The Lord is Risen

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

April 8, 2007
 Easter

Text: John 20: 1-18

Most of the miracle stories about Jesus, we manage pretty well, in one way or another. His changing water into wine, or his feeding of the five thousand, for example, we can rationalize about. We can see the symbolic meaning in the story, at least. The moral of the story seems pretty clear. We can think of fairly decent parallels in our common experience.

But the story of Jesus’ resurrection renders us speechless most of the time. These stories go far out beyond our empirical minds. No matter how many times we hear the gospel accounts, we come away with blank looks on our faces.

Easter stories remind me of the Genesis accounts of creation.
 
Whatever your views about how all-that-is came to be--- sudden or gradual or with stops and starts---we must end in wonderment unless we think we really are Prometheus.

 Have you ever looked up at the vastness of the skies, or into a microscope at the wonders of simple organisms, and thought: “Who made all of this? And why is there anything at all?” Yes, we mortals can measure and label things (as Adam did). But we are like a speck of animate dust in the presence of infinity.  As the psalmist sang, “When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what are we mortals that thou art mindful of us.” (Psalm 8:3-4) Wisdom begins with astonishment and wonder and not a little fear.

We are in good company. The closest friends of Jesus, and those to whom they bore witness, stuttered and stammered when they tried to describe resurrection. (Read First Corinthians 15)

The Gospel of John’s account is a case in point.

Mary Magdalene came “while it was still dark” to the tomb of Jesus. It was night time in her soul and in the souls of Jesus’ other disciples. Despair had fallen like a cold sleet. The one who had so loved them had been brutally executed. The disciples had scurried to safety rather than stand by him in his hour of anguish. Though Judas was the betrayer, they all knew the truth: they were not, in fact, able to follow him to the cross, contradicting those brave words spoken to Jesus earlier, “Lord, we are able!” Yes, it was still dark, outside and inside, when Mary went to the tomb. This first Easter did not begin with flowers on crosses.

So why does she go? It is too late for anything to be done to honor the body of Jesus.

Perhaps she goes as many of us do in the days after the burial of a loved one, to assure ourselves that everything has been done properly. Or, in our grief, we go because we so miss our beloved and we want to be near. Perhaps Mary went to pray or ponder.

Mary Magdalene was the woman from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons; it was Mary Magdalene, along with Joanna and Susanna, who traveled with Jesus and the twelve, and provided for them traveling money out of their resources (8:2).  And, it was Mary Magdalene who did not hide when Jesus was crucified. She, along with Jesus’ mother and another Mary, stood by the cross when Jesus breathed his last.

What Mary found was an open tomb, the stone having been rolled away. She assumed that someone has taken the body of Jesus out of the tomb; she runs to tell Simon Peter and the “beloved disciple,” presumably John, the son of Zebedee.

Upon hearing from Mary, Peter and John run to the tomb. (This is the only account I know of one of the twelve running anywhere!)
 
John gets there first and looks into the tomb. Peter, characteristically bold, goes right on in. He sees the shrouds neatly folded. John then goes in, too; he sees and, it says, he “believed.” Believed what? Did he believe that Jesus had been raised, or did he think to himself, “Yes, she’s right; his body is gone.” We do not know. Nothing is recorded of any words they spoke. They are as speechless as we are. No one had every been resurrected; they did not expect it this time.

The verb “believe” occurs ninety-nine times in John---more than in all of the other gospels combined; more than in all of Paul’s letters combined. So what does it take for someone to believe in Jesus?  Or to believe that Jesus lives? It seems that it will take more than an empty tomb. The absence of Jesus’ mortal remains simply leaves more questions than answers.

Peter and John simply go back home. Think about it: The ones Jesus told that he will dwell in them and they in him----these same disciples simply go back to their old dwellings.

But Mary Magdalene remains, weeping. Two angels in the tomb, sitting where Jesus’ body would’ve been, ask her “Woman, why are you weeping?” (Angels appear many places in the Bible, usually as messengers of God.)

“They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” she says. “They?” Whom does she have in mind? The authorities? Anxious disciples? Perhaps Mary saw this as just another humiliation for Jesus and his disciples. A decent burial was all they asked, after all that Jesus had been put through.

Have you noticed that Mary’s words are the only ones recorded so far in this story? She gives voice to her grief and fear rather than bottle them up. Her tears and questions are a signal of the depth of her love for Jesus and her devotion to him, even in death..

Mary encounters another man, whom she assumes is the gardener, who also asks her why she is crying. He adds, “Whom are you looking for?” Mary says “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Mary’s concern is still to correct the indignity of someone having disturbed the body of Jesus.

