Anastasis

Anastasis

April 5, 2026 | Easter Sunday

Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf, Acting Lead & Intentional Interim Minister

Readings: II Corinthians 4:7-12 and Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”

Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.

CENTRAL FOCUS:

That Easter is a resurrection for us all together over the powers of death so that we can live a countercultural way of love, personally and collectively.

7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
8 We are afflicted in every way but not crushed,
perplexed but not driven to despair,
 9 persecuted but not forsaken,
struck down but not destroyed,
10 always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
11 For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us but life in you.        

These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.

I have good news for us this morning, friends:
Christ has risen!

[The church answers: “Christ is risen, indeed!”]

This is good news because we live in a world where the expectation is so often that the stone will not roll away, that the darkness will overcome the Light, that Caesar and death have the final word.

Indeed, we live in a human world where there is crucifixion, where people seem to believe that power over others and the earth is what will save us, that bombing our enemies into the stone age will save us.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, said in January: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

Apparently, Mr. Miller is unfamiliar with the Good News of God that says those who govern by force are not the ultimate power!

Apparently, Mr. Miller is unfamiliar with the power of God that rolled away the stone and emptied the tomb!

Apparently, Mr. Miller is unfamiliar with the power of Love that will not stay down and will not stay dead!

This is not partisan political talk. This is the experience of resurrection faith and the proclamation of an Easter people!

Over the years, I have come to know that the true depth and power of the Mystery of Easter cannot be engaged without engaging crucifixion. And when we engage crucifixion in our personal lives through death, disease, despair, and depression, through broken hearts and broken relationships and broken dreams…

….or when we experience the labor pains of history when fearful shadow in the national soul leads to the invasion of our Twin Cities by those unconcerned with citizens’ rights, human dignity, or due process;

….or when our collective contraction leads to the rise of despots and demagogues, and to an increase in military spending and in tax breaks for the wealthy while we decrease social safety net funding;

…or when our social and economic anxieties lead to the decline of social cohesion and social equity, and to the lack of respect for our earth siblings in life,

…then we, too, are in crucifixion and its suffering and death.

Then, we, too, are subject to the force of the empire out there and the empire we have internalized. We, too, then will lie like Jesus in the tomb prostrate and wounded, worn down or shocked into lifelessness … or perhaps we are the ones left with only the option of gathering spices and ointments to tend to and cope with the status quo of despair and death.

There is a force that wants the descent of our Good Friday suffering to be final. There is something within and without that goes by the names of Caesar or King Herod or Pharoah or inquisitor that wants to place a period on this story, that wants our capitulation and dead silence.

And, yet, the witness of faith is that the silence of Holy Saturday is not the dead silence of a tomb, but the Divine darkness of the womb. Holy Saturday is a pregnant pause because the eternal God of the Comma has a way of putting a comma where the death-dealing culture of scarcity and fear, of judgment and violence, of projection and punishment wants to place a period.

Where the stone period of limiting inner belief and cultural norm says that nothing can be done,

that’s just how life is, that’s what we have to do for security, and where the tomb of culture and consciousness is the status quo of might-makes-right, self-interest is king, and profit over people, that’s where the GodMystery places the comma of the empty tomb and the Risen Christ appears to call us to rise up to a new life, a new way.

Anastasis (uh-NAH-stah-siss). Do you know the word?

It’s Greek. It means ‘uprising.’

Written in Greek, on the walls of many ancient churches, above murals depicting the resurrection story of Christ, is the word anastasis, uprising. These images show Christ breaking down the doors of the land of the dead, standing atop and subduing Hades, and grasping the wrist of Adam and Eve and leading other saints in a collective uprising, a mass jailbreak triumph over death. In his book Resurrecting Easter, John Dominic Crossan documents these images and what we in the West, Protestant and Roman Catholic, have lost; the sense that the Resurrection is a universal resurrection for all humanity and all Creation.

Resurrection as anastasis is a vision of triumph, recognized in the mythic language of its time, as a Christ-led countercultural way of life and its power to overcome ‘the soul and body death’ way of being of the Roman empire. In the West, we too often limit the Resurrection story to an individual story of Jesus and maybe as a story of individual hope, while in the Eastern side of Christianity, the Resurrection was an anastasis, an uprising, a universal uprising, not against mortality, but against the imperial and cultural powers of Death, the power of Caesar, of Pharoah, of all those internal siren voices and external fear-filled forces that claim that life and peace are served by a law and order of violence, of domination, of intimidation, of punishment, of separation from each other and from Creation.

We have forgotten that Resurrection is about rising up, together.

My friends, we have witnessed a new expression of that ancient uprising. The neighboring that happened here in Minnesota when King Herod came to town this winter was an uprising, a resurrection moment where the people rose up together like the hopeful energy of springtime, blossoming into new life. Let us continue in that resilient way, in that resurrection Spirit of loving the neighbor.

The Apostle Paul expressed this experience of resilient Resurrection power speaking to the church at Corinth …

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

The late great Elder and poet laureate Maya Angelou expressed this resilient uprising power of Resurrection in her poem “Still, I Rise”:

Out of the huts of history’s shame, I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain, I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear, I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise, I rise, I rise.

For the many saints of history and of the present, the resilient Resurrection power of the God of the Comma has and is rolling away the status quo stone of the powers of death and calling forth an Easter uprising.

Will we join in?

Will we let the Easter story live in us now so that we are an Easter people?

My friends, the Good News of Easter is an uprising, a power of resilience in the face of Pharoah and Caesar and all forms of soul stealing life. Easter is a victory over that which presses life down.

But let’s be clear that the victory of faith that we proclaim and seek to embody is not like that of Caesar— zero-sum game where someone else must lose for a victory to happen. Our victory is not over other humans, but over powers and principalities. It is the ascendancy of love over fear; within us, among us, and beyond us.

In the words of author and pastor Bret Myers …

Remember that resurrection is more than mere resuscitation!
It is life transformed!
It is faith in possibilities, when others are convinced of inevitability.
It is the courage to love others, when they don’t love you in return…
to show compassion, when others are heaping judgment…
to live by peace, when others are being violent…
to work for justice, when others are working for wealth…
to respond with gentleness, when others are reacting with rage…
and to trust that life, well-lived, even if short-lived,
is preferable to longevity without virtue.
Don’t remain caterpillars when you can become butterflies!
Live beautifully! Birth goodness in all you think, say, and do!
For you are called to life abundant!
God’s blessings be with you.

No matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey, there is an uprising force, a Resurrection power available that takes us through the death of crucifixion and the grieving to the abundant life of Resurrection where we know a resilience of life, a joy of living that seeks healing and justice for all, where we dance with the Lord of Life.

This Easter the eternal invitation of faith remains: to rise up together!

Christ is Risen!

And let the people say…. AMEN!