The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church, Fairfax, Virginia, on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1980. The sermon is entitled, A Little Easter Magic. 

There's a certain advertisement that appears every now and then on the television. It features Angie Dickinson. Perhaps you've seen it.

Begins with Angie saying, you want to see a little Hollywood magic? And there she is, seated. She says, Angie Dickinson on a studio soundstage.

And she quite obviously is, seated in an empty studio in front of a blank wall. There are some microphones and some spotlights hanging down from the rafters, but they're not turned on. Her voice sort of echoes in the emptiness.

you want to see a little Hollywood magic? and she snaps her fingers and suddenly the whole scene is changed what appeared to be an empty sound stage turns out to be a penthouse apartment and what looked like a blank wall behind her is a huge picture window looking out on one of our glorious cities by night Chicago or San Francisco, New York, whatever it is blazing with light and beauty. What appeared to be a single chair in the middle of an empty stage turns out to be one member of an ensemble ready for a party.

And you can almost hear voices and laughter and the clinking of glasses and somebody playing a piano just off stage. Things are not necessarily the way they look at first. And then she goes on to advertise toothpaste.

But just capture that picture for a moment. What appeared to be cold and dark and barren and lonely and hollow, maybe even a little frightening, in the blink of an eye, turns out instead to be filled with joy and laughter and light and sparkle and beauty and other people enjoying themselves. It was a very black afternoon, wasn't it?

A young rabbi was nailed to a cross of crucifixion and his life blood ebbed out of his body. His back had been lacerated with a cat of nine tails. He had a crown of thorns planted on his forehead.

His beard, we're told in one of the Psalms, prophetically was ripped out of his face. And he finally succumbed. Death by crucifixion is really death by suffocation.

As your muscles can no longer support you and you collapse and you can't get another breath. They jabbed a spear into his side and blood and water, actually separated lymph, flowed out. He was truly dead.

They took him down and they began the process of embalming. Night was drawing near and it was the Sabbath. And they didn't have time to finish it.

But they at least began. They wrapped him in a shroud and packed in spices and ointments around his body. Laid it in a cold little room.

Carved out of a hillside. Actually a cave. Then they sealed it tight.

They rolled a massive boulder across the doorway. It was so large, we're told that three women felt they couldn't move it by themselves. And if that wasn't enough, they sealed it.

They posted a guard. That's the end of him. Things are not necessarily the way they look.

That cold, dark, lonely, empty, frightening, hollow place of death. was a doorway into what the church has always called the gates of larger life. C.S. Lewis spun out a series of children's stories called The Chronicles of Narnia in which he pictures a fairy tale world parallel to our own with witches and giants and marvelous talking animals presided over by a lovely golden lion whose name is Aslan and he's quite clearly a picture of Christ.

Four very ordinary English school children blunder their way into Aslan's country and we follow their adventures through seven books. The last of them is called The Last Battle. And in it the children and now a dwindling company of animals and soldiers still loyal to Aslan are surrounded by the hostile forces of the arch enemy Tash.

And the children are being driven relentlessly toward a little stable in which the monstrous dragon Tash himself awaits to destroy any who would cross the threshold. And one by one, with their comrades dropping on either side, the children are forced to that fearful doorway, and finally, across it, and to their astonishment, instead of a place of tearing and blood and gore and horror, pain and death, darkness and fearfulness, instead of that, they find themselves in a land of light and beauty, rolling hillsides carpeted with wildflowers. The sound of battle is suddenly replaced with the sound of birds singing.

And it's springtime. And instead of facing this awful monster, Tash, they find themselves greeted by their hero, Aslan. It takes them quite a while to realize what has happened.

They have, in fact, faced Tash, and he's torn them limb from limb, and they've been destroyed. Only they found that death itself was a doorway into larger life. Things are not necessarily what they appear to be at first.

In the middle of this scene, there's the stable door through which they pass. It's just standing there, right in the middle of the hillside. You can walk all the way around it, and there's this strange stable door.

Scene is the same on both sides. Beautiful countryside, but you can come back to the stable door, and you can look through the cracks in the door, and you can see the scene that they left behind. Still night, still cold, still ugly, still fighting, still clamor, still blood.

And one of the children says, it seems then that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places. Yes, says another, and its inside is bigger than its outside. And a third child adds, in our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.

I suspect there are very few of us who haven't had friends, neighbors perhaps members of our family fight that last battle with the dread dragon who would destroy one of the members of our family fought that battle just this last month as a pastor who has stood by the bedside of scores of people fighting that last battle I can tell you that some of the moments of greatest human nobility emerge as people face up to death the courage, the honesty, the ability to bear suffering if need be the remarkable way that priorities suddenly snap into focus and relationships get sorted out. Sometimes quite awesome. In spite of which, in spite of which, death remains an abomination.

Death is a blot on the face of the creation. Death is a horror. It is not part of God's original purpose.

It's a perversion of His will. Scripture calls it the last enemy to be destroyed. I want us to see that what Jesus Christ did on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter morning, was to join battle with that last enemy, that dragon, that destroyer.

St. Paul wrote to the Romans, Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, And so death spread to all men because all men sinned. Until one man came onto the world scene who did not sin. Who did not owe death one iota.

It had no power over him. But he willingly embraced it to himself. For me.

And for you. I want you to follow something with me John writes at the very beginning of his gospel in him was life he didn't just have life life itself resides in Christ he's the source of life he is life in him was life and the life was the light of men And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not been able to put it out. Now think with me for a moment.

What is darkness? Darkness is just the absence of light. Darkness is a nothing.

A nothing has no power over a something. Do you understand what I'm saying? You can take all the darkness of the whole universe and by itself it can't snuff out one single candlelight.

A nothing has no power over a something. Take one little candle into the darkness and the darkness disappears. Take heat into the cold.

and the cold disappears because cold is just the absence of heat it's a nothing and a nothing has no power over a something the tiniest amount of heat will dispel all the cold it won't be cold anymore you can put sound into silence all the silence of the whole universe all the silence of hell and one sound will destroy the silence because silence is just the absence of sound it's a nothing and a nothing has no power over a something do you follow me? now watch this you put life real life thing, life eternal, life abundant, life into death, and you destroy it, because death is just the absence of life. It's a nothing, and a nothing has no power over a something.

Jesus Christ is life, and he came to destroy death, and the only way you could destroy death is by putting life into it. Do you see that? The only way you can destroy a nothing is to put a something into it.

Jesus Christ went into death. And you see what that looks like. It looks like death has triumphed.

The Son of God came and was defeated, was destroyed. they laid him in the dust of death rolled the stone in front of the grave that's the end of him things are not necessarily the way they look Jesus Christ entered death and filled it with himself and destroyed it he beat it at its own game and on Easter morning he burst out of that tomb and he confronted first the guards and they ran away scared. And then Mary.

Mary the harlot. And then Peter, who denied him. Cleopas and his friend.

And then the little band, scared, gathered in the upper room. It is I. I've come back. Look.

look at my hands, look at my side it is I death couldn't hold me the silence couldn't silence me the cold couldn't paralyze me the darkness couldn't snuff me out I'm alive and that's the gospel truth he is risen hallelujah