Readings for Easter Sunday (Year C)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Easter Sunday April 17, 2022.
“Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened” Luke 24:12
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning and Happy Easter! What a joy it is to celebrate Easter with all of you three-dimensional human beings, radiating with light on this bright morning, after two years of isolation. It was on March 20th, 2020, that we were all ordered to shelter in place; and I remember that day because it was the day after my father passed away. A couple years before he died, I sat down with him in his room at the Stanford Hospital and asked him to share with me his entire life story, which I recorded on my iPhone. It essentially took all day. And recently, I’ve been listening to the recordings and even transcribing them; and I’m so glad I did because there’s so much information I would not have retained otherwise; and also, I get to hear his voice and I feel like we are still in conversation. I would recommend that you all (if you haven’t already) record the stories of your loved ones and record your stories for your loved ones, especially those stories that might be difficult to remember and recapture after we shuffle off this mortal coil.
This morning, we hear the most amazing story of someone who shuffled off his mortal coil and clothed himself in immortality so that we too may clothe ourselves in immortality. The Easter story according to Luke (which includes Peter’s amazement at the Empty Tomb) reminds me of my father’s conversion to Christianity, which he shared with me in that hospital room. Although my father’s spiritual journey began with a mystical experience on Thurston Avenue Bridge at Cornell University, it wasn’t until many years later that his journey led him to an encounter with the Risen Christ. And what led him to the Risen Christ was the Empty Tomb. Not just the idea of the Empty Tomb, but the actual Empty Tomb in Jerusalem.
My father described his experience of the Empty Tomb[1] when he said, “They let us go in there and I was able to be in there alone for a while. There were two spots for bodies…. One was clearly unused. And the other one was discolored like radiation or something had been dealt to it. And I just felt Jesus’s presence right there.” As I listened again to this description in my recording of my father, I remembered a conversation I recently had with Fr. Francis Tiso, a Roman Catholic priest and scholar who served here in Eureka about 20 years ago and who guest preached for us here right before Lent. I’ve been chewing on his words over these last 40 days. Like my father (who was a scientist, with a PhD in science from Stanford), Fr. Francis Tiso is a scientist who has applied scientific analysis and rigor to modern phenomena that resemble in some ways the Resurrection of Christ, particularly phenomena among Tibetan Buddhist Lamas who attain what is called the “Rainbow Body.” The phrase that stood out to me this time in my father’s description of the Empty Tomb was “radiation or something had been dealt to it.”
In our conversation before Lent, Fr. Tiso explained the apparent biology of the Resurrection in a way that makes me no longer inclined to relegate Christ’s Resurrection into the category of mere metaphor. Tiso described these tiny bits of light called biophotons that are produced in the nucleus of each cell in our body.[2] These biophotons help guide and activate the 100,000 chemical reactions taking place every second in your cell, energizing the production of DNA and proteins. Biophotons are pulsating in your cells right now.[3] There have been experiments that have studied the output of biophotons among people who are engaged in deep, contemplative practice, in heart-centered prayer in which one simply bathes in God’s love and light (like the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing). And the output of biophotons for people in deep prayer was extraordinary! Not just twice as much as the normal output, but hundreds of thousands of times more than the normal output. So, this suggests that when we are engaged in prayer and worship right here (when we are fulfilling our primary mission which is to glorify God), we are actually heightening a biological process that takes place in all of our cells. We are emitting biophotons of light from our bodies.
So, if we flashback to Jesus with this knowledge, we can see that he was able to emit an extraordinary amount of biophotons since he manifested an entire body of light at the Transfiguration. Jesus, who spent days and nights in heart-centered prayer, knew how to “turn on the light bulb” of the body, so to speak. Jesus, who was the divine Word made flesh, knew how to turn on the spiritual and biological light even when his mortal body lay dead in a tomb. And the light apparently exploded from his body with such force that even the stone of the tomb rolled away and the linen cloths in which he was buried were imprinted with his image.[4]
Did that explosion of light leave a mark in the empty tomb that remains visible today, 2,000 years later? Was this what my father saw when he described a spot reserved for a body “discolored like radiation or something had been dealt to it. And [when he] just felt Jesus’s presence right there.” Like Peter, who peered into the empty tomb and saw the linen cloths by themselves, my father was amazed at what had happened.
Now we don’t have to go to the Empty Tomb to be amazed and transformed by the power of the Resurrection. The same divine light which radiated from Christ’s Body is here among us and within us, right now. And we can amplify that light through prayer and worship. We don’t engage in prayer and contemplative practices in order to earn God’s love and light. We pray and we worship in order to open our hearts to more fully receive the Love and Light that God is always pouring out lavishly upon us, the Love and Light that will eventually lift us up into the Risen Life of Christ, the life everlasting. As Paul said, “All will be made alive in Christ.”
So, even if you don’t get around to recording all your family stories on your iPhone (and I still hope you do), we ultimately do not need to worry because as long as we keep telling and believing the amazing story of the Empty Tomb, we can trust that all the human stories that glimmer with light and love will be woven into the great tapestry of God’s everlasting life and love and light, the very same light that pulsates in your cells right now. If the tiny light of normal biophotons can help with the production of DNA, then certainly God’s explosive Light can hold all our stories in its dazzling and death-defying glory. As the psalmist says, “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” We are amazed like Peter and like my father at the empty tomb because “on this day [Easter Day] the LORD has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Amen. Alleluia!
[1] Now historically, the holiest Christian pilgrimage destination is, no doubt, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is where many believe that Christ was crucified, buried, and rose again. And millions of others believe that this other tomb known as the Garden Tomb, which is located less than a mile away outside the walls of Jerusalem (not too far from the Anglican cathedral), is the actual site where Jesus was buried and rose again. And this was where my father felt the presence of the Risen Christ.
[2] Whenever the nucleus sends out mRNA to the mitochondria to the produce protein, there is a pulsation of light energy that comes out of the nucleus that helps guide this process.
[3] The approximately 70 trillion cells in our body are producing biophotons right now. In every cell, 100,000 biochemical reactions take place every second. So, what is fast enough to activate 100,000 reactions in just one single second? Light moving at the speed of light in our biophotons!
[4] “Ta Da” joke?
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 