“The Open Tomb”

John 20:1-18

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

Easter Sunday

March 27, 2005

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

It’s Easter Sunday and here we are.  Spring is already making us look at the world differently.  People are wearing shorts.  Joggers and bikers are out.  The debris from the snow drifts are being cleaned away.  We are coming out of the long winter cocoons of our houses.  We’re planning our gardens and gearing up for a new season. 

In here, the colors have returned to this place.  Hyped up on jelly beans and chocolate eggs, thrilled by the music of voice, bell and brass, we’re here in full celebration mode all because of what happened on that first Easter Sunday and continues to happen throughout our world if we look closely enough. 

It’s taken a while to get here.  This whole program year we have been taking a journey of faith.  Starting in September we looked at the Exodus and our liberation from slavery.  During Advent we looked at the pilgrimages we make throughout our lives as we seek to live in devotion to the work of Christianity.  During the Season of Justice, we looked at the journey to justice from the perspective of politics, economics and race.  And during Lent we have focused on the barren ground of exile where we go to places we do not chose.  We enter tombs.  Heck we send others to those tombs.

            But on Easter, we begin a new journey.  This journey begins with an open tomb.

            Think of some of the tombs we live with these days.

There are exiles that force us into the tombs. 

There are diseases. 

There are judgements by family and so-called friends.

            There is the barren ground of exclusion and injustice.

There is the barren ground of crucifixion of those who try to do right.

We’ve seen too many crucified.

We often live in and around tombs.

            I think of the people in Red Lake especially this week.  All of those young people put to death too early, for reasons that seem unfathomable and yet seem to be related to hate-filled propaganda on the internet, bullying by classmates, suicide in the perpetrator’s family, a highly unstable home life, debilitating poverty and easy access to weapons.  All of those people are put in tombs this week. 

            I think of Terry Schiavo, prolonged of life against her wishes and existing as a political football as her body wastes away in Florida.  I think of her family and the way they are torn apart, and have been to differing degrees for the past 15 years.

            I think of the victims of the horrible tsunami.

            I think of the 2-year and counting war in Iraq. 

            It would be so much easier if we were to close up the tomb and be done with it.  We could just move on, act like none of it happened, admit that death has won.  Oh, we’re tempted to do that with every shooting in the Jordan neighborhood.

            Mary went to the tomb early in the morning on that first Easter Sunday.  She seemed to be the only one with the guts to be there.  Matthew, Mark and Luke put Mary with a few other people, all women.  But in John’s gospel, Mary is alone.  She comes to the tomb.  She weeps and wails and mourns.  Her beloved was dead and gone.  She goes to the tomb out of devotion, out of love, out of not knowing what to do next. 

            Graveyards can be meditative places.  They can reconnect you with who you are and who you seek to be.  When we were in Rochester, New York a month and a half ago, Jean Lubke tells of how she visited the grave of Susan B. Anthony in the same cemetery where Frederick Douglass is buried.  The friend who took her there visits Ms. Anthony’s grave often as she seeks to connect with the power that was that woman.

            I remember in Nicaragua going to the grave of Benjamin Linder.  Ben was a unicyclist, clown and an engineer who worked tirelessly to set up a hydroelectric power plant in the hills of Nicaragua.  He was killed by our US tax dollars in the late 80’s.  In what was like a crucifixion.  I went to his grave and was emboldened top continue to work to change US policy toward Nicaragua.

            I went to seminary across the street from Grant’s tomb.  I have prayed at the Vietnam Memorial.  I witnessed the horror of the stories recounted at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC.  I have reflected as I visited the now-extinguished eternal flame at the grave of Sandinista founder Carlos Fonseca in Managua. 

            There are tombs to fallen leaders.  There are tombs for the unknown soldiers who died on the battlefields.  Who knows, we may be standing on the tomb of a forgotten people from centuries ago.

            When my grandparents died, their ashes were interred in the benches that surround the altar at St. Paul’s Episcopal church in Cleveland.  Whenever I go there, I remember them putting the small boxes in the secret chamber, alongside all of the other boxes of the saints gone before.

A neighbor of a church member in Hartford Connecticut used to go to the graveyard every day to be with her husband who had died many years before.  She showed him great devotion, and yet it still consumed her life.

