Easter Sunday - March 23, 2008

Kingswood UMC — Buffalo Grove IL

Texts: John 1:1-18

Happy Easter!!! He is risen!!! He is risen, indeed!!! Alleluia ! Amen!!

The greetings we offer one another on Easter morning are full of joy and promise. Full of life and celebration. It’s like when your team has just won the biggest game of the season. There are high fives all around as we share our great joy and astonishment! There is that momentary sense of invulnerability ... balanced with a certain surprise!! Kind of a "we can do anything" energy, tempered with "I can hardly believe it is true" humility. On Easter Sunday we rub our eyes, trying to see clearly what it is that is happening, as we celebrate the resurrection with songs of praise, with flowers, festive food and clothing, and with all kinds of signs and symbols of life renewed.

But what is this resurrection that we celebrate on this day? Beyond the Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, beyond the Easter outfits and the spring flowers that decorate our sanctuary and our homes, what is that we proclaim when we tell the news of resurrection? It is the center of our faith ... the reason we gather each week to worship. But what is it and what does it mean?

Let’s begin with the story as it is told in the Gospel of John. We see Jesus’ close friend and follower Mary of Magdala arriving alone in the garden where Jesus’ body had been laid. Unlike the reports in the other gospels, here Mary comes alone. She doesn’t come with spices, because in John the body has been well cared for by those who had placed it there just before the Sabbath began. She comes alone. She comes to grieve. And she comes early in the morning, while it is still dark. But when she arrives she quickly notices that things are not in order. The stone is rolled away. She may have come alone ... but she quickly seeks support as she runs to report to Jesus’ other closest friends that the tomb has been opened. She assumes the body is gone .. otherwise why would it be opened ... and she assumes that someone has taken it. Surprised by the open tomb, she tries to make sense of it in the categories of reason. Dead bodies don’t just get up, carefully fold their grave clothes, push away the stones blocking their graves and walk out into the sunshine. So someone must have taken the body.

Her friends come ... confirm her report that the body is gone and return to their homes. They don’t understand what has happened any more than she does. But Mary stands weeping, peering into the tomb. There she sees two angels who ask her why she is weeping, and she continues her lament that the body has been taken. Then she turns and spots someone in the garden ...whom she assumes is the gardener ... and she repeats her concern about the missing body.

Imagine having been through the hell of the days before. They had arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration knowing that Jesus was at risk. But they had never imagined how it would play out. The arrest, the trials, the mobs of people, the mood against him, and finally the long walk toward Golgotha and his death. It was horrifying. Mary had stayed close throughout and had seen it all unfold. And she was still numb from what she’d seen and experienced. But now!!! To add insult to injury, someone has taken his body!!! Why? What more could they do to him? He’d already been paraded through the streets – alive! What would be the point of it in death?!!

But as she questions the gardener, she hears him call her name and recognizes Jesus ... the very one whose death she grieves stands before her, alive, and calling her name. At first she grasps to hold on to him, but Jesus gently turns her toward the future as he sends her to go and tell the others. And she does. I have seen the Lord ! she exclaims.

So what do we know of resurrection from this story? We can begin by noting one thing that it is not. Resurrection is not the resuscitation of a dead body. The Jesus that encounters Mary is not the old Jesus, but a revelation of God. It reveals Jesus as Lord over life and death. The story doesn’t tell us how Jesus was resurrected. In fact, none of the gospels tell us that. If you read the resurrection story in each gospel, you see that there is no description of how Jesus was resurrected. But they all tell us how those around him experienced it. It wasn’t the empty tomb or the appearance of angels or even the sight of the risen Christ that makes the difference. It was their experience of him alive and among them that was the real story. They were shocked, amazed, elated, confused, disbelieving, disoriented. Most of all, they were changed!!! Changed by the relationship they found with the risen Christ and with each other as they shared their experiences and hope. No longer were they afraid of what would happen ... afraid of death. Afterall, the worst had already happened. And they weren’t taken back to the way it was before ... to the past. Instead, they were opened up to a new future.

