To Live as an Easter People - Easter - 4-17-22
To Live as an Easter People
1 Cor 15:19-26; John 20:1-18
1 Cor 15:19-26
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, 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.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Prayer – On this day, Lord Jesus, we sing our hallelujahs because this is the day that you defeated death and sin and rose triumphant. You showed us the power in saving, suffering love that overcomes both sin and death. Give us the faith that when we face any of life’s ‘deaths’ we remember your resurrection and thereby take heart. When hope is in short supply and we see no way out, no path through our problems, come to us Lord Jesus in all your saving power. Remind us that is what it means to live as an Easter people – amen.
The Gospel this joyous Sunday is an account of the reaction of some of the followers of Jesus to the great God-worked wonder that is at the heart of our faith, the basis of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the crucified one, has been raised. John entices us to observe Mary, Peter, and an unnamed disciple discover that Jesus’s tomb is empty, and in so doing we get to make the discovery of the resurrection for ourselves.
Surprise! Jesus has conquered death and a new creation has begun. Next, we witness Mary encountered by her risen Lord. In this stirring encounter, Mary’s grief turns to joy, and Mary immediately moves to proclaim to her fellow disciples the good news of resurrection that is the basis for the church’s proclamation throughout all time: “I have seen the Lord.”
It’s a story about defeated, despondent disciples, who had no reason to hope for a future, being given a future. And by a God who does not allow death to have the last word, a God who makes a way when we had good reason to believe there was no way. Mary Magdalene, the first to venture out to the tomb, has come to the cemetery to pay her last respects to the dead body of crucified, defeated, and dead Jesus.
Finding the stone rolled away from the tomb, Mary immediately jumps to a perfectly rational conclusion: someone has entered the tomb and stolen Jesus' body. Mary rushes back to tell Peter about this final, heartless outrage.
Next thing we see is that Peter and the unnamed disciple (identified only as “the one whom Jesus loved”) jog out to the tomb to see the situation for themselves. Though the anonymous disciple is the first to arrive at the tomb, Peter is allowed to enter first. The tomb is empty, just as Mary said. See? The cloths are still in the tomb. Curiously, we are told that the wrappings of the body are now carefully placed and the cloth that had covered Jesus’s head has now been rolled up and placed in another part of the tomb. In other Gospel accounts, there is an angel there to greet the baffled disciples, but not here in John’s narrative of the resurrection.
That unnamed, beloved disciple “saw and believed.” Believed what? Maybe he believed that Mary was correct—someone had indeed stolen the body of Jesus. All of this occurs in the dark, a somber, time of no vision. Then the two disciples having seen the empty tomb for themselves, go home. They see, but what they see makes no impression on them. They go home to breakfast: unchanged, unmoved, uncomprehending. They had yet to figure out what it means to live as an Easter people.
Only Mary lingers at the tomb, weeping. Then she dares to enter. Now two angels, heavenly messengers, greet her. “Why are you weeping?” What a ridiculous question. She weeps because the course of her life appears to be over. She is at a dead end. Jesus, the one in whom she believed and trusted and followed is dead. She explains all this to the angels, including her assumption of the theft of the body.
She repeats this to a man whom she believes is the gardener. Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus asked the disciples of John the Baptizer. “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38) Now, the risen Christ asks Mary the same question, “Who are you looking for?” (John 20:15) Truth to tell, Mary isn’t looking for much of anything at this point. She is at a dead end. There is no tomorrow in sight. It’s over. The end.
Perhaps the question of the risen Christ is a challenge to us all. In the resurrection we are permitted to look beyond the bleakness of present reality, to look past the boundaries and locked doors.
What are we looking for? We look for a way out, a way when there is no way, that is, a way toward hope. When Jesus calls Mary by name she recognizes her “Rabbouni.” Mary also recognizes that the future comes to us, not as a result of our wishful thinking or our dedicated, pious hard work but because we have a God who is not only love, but love in action. A God who raises the dead and wrenches a tomorrow for us just when we thought there was none.
I won’t lie to you – I LOVE EASTER. I love the communal joy and celebration of Easter morning services. I love the music, the vestments, the people, the triumphant and public acclamation of Jesus’ historic and miraculous rising. But as I sat with our Gospel passage for this morning, what I noticed is something quieter and more mysterious than the full-on jubilation we experience some 2000 years later. And though the past 2000 years have honed and codified our Easter hallelujahs, what we know from our passage is that the original disciples stumbled around in the half-light of that Easter dawn confused and afraid. Was it an angel, sitting in the unlit tomb? Were those shadows in the corner really grave clothes? That quiet stranger lingering outside – was he a gardener? Or someone else? Why did he look vaguely familiar?
