Daily Archives: April 10, 2026

Lost and Found

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

Easter Sunday Year A • April 5, 2026

Matthew 28:1-10

A few years ago, our family was driving from Omaha to Kansas City to attend a convention. When we got to the hotel, we settled in. For Jacquelyn, that means unpacking clothes; for me it means setting up the computer, getting online, setting up my iPod for music. I had one of the first iPod and it was a prized possession. So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered it wasn’t there—not there in the bag, not there in the car.  What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You do what you know. I knew I’d had it on my belt in the car and I searched and searched, moved the seat back and forth until finally it dawned on me that somehow my iPod was gone. Then I remembered something. At a rest area where we’d stopped, there was an odd little thunk noise I’d ignored. With a sick realization, I suddenly knew the iPod was gone: left an hour or more up the road, gone for good. It was lost and all I could do was rant at my thoughtlessness and sputter in anger. I didn’t know what to do so that’s what I did.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You do what you did last time. You do it whether it worked or not; you do it whether it makes sense or not. Most of our life is cooked up from a series of recipes. What should we do? Look at your handbook; look at your cookbook. But there’s no handbook for Easter, no cookbook for resurrection. We’ve just heard the story of two women in the midst of something unimaginable; one of those stories you read in the newspaper and wince about, one of those tales you hear and think, “thank God that’s not me”. Their friend, their leader, the man who guided their lives and gave those lives light has been crucified. They don’t know what to do so they do what they did the last time someone died: they’re on the way to bury him properly. But they’re about to experience an earthquake, they’re about to come face to face with the real Easter. This is the Easter story: you start out to bury Jesus and end up proclaiming his life. You lose your friend and find the Lord.

Can you see them on the way to the tomb? Like a group preparing a funeral lunch, like people setting up the tables and chairs, they’ve come to properly bury Jesus. They wonder about the difficulty; they’ve brought the things they’ll need. Ancient Palestinian tombs were places where families gathered for picnics, where they went to remember and they are going to get everything ready. They are following a map, as we do, the map of grief. We look at its ways, we check off its steps. They are not prepared for Jesus’ death; nothing prepares us for death. But they are prepared for him to be dead. They know what to do: they do what they did last time. Matthew tells the story with care. Everything is just as expected. It’s early, just after dawn; the soldiers are guarding the tomb, the world is quiet, Jesus is dead and buried. They are doing what they did last time.

But at the tomb, everything changes. Matthew says there is a kind of earthquake; perhaps the true earthquake is the stunning surprise when their map suddenly disappears, when last time is no guide to this moment. For Jesus isn’t there. None of the gospel accounts tell the details of the resurrection; all the accounts agree on this stunning surprise: that the women went to a tomb, expecting the dead Jesus and found he wasn’t there. What they did last time, what they believed from their past, what they knew about things staying the same suddenly didn’t apply. Instead, they meet this strange angelic figure; instead, they are told three things: go, tell, see. Go tell his disciples he is going to Galilee, going home, and there you will see him. The surprise of Easter is that Jesus is not done with them; Jesus is not done with us.

It was, we are told, in the breaking of the bread that Jesus was seen. It is when we together believe and act from the faith that Jesus is not done with us that we will see him. Today, this day; tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, may you see him with you. For he is not buried long ago and if we seek him there, we will not find him. Instead, we should look where he said: going ahead of us, inviting us to follow, where he is going next.

One of the great bedrock proverbs of our culture, a saying we hear in our heads and recite to each other is, “People don’t change.” But in fact people do change, people change every day and that is resurrection. In his book, New Mercies I See Stan Purdum tells about a little baby that would not have survived if he had not had the right people in the nick of time.

Lucille Brennan had lived a hard life, but found faith in Christ in her mid-fifties and turned her life around. As a way of making up for being such a poor parent to her own illegitimate son, Lucille became a foster parent. The director of the Department of Children’s Services considered Lucille one of their best foster parents and asked her to take one of their sadder cases.

Little Jimmy, five months old, had been beaten unmercifully by his mother’s live in boyfriend whenever he cried. Jimmy had been so emotionally damaged that now he wouldn’t cry even when he was hungry or wet or cold. Everyone was afraid that the damage was permanent. Lucille determined that Jimmy needed to be held, and held a lot. So for weeks, Lucille did everything one-handed. Her other arm was busy cradling Jimmy, who remained silent as ever.

Jimmy wouldn’t cry to tell her he was hungry, so Lucille made it a point to feed him on a regular schedule. Lucille would get up in the middle of the night and check on him. Sometimes he was asleep, but other times he just lay there awake and quiet. When she found him like that, she picked him up and rocked him until he drifted back to sleep.

Of course Jimmy went to church with Lucille and the entire congregation heard the sad story of this baby who was too afraid to cry. On the fifth Sunday after Jimmy had been placed in Lucille’s home, the pastor was well into his sermon when he heard something and stopped talking. It was a little cry. And when people turned to look, they saw Lucille with a big smile on her face and tears pouring out of her eyes. But the crying sound wasn’t coming from her, it came from the bundle she held in her arms.