The man is, of course, not the gardener at all, but Jesus himself. He simply calls her by her name, “Mary.”

Mary may have remembered what Jesus had said earlier. “The sheep will follow the shepherd, for they know his voice.” (10:4)

Notice that the angels caledl her “Woman.”  Jesus calls her by her name, “Mary.” She knows this voice. It is the voice of one who cured her of her mental torment. It is the voice of the one whom she listened to as he taught her and the others. It is the voice of the one who said from the cross, “It is finished.” It is the voice of the Good Shepherd.

We know what this is like. We see an old and treasured friend. The years may not have been kind to them physically, but we recognize them by their voice. Mary’s astonished “Rabbouni!” means, “My dearest teacher.” (I can close my eyes and remember the voice of Dr. Schubert Ogden, my theology teacher, even now.)

There is so much that we do not understand about the resurrection of Jesus. But this much was affirmed by the apostles: The one raised was the same one who had lived and died. He was recognized. The risen one is the crucified one. (David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion, 1992)

Mary wants to “hold on to the source of her joy.” But Jesus says, “Do not hold me.” What’s this about?

This is a big part of the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. He is himself, but he is different. He has a body, but it is not like ours. Raymond Brown, who has spent a lifetime studying the Gospel of John, explains it this way. “Jesus has not been restored to his normal life before death; he possesses eternal life and is [already] in God’s presence.”

So Mary Magdalene becomes the first witness and the first preacher. (Along with other evidence, this fact alone should lay to rest any reservations we have about women being fit to preach!) Jesus tells her to go tell his brothers, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

There is profound grace in this brief message: notice the use of the words “my” and “your.” Remember that these are the same disciples who abandoned Jesus in his hour of deepest pain; the same Peter who denied that he ever knew Jesus. Yet Jesus includes them as his brothers, and Mary and the other women as his sisters. The first recipients of atoning love were disciples who had fled, and who had no doctrine of atonement to explain what happened.

Mary does as Jesus asks. She goes and tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

Karl Barth wrote that the gospel “is not a natural therefore but a miraculous nevertheless.” This is certainly true of the resurrection of Jesus. It was not expected. It was a surprise to the disciples. They killed Jesus; nevertheless, God raised him up. (Quoted by Theodore J. Wardlaw in “Unnatural Event,” Christian Century, March 20, 2007, italics mine)

So how do we respond to this story today?

At the very least, we acknowledge the disciples and other witnesses have told us that they encountered Jesus after his death. They tell us that the tomb was empty. Even the Apostle Paul, who tracked down and captured Christians before his conversion, tells of the risen Lord appearing to him. Somehow Jesus got up, the same person, yet transcending mortality.

Believing that Jesus is risen (the rare verb use which means has been and is continuing to be), however, requires more from us than trusting the credibility of the earliest witnesses; and offers more than morals from a history lesson. By faith, we believe that Jesus has been raised “in the fullness of his humanity into the full presence of God.” As the Gospel of John tells us, when we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father. (14:9)

The spatial language regarding Jesus’ ascension (going up) is a simple way of stating our belief that Jesus, as a member of the Trinity, is, even now:

available to us,
calling us to repentance,
forgiving us,
ministering to us,
 representing us to God and God to us,
 and leading forward the people called Church.

Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus comes among us
 when we break bread together in his Name;
 when we and those we love are baptized;
 when in prayer we open ourselves to God;
 when we make our ways to churches in the hope that God will call us by name and bless us;
 when we serve neighbors in their needs;
 when we oppose evil in its many seductive forms;
 when we refuse to count anyone as less than human;
 and in our walks through the valleys of the shadow of death-- ourselves, or with those we love;

In all of these ways, and in wonderful serendipities, we meet the Risen Crucified One.

And when our mortal bodies wear out, in God’s good time, God will supply the faithful with new modes of being. In these bodies, we are perishable. “But it is within the power of God to re-create our lives in an immortal and imperishable mode. This new mode is promised us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” This is what Paul in First Corinthians, Chapter 15 is telling us. (Ronald Goetz, “The Resurrection: A Truth Beyond Understanding,” Christian Century, April 7, 1982)

Death did not conquer the Word made flesh.

Death did not silence his voice.

Death could not keep him from us and will not separate us from     him.

All that we love about Jesus--- all that he taught and did--- has been vindicated by God.

 God is faithful. “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23)

At the resurrection of Jesus--- however we come to terms with it in our Thomas-like minds---a new day has dawned. It is as astonishing to imagine as the first day of God’s creation. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,” says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55) And it is so.

Sit in wonder. Believe in Jesus, crucified and risen. Sing for joy.

The Lord is risen.
The Lord is risen, indeed.