What a story. What a ride.
I mean, do you remember Christmas? Do you remember the Silent Night, Holy Night? The First Noel, the Babe Born in the Manger? He was cute and tiny and harmless. While we were praising an infant in swaddling clothes, he grew up.
A young boy, sitting in the Temple courts and teaching wisdom to all who would hear him. He is young, precocious maybe, and yeah, it’s a little unnerving that he’s teaching all these masters of the Scriptures.
A young man, something like thirty, attending a wedding, and suddenly there is more wine than there had been before. Perhaps strange for a first miracle, but it got the job done.
A man, placing his hands upon somebody, and the impossible happens. He rubs mud into somebody’s eyes and they can see. He speaks to a parent, and their child is made well from the brink of death. He is amazing These feats attract the attention of worshipers and enemies alike.
A man, hearing that his friend has died, weeps in grief. But he then calls his friend out of his tomb, and the friend rises from death. This is the impossible entering unbelievable. At this point, the man demonstrates power to control life and death, so he must be either directly from God or directly from the Devil. He’s beginning to look dangerous.
A man, making a scene in the state capital. He goes to the center of all religious life, the Temple of Solomon, and tears the place up. Throwing tables, screaming. He threatens to destroy it all. He proclaims, and his followers proclaim for him, that he is Lord. He is a threat to every authority figure around – he’s usurping the political authority of the Romans, and he’s attacking the Jewish authorities in the Temple. It’s almost like he’s trying to get himself killed.
A man, leading the Passover meal with his friends. He uses the opportunity to transform how they see the Passover. How they see him. How they see God.
A man, arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin, the council of priests. Brought before Roman officials. Brought before the Governor of the territory. Convicted of treason and of blasphemy, which is sort of to be expected after the life that he lived.
A man, beaten and shamed, mocked and broken, then nailed to a plank of wood and raised into the air. Nobody can say they’re surprised, but his followers, his family, they are devastated. Their world has collapsed. They had so much hope in this man, they truly believed that he was ordained by God to free the people. But now, he’s just another example of what happens when you try to serve God up against an empire that wants your submission. That’s just what happens. It’s the moral of the Jesus story, if you value righteousness above your earthly masters… if you value service to other people and to God more than you value the power that the Empire has over you… you will die. They will kill you, end of story. It’s just what happens.
So what do you do when hope dies? There’s a period afterwards of adjusting to it, like a trauma. Peter, the head of the disciples, distances himself from Jesus and his memory and his followers. Judas, whose betrayal set this whole thing in motion, kills himself. The rest of the disciples sit in a closed-up room, miserable and scared of the people outside – if they killed your leader, your teacher, your candidate for Messiah, they can certainly kill you too.
Jesus died as the Sabbath was beginning, so nobody had time to go prepare his body without breaking Sabbath rules – don’t work, don’t touch a corpse, and so on. Sunday morning, about forty-eight or so hours after they nailed him to the cross, some of the women who loved Jesus go to his tomb to anoint his body. It’s a gesture of respect and adoration for the deceased.
And then… all this happens. The story that we read this morning, one of several different accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb, is set up almost like a comedy of errors. Mary gets to the tomb, and the stone that keeps the robbers out is missing. Well, shoot. Better go check on the body.
Then the body is missing.
She’s mortified, somebody has disturbed the remains of this wonderful man. She gets a couple of the others, who fall over each other trying to get to the tomb as fast as possible, then they look inside and see the burial cloths cast aside, the face cloth folded nicely.
She weeps, and two men identified as angels ask her why she’s weeping, and then promptly vanish from the story. Unlike the other Gospels, and unlike the story of Christ’s birth, the angels aren’t the ones who reveal truth.
In John’s gospel, one of the recurring themes is misunderstanding. Everybody misunderstands Jesus – what he’s saying, what he does, who he is. This moment, when she sees a man and thinks he’s the gardener, is the climax of all that misunderstanding, that a women who knew and loved Jesus so well mistakes him for a stranger.
But then there’s that moment. In chapter 10, Jesus told people that he was the good shepherd, and he would call his sheep by name and they would recognize his voice. Now, when Mary’s eyes deceive her, he speaks her name, and she knows.
That moment? When she hears him say that word, “Mary”, that moment… is the whole Gospel in one instant. What an incredible experience. This person that you have grown to love, grown to worship even though it feels sacrilegious. This man that you have followed around and served and worked for, this person that has opened your eyes to unbelievable truths, who was so close to God. This man who died the day before yesterday. He genuinely died, and now, here he is. In that moment of understanding, she was the first person to get it. She was the first true disciple, because she was the first living human being in the whole world to recognize that for Jesus to be the Messiah, he had to die. He had to demonstrate the facts of our world, that living a holy and righteous life will cause other people to want to destroy you. He had to demonstrate that God was stronger than hatred, stronger than the death that hatred brings. He had to demonstrate that dying in pursuit of righteousness is not the end of the story. He had to demonstrate that all the reasons we give for not throwing ourselves headfirst into service in God’s name – fear of danger, fear of loss of property, fear of emotional pain, fear of physical pain, fear of death – all those reasons fall by the wayside, because God restores you. There is nothing that the world can take from you that God cannot fulfill within your soul. He couldn’t just tell us – we wouldn’t have understood. He couldn’t just take over the world, because the Kingdom of God has to begin in the hearts of women and men. We have to be convinced by it, so that we can begin building the Kingdom, brick by brick, until God comes to complete it.
