Daring to Say Alleluia
Sermon for Easter Sunday
April 9, 2023
Matthew 28: 1-10
Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
These are the words of the Easter acclamation, the proclamation of the Resurrection that we say today and every time we will gather to worship together in this Easter season. These same words—or at least similar ones—were also proclaimed in the midst of this community 81 years ago today on Easter of 1942, just as they had been every Easter since St. Peter’s founding in 1908. For St. Peter’s, though, Easter of 1942 was not the same as other Easters.
Just a couple months before, on February 19th, President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066, calling for the creation of “military zones” where people seen as a threat to national security would be “relocated.” Although some Italian and German Americans were detained, the order mainly targeted Japanese Americans. In the weeks and months that followed February 19th, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—most of them American citizens—were given so-called “evacuation” orders. This included the 47 families that made up St. Peter’s.
St. Peter’s held its last service on April 26th, 1942, just two weeks after Easter Sunday, before closing its doors for the next three years. In between February 19th, when the order was signed, and the date of the last service in April, the families who made up the congregation had their lives upended, squeezing their belongings into the two suitcases that each person was allowed to bring with them to camp. The rest of their belongings they stored in the Sunday school classrooms here at church—the space that is now our gymnasium. Each family was given six cubic feet to consolidate their whole lives.
I have often wondered what it must have been like at St. Peter’s on that Easter Sunday in 1942. What was it like to celebrate Easter on the brink of exile? What was it like to proclaim the Resurrection when everything they had—their homes, their neighborhoods, their livelihoods—was about to be pulled out from under them? What was it like to profess their faith that Christ was risen, breaking death’s dominion over the whole creation, when everything about their future was uncertain? What was it like to say Alleluia during such a time as that?
I wish I could say we had a copy of the sermon preached at St. Peter’s that Sunday, but we don’t. We do know a few details about the day, though: That there were cherry blossoms around the altar; that the Bishop, Bishop Huston was present to confirm people before they went to camp; that the congregation entrusted Mrs. Huston with the two rubber plants they had cared for since their early days; and that there was a lot of food, including a full turkey dinner for a hundred people during coffee hour after church. Some things about St. Peter’s never change!
Although we may never know exactly what was said at St. Peter’s that Sunday, a colleague of mine who served as rector of one our sister historically-Japanese congregations in the Episcopal Church shared with me a collection of sermons preached at other Japanese churches on the Easter Sunday before the evacuation. To say the least, it was humbling to read how pastors grappled with what was about to take place in light of the Easter story. Included in this collection is a sermon by the Reverend John Yamazaki, the priest of the Japanese Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, what is now called St. Mary’s in Koreatown. Speaking to the people there on Easter Sunday 1942, Father Yamazaki offered these words:
…It is unbearably sad to think of our peculiar destiny that, in a few days, we all have to leave our dear homes and even this our beloved Church in which we have worshipped God… We cannot help but feel that somehow an abrupt end has come to our good life, and that we are defeated in our good efforts. However, strange enough, when I hear you sing the Easter song of triumph, a strong power which can never be undone arises in my spirit, and the dismayed feelings of fear and defeat disappear and I feel hope for the future and am unfailingly reassured with great strength and courage. Is it not because we believe in Jesus Christ and His resurrection? Is it not because what St. Paul calls ‘the power of His resurrection’ is sustaining us? Let us all rejoice in the Lord who is risen today.
It is hard to imagine preaching these words to a community that was about to be scattered—a community whose future was totally uncertain, a community that seemed to have every reason in the world for doubting the possibility of new life—even for doubting the providence and presence of God.
This is also the place where the disciples of Jesus found themselves on the very first Easter. As those of us who have gathered here for the services of Holy Week and the Triduum have experienced for ourselves, those first followers of Jesus faced a crisis. Jesus, the One in whom they had placed their hope, had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by crucifixion by the state—a shameful death, one usually reserved for criminals and convicts. They had thought they had a future with Jesus, but all of a sudden, that future disappeared. They had felt at home in his presence. But now, it felt like they didn’t have a home. Most of them scattered.
I recently reread a wonderful book by the Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe called What’s the Point of Being a Christian? One of the most powerful things Radcliffe says in it is that for us, as Christians, this story—the story we retell every Holy Week—is our foundational story. It’s the story, he writes, “in which we find the meaning of our lives,” and yet, at the same time, “it is a story which tells of the moment when there was no story to tell, when the future disappeared.”
Of course, we know how the story of Holy Week ends. But those first followers of Jesus didn’t. We know now that Easter is about joy, the joy of life triumphing over death. But all Jesus’ disciples knew was that he had been killed. That he was dead. And even that their own lives might be at risk because of their association with him.
All of which is why it took genuine courage for Mary Magdalene to show up to the tomb in this morning’s Easter Gospel story from John’s Gospel. Just as she had been courageous enough to remain with him by the cross, now, in her grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty, she is courageous enough to show up to the place where he is buried. Perhaps she comes expecting to grieve near the dead body of her teacher and friend. Perhaps she comes expecting to be reminded that her future had died and been buried with him. Perhaps she comes because she doesn’t know what else to do.
But when she arrives at the tomb, her expectations are broken open. At first, even though she sees the empty tomb, her old expectations keep her from realizing what has happened. Resurrection sounds nice, but she wants to know who’s taken the body of her Lord. Her expectations that he must be dead and gone for good blind her to his presence. When she does realize it’s him and not the gardener, she reaches out to touch him. She wants to be with him—close to him. But things are different now. And it turns out, she as important job to do, one give to her by Jesus himself—to proclaim that he is risen. "Do not hold on to me,” he says, “because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, `I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
And from the tomb, she runs and proclaims the resurrection. In the midst of her grief, her fear, and her uncertainty, she proclaims it. In the midst of a future she assumed had disappeared, she proclaims it. In the midst of death, she proclaims it. Because the truth is, that’s exactly where the Resurrection must be proclaimed. Easter isn’t just something we celebrate when all is well. Alleluia isn’t just a word we say when life is good, or when our future is certain. It’s a word we say in the midst of death. It’s a word we say when all hell seems to have broken lose. It’s a word we say when the future has seemingly disappeared.
I think it’s fair to say we too are living in the midst of uncertain times. Fearful times. Times when our own world can seem like it’s unraveling. Some days, between the existential threat of climate change, the intensifying gun crisis in our country, the ongoing attack on LGBTQIA+ folks in many state legislatures, especially on trans people, the disintegration of women’s rights and access to health care in many states, our fragile political system, and the scandalous inequality between rich and poor, especially right here in Seattle, it can feel like our future has disappeared. In a world like ours, it’s easy to wonder what the point of the Resurrection story is. And it’s easy to wonder what the point of proclaiming the Resurrection is, too.
And yet maybe, just maybe, it’s for moments like this that we have the Resurrection story. Maybe, it’s in moments like this—moments when it can seem like the future has disappeared—that that good news of the Resurrection must be proclaimed. Maybe it’s in moments like this when it’s most needed.
That is the witness of the Gospel story today, and it’s also the witness of our ancestors in faith here at St. Peter’s. During the war, even when St. Peter’s people were in camp, they continued being the church. Along with other Episcopalians in camp, they came to call themselves the Church of the Apostles. They kept gathering to proclaim the Resurrection in that cold and barren place, Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year, until they could finally return home. In spite of everything that had happened to them—when very little around them looked like Easter, when the future seemed to have disappeared—they still dared to say Alleluia, and to proclaim that Christ is risen. Now may we go and do the same. Amen.
—The Reverend Edmund Harris
*Image is Resurrection, by Ivanka Demchuk