DO YOU HEAR THE CRYING?
Easter Sunday April 1, 2018
The Rev. Canon Dr Duke Vipperman

Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Do you hear the crying? listen carefully, from all over the world. Syria; Parkland, Florida; in the wake of a prison fire in Venezuela; a mall fire in Russia; deaths and tragedy in Toronto and Durham. Crying In hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral homes, in families or alone. Sometimes we hide our tears because “they” say we’re not supposed to cry in public.
My mom passed away last Sunday night as I was leaving the Durham Community Choir concert Lamb of Glory. We all cry a little or a lot. Tears aren’t wrong, but what move us to tears can feel very wrong: frustrations, end of relationships, end of life.
“Woman why are you weeping?” Angels could be forgiven for asking because they know nothing of grief but Jesus asks the same.
“Woman why are you weeping?” She had thought He was long gone. Now his last remains are missing so life is intolerable. “We stand on the shore of an ocean,” said Bertrand Russell “crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning &, in a moment, the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great and I often wonder how they all endure it.” [The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Letter to Goldie, July 19, 1903. Rutledge. p. 194.]

Mary’s grief was sudden: her joy come crashing down led her to the tomb, dark as her mood. She was not in love with Jesus, no more than anyone else. She was not a central figure of the story, just someone like us following him doing what we can, one of many who Jesus delivered from evil. In John we only see Mary twice: once at the cross watching him die and then again in the garden unsure if he lives. Still she is a stand in for us. Like her, we don’t doubt Jesus died. She saw the spear pierce Jesus’ side on the cross, the water separating from his congealed blood - both flowing to the ground – a sure sign of death even ancients knew. She knew he died.

She did not suspect his rising. Conspiracy theories are endless; She mentions two here. Did body snatchers take him away. Or had the gardener taken him away. She asks the same question twice. Her questions are our own. What happened? They have hidden the truth from us. Why, we can only guess, but that’s easier to swallow than his rising from the dead, easier to believe that his lifeless corpse was stolen than the truth of his resurrection - and less demanding of us.

How was she converted? How was she changed? Mary was not impressed by angels: they didn’t change her a bit. No proof was offered. She reached to touch him to make sure but he insisted don’t touch. Why deny her that confirming, assuring, healing touch? Because she IS a representative figure. None of us, neither you nor I, can touch the Lord. Not that way. She saw him, in a way that few have claimed to see him since, but even so she misunderstands what she sees.

How then was she converted? How does Jesus transform her intolerable existence? He found her and called her by name. He says “Mary” and her shattered soul is healed. her shattered world remade by the gardener who made the world. Recall Eve in the Garden of Eden –God the gardener often came to walk in the cool of the evening, until Eve was deceived. Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener but she was not deceived. Jesus is God is the earth’s gardener planting a new creation, entrusting the first word about the new world order to a woman to Mary, to the apostle to the apostles. Only here in John’s gospel does Jesus calls anyone by their personal name other than God. ‘The good Shepherd calls His sheep by name, they hear his voice, and he leads them” [John 10]. Mary spoken to by Jesus opened her eyes to the resurrection. It is always personal with Christ. She falls at His feet. Do not touch me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. Jesus will no longer be known by sight or by touch but by faith in love.

For your sake he has been crucified! Jesus, at his death, embraced the death fashioned by our sins; said Pope Benedict yet, in his death, Jesus filled death itself with Love, he filled it with the presence of God. By Christ's death, death itself was vanquished, for he filled death with the one power capable of canceling the sin that had spawned it: Jesus filled death with Love! [adapted from “In the resurrection love is shown to be stronger than death,” Pope says at Easter Vigil April 2007

He called her name and the world was made full of new possibilities. Six-year-olds were asked to write down what they wanted to be. Arthur wrote: “I want to be the person my dog thinks I am.” Billy wrote one word "Possible" "Possible?" the teacher asked, “What do you mean possible?” He said, "My mom is always telling me I’m impossible. When I grow up, I want to become POSSIBLE." Mary’s life became possible. Life becomes possible when God who calls your name.

It did not end with Jesus calling her. He sends her (& us) with a message. Go tell the others. Jesus' death and resurrection has opened life not just for us but for those he sends us to: to other Christians and those who come to trust him. His God is our God. The one he calls Father is our Father. This world and our lives are good because he made them and he raised Jesus, not just in spirit, but also in body. We need redemption for our sinful wills. Sinners shown mercy. He comforts when we suffer; as Christ was raised from the dead, so our deaths are not the last word…. By this hope they endured the intolerable.

The early followers of Jesus were no powerful, monolithic body. They were a despised sect, persecuted in the marketplace and facing lions in the Coliseum. They were run out of synagogues and beset by fantastic distortions of the good news but they spread the news anyway that Jesus lives for you. That news brought you to here. He has called you by name. You have heard it or you would not be here. If not directly, then by someone like Mary. Listen. What is your name? He is calling you now. and if you hear him call, then he is just as surely sending you. Go tell the whole world:

Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!