There’s always a strange and tricky road to navigate for preachers preparing an Easter sermon. It’s the one day of the year when you can always expect a visitor or two or twenty. I’m glad to see them – you, if you are visiting here today, especially for the first or second time, I am glad to see you. So preachers must be aware that the Easter sermon is a chance to really drive the Gospel home, to snag folks with some interest in this Jesus fella so that they can be convinced to dedicate themselves to him.
I could just tell you the story, and tell you what it means. Jesus died for you, Jesus was raised from the dead, and by that your sins are forgiven and you have eternal life. Those words are true, but then again… you’ve heard them before. In this day and age, in America, you’re hard pressed to find anybody who hasn’t heard that message before. Everybody has had it shoved upon them at one time or another. I could even threaten you with it – Lord knows some preachers do – but in my experience people don’t respond well to threats.
I could find some clever way to drive home the finer points of the story. I could give you a funny story, a joke, a poem, a song lyric, whatever – something focusing on transformation, on new life, on brokenness and wholeness. But I just don’t know if that would be as convincing and as life-altering as it seems like it’s gonna be. They always feel a little contrived, don’t they?
What could I say? What words could possibly encompass the beauty of this miracle, the unimaginable power of new life? What words and sentences and clever speech could make somebody understand what it means when I say that the Gospel sets you free, when I say that knowing and believing and responding to the story of the life and death and life-again of Jesus can transform people in ways they couldn’t imagine?
The answer, of course, is that I can’t. There are no words to capture that, not completely. All language about God and God’s work has to be metaphorical, because there is no word long enough and complex and nuanced enough to accurately describe God, to describe the miracle of life. It’s just too big.
The solution can be found if we ask a question: Why did God choose, after centuries of speaking to patriarchs, like Moses and Abraham, centuries of speaking to prophets, like Elijah and Isaiah, why did God choose to manifest God’s will into a human being? Why did God stop using words and instead manifest The Word into a living person?
[Pause, wait for consideration]
It’s because the truth of God? The whole truth of the power of a God that created this universe, that loved each and every thing within the universe because it is a part of God, a God that cares enough about us to guide us in darkness, lift us in despair, and to save us from the nothingness of eternal death? That can’t be captured in words. If you want people to know about this God, you have to show them. You have to show them.
And it can’t be done in one action. God was not found in miracles. God was not found in turning water to wine, in healing the blind and casting out demons, God was not found in raising Lazarus from the grave. It takes a life. It takes a whole life, every second of it lived in the secure and binding knowledge that God will take care of it. It takes a whole life that is unafraid of the bad things that can happen to it, unafraid of loss of property or strength or health or life, because it knows that in God, it is free to be a complete, whole, righteous life. That’s why God decided to quit using words and to give us instead The Word, formed into a person that lived a whole life. That person was a baby, was a little kid, was a teenager, was a young man, was a man. A whole life.
And now? The key is, Christians, that we cannot use our words either. Nobody will be convinced, not truly deep-down convinced, of the truth of our convictions if we tell them. Nobody will believe that Jesus lives, that his presence by the Spirit brings you such peace, if you use words. Nobody will believe that God grants eternal life through this Jesus fella if you just hand them a tract, ramble off a couple of passages from Romans about believing and being saved. The information itself is not convincing.
What is convincing, yet again, is a life. A whole life lived in devotion to God. A whole life lived secure in the knowledge that God has your back, that God will take care of you, regardless of how much you fail in that life.
So, Christians, if you take anything away from this day, from this celebration of Resurrection, take this: Act like you believe it. As you leave this house today, as the fire of the Spirit burns in your belly, it will be easy. But on Thursday, on the Tuesday after that, on a Monday morning in three years… act like you genuinely believe that Jesus was raised from the dead so that you could be free to live a life of righteous service. Act like you have nothing to fear, like you cannot help yourself, that you are compelled to do crazy charity and speak crazy words of love, because whatever else happens, you believe thanks to the Resurrected Christ that life awaits you.
Believe that life awaits you, whatever you do, and act like you believe that.
Non-Christians, seekers, doubters, and questioners, I hope my words today have had some impact. I hope a seed has been planted. But I understand if you’re not convinced yet. I don’t blame you. I don’t think less of you if you don’t come up during the Invitation and throw yourself upon the altar of mercy. I get it. But just do me a favor – in the coming days, and weeks, watch Christians. Watch the believers who have been reminded about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, because if they’re truly convinced, they will demonstrate in their lives a truth and a power that no words could ever convey. This is the power of God – not a miracle, not a fiery pillar of cloud and thunder, not shaking the foundations of the earth – but the power to transform a human life. The power to make you what you were always meant to be. The power to make you whole.
Amen.