Early in the morning, while it was still dark . . . that’s where Easter really begins. It begins in darkness and fear and bewilderment and the pain of loss and a profound loss of certainty. The creeds and clarifications we cherish today didn’t come until later. What came first were many variations of that dark morning. When I was growing up, the key Easter fact to proclaim was that Jesus rose from the dead – physically, bodily, literally. And as long as I believed in the historicity of the resurrection, I was safe. As an adult, even while in seminary, I have encountered other versions of the Easter narrative. The resurrection was a metaphor in these versions – not a literal, historical fact, but a potent symbol of transformation, renewal, rebirth. Whether or not Jesus physically rose again didn’t matter – his friends and followers experienced his presence, and that was enough.
The fact is, the resurrection happened in total darkness. Sometime in the predawn hours of that Sunday morning, a great mystery transpired in secret. No sunlight illuminated the event. No human being witnessed it. And even now, 2000 years later, no human narrative can contain it. It exceeds all of our attempts to pin it down, because it’s a mystery known only to God. Whatever the resurrection was and is, its fullness lies in holy darkness, shielded from our eyes. All we can believe is that somehow, in an ancient tomb, on a starry night, God worked in secret to bring life out of death. Somehow, from the heart of loss and misery, God enacted salvation.
In our gospel story, Mary Magdalene sees Jesus first because she chooses to remain in the darkness. Peter and the beloved disciple leave when they see the empty tomb – Peter ran back to the upper room while the beloved disciple somehow knew something extraordinary had occurred in that dark tomb as he too returned to be with his friends. But Mary remained present to what is real, to what is actually happening, and she is recognized by Jesus coming to her and then she recognizes the stranger as her Lord.
In my own life, I am finding it increasingly true that clarity, hope and healing come when I am willing to linger in the hard, barren places, places where the usual platitudes fall flat, and all easy answers prove inadequate. Jesus comes in the darkness, and many times it takes a long time to recognize him. He doesn’t look the way I expect him to look. He doesn’t let me cling to my old ideas. He disappears just as I lunge to grab ahold really tight. But he comes, he calls my name, and in that instant, I recognize both him and myself.
In a beautiful essay on the resurrection, theologian and writer, Chris Barnes reminds us what really matters during Holy Week – “The question that Easter asks us is not, ‘Do we believe in the doctrine of the resurrection?’ Frankly that is not very hard. What the gospel asks, is not, ‘Do you believe?’ but ‘Have you encountered the risen Christ?’” What we see in our passage this morning is an individual having a profoundly individual encounter with the risen Christ. We read more resurrection narratives and realize the encounters aren’t identical. Peter runs, the beloved disciples somehow believes and Mary stays and encounters the risen Lord.
So perhaps the question of what are we looking for on this Easter morning is how are we encountering the risen Lord as an Easter people. We must come to the empty tomb ourselves, for good or out of desperation. We don’t shed our baggage ahead of time; it barges in with us and shapes our perceptions and conclusions. What matters, then is encountering the risen Jesus in the particulars of our messy lives. What matters is finding in the empty tomb the hope we need for our own struggles, losses, traumas and disappointments. Whatever universal claim we make as Christians must begin in the rich, fertile ground of our own hearts, our own stories. Whatever acclamations we cry out on Easter morning must begin with a willingness to linger in the garden, desolate and alone, listening for the sounds of our own names, spoken in love. Four our testimonies to ring true, they must originate in the radical, intimate encounter with the risen Christ. The question is not why should we believe or even why do you believe, but rather, how has the risen Christ revealed himself to you?
This type of salvific seeing isn’t automatic or easy. It requires risk – the risk of hanging on to hope when all else fails. The risk of sitting in the dark after everyone else runs away. The risk of turning towards the one who calls our name, and recognizing him for the savior he is. Honestly, it’s often in retrospect, only as I look back across the ‘graveyards’ of my life, that I see my salvation. Poet R.S. Thomas describes the process this way in his poem, ‘The Answer,’
There have been times when, after long on my knees in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled from my mind, and I have looked in and seen the old questions lie folded and in a place by themselves, like the piled grave clothes of love’s risen body.
This Easter, may the Christ who rose in the darkness lead us into new life, new light, new hope. May we know him in the half-lit places, the shadowy places, the hard places. May we dare to linger at the tomb until he calls our names and sends us forth to share his good news with the world. And when we are asked what it is like to live as an Easter people may our answers by honest and humble, earned and true – it is to live as witnesses to the hope and struggle, braided together. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed – thanks be to God – amen.