            Mary went to the tomb, just like we do.  It was the right thing to do.  It was the thing a devoted person did.  It’s what we often do.  And yet we know that when she got there, the tomb was not as she expected it to be.  It was open.  Immediately, she ran and told Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved.  They saw the open tomb, too. But they seemed to not perceive its significance.  In Luke’s version, the angels say, “Why do you seek the living amongst the dead.”  Why indeed?  We know what happened next, she got introduced to the gardener, the risen Jesus.  Jesus said, “go and tell my disciples what you see.”

            Go and tell the disciples that the tomb is open.  But more than that, Mary got to tell them what it meant.  Of course the tomb being open was and is a metaphor for how we are to live our lives as Easter people.

            We are to look not at the closed tomb, but at the open tomb.

            The open tomb means life. 

The tomb being open means that hope is alive.

            The open tomb means God is not done with us yet.      

            The open tomb also means that the powers of this world with all of their exclusion and injustice and cruelty and barbarism and death-making are not the final answer because Christians will not be silenced.

            The open tomb means we have more possibilities ahead of us than we can imagine.  We come to Easter and the tomb is open.  That means we need to reorient our views.   Oh, it’s tempting to stay outside the tomb wailing and licking our wounds.  It’s what happened at the last election.  We are stuck, too many of us outside the tomb. 

            But the tomb is open.  There’s a new kid in town.  A new perspective.  We need to look at the world from the perspective of the open tomb. For when we remember that the tomb is open, something wonderful is on the way.  Hope is born out of the open tomb.  We start to see things anew.  We begin to believe.  But it doesn’t stop there.  No, it inspires us to do some things because of the open tomb.

Because of the open tomb, we start to think outside the box.

Because of the open tomb, we start not only considering opening up a homeless shelter here in this church building, but also how to provide affordable housing to all Minnesotans.

Because of the open tomb we passed a statement saying that we support marriage rights for all people and that exclusion because of race, gender, class, age, ability or orientation is beneath us as a people.

Because of the open tomb, we might even be able to mend a relationship, or at least take a small tentative step in that direction.

Because of the open tomb, Jesus goes with us into all the world preaching his gospel of love, justice, compassion and mercy to a world in need.  But he preaches it through each and every one of us.  Maybe because of the open tomb, we can transform some of the tragedies in our world to hope, too. 

When the tsunami hit, our church came up with close to $2000.00 in aid.  American Baptists came up with $1.85 million. 

            As the war rages on in Iraq, more and more peace groups are finding their voices and will not relent until it stops.

            At the state capital people of faith are pouring in in record numbers to oppose increased gambling, the regressive tax policies, the cuts to schools, the unmonitored increase in gun availability, and the proposed constitutional amendment banning not only gay marriage but also domestic partnership rights.  A number of us have hand delivered our UBC statement calling for equal marriage rights for all people to our elected officials.  And because of the open tomb, many of us will keep doing that.

            American Baptist Minister and Minneapolis City Councilman Don Samuels holds vigils in the Jordan neighborhood every time there is a shooting.  Because of the open tomb, death and fear cannot and does not have the final answer.  Faithfully and relentlessly he goes back along with some of us as a witness of hope.

            As Terry Schiavo’s body gives way to its natural process, we who believe in the open tomb might well look responsibly at the ethics surrounding end-of-life issues.  We certainly see that people are redoubling their efforts, making sure that their family and friends know of their advanced directives.  May there never be a family put through such agony again.

In Red Lake, MN, the open tomb reminds us that we cannot stay outside the tomb forever.  That community will need to look at the many ways that they have failed the perpetrator for him to do such a thing.  We as a culture ought to concentrate on the open tomb enough to care for one of the lost boys enough to make sure that he and those like him have a sense of hope and caring in this world.

Sisters and brothers, the tomb is open and it yawns for a world in need.  It is open and it is calling us to go out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 

It is open and it calls us to look at the possibilities out there as well as the obstacles. 

The tomb is open which means that the unleashing power of the Holy Spirit is upon us.

That power can restore us to sanity.

That power can help us to see the new way.

That power can remind us that we are not alone.

For Christ has risen.  Why do we seek the living amongst the dead?  He is not here.  He has gone before us into Galilee.  Hallelujah!

So on this Easter, remember the open tomb and the wonder and celebration it brought.  But don’t stop there.  Inspired by the open tomb, do acts of resurrection wherever you can.  Don’t let death have the final word.  Witness to the new possibilities available to all people..  Walk with Jesus and the disciples out of that tomb and change the world.  Then we can truly say, Christ is risen.  Christ is risen, indeed.