Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed. Powerful words we say to one another on Easter morning. But only powerful because we know the story behind it – a story that gives meaning to everything.
The particular story of this day is the one about the women who came to the tomb early. They came to tend the body of their beloved, but it was gone. The tomb was empty. Angels appeared and said to the women, “He is risen; you will see him again in Galilee, the place where it all began.”
It goes back to Galilee, where his ministry began. But there is much more to it than that, isn’t there? It goes back to Bethlehem, where he was born – this child called Immanuel, God with us. Because God so loved the world. It goes back to Bethlehem.
But it goes back much further, doesn’t it? It’s a story that actually goes back thousands of years and encompasses everything we know. It’s a story about God who created this amazing world and just loves it – and all of us in it. It’s a story that was written thousands of years ago and that is still being written today in so many ways.
And so I can think of no better way to talk about Easter, what it means to us, than to tell you a story. In the middle of an epically long book, The Deluge, by Stephen Markley, there is a story about Tony.
Tony is a scientist. Who, unfortunately, really has no friends. He is not good with people, too gruff and too blunt. He is a prickly man – with reason. Tony’s wife died years ago after a very brief battle with cancer. She left him alone with two young daughters to raise. Even decades later, he wears his bitterness like a shield.
Tony is also bitter about his life’s work. He has devoted himself completely to convincing people that they need to respond to the climate catastrophe he sees coming. But he is unable to convince anyone, and his urgency pushes people away.
As a result, Tony’s relationships are few. Aside from his two daughters, there is his brother-in-law, whom he just tolerates. Corey and Tony have absolutely nothing in common. Their lives, their values, their politics, are polar opposites. Tony is all about saving the world and Corey is all about making money – lots of it.
One day Tony gets a call from his older daughter Holly, who is worried about her sister, Catherine. Catherine lives all the way across the country, in Los Angeles. There are wildfires raging. These fires have, of course, become a normal feature of the weather in California, and now they are encroaching on the city. Several fires from different directions coming together – they are uncontrollable. Holly is worried because she can’t get in touch with Catherine.
Tony can’t reach her either. As they watch the news coming out of California, frightened and helpless. They know Catherine is in her apartment, or at least her phone is, because the sisters have location sharing with each other. Holly and Tony, along with the rest of the nation, are watching this disaster grow bigger by the hour.
People are calling this one El Demonio, because when they looked up at the smoke clouds they thought they could see a demonic face in it. The city of Los Angeles is about to go up in flames. The call goes out for the whole city to be evacuated. And Catherine is still not answering her phone.
Tony calls a professional acquaintance, whom he thinks might have some inside information that would be helpful. It’s hard to imagine what he might be able to tell Tony that would help, but Tony is desperate. He gets Ash on the phone to ask him what he knows about the fires. Ash sends him some technical reports.
Ash is an interesting character. He is a brilliant man with little to no ability to engage with others on an emotional level. He is pretty far on the autism spectrum, and his human-to-human interactions are usually very awkward. So try to imagine it: you have these two guys on the phone together, neither one of which has great interpersonal skills. Ash is talking about technical matters related to the fires, which are endlessly interesting to him. Tony tries to listen while his heart is practically bursting out of his chest because he is so afraid for Catherine. Tony finally interrupts Ash. “My daughter is there,” he tells him, “and I can’t reach her.”
The tone of the conversation shifts then. Ash understands now that this not a purely intellectual interest for Tony. Ash may not experience things the same ways most people do, but he is an astute observer of life, studying humans as if they were an alien species. On an intellectual level, he understands – sort of. But he hardly knows what to say. Tony hangs up on Ash and goes back to pacing in front of the TV news.
Pretty soon his phone rings again. It’s Ash. He has reached out to some official connections he has through his work and managed to get Tony on a FEMA plane to California. He will arrange for a car to meet him, so he can drive to Holly’s apartment. Ash will get him information about the emergency routes into the city, because all the highways are being used for outbound traffic as millions of people evacuate.
In that moment, Tony breathes in a sense of hope, of possibility, for the first time since this all started. He says to Ash, “I’ll never forget this.” Ash says to him, “I was thinking of how my sister and her husband would behave if it were their child.”
