An Easter Son-Rise Sermon
Hear the gospel of our Lord according to John.
Glory to you O Lord. John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is the gospel of our Lord. Praise to you, O Christ
May these spoken words
illuminate your written word
and draw us to your living word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. I love this opening to the resurrection story in John. Imagine it. We’ve had the harrowing anguish of Friday: your hopes and dreams shattered like so much broken glass, a living nightmare that you can’t bear to admit is real. We’ve had the dazed limbo of Saturday: eyes dry of tears because you’d wept them all away and you went through the motions of life, mechanically making food but it might as well have been cardboard because you couldn’t taste any of it.
And now it’s Sunday. Now, finally, you can say goodbye properly. Now you can show your love, and your sorrow, and yes, let’s be honest, your anger. This wasn’t how it was meant to be, surely? Where were the thousand legions of angels when you needed them? You’d been convinced that God would do something amazing, some gigantic miracle, and Jesus would step down from the cross and go “Ta Da!”
But that hadn’t happened. Jesus had died, properly dead, and you’d watched him being buried. Bit of a rush job. Barely time to mutter the prayers before they shut the tomb, and no flowers at all. Mind you Nicodemus had laid it on thick with the spice. And you’d wanted so much to say … everything. And you hadn’t been able. And that hurt. But now it’s Sunday. Now you can do it properly.
You wake before the others and creep out into the dark street. Not yet dawn but there’s enough light in the sky to find your way. Must be near here, you can smell the spice. But … what? It’s open?
It all makes perfect sense. “Jesus has come back to life,” you think. No, of course you don’t. Dead is dead is dead. OK, yes, Lazarus, but who is there to call Jesus out of the grave? No, this was thieves. They would have heard about those yards of expensive cloth and the pounds and pounds of spices – well worth stealing. Let’s hope they dumped the body somewhere nearby. Best find it before the rats get at it.
You run to get help with the search and, after some kerfuffle with Peter and John in the tomb, they go back to get the others and you are left alone in dawn’s half light, utterly bewildered.
This is the weirdest grave robbery. The expensive cloth is still there. Neatly folded, would you believe. And the spice? The floor is thick with it. You can smell it half way to Bethany. Why would someone take the body and leave the valuables? Makes zero sense.
There’s a movement behind you. Maybe it’s the groundskeeper. Maybe he’s found a body dumped over by the wall. He can help you carry it back. It will be fine. You can bury Jesus properly and say everything you’d wanted to say.
You turn. Your eyes are blurry with tears and you’re about to blurt out the story about the grave robbers when the man speaks. “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
A new idea dawns. Maybe he moved the body. It was only a borrowed grave after all. Ah! Jesus is safe in another tomb, in a different part of the garden. “Sir, if you have carried him away,” you say, “tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
A single word. “Mary.”
The world stops spinning. Time holds its breath. The universe pulls itself inside out like a sock and everything you ever knew, everything that ever was, every wish, every hope, every fear are all flipped on their head.
You turn, really turn this time, and you see. Despite the tears, despite the still-grey dawn light, despite the thousand million thoughts racing through your brain, you see. “Rabboni!”
Here’s the thing about turning: when you turn around, you see different things. You change your perspective. You look at things from a different angle. Things you could not see before are now right in front of your eyes. And other things that you used to focus on are behind you, out of sight, out of mind. Turning changes things.
For Mary, that Easter dawn, her mourning was turned into joy. I love it that Jesus’ first words to her were ‘Why are you weeping?’ Not ‘Stop crying, don’t be a wuss,’ but a genuine question. Who are you crying for?
Someone she loved had died. And that’s worth shedding tears. Jesus wept over death. That loud cry at the tomb of Lazarus was a howl, a furious screaming at death. This should not be!
We’ve read to the last chapters of Revelation so we know that in the end, death will not be, but right now we live in the between times when loved ones die and there is plenty of mourning and crying and pain. But in that early dawn light, Jesus was there to say, to show, that death is not the end, it does not have the final say, it is not the only certain thing in life beside taxes. And he, standing by Mary and speaking her name, was the living, breathing, smiling proof.
After we’ve gone home today and consumed our own bodyweight in chocolate, I hope this image of Mary turning sticks with you. She turned and she saw. When you turn, what might you see? What might I see?
What are we looking at here that stops us from seeing something there? What narrows our attention like blinkers so that we miss everything else? Jesus is calling your name, wanting you to turn and see him, maybe for the first time, maybe in a new way. New perspective. New vision. New outlook.
Perhaps when you get home, in a quiet moment, you could imagine it is you in the garden. You hear your name and you turn. Really do it. Really turn around. I wonder what you will say. I wounder what you will hear.
In this dawn light, early on the first day of the week, I wish you a most blessed and joyous Easter, for
Christ is Risen – He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!
The Reflectionary 