The Shadow of Easter

The Shadow of Easter
Acts 5:12-32

Colesville Presbyterian Church, Silver Spring, Maryland
April 24, 2022


The second Sunday of Easter is celebrated by many as “Holy Humor Sunday.” It has its roots in 15th-century Bavaria where Christians celebrated Risus Paschalis (“Easter Laugh”). Priests would include jokes in their sermons to make their congregations laugh. This was a way of celebrating the resurrection of Christ, which is understood as God’s ultimate prank on the forces of death and evil. The resurrection is God getting the last laugh, so this is a day to laugh and celebrate the sovereignty of God. So to celebrate God’s guffaw, I offer the following:

     Handling admissions to heaven is boring for Peter. Sometimes, to break up the monotony, he varies the question. On one occasion, he was asking hopeful entrants, “What is Easter?” One person said, “Oh, that’s the day that some fellow discovered America, isn’t it?” “No, you’re wrong,” said Peter, “you’ll have to go below.”
     A woman came along, seeking entry to heaven. “What’s Easter?” asked Peter. She replied, “Oh, that’s the day the big, fat jolly man with a big bag of toys comes around.” “I’m sorry,” said Peter, “that is not correct. I can’t let you in.”
     Then a third person came along. When Peter asked, “What’s Easter?” he said, “Easter? Isn’t that the story about the man who died, was buried, and on the third day came alive, rolled the stone away from his grave?” “Good,” said Peter. And as he was about to unlatch heaven's gate to let the man in, the man continued, “And he saw his shadow and went back inside for six more weeks of winter.”

     The man almost had it, but it was the shadow that got him. Shadows will do that. We talk about villains lurking in the shadows. Or we will say that a person is a shadow of her former self. A television commercial for a drug you have to convince your doctor that you need showed an empty hospital gurney following a man while the voice-over talked about heart disease lurking because of high cholesterol. Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, has a poem which begins, “I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me....” One of the great comic gags of cartoons is when a small mouse steps in front of bright light and casts a shadow many times its original size and the chasing cat halts in its tracks and turns tail thinking that there is a huge beast about to pounce.

     If you are going to have a shadow, there has got to be a source of light. That’s why Dr. Luke tells this story in his saga of the early church. As a medical person he was familiar with observable facts, so the stories he told weren’t fiction. He passed along what he knew to be the truth as he knew it or had received it from reliable sources. 

     Luke writes that people were so taken with the message of the risen Christ which Peter and the apostles proclaimed, that they carried the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on them and cure them as he passed by. The good doctor was talking about something more just a shadow made by the sun. I don’t care how bright it is on a cloudless day, a person’s shadow won’t heal very much when it’s 110 degrees in the shade. There has to be a different light involved.

     You remember how Moses’ face shone whenever he had been in God’s presence? So much so that the people made him wear a veil. And the witnesses to Jesus’ mountaintop transfiguration said that not only his face but also his clothes shone. The gospel writer John talked about the light which came into the world, a light that darkness did not overcome. If that light is not overcome by darkness, then it must cast shadows.

      In the New Testament, the word shadow usually connotes foreboding or death. However, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews noted that the worship in the sanctuary of the Temple was “a sketch and shadow of the heavenly one” (Hebrews 8:5). The Colossian letter writer said that the common rituals of festivals, sabbaths, food and drink “are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:17). The “shadow of what is to come” is what Paul meant when he wrote the Corinthians that at present “we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

      In the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, the word shadow was frequently used as a symbol of protection or refuge.

• In Psalm 57 the psalmist writes: “O God, be merciful to me, for . . . in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge” (Psalm 57:1).
• The prophet Hosea tells Israel God’s promise: “they shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden” (Hosea 14:7).

All of these images – foreboding, prefiguring glimpse, protection and refuge – help to fill out the meaning of the shadow that Peter was casting. The shadow proclaimed the death to the old but empty ways of relating to God and neighbors. When Jesus was crucified darkness fell over the land. That contrasts with the glory – light – of his resurrection. The sketchy glimpse we have in the present is the promise of what is to come, life abundant and glorious in God’s fullest grace. The protective shadow is God’s providential care for all who receive the love and forgiveness offered by Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit.
      The people actively sought out the shadow of Peter so that they could experience the healing that it brought. If Peter’s shadow could do that, why not mine? Or yours? Has your shadow healed anyone lately? I don’t think that mine has. The comment I usually get is, “You’re standing in the light.” You can make your own explanations or excuses, but I suspect that my problem is that a lot of the time I’m not standing in the right light. I’m too often trying to stand behind Jesus. After all he is Lord and Savior. Everything is supposed to be about him, not me. We have all learned Christian humility too well, haven’t we?
      If we are hiding behind the robes of Jesus, it’s not possible to cast any shadows from the light of his presence. I bet the Samaritan on the road to Jericho cast an impressive shadow. The priest and the Levite hid behind their rank and position. The Samaritan basked in the light of a caring God and cast the shadow of that caring over the traveler in need [Luke 10:29-37]. The father whose son squandered his inheritance surely cast a good-sized shadow as he raced along the lane to embrace the returning son [Luke 15:20]. Short Zacchaeus cast a tall shadow when he gave back with interest what he had extorted from taxpayers [Luke 19:8]. And what a shadow Paul must have cast over countless folks as he told about the miracle of God’s love in Christ for all people, even himself who was once the chief persecutor of the faith.

As a child I thought that one of the neatest things in the world was the spotlight that would come to town to mark the opening of a new store or the introduction of the new models at the car dealer. I imagine that they were search lights retired from World War II. The powerful beam would sweep across the night sky. I would hound my father to drive us to find out where the light was coming from.
      A shadow has to have a source of light to cast the shadow. Jesus taught listeners in the Temple, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light of life” [John 8:12]. It was the light of the world which cast Peter’s shadow so that it healed people. You are standing in the light of the world, aren’t you? I can see you, so you’re not transparent. Do you cast shadows over the people around you? They’ve got to see the shadow if they’re going to seek the source of light.
      Peter and the others were bold in their preaching the Good News. That’s what cast the shadow. The good news of salvation in Christ not only came from the apostles’ lips, it radiated from their very being. The light of Christ’s grace in them cast a shadow wherever they went. The more bold their faith, the stronger the shadow. That’s what got them in trouble with the authorities. That’s good trouble as John Lewis liked to call it. As they told the high priest, “We must obey God rather than human authority. . . . We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
      To what does your shadow give witness? Can people who observe you see that you have a power that does not come from the world? As Easter people, people who claim allegiance to the risen Christ, we are called to be the shadows of his light in the world we inhabit. The shadows we make by the light of his grace can feed the hungry, slake the needs of the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, radiate God’s love.
      If you and are Christ’s shadows, are we daring the powers of death, evil, despair, and hopelessness by proclaiming God’s truth? Are the sermons of our lives bold portraits of the Christ we call Savior and Lord? J. Michael Krech in his notes on this passage in the Feasting on the Word commentary says that this reading from Acts is “less about what to preach than how to preach—with boldness, but without wounding anyone in mean-spirited payback; and with relevance, but without betraying confidentiality; with authenticity, but without calling undue attention to oneself.”
      It is the boldness of the gospel which magnifies the shadow that we cast. Be the shadow of Easter as you live your life in the power of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!