Easter Day – April 24, 2011 – Year A (RCL)
Easter is the event that nobody expects, nobody is ready for.
Jesus’ resurrection takes everybody by surprise.
We who have come to take the idea more or less for granted cannot begin to imagine how astounded Jesus’ disciples were when they realized that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Resurrection was something they hadn’t counted on.
The story of the disciples’ experience as we have it in the Gospel according to John proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The idea that the dead would be raised when God brought the world to an end was familiar enough; Jesus wasn’t the only rabbi who stressed the resurrection on the last day in his teachings.
But resurrection now—resurrection as God’s answer to a cruel and unjust death—resurrection of that sort was simply unheard-of.
It was not only good news; it was amazing news.
No wonder the disciples had so much trouble taking it in at first!
Look at Mary Magdalene.
Her first reaction, when she sees that the stone has been rolled back from the entrance to the tomb, is to think that Jesus’ body has been stolen or taken somewhere by someone: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,” she says, almost out of breath from running to tell the others, “and we do not know where they have laid him.”
It’s enough to make Peter and another, unnamed disciple spring into action; they race each other to the tomb to see for themselves what has happened.
Almost predictably their investigation leads them to the conclusion that Jesus’ body has in fact vanished, though they are not quite ready to think the unthinkable yet.
So it is a good thing that Mary stays behind when Peter and the other disciple return home.
Once the two men have removed themselves from the scene, we recognize their boisterous intrusion as a sub-plot; this is Mary’s story; it has been Mary’s story from the beginning.
When things have calmed down again, it is Mary who stands center stage, alone in the garden, weeping.
What is it that has kept her here?
Is it sorrow or confusion, or is it, perhaps a glimmer of hope?
Whatever it is, it leaves her open to the full revelation of God’s unconquerable love.
It would probably be unfair to suggest that the men in their haste somehow failed to notice the angels who speak to Mary now, asking her why she is weeping, but it is almost as if their flurry of activity simply crowded out the meaning of the miracle.
It is left for Mary to recognize the significance of what has happened.
How often it seems that God must wait for us to get ourselves to those islands of stillness, to those graciously uncluttered, though often inexpressibly painful places in our lives, before we are able to truly hear, before we are able to truly see!
If there are times in our lives when God can be found at the center of our consciousness—and all of us can point to those times, there are other times when we have to admit that God can only be found at the very edge of our consciousness, if God can be found at all.
Sometimes we’re content to left God kind of slip off to the sidelines to be recalled if needed.
Other times we may even deliberately drive God from our lives, the way our First Century counterparts drove Jesus out of Jerusalem to be crucified, the way the Church strips the hangings from its altars each year in observance of Good Friday.
But God finds a way back.
Whether relegated to the periphery of our lives by design or indifference, God finds a way back.
Just as when fearful humanity pushed the Christ of God out of their lives and into the jaws of death.
God found a way back then, too—especially then.
No matter how great the distance we may put between him and ourselves, the Christ of God finds a way to slip back into our lives when he needs to.
Or he can burst forth in radiance from the tomb, as on that first Easter morning so long ago.
Mary, who does not know that she is to become the first witness to the resurrection, stands weeping in the stillness of the garden.
Shock and disappointment and deep sorrow have driven the reality of Jesus so far from Mary’s consciousness that all that is left is her memories of him, little more than broken pieces of her life, life as she has known it, which she longs to put back together, but she cannot.
It is Jesus as she last remembers him that Mary has gone to the tomb to find, not the living reality.
No wonder she will not recognize him, when he re-enters her life!
No wonder she will mistake him for the gardener!
Troubled and unsure of what she should do next, Mary senses a presence and turns to see who it is.
It is Jesus.
Somehow, in some way God has put the broken pieces back together, breathed new life into the One that ignorant, frightened, desperate humanity had so mercilessly torn apart.
A new creation stands before her.
It is Jesus.
Or is it?
Mary does not recognize him, until he speaks her name.
“Mary.”
Then she knows him.
Then she realizes that at the point of her deepest need God in the person of Jesus Christ, her risen Lord, has found the way back.
She does not yet know what course her life will take, but she does know that that which seemed irreparably broken has been made whole again.
“I have seen the Lord,” she will say to the other disciples.
“I have seen the Lord,” she will say from that day forward to everyone she meets.
“I have seen the Lord.”
That is why each one of us is here today, on this Sunday of the Resurrection: to give thanks to God that we have been able to say or will find ourselves able to say those very words at some point in our lives.
“I have seen the Lord.”
Like Mary Magdalene, we may be able to point to a place in our lives when we thought that all was lost, only to find that Christ had gotten to that desolate place before us, maybe in the person of a friend, whose selfless act on our behalf brought release and relief, maybe in the ministrations of a complete stranger we will never see again—like Miguel, who stopped to help us, when Lucy and I ran out of gas on the interstate—or maybe in some stray words on a page that happens to catch our eye.
Or the grace of that assurance may not wait until the darkest hour to flood into our soul; several of you have mentioned to me how “right” it can feel when you go out of your way to help someone in need; we don’t always have to be down and out to sense God’s saving presence in our lives, to be able to say to whoever will listen: “I have seen the Lord.”
Whichever way it happens, we choose to shape our worship this Easter Day and every Lord’s Day as an act of thanksgiving for it; that is why we call our worship “Eucharist”, which literally means “gratitude”.
Each time we share the bread and wine of Holy Communion together we cannot help but be reminded of that sacred mystery: that Christ’s body, given for us, brings healing to our bodies and to our spirits, and that Christ’s new life, breathed into our broken world that first Easter Day is here to make you and me and all creation new.
“Alleluia, Christ is risen!”
“The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!”
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