Eileen, who was sitting next to Lucille, stared as the little boy took a deep breath and started crying louder. Finally, Eileen couldn’t contain herself and in an action unusual for a bunch of quiet Lutherans, she exclaimed, “Praise the Lord.” At that same time the entire congregation broke into an enthusiastic applause – probably the first time in history that worshipers had applauded because a child cried in church.

Do you see that this story is the Easter story? A woman, a person, finds resurrection and lives her life from it, giving life to others. She embraces a baby who’s silent and dying. Through her embrace, Jimmy learns to cry. Now if you search the scripture, you will find this ever present reality: God hears cries. Whether it’s Hagar in the wilderness, or Jimmy in church, God hears cries and makes them the occasion for grace. Someone changed: someone loved, someone was saved by which we mean able to grow up into the person God hoped. 

We come to the tomb today. It’s important to recognize where we are today. It’s important to know this place. This is the tomb. This is the cemetery. This is the world. It may be pretty. It may be familiar. It may look nice and smell sweet but this is the tomb. The world is a tomb and our call is not of this world, our call is not in this world. We are called like the women of this story to get up and get going. Jesus is not here; Jesus is gone, Jesus is gone to Galilee, Jesus is gone to glory. Where is Galilee? It’s back where he came from; it’s back where we come from, it’s home. Resurrection is where we are, not some other time or place. So get up: don’t be afraid, if he could escape the tomb so can you. Get up: you’re not done, you’re not finished but you aren’t here to do what you thought, he has a new purpose and a different mission for you. Get up: go where he told you. Get up: go find him.  

It was, we are told, in the breaking of the bread that Jesus was seen. It is when we together believe and act from the faith that Jesus is not done with us that we will see him. This is why we’re here together. It’s not just Lucille that taught Jimmy to cry; it was a whole congregation who loved and nurtured. Jesus never works alone; he always gathers people together. We are among the people he gathers. So in our going, we go together, helping each other, nurturing each other. 

Today, this day; tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, may you see him with you. For he is not buried long ago and if we seek him there, we will not find him. Instead, we should look where he said: going ahead of us, inviting us to follow, where he is going next.

We will find him where he said: in the eyes of the homeless, in the service of the hungry. “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” he says. We will find him when we make the resurrection of those around us as important the decoration of our tables. We will find him when we are more interested in following him than finding our own way. We will find him when, as Paul says, we have the mind of Christ in our own mind. Then,, then indeed, Easter will come not only for us, but from us. Then, our church, our lives, will proclaim this glad news, “He is risen!” for he will be risen, risen in us, and we will have found him. 

We’ve been thinking about conversations with Jesus for six weeks. We’ve heard them, I’ve preached about them, we’ve imagined them. It’s time for our own conversation with Jesus. For if we believe he is alive, wouldn’t he still be talking with us, sharing with us, meeting with us? And here is the question we ought to be asking, all of us, every day: what now, Lord?

Amen.

The Cross

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2026

Good Friday/A • April 3, 2026

Matthew 27:32-44

Jesus has been preaching, teaching, casting out demons and healing broken lives throughout the region of Galilee. It’s a place broken by many divisions. In Galilee there are rich people who enjoy fabulous luxury; there are poor people literally starving. In Galilee there are devout Jews but there are many Gentile settlers as well. There are farmers but also manufacturers, weavers and potters and metal smiths. In Galilee Roman and Palestinian and Jew and many others as well live side by side and not always peacefully. There are slaves, citizens, outcasts and many people just trying to get through the day, to put bread on the table, raise their children, take care of their parents, and wondering if there isn’t something they are missing. It is in Galilee that Jesus first turns to his disciples to ask, “Who do people say I am?” and then, “Who do you say I am?” It is there that Peter exclaims, “You are the Christ, the anointed one of God”. And it is in Galilee that Jesus first speaks of the cross to come.

What is the cross? What does it mean to pick up your cross? What does it mean to follow Jesus with your cross? It’s difficult to extract the cross from the overlay of lore and tradition which surround it. It’s difficult to separate it from the meanings we have thrust upon it. Like an old piece of furniture finished and refinished and painted over, it takes careful effort to strip off all the surface layers and see the cross for itself, for what it truly is, and not mistake it for the decorations we have applied. Today crosses come in all shapes and sizes; they come in all kinds of materials. For us the cross is principally jewelry. It’s an ear ring, a pendant, a lapel pin. Clergy wear pectoral crosses: big ones that sit on the chest, perhaps hoping people will assume the bigger the cross, the more faithful the minister. For us the cross is pretty and empty and we put it on or take it off like a name tag.   

