A father and his college-aged son sit in the driveway of their suburban home, the father relaying to his son the story of how he received his name. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Ashoke Ganguli finally reveals to his son why he doesn’t have a Bengali or American sounding name but of all things, a namesake derived from the famous Russian writer: Gogol Ganguli. It’s a story that Gogol has never heard, a story that his father has kept from him until this moment: three decades earlier, while reading the short stories of Nikolai Gogol, the train that he was riding in derailed, killing almost everyone on board and severely injuring young Ashoke. Gogol’s eyes fill with tears, as he takes in this horrible story of death and destruction, and asks his father, “Is that what you think of when you think of me? Do I remind you of that night?” “’Not at all,’ his father replies tenderly, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now,” Lahiri writes. “‘You remind me of everything that followed.’”
After the bells have stopped clanging to proclaim the arrival of Easter, after the echoes of “Alleluia” have died down, after we look ourselves into that empty tomb that is our sign that Christ is once again loose in the world, we might if only for a moment remind ourselves of where we’ve come from, the journey that we’ve taken. The Lenten season began with these words, as ashes were smudged on our foreheads: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or as Lily Tomlin puts it, “We’re all in this together. And none of us is getting out of it alive.” To remember intentionally our mortality every year is not because the Church is principally a Debbie Downer of an organization, but rather a call, a reminder, that our time on this earth is brief, that to live fully is to live into our truest selves while breath is still in us. Our rector invited us throughout Lent to enter a journey in which we might deliberately discern how we might rediscover our true selves as beloved children of God, of finding our way home to God. We have heard stories about being reminded what that journey home looks like: in a distant land, a son remembers his father and returns, and a father embraces him as a dead person come alive again; a prophet goes into the wilderness to be tested and reminded what really matters in life; a God remembers God’s people crying for freedom from exploitation and servitude.
And this evening, as we listened and sang about God’s saving deeds in history, the stories that we turn to are stories of God relentlessly remembering us, especially in those moments when we feel utterly forgotten: God remembering God’s creation as good out of the deep chaos, God leading God’s people out of Egypt; God remembering the bones of Israel, even in the midst of this scene of genocide, so that new life might emerge. In our gospel lesson, the messengers who deliver the news of the risen Christ to the women – and there’s another sermon to preach, but of course it is the women who are the first to experience Easter, and the first to proclaim it – these messengers who ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” answer their own question by commanding the women, “Remember.” And sure enough, the women do remember, and Easter happens for them.
Remembrance is part of God’s saving acts in human history. Remembrance is how Easter happened and how Easter happens. Easter is not about setting Lent aside, or about enduring Good Friday just long enough so that we can get to this moment and say to ourselves, “Whew. Glad that’s over.” Easter isn’t a celebration of life without death. Easter is a celebration of life after death, of life amidst death. Easter isn’t about forgetting the intentional and hard journey we’ve taken. Rather, Easter is a culmination of Lent, of the Passion, of this journey though Gethsemane, Golgotha and finally to this place, where we, like the women, are given the imperative to remember, because that’s how God brings new life into the world, even worlds that die: even when all seems lost, even as all is lost, God remembers. And this divine remembering is more than memorial, the kind where we place headstones. No, God’s remembering is so powerful than our chief symbol of this kind of remembrance is the empty tomb: God’s remembrance bursts from the tomb, and from this a community is reborn. God’s remembrance is God’s way of bringing new life to you and me, God remembering the essence of our true selves and therefore an invitation to live into this true self.
This then is what we mean when we say that we are an Easter people: we are a community that remembers as God remembers. We are not a rapture people but a resurrection people. We are not a community that forgets pain and suffering and death, pretend that these stark realities don’t exist. We remember it all, we embrace each other in our mutual pains and sorrows, we look into the darkness of the tomb, and in remembering as God remembers, we become that spark of light in the dark tomb. The light shines and burns a bit brighter and then brighter still and we realize that the tomb is empty. When we remember as God remembers, we bring resurrection to every person, every moment, every place that needs resurrection, an Easter spark in our Good Friday world. While we wait until this night to say alleluia, we bring Easter with us anytime we stand with those who are forgotten, left for dead. While tonight is the night we say the Lord is risen indeed, we bring Christ to life anytime we feed, clothe, heal, comfort the least of these, for in doing so we care for Christ. While tonight we shout with joy and ring bells for the Passover of our Lord, we experience God’s liberation for ourselves and other every time we remember the true self of every human being and every creature of God, as God’s beloved, whom God regards as beautiful and good, even and especially after the world has drilled into them that they are unlovable. My sisters and brothers, tonight we celebrate Easter, but as we leave here may we be an Easter people to a Good Friday world, so that when those whom we encounter ask “Do I remind you of that night?” we can say to them as God does to God’s beloved creation, “Not at all. You remind me of everything that followed.”
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