| April 4
Providence, Rhode Island - Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
One reason it’s difficult to preach on Easter Sunday is everybody knows the ending. It’s hard to come up with something new, but do we ever tire of hearing about it? Another reason is the whole thing is so unfamiliar; so unlike anything we know about, which makes it hard to comprehend. The change of the seasons, the welcoming warmth of springtime is natural. We’re used to it. A caterpillar morphing into a bright yellow butterfly is miraculous, but it’s also a familiar part of the natural world.
The resurrection of the dead is not about any of that. It’s entirely unnatural. When somebody dies we bury them and that’s that. You don’t wait around for them to come back from where you left them. You say goodbye, pay your respects, and move on in life as best you can. Because the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them.
That’s all Mary Magdalene was doing on that first Easter – paying her respects; just making sure it really happened. When she got there it was dark, but from a distance she could tell something wasn’t right. Somebody had “moved the stone!” Jesus wasn’t there; only God knows where. So she ran and brought back a couple of guys to corroborate it, because her word didn’t count. Once they’re satisfied she’s telling the truth, they went back home. In a world full of deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary! So Mary stayed. She stuck it out. If it was worse, so be it. If the body was stolen, she’d find it. She wasn’t afraid of the dark because she hoped to find Jesus in it.
Then the scene shifts. This time when she went back into the sepulchre, she bumped into some angels! They wondered why she was weeping? She allowed as how somebody had moved Jesus. I guess it never occurred to her that they might be the culprits! But we cut her some slack because the grieving don’t always thinking clearly. So as she left she bumped into the Gardener, whose only value to her was he might know where Jesus was. But this Gardener didn’t seem to mind.
When he spoke her name: “Mary,” her eyes were opened! “Rabboni? “My Teacher!” When she grabbed for him, “Don’t hold onto me,” he flinched. But he wasn’t on his way back to her or the others, he was on his way back to God! And he was intent on taking the world with him. So she runs out with joy, the first evangelist to tell the others the Good News.
All this happened because Mary was the only one who was faithful “while it was still dark.” No matter how impossible it looked, she went back to be with Jesus. Even when he wasn’t there, she stayed, unwilling to be stymied by his absence. This could be why the other gospels tell us “not to be afraid.” New life is scary because it’s unknown. To visit a sealed vault and encounter angels inside; to hunt for the past and discover the future; to seek a corpse and find the Risen Lord! None of it is natural.
Death is natural. But we never get used to it. But by the time the sun rose, God had planted a seed of life in somebody that couldn’t be killed. It’s still sprouting to this day. And if we can remember that, there’s nothing we can’t do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world. The only thing we can’t do is hold him back. Better we should let him hold us!
John notes a curiosity about the empty tomb: Jesus left behind “his old clothes,” wrapped up in a tidy pile. Mary didn’t notice them, but the disciples did, after they surmised that his body may have been stolen. So when the “beloved disciple” followed Peter inside the tomb and saw the grave clothes left behind, that’s all it took for him to believe! Believe what? John doesn’t say. Just that he believed. And without another word to each other, the two of them vacated the premises.
The rest of the story belongs to Mary. She’s the one in the Gospel of John who gets it. She got it before the crucifixion and she finally got around to getting it on Easter -- before anybody else did. She’s the one who saw the angels. She’s the one who encountered the risen Lord, who got himself some new clothes. I find it striking that both of the guys missed all this. They didn’t see anything but a vacant tomb with some clothes lying there; remnants of emptiness and absence. And on that skimpy basis, at least one of them believed; although neither of them understood. John attributes it to not reading their Bibles. But anyway you frame it, that’s a mighty fragile beginning for the Christian religion, that’s lasted unbroken, nigh onto 2000 years.
I don’t have a rational explanation for that, other than to point out how we’ve continued from that day till this -- to focus our energy, our theology, our faith on that empty tomb; on that morning; on what did or didn’t happen there and how to make sense out of it to anybody who doesn’t happen to believe it too. Resurrection doesn’t square with anything else we know about on this earth. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. Even this one happened “while it was dark.”
I’m sure we’ve all been where Mary was, enduring a down-time in her life. When it’s dark and you can’t see because there’s too much grief, pain, and doubt. It’s natural to sack out like everybody else on Easter; pull the covers over our heads and sleep it off. But Mary went to the tomb “while it was still dark.” Despite her grief , anxiety, and fear, she’s the one who got up and did something! And we might not even know about Easter if she hadn’t!