Many years ago one of my teachers invited the class that I was in to do a drawing exercise. I hated those sorts of things. I couldn’t draw ... and had no imagination. I wasn’t the only one. There was an audible groan in the room when we heard the assignment. The assignment was to draw a picture of something that we had seen recently in our world that included images of both life and death in the same scene. One student drew a picture of run down buildings in a city neighborhood where factories had recently closed (death) ... and of people marching, praying, carrying signs that asked for zoning changes that would allow these buildings to be redeveloped (life). Someone else presented a picture of a mountain where the trees had been clear cut for fuel (death) and a group of school children arriving with shovels to plant young trees that would protect the hillside from further erosion (life). Someone else drew the cross, and the empty tomb. But I had no such political or religious images in my head at the time ... my world was mostly centered in my own house and family. So I drew a picture of my front kitchen window ... through which I could see the wintry scene of leafless trees and snow. But on the window sill in that kitchen there was a single pot of tulips, ready to be planted outside, holding out the promise of spring. When I think of that scene now, I think of the lovely hymn by Natalie Sleeth:

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed an apple tree;

in cocoons, a hidden promise; butterflies will soon be free!

In the cold and snow of winter there’s spring that waits to be,

unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

What are the images of resurrection that you find in your environment and heart? Where do you see death and new life in the same scene?

Last weekend, I joined my parents and family for popcorn night. It is a family tradition ... every Sunday night there is popcorn, milk and dessert. Now we gather in the nursing home parlor where my mother is rehabing from a broken hip. My Dad brings the popcorn, whoever is available comes, and we visit. Last week my Dad wasn’t looking too good ... pretty frail, grey, unable to engage in much conversation. He had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and barely started the new medication. His low energy was contrasted with the bubbly energy of my 22 month old grandson, whose curiosity is boundless and who doesn’t miss a thing. Near the end of the evening as Robert circled the crowd to get good-bye kisses, he went over to my Dad and could see that great grandpa didn’t even have the energy to bend over and give him a kiss. So on his own, Robert crawled up on the chair with grandpa, put his head up to grandpa for a kiss, and just ask quickly as he’d gotten up there, he squirmed down. Then he made another circle and did it again.

As I thought about images of resurrection in my world this week, I thought about this scene. Great grandpa — with fewer days left than he’s lived — and young Robert, with a lifetime ahead of him, God willing. My first thought was a kind of philosophical reflection that resurrection is this sense that "life goes on."

But the more I’ve thought about it, I’ve begun to realize that though the images of bulbs, and butterflies and babies are full of promise and hope, Easter and resurrection is even more than that. It is not the juxtaposition of old with young, of winter with spring, of butterflies with cocoons ... it is not the transformations and births of nature that tell the story of resurrection, though these are all moving and beautiful things. It is not simply that life goes on, but that life wins!!! In the love that is shared between a baby and his Great-Grandfather, life wins!! In the struggle of the butterfly to emerge from the cocoon, life wins! And in the ultimate match between the powers of death and darkness and the powers of life and light, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, life wins!! God gives life. And God gives new life. In the resurrection of Jesus, God says yes to Jesus and no to the powers who killed him. God says yes to life.

Too often, I think, we confuse Easter and the story of resurrection with the natural emergence of spring. At least in this part of the globe, it is easy to do. But I think the calendar this year helps us to this other story. Resurrection is not the natural emergence of new life ... but a radical break with all that seems normal and natural in our world. In that sense is it unseasonable. Easter is not a season but a breaking into all the rhythms and routines, all the seasons of life with something radically new!!! With life!!!!! In the face of death, life wins!!! In a world that trusts in the power of death – of war, of violence, of guns – in the resurrection we proclaim Jesus Christ and the power of vulnerability and love and life. Life wins!!!

Easter came early this year. A couple of you were really annoyed to realize that the date of Easter is not set by some religious schedule but by its relationship to the movements of the moon. But unlike Christmas which has its own day ... forever celebrated on the 25^th of December ... Easter moves around the calendar, surprising us some years by being extra early or late. This year there is no confusing of Easter with spring. Instead, we have been surprised by it, thrown off our game, disoriented by it. That is what resurrection does. It is the radical disruption of all that we expect ... death, disaster, despair in the face of our finitude ... disrupted with the resilience of divine energy, with the intrusion of grace, with the persistence of love when we believe that hate has wiped it out. We don’t know how it happens .... it is not something that can be explained. It is a mystery! But it is a mystery to stake your life on.

Happy Easter! He is risen! Alleluia! Amen!