But the first century knew the cross for what it was: an image of death, a symbol of execution. The Jewish historian Josephus who lived in that time tells of thousands of crucifixions in the area of Jerusalem. Two thousand were crucified by the general Varius about the time of Jesus’ birth and five hundred a day for weeks were crucified by Titus in 70 AD during the Jewish war. In June 1968, the skeleton of a crucified man from the period was found in northeastern Jerusalem. He had died with his arms tied to a crossbar, with a foot nailed on either side of the upright, with legs unbroken and he was found with an iron nail still impaled in his right heel. Death for a crucified person does not come from the trauma of the nails; it comes from asphyxiation. The unsupported position of the body strains the diaphragm and eventually the person is unable to breathe. It is a long, painful death designed to terrify all who see it. The public nature of crucifixion was its essence. Crosses were guarded by the Romans to make sure that the victim was not rescued by friends or family. For a Jew, death on a cross carried an additional stigma. Deuteronomy provided that a man who was hung on a tree was cursed.  So a crucified Jew was not only dead but cast out as well from the covenant of Abraham. It was a spiritual death as well as a physical death.

This is the meaning we must extract from the cross. The cross is about death and degradation. It is the stripping away of dignity, it is the denial of humanness as well as the extinguishing of life. This is the cross; this is what it means. This is why Peter and the others reacted so strongly when Jesus said he was going to a cross; they were scared to death. No one had to tell anyone in the first century about the meaning of the cross. Crucifixions were common; all they had to do was walk out in a public place to see them, to hear the gasps of the victims and feel an involuntary prayer forming: “Thank God it’s not me”!

The cross is terrifying. So terrifying that other generations couldn’t stand to think about it. In the centuries after Jesus, crosses became more and more elaborate and more and more beautiful. The high art of the Middle Ages found its expression in the production of crucifixes and the working and reworking of the cross in gold and silver and with inlaid jewels. By the 1600s when a longing to return to the deeper, simpler, purer meaning of Christian faith swept England and our fathers and mothers in the faith, the early Reformed Christians, rode to war against the Church of England, they made a thorough going attempt to destroy these pretty crosses. All over England they melted them down, broke them apart, and closed the chapels which had housed them. No pretty gold or silver or brass cross ever adorned a Reformed communion table. Today we are reluctant to speak of this period; we don’t like to remember there were religious wars or that people died to free themselves from the dead hands of kings and popes and bishops. But we shouldn’t forget it; we should remember what they did and celebrate it. Every cross they destroyed, every pretty, jeweled, precious cross shaped artifact they destroyed was one step closer to recovering the bright hard light of the cross experience.

For the cross is not an object but an experience. The cross you wear is not the true cross: the cross on the table here is not the true cross. The true cross is our fear; the true cross is our excuse. The cross is what holds us back from God, the ultimate barrier to living as a covenant partner in the kingdom of God. Jesus and his first followers certainly knew this even if we do not. To them crosses weren’t beautiful; they were frightening. The call to carry a cross was a call to faith in the midst of fear, a call to bring even fear to God faithfully. The text of Jesus’ first prediction of his death contains this experience. Peter is basking in getting the right answer when Jesus speaks of the cross and he tries to argue with Jesus. Peter is scared! But Jesus tells him to get behind him, that is, not to be a barrier. The call to the kingdom of God is not all comfort; it is a call to face the threat of death. It is the call to a faith in life and the life giving power of God so complete that death—and the cross—lose their power.

For the cross is life and death. Jesus knows this: Jesus speaks of it. He says, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” There is the choice: to hang on to your own life with your own two hands as hard and tight as you can, grasping and scratching with all your might what you will lose in the end—or to let go and believe you can live in the hands of God. To come to the cross, to the real cross, is to to face our own death, our own suffering, our own fear and embrace them; to believe that even there, God is present, to believe it even when there is no feeling of presence. 

The cross was not beautiful to Jesus or his followers. It was not a symbol of life, it was a concrete reminder of death. But it reminded them as well that even there, on a cross, on that symbol of the greatest, most violent, ultimate worldly power of their time, God was alive: God was present. The cross was not powerful because of its beauty; it became beautiful because they remembered the power of God had overcome it. There, faithful even to death, Jesus embraced God. To follow Jesus is to let go of the charm bracelet cross, the ear ring cross, the pectoral cross, the brass table cross and pick up a real one. It is to frankly and faithfully face fear and failure, accept what you cannot change not in despair but in faith that God can work even there. It is to accept your death but even more to offer your life to the transforming energy of God’s love. 

This is the true cross. It exists in only one place: the hearts of faithful Christians. We see its shadow from time to time. I see it in hospital rooms the night before an operation. I see it in the lives of people living their faith. The true cross is not pretty and does not hang on ears or walls; it does not sit on shelves or tables; it burns in the hearts of men and women who are being transformed because they are faithfully seeking to live the gospel. It is not the triumphant signal of victory; it is the last exit before the Kingdom. And when we have passed it, tthen we know that we are home with God where we belong, for as Paul said, if we have died with Christ, we shall certainly live with him. 

Amen