She went to the last place she knew where the remains of Jesus was. Yeah it’s a cemetery and she knew he was dead, she’d watched it; she was there at Calvary. As useless as it seemed, she needed to be where Jesus was, because just the thought of it gave her hope in the dark. And that’s when she discovered that God has been at work all along, even in the darkness. It wasn’t in the papers or on the news. Nobody saw it happen. Both the birth and death are shrouded in mystery. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the one and only event in his life that was entirely between him and God. And maybe a couple of angels sprinkled in. There were no human witnesses. Everybody arrived after the fact. Two of them notice the clothes. One saw angels. The rest saw nothing at all, because they were still snoozing in bed.
But as John tells it, that didn’t matter because the empty tomb is not the point of Easter. The living being that was put there was not there anymore. He had other things to do than hang out in a graveyard. It would’ve made believing it a lot easier if he allowed the people who witnessed the crucifixion to stop by for a visit. “Hey everybody, I’m back!” But he wasn’t interested in sensationalism. His way is by hope not proof; faith not sight. With sight we wouldn’t need faith. With proof, we wouldn’t need hope.
Easter is about somebody outgrowing his tomb. It was much too small for something as great as resurrection. Jesus arose because he had business among the living, to whom he appeared four more times in John’s Gospel. And every occasion was before his friends. And each time they grew stronger, wiser, kinder, braver. When Jesus showed up after Easter, they became ... more like him. That’s why he became … like we are.
All the “beloved disciple” needed to believe was seeing the empty tomb and the clothes. For me what cinches the resurrection is the appearances; not what happened in the tomb, but outside of it. What happened in the tomb took place “while it was still dark.” There’s a hushed tone to it and we dare not tread where angels fear to trod!
But you gotta admire Mary’s moxie! She shows us that darkness isn’t a sign that we have no faith. It’s an opportunity to show our faith. Darkness is the time to get up and face our dilemmas head-on. Get up and go to the graveyard. And go back again if you have to. Easter happened when things appeared to be at their worst, but God was at his best! He might even speak your name!
If that were to happen, you might prepare for it by thinking about who you identify most with in the story. Peter and John, who came running to see and went back home unimpressed, without having met Jesus? Or Magdalene, who refused to lose Jesus, even when he was lost? Note though that Jesus was the same with all of them. He didn’t tailor his approach to each individual. It was their response that determined whether Easter came early or late. Or at all.
When Easter began is up for grabs. But I believe it began the moment the Gardener said, “Mary!” And she knew who it was! Because the resurrection is not so much about life-after-death, as it is about relationships. That’s where the miracle first happened and where it continues to happen. Not in the tomb but in the encounter ... with the living Lord.
When you get down to the bottom line, that’s the only evidence we have to offer anybody who scoffs at us for daring to believe something so unnatural as resurrection from the dead? So this Easter I wanta offer to ya’ll one thing that might help: never get so focused on the empty tomb that you forget to speak to the Gardener!
Providence Prayers: (Easter - April 4, 2010)
Even as the flood waters subside around us, we’d prefer our tragedies to be prevented before they happen. But Easter shows how the victorious Christ can turn our tragedies into triumph. For rolling away the stones that prevent us from being at our best, we give Thee thanks. Enter the tombs of our lives and empty the emptiness. Touch with healing everyone who suffers affliction of the body and spirit. Visit those whose minds are in disarray with a clear perception of reality. Walk with those who must go through the “valley of the shadow of death,” and carry them over the threshold of eternal life.
We thank Thee that we need no longer be afraid to die, or live, or deprive ourselves of quality life, no matter how strong the foe, we can be “more than conquerors through our Lord Christ.” On this glorious Easter Day, remind us of the importance of encountering the Risen Christ. And to surrender to Thee everything that is dead in us ... our stillborn dreams, our unhealed wounds, our disturbing anxieties.
For the knowledge that “neither death nor life, things present or to come, or anything else with the whole creation can separate us from Thy love,” we magnify Thy name for the blessings of “the third day!” “Morning has broken!” The angels rejoice! Evil sees the handwriting on the wall! “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t douse it!” Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Amen! |
