Surprised by Easter!

Easter Day

April 4, 2010

Grace Church

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

How many times has it happened to you? You’re driving down a road you’ve driven a hundred or a thousand times—perhaps it’s a commute you’ve made every day for years—and one day, for whatever reason, you look out the window and see a house, or building, or sign that you’ve never seen before. How long has it been there? You have no idea.

The same thing can happen with scripture. I don’t know how many times I’ve read today’s gospel. Surely dozens. I know I’ve used it in class with students more than twenty times. So you’d think I would know it, perhaps even have it memorized (I do mostly). So how is it that all of a sudden as I was reading it in preparation for my sermon today, that I saw something completely new? Oh, not the words, by any means, but rather the intent of them.

It’s that sentence that describes Peter and the beloved disciple entering the tomb, seeing that it was empty, and the gospel’s report that the beloved disciple “saw and believed” but then continues, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.” So here’s what I wondered, for the first time, what was it that the beloved disciple believed? It’s clear from the sentence that the gospel writer does not mean he believed Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

And why should they have believed Jesus was raised from the dead? What did they see? An empty tomb. And what is an empty tomb evidence of? That’s an easy question to answer. If you read in the State Journal tomorrow that an empty tomb was discovered in one of Madison’s cemeteries, what would you think? What would every one of us think? That we had grave robbers. None of us would conclude that the body interred there had come back to life.

I’m going to let you in on something. The resurrection is unbelievable! It’s unconceivable! We’ve all heard these stories so many times that they have become commonplace. We don’t see the absurdity of it. Oh a few of us do. We may have questions about it, about the science or logistics, or biology. We’ve all seen enough episodes of CSI to know a little bit about the decomposition of bodies. We either suppress those questions, refusing to ask them, or we come to church on Easter to let the glorious celebration of Easter hoping that all of our doubts and questions would go away, at least for an hour or two.

Peter and the beloved disciple didn’t believe. They ran to the tomb to check on what Mary Magdalene had told them, but they weren’t even curious enough to stick around, to call the cops, or whatever else you might do when you discover an empty tomb. They went home and ate breakfast.       At least Mary stuck around.

All four gospels tell a very similar story—women come to the tomb; it’s empty, so they either a) go back and tell others what they’ve seen, or b) stick around and have an encounter with the risen Christ. In this case, in the gospel of John, both things happen. The other thing that’s common to all four stories is the presence of others—some times angels, some times just young men, who ask the women what they’re looking for, and may tell them that Jesus has risen from the dead.

John’s story combines all of these elements but reworks them. The story John tells here follows the general outlines of the empty-tomb stories in the other gospels. Women, in this case, Mary Magdalene all by herself, comes to the tomb early in the morning, and discovers that it is empty. Frantic, she runs back to share the news with the other disciples. Here’s where John’s version begins to diverge. Peter and the beloved disciple race to the tomb upon hearing the news, enter it, see that it’s empty, and then they go back home.

Mary stays behind, weeping and wondering what’s happened to Jesus’ body. She looks in the tomb, sees two angels who ask her why she is weeping. Before she can reply, she turns around, sees the gardener, who asks her why she is weeping and what she is looking for. She responds by asking where Jesus’ body is. Only when the gardener calls her Mary, does she realize he is Jesus and that he has risen from the dead. And then he continues, enigmatically, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”

That interchange deserves our close attention because it reveals a great deal about the gospel, and it tells us a great deal about the resurrection itself. All four gospels agree on something else besides those story elements I’ve already cited. All four gospels, every appearance of the risen Christ to his disciples, was accompanied by the disciples’ misunderstanding and lack of recognition. They didn’t know what was staring them in the face until Jesus helped them to understand. That shouldn’t surprise us. Resurrection was the very last thing any of them were expecting. Resurrection is the last thing any of us expects.

Mary was mourning. Her grief and her ordinary perspective on the world made it impossible for her to recognize that the one she was grieving stood before her. Her assumptions, her world view, her past experience blocked her from seeing the new reality in front of her eyes.

And that makes her very much like us. We bring all of our lives to this place—our worries, our fears and our life experiences. The world in which we live is a frightening and worrisome place. Many of us are struggling economically, or with our health, or families. We wonder what’s going to happen. All of that may be whirling around in our minds right now, in the midst of this service.

Even more, many of us may not be sure any more if Christianity can provide the answers we are seeking. In a week that saw people who call themselves Christians advocating killing people in the name of Jesus; in a week that saw the Roman Catholic church embroiled again in a scandal that never seems to end, we may wonder whether the Church, any church, its message and its faith have any truth in it. And then there’s the absurdity of the resurrection itself.

Look, believing in the resurrection is absurd, it’s impossible. It flies in the face of science, reality and our own day-to-day experience. That something good could happen out of the evil and horror of the cross defies belief. It defies everything we know about the world. And the last thing you should do is take the word of some guy standing in front of you wearing funny clothes.

But still, in spite of all that, there’s the risen Christ, speaking to Mary, telling her who she is, who he is, and in that moment, helping her to see him. That is resurrection. We bring it all with us, our fears, our worries, our doubts, our brokenness. We bring all of it here to this place, which like all human institutions is broken, too. And in the midst of it all, we hear Christ’s words of recognition. We see Christ himself, in the sacrament, in the faces of those around us, in the love that embraces us and accepts us as we are. We experience the possibility of new life, the possibility of resurrection in the midst of suffering, fear, and doubt.

That is the power of resurrection. That is the power of Christ. Oh, when we leave this place, nothing will have changed. Everything in the world and in our lives will be just the same. Nevertheless, everything is different. God has broken into our world, conquered death and offered us new life, a new reality, a new way of seeing the world. In spite of everything, our encounter with the Risen Christ today offers each of us, and the world, hope for the future, hope for new life! Thanks be to God!