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“Jesus, Mary, You & Me”
John 20:1-18
Annie Lamott says “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work and you don’t give up.”
That’s how that first Easter began. It began in the darkness before dawn. According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ beloved, the one who never gave up, came alone to the tomb early, just before dawn. The Gospel doesn’t tell us why she came, although we can guess that it was to tend to Jesus’ body now that the Sabbath had concluded. You know what happened. She saw the stone rolled away.
“Mary ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved sprinted to the tomb and saw that it was true—they saw the cloth of burial in a heap in the corner. They saw it and then went home. There was nothing more they could do, they feared. They were holed up for their lives.
But Mary didn’t go back to the upper room. Fleeing to safety was not part of her nature. It was certainly not befitting a follower of Jesus who willingly went to the cross. Instead, Mary sat there and wept. Mary wasn’t interested in the next steps. She needed to weep, just like she needed to be there at the crucifixion. Mary didn’t need to plan and strategize. She needed to weep. Ironically, it was one of the ways she experienced her power. Mary felt with all her might. Just as Jesus wept outside of Lazarus’ tomb, so Mary wept outside of Jesus’ now-empty tomb. Mary wept for Jesus. She wept for herself. She wept for the world.
And it was there that Jesus appeared to her, in her weeping and wailing. Sojourner Truth once said in her famous Ain’t I a Woman speech, “I have born 13 children and seen most all sold into slavery and when I cried a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me.” Jesus heard Mary on that first Easter Sunday.
At first she thought he was a gardener. That was until he said “Mary”, like only he could say it. He appeared to Mary Magdalene and told her of his resurrection.
He told her that as a result, she needed to rise, too.
She needed to not stay in the place of weeping.
She needed to rise and tell the others the truth.
She needed to rise and live as Jesus taught her.
She needed to rise and stand on her own two feet and not listen to the ones who would tell her she’s not good enough, not holy enough, not pure enough, not male enough, not acceptable enough.
Mary, you need to rise up and preach my gospel to every creature.
Like someone who has emerged from baptismal waters, you need to rise in newness of being.
You need to become a new person.
And I have to ask myself, how will I rise on this side of Easter? More on that later.
It’s a question for all of us. How are we different people because of Easter, because of the resurrection?
Well, you don’t become new overnight. It took a while to sink in, but those early disciples and the early church started putting two and two together. Eventually, they realized that the world used its most powerful weapons and they were no match for God. All that needed to happen was that the people needed to rise up.
On Easter, we celebrate people starting new lives. It was a new day for Mary as she and the others saw the risen Jesus. It was not new in the way they would have expected it to be. They had work to do. They needed to proclaim the gospel. They needed to implement all of the ethics and practices that Jesus taught while he was alive. What the resurrection showed was that the world’s mightiest weapons of mass destruction are not the final answer. In fact, the answer comes in the resurrection.
It comes when we the people decide to live by a new reality.
It comes when we no longer settle for business as usual.
It comes when we say in the words of Isaiah that “the wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the fatling and the calf together and nation shall not raise up sword against nation and neither shall they study war any more.”
Resurrection happens when we remember the words of Amos who bitingly said, “I hate your solemn assemblies and the singing of your tunes, but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream”. Then I’ll have something to be happy about.
Resurrection comes when like Jesus said “go ye into all the world and preach my Gospel to every creature.”
Resurrection happens when Peter quotes God in Acts 10 and says, “What I have made you shall not call unclean.” While he did this, he undid most of the restrictive Torah laws. Tell that to the next person who quotes Leviticus as justification for their condemnation of a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person.
Resurrection happens when the early church carved out its niche in the midst of warfare and famine and persecution and survived.
Resurrection
happens when people read the Bible for themselves and discover new meanings,
new beliefs, new truth about God and the world, which is what every
church-based liberation movement did from Martin Luther to the Anabaptists to
the Civil Rights movement to the Every Church a
Resurrection happens when people stand up to the fundamentalists who used to say the clear teaching of scripture says that we need to only have male ministers, or we should have slavery, or we should not support glbt rights.
Resurrection happens when people see the clear teaching of scripture as one of love, compassion, justice and mercy to all of God’s people. This teaching always trumps restrictiveness, because it embodies resurrection.
Resurrection happens when we see the relationship that Jesus had with Mary and see that its intimacy is not a threat, but a point of enlightenment.
Resurrection happens when we open up our church to homeless families as we did this past week.
Resurrection happens when we vote to ordain Lynn Welton and Ross Aalgaard over and against the decisions of our region simply because some are threatened by their sexual orientation.
Resurrection happens when someone experiences the process of recovery from addiction.
And finally, resurrection happens today as Solame, Rebecca and Kenny enter the waters of baptism. They entered it one way and now as they symbolically died with Jesus, they rose with him into newness of life. They are ready to take on the world as resurrection people. And we had better look out.
Anne Lamott says this about baptism: “Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time it’s also holy and absurd. It’s about surrender, giving in to all those things we can’t control; it’s a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.”
It’s true. It’s about all of that. It’s about resurrection. Because when you rise from that water, like many of us have, we have symbolized our commitment to live by a new set of rules, a new set of priorities, a new set of guidelines. We have committed to live as Easter people, resurrection people who see the big picture of God’s ultimate plan for the world. And it is good. It is filled with love, mercy, justice and compassion because that’s who God is. Anything that doesn’t focus on love, mercy, justice and compassion and uses the name of God to do it is practicing deception. Resurrection happens when people rise up and live in a new way, never settling for business as usual, always pushing us toward a higher plane, always a little bit uncomfortable until that great day comes where the blinders come off all of our eyes and we see our enemies as our long lost sisters and brothers.
It’s Easter. We experience the resurrection story through word, through song, through story, through bells and brass and flowers and pretty colors. But none of it means much of anything unless we leave here somehow changed, somehow risen above the mundaneness of our existence, somehow risen above the ways of the world, somehow risen to walk and talk and be a new person. That’s when Easter really happens.
So how about it?
How are you going to witness to the resurrection?
What’s going to change in your life?
How are you going to rise above the rest of the world?
Me, I’m going to take my queue from Solame, Kenny, Rebecca and all of the people here in this church who are committed to being defined by a higher plane of existence. I can only do what I do if I remember that none of us do it alone. It is together that we experience resurrection.
Each time we take a tentative step into the void of uncertainty.
Each time we break with tradition.
Each time we come up against powers and principalities because of our Biblically-based convictions, we do so with a power that comes from God out there. And yet I experience God in here, right in this very room. That’s resurrection.
And if one of us is in a resurrection mood and that person gets another in a resurrection mood, then we have ourselves a movement. This movement is called the church and it is a force to be reckoned with.
Never underestimate the power of people who have experienced a resurrection. They tend to change the world. And that’s our task. And the way we change it is to first change ourselves.
So I face this next season of denominational, legislative and even cultural uncertainty with a renewed conviction that we are resurrection people: That our lives are owned by God above; That God is interested in love, mercy, justice and compassion. I refuse to demonize my enemies. I refuse to stay weeping and wailing. With you I commit to rising up and facing the future drenched with a commitment from God to preach and live the gospel of love, mercy, compassion, justice and resurrection to a world in need.
As Mary and the rest of the disciples spread the word about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, they changed hearts and minds along the way.
And we are changed, too. I know I am. Solame, Rebecca, Kenny and so many of the rest of you have helped that happen for me. So I will say with confidence,
Christ is risen. And I hope you can respond with: Christ is risen indeed.
Amen.