Easter Sunday is a rollercoaster of emotions.
We felt that as we began worship today… instead of starting with the joy of the resurrected Christ, we began with the despair felt by Mary and the disciples because their Lord and Teacher was no longer with them.
You see, for the disciples, Easter morning began with a hopeless situation.
It began with fear of the unknown.
It began with the gloom of death.
When I wrestled with what I should preach about this morning, I couldn’t help but think about all of the hopelessness and fear and gloom in this world.
I hear it in the halls of this church, and around our dinner tables… in the grocery store, the halls of work or school… all of the varied and sundry places that we gather in our lives.
We worry about family who just can’t seem to get their act together.
We struggle with illness or money in our personal lives.
We watch the evening news and everything seems wrong with the world.
After a while, the daily grind starts to take its toll and we become numb to all of that stuff around us. We find ourselves settling into the rut and start to believe that this is just the way it’s going to be.
The violence of the world almost ceases to phase us. What is a crucified Savior when another bombing in Syria has taken lives? Another shooting at a school last week? Another gun related death in our city?
We can barely keep ourselves abreast of the human rights violations occurring across our planet as war-torn countries continue to destroy the lives of innocent men, women and children. So many of these places of conflict feel utterly hopeless and without end. It seems that no matter what we do, or maybe because of what we do, new groups and new people spring up to fight, instead of searching for ways to work together and to rebuild lives.
In our gospel reading this morning, Mary goes to the tomb and she is not going with expectant hope. She is going to bring spices and oil and to continue to prepare his body for burial.
You see, Jesus was laid in the tomb just before sunset and the beginning of the Sabbath Day and so the women did not have enough time to properly lay him to rest.
As the sun rose on this Easter morning, Mary Magdelene went to the tomb to mourn, to pray, and to say her good-byes.
She was someone who desperately loved Jesus. He was her Teacher and her Master. He offered her new life and a brand new beginning when he cleansed the demons from her life. And ever since that time, she had followed him faithfully. Then, in one fell swoop, everything that she had begun to put her trust into was taken away.
Her Lord was gone.
The disciples who followed him had scattered and those who remained were hiding out in fear of the Jewish authorities.
Mary had no one to turn to and nowhere to go.
The only thing she knew to do was go to that tomb and rehearse a ritual practiced by Jewish women for centuries. She would go to the tomb to honor Jesus and to mourn for him properly.
But as our scriptures this morning remind us, when she arrived, everything was in disarray!
The stone was rolled back and her Master was nowhere to be found!
His body was gone!
Desperately, she ran to the house of one of the disciples for she knew that some of them would be there…
They have taken away his body! She cried out….
They have taken him and I don’t know where they have laid him!
Two of the disciples, run back to the tomb with her and find her story to be true. They enter and find the burial clothes there also, neatly folded and placed on the stone. They know that something has happened… but none of them really knows what it means.
Mary, in the midst of all of her desperation and mourning saw Jesus standing before her but did not recognize him. She couldn’t see the promise that was right before her eyes!
Jesus even called out to her, trying to scatter her fear and her gloom:
“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
As Mary stood in that garden weeping out of desperation she heard her Master call her voice. One moment of startling fear and overwhelming joy – a moment of holy awe – as the significance of what is seen – and what is unseen comes crashing in.
And Christ is calling out to us all the time, every day.
He asks us constantly what we are weeping for.
He longs to wipe away the tears from our eyes.
Jesus is Risen. Death could not hold him.
And if it cannot hold him, it cannot hold us.
All that Jesus said about life and death
all that was understood only as idea – as a concept – as a vision
is made real in that empty tomb and in that encounter in the garden.
The disciples and the women heard Jesus talk SO MANY TIMES about his death and resurrection and it just never sunk in.
They couldn’t understand the promise because they never believed it would happen.
So when Jesus shared his final meal with them on Thursday night they let him down and failed to remain faithful.
And when Christ was crucified on Friday afternoon, they were paralyzed by their unbelief and forgot the promises he made to them.
They couldn’t see past their own pain and fear and gloom to remember the promise!
The ancient promises from Isaiah:
“No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime… They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”
And he wants us to see him, to recognize him as the Jesus who is alive – the Jesus who is risen – the Jesus who has the power to bring that new creation to bear on our lives.
But like Mary, our hearts are often so slow to believe, to trust, and to accept he is standing before us.
There are so many things in our lives that we could feel hopeless about:
Loved ones who die too young,
People who work away their lives for a wage that won’t pay the rent,
Hungry families… including the 55,000 people in Des Moines who don’t have enough food on their tables,
But the power of the Easter resurrection didn’t just bring Christ to life.
The power of the Easter resurrection took a rag tag bunch of disciples who barely knew their left from their right as far as following Jesus was concerned…. And turned them into apostles.
It turned these doubting, stammering, disobedient fools into the leaders of a movement that would transform the world!
When Christ rose from the dead, the Body of Christ that is the church was brought to life – a community was formed that would love and cherish and carry on the mission and the ministry of Christ!
Each and every single one of us is a living testimony to the power that Christ’s resurrection had on our world.
Each one of us is who we are today and is in this place this morning because those first disciples experienced the risen Christ.
And because that experienced so radically changed their lives that they had to tell others.
So what is this Easter morn?
It is God’s promise of a new day
It is God’s promise of a new life
It is God’s promise of a new world
coming to pass in our midst.
Jesus is risen. Death could not hold him. And it will not hold us either.
Wherever in your heart there is weeping, Christ promises to turn your tears into laughter.
Jesus is risen! Death could not hold him!
And the forces that tear us apart in this world will not defeat him either!
Christ has risen!
And we… as the body of Christ, in this time and in this place… are called to continually live our lives as a beacon of that promise!
We are called to visit the sick and those who mourn and pray for healing in this life or the next.
We are called to work for those who are struggling and help to create a better way.
We are called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
We are called to welcome the stranger and the outcast, the person who is not like you:
whether that means they were born here or not,
an NRA member or fighting to limit guns,
someone who wants sidewalks in their community or doesn’t,
whatever the color of their skin or whomever they love.
You and I… because of the reality of what we experience this morning… are called to go forth and scatter the forces of fear and gloom in the world.
We are to find small ways to live out and practice the resurrection power in our world today.
Christ is risen!
Let us crown him the lord of Life, the Lord of Peace and the Lord of Love
and may we believe in his power to truly transform our lives.
Amen.
No Comments