“He is risen!”, this Easter, we sing, we squawk. If we were a chicken, we would probably shout, “Ba-Gawk!”

There once was a little chicken named Millie who lived on a small farm out in the country. Millie wasn’t like the other chickens. While her friends spent their days scratching in the dirt, gossiping about whose eggs were the biggest, Millie would wander off and stare up at the sky. “Why are you always looking up, Millie?” the others clucked. “I’m waiting for something amazing to happen,” she replied. The others just laughed. “You’re just a chicken. Amazing things don’t happen to chickens.” But Millie held on to hope.

Then one day, the farmer, placed a wooden sign near the henhouse that read: “Easter Sunrise Service. All Are Welcome!” The farmer must have been an Episcopalian. Millie saw the sign and felt something stir in her little feathery chest. “That’s it!” she thought. “That’s the amazing thing I’ve been waiting for!” So on Easter morning, before the sun had even peeked over the hills, Millie strutted her way to the little outdoor chapel the farmer had set up by the barn. She sat in the front row, flapping her wings in excitement. She was the only chicken there, surrounded by people sipping coffee and trying to stay awake.

When the visiting priest began preaching about the stone rolled away and how Jesus rose from the dead, Millie let out the biggest “BA-GAWK!” anyone had ever heard. The congregation froze. The priest paused.
Millie fluffed her feathers proudly, as if to say, “Finally! I get it!” From that day on, the farmer’s kids called her "Millie the Resurrection Chicken." Every year on Easter Sunday, they let her sit in the front row again. And every year, when the priest proclaimed, “He is risen!” Millie gave her loud, joyful response: “BA-GAWK!”

There should be no surprise to anyone that animals appear in heaven. The prophet Isaiah describes how God will reveal a new heaven and new earth at the coming of the Lord. On this Easter we hear, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent, its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” Surely there will be a chicken. One who likes to talk, and to squawk. One who gets it. One who lets out a “BA-GAWK!” Now, we know how important words are when speaking about the Almighty in church. Crazy words in this church, now, like “Ba-Gawk.” We must ask, “Is that Hebrew, Greek or Latin?” Come to find out... it’s chicken-speak.

Sometimes, we run around like chickens with our heads cut off, don’t we? In doing so, we lose touch with what really matters. We peck at the dirt, gossip about how big our eggs should be, and miss the vitality and meaning of Easter, the gift God has given us through His Son. We stop singing. We stop squawking.
In World War II, the Air Force came up with a way to identify friend from foe in the air. Planes were flying in every direction, and they had to know who to protect and who to shoot down. So, they invented a system using transponders, little machines that would send back a code. If a plane didn’t squawk back with the right signal, it got shot down. That exchange between ground and air was called “squawking.” It reinforced Communication. Connection. Relationship.

Think about that for a second, between Millie the chicken looking up at the sky, hoping for something to come down, and a wartime system for survival… isn’t there a spiritual connection? I think Easter is all about that. It’s why squawking matters. It’s why we need to be listening for the message God is sending us from above and today, that message is simple: He is risen. Christ is alive. But… is He truly alive in you? Or is it just something we say?

Here we are, in what you could call the barnyard of God’s providence, pecking at the ground, having a little holy chat. But at some point, we’ve got to be like the two blessed souls who ran to the garden: Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter. Now, before we talk about that empty tomb, let us add it should be no surprise that there will be animals in heaven. Long debated this you have probably wondered too, “Will my dog go to heaven?” Come back in October for the Blessing of the Animals and learn more about it. That’s a different sermon in itself. Isaiah, the prophet, tells us that in the new creation, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The serpent’s food will be dust."[1] Sounds like a barnyard revival to me. Maybe , we’re just simple chickens after all, looking up, hoping for something amazing to descend from above.

And now, the empty tomb. It cannot be avoided on Easter. Mary Magdalene arrives first.[2] She had lost all hope. Her heart was empty. For three years, she followed Jesus. She was destitute, not just in money but in soul. And Jesus taught her. He filled her. He lifted her up. But when she got to the tomb, even with all that faith, what did she expect to see? A corpse. Not nothing. But instead, she finds two angelic figures and neatly folded grave cloths. Jesus is not there. She is surprised. And that, beloved, is the beauty of faith: the willingness to be surprised.

The resurrection wasn’t just a twist in the plot, it was a divine message sent straight from heaven to earth. Nearly 2,000 years ago, something happened. The world kept spinning. The sun still rose and set. But something changed, forever. And if we gather here today to say Jesus is alive, then we are also confessing that God has done something to us. And when God does something to you, you can’t keep quiet. You’ve got to sing it. You’ve got to squawk it.

God is not interested in small talk. He is speaking truth, speaking love, speaking resurrection into your bones. The tomb is empty not so we can gawk at it, but so we can walk into it, so God can talk to us, and call us by name, just as Jesus called Mary that day. So, when we say, “He is risen,” we are not just echoing tradition, we are affirming that Jesus has lifted us out of despair, out of sin, out of death itself. He has taken what was broken, and He has emptied it. Because we know that when we’ve looked up into the sky all our lives, wondering if anything holy would come down, well, now we know it did. And it changed everything.

This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and squawk it out with joy! If you must let out an earnest, “Ba-Gawk” and when you speak, don’t let it just be words. Let it be the Spirit of God singing through your soul. Let it be more than just talk.

[1] Isaiah 65:25
[2] John 20:1-18