won the Series, the team was immediately dismantled in what was termed a "fire sale," because the cost of keeping it together was too high.

Or take ourselves. We don't like cracks in our own life. On the one hand, we want some semblance of consistency. We like to know that what was true today will be true tomorrow. It's comforting to know, or think, that I could call any one of you tomorrow and you'd be there. And on the other hand, we don't want to appear vulnerable, so we build up barriers trying to keep from being cracked.

In everything we do, we try to eliminate the cracks. In buildings and planes and sports teams, and in our life, we try to keep out weaknesses, defections and imperfections. We want something pure and solid and sound and unchanging.

The gospel of the resurrection, however, is full of cracks. Let's start with the disciples. Their personal lives were cracked. For three years they followed this itinerate preacher-dude named Jesus. They were with him when he walked on water and calmed the storm; when he healed the deaf, blind, lame and leprous; when he fed the 5000 and more. They were just beginning to grasp what his view of the kingdom looked like. They were, it seemed, on the verge of something spectacular.

And then, in the words of Tim Rice's Judas, it all went sour. Events spiraled out of control. Judas betrayed Jesus into the hands of the religious leaders, who in turn collaborated with Rome. This man the disciples had followed for three years was arrested, beaten, abused, whipped, crucified, died and was buried. They had given up everything to follow him; now he was gone. Their world was cracked.

The world cracked. In Romans, Paul writes that creation hopes to be set free from decay and that it groans with labor pains. With his resurrection, Christ has done just that -- set us and creation free from decay. Death no longer holds sway over us; we are new creatures in Christ.

This "creational birthing" became evident when the two Marys went to the tomb. It was then that the world cracked with a great earthquake. It was then that the division between heaven and earth cracked and an angel came down to roll away the stone from the tomb.

The door to death was cracked. The door, in this case, was the rock in front of the tomb. That door sealed off the world of the dead from the world of the living. That door prevented the two worlds from mixing. But the resurrection changed that.

Christ was raised from the dead, and that act cracked death's door. The stone wasn't rolled away so that the resurrected Jesus could get out of the tomb. The stone was rolled away by the angel after the event. It was rolled away not to let Christ out, but to let the women in. In other words, death's door was cracked so that life could enter.

Cracks are a funny thing. It can be a good thing when we work to build something that is perfectly smooth and seamless and completely sealed -- such as with ships, planes and buildings. But we should understand that that doesn't work for everything.

When we strive for seamless, sealed perfection, we are attempting to seal off and keep out things that bother us. Like other people and ideas.

If I don't crack a little, I become cold and distant and don't let people too close. If I seal off all my ideas with a barrier of rightness or correctness, those ideas can never be legitimately challenged and I stagnate. And if we attempt to seal off our church so that we are completely insulated from contamination by those who upset us, or from those whom we deem to be sinners, then we have, in effect, rolled a stone in front of the doors to keep everyone out. The church becomes closed and dark, and the cost of maintaining it, like the Marlins, becomes too high and it gets dismantled. Our church, perfectly seamless, completely sealed, and free from imperfections, becomes nothing more than a tomb.

We need cracks. It was a crack that changed the disciples' lives. It was with a crack that the angel rolled away the stone. It was a crack that allowed death to become open to life.

"Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen

The resurrection hs cracked the world and us. We are a cracked people, and that is a good thing.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!