Tony flew out of his house to the airport. Six hours later he was in L.A. He jumped in the car that Ash managed to get for him. He grabbed the satellite navigation device while listening to someone call him a crazy son of a gun who wants to drive into LA in the middle of the book of Revelation. And he drove off toward the fire.
It was like driving through Armageddon. The flames, the smoke, the heat, helicopters flying low, ashes falling like snow. As he was getting close to Catherine’s neighborhood, a backyard propane tank exploded, with pieces hitting his car causing him to crash into a tree. The car was wrecked, Tony definitely had a concussion. He got out and started walking, choking on the smoke, moving as fast as he could.
He reached her apartment, pounded on the door – no answer. Shouted her name, “Catherine, Catherine!” He tried to break down the door with his body. He managed to get ahold of a crowbar and wrench it open. He found Catherine passed out in her room, still breathing.
He lifted her up and out of the apartment. But when he got outside and looked around he realized there was no way they could outrun the fire. Without a car, it was hopeless. So Tony found a school, a large brick building. This is where they would try to ride it out, it was their only hope. He hit the SOS button on his satellite navigator; he sent a text to Holly, in case by some miracle it might get through to her, and they went down to the basement, shutting the door behind them.
After a while Tony could see, and taste, the smoke that was seeping under the door. There was nothing more that he could do. Tony sat on the basement floor with his daughter’s head on his lap. She opened her eyes and said to him, “I’m sorry.” He said, “For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
Then they were choking and gasping for air.
Suddenly Tony heard a siren. Was it a hallucination? It grew louder, flashing lights appeared out the window. It was a fire truck. Firefighters leaped out with oxygen tanks and axes. The basement door burst open and three women in orange jumpsuits rushed down the steps.
As they left the building together and headed toward the truck, Tony saw a man standing there. It was his brother-in-law, Corey.
Corey had been trying to call Tony, worried about Catherine. Eventually, he reached Holly, who filled him in on the whole crisis unfolding. Corey chartered a jet from Florida to California. He bribed his way onto a rescue helicopter. He stayed in touch with Holly, who got the text Tony sent about being at the school, so Corey knew where he needed to go.
He started moving from one group of firefighters to another trying to get someone to go out and find his family. There was a whole army of first responders – professional and volunteers – people from all over the country who had answered the call for help. But everyone he approached told Corey to forget about it. That neighborhood was gone.
Corey didn’t give up, though. He found the women in the orange jumpsuits. They were inmates at a women’s correctional facility who fought wildfires for $7 a day. They didn’t want to do it either, but Corey was an able and motivated negotiator. He vowed to spend the next decade of his life doing whatever he could to get their sentences commuted, get them free, find them jobs. Whatever they needed, he said, because, “this is my family.”
This, my friends, all of this, is love.
My title today is “Love Is Our Religion,” taken from a song by Ziggy Marley called, “Love Is My Religion,” and its essential message is that books, belief, doctrine, and dogma are unnecessary because all you need is love, as the Beatles would say.
And while we are not abandoning the book, the belief, the doctrine, we want to make sure that we let none of it obscure the essential thing, and that is love. Love is the power that drives it all.
Love is the power that birthed Jesus, God in the flesh, God with us. Love is the power that carried him through his ministry, his teaching and healing. Love is the power that took him to the cross. Love is the power that ultimately conquered death. Love is all you need.
Love is the power that drew the women back to the tomb on Sunday morning, at risk to themselves. Love is the power that compelled his followers to carry the story of Jesus far and wide, confronting mortal danger, taking on great risk because love is stronger than fear; love is stronger than rage; love is stronger than death.
There is another song I have been thinking about this week: The Things We Do for Love. Tony was willing to die for his daughter. Love empowered him to do things he never before imagined. He would do whatever it took, even if that was dying. And, to his enormous surprise, Corey was willing to give everything, do anything, for love of his niece and his brother-in-law. Even Ash, ever the astute observer of humans, understood the power of love.
Love is the greatest power, stronger than guns, bombs, or missiles. Love is strong enough to carry us through any hardship. Love is the way Jesus showed us, and the way he still continues to lead us.
Love is our religion. The power of love can be used to do great things in the world, if we only let it.
You know the story, a story that is still being written – by our lives – here and everywhere in the world. Let this be our story. May our hearts be open to love and let it do amazing things through us.
