Easter Message

God Wins!
John 20:1-18

It is a joyous day! Jesus is risen! God has acted in a powerful and decisive way to give us victory over sin and death. It is right that we should shout Alleluia! It is right that we celebrate with family and friends….I hope that today, when you gather together with your family and friends, look at each other and know that this life is a good life; our God is an awesome God, and that we have a future promise of life everlasting…

Yet, even as we celebrate the great good news of the Resurrection of our Lord, even as we shout Alleluia! His is risen! we need to step back a few days to Friday, and remember what got us to this moment of joy was a death. Death … There is no other way of putting it–death simply is horrible. It intrudes into our lives, oftentimes with little or no warning. Accidents, illness, war, violence. That’s the way it is…Death has always been with us, always lurking nearby, stalking us, and that’s a reality that is hard to face. Part of the burden of being human, you see, is having the knowledge of our own mortality–we all know, even if we don’t choose to think about it very often, we all know that someday, we will die.

I’m not trying to scare you, or dampen your enthusiasm for the joy that is Easter, or put you off with all this talk of death, it’s just that I believe that as people of God and because of Easter, we might have something to say to the rest of the world, when it comes to death. After all, this morning, we claim and proclaim that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

So, what do we say to people in places like Iraq, Darfur, Tibet or Oakland, where war and violence take young lives? What do we say to our neighbor, or loved one with cancer, or the parents of a baby born too soon? We cry with them, we hold them, we share their grief and pain, we love them through the darkness, through the tears, and we pray with them and for them. And by all of these acts of love, we try to show them the truth that death is not the end. Death no longer has the power it once had over our lives, over the world. Death is still awful, death is still a mystery to us in so many ways, but Thanks be to God, because of Easter, we know for certain that death is not the end.

In John’s Gospel reading for today, we get a glimpse of what awaits us–not a visual glimpse of the new heaven and new earth promised in Revelation– as intriguing as that would be–but we get a glimpse of the world’s future and our own future as well. Mary Magdalene has gone to the tomb–John does not say why she goes–perhaps to mourn, perhaps to complete the custom of anointing the body with spices for its final burial. What she finds, as we know, is not a body, but an empty tomb. In her grief, Mary runs to gather the other disciples, who confirm her report–the tomb is indeed empty–but what does this mean? The beloved disciple has an inkling of the truth, as John reports, “he saw and believed.” What did he believe? Did he believe Mary’s account of an empty tomb, or was it something more? Did he actually believe that Jesus had conquered death? At that moment, I think the answer would have been no.

If you think about it this seems like pretty flimsy evidence—if this were a CSI episode, what would Grissom do? Fingerprints? DNA? Whatever they did see—meaning empty grave clothes and what they didn’t see—meaning a body—isn’t very strong evidence, do you think? Would you change your life based on this evidence—or rather, lack of evidence?

To put it mildly, Resurrection does not fit into our rational worldview—it is hard to believe—and I think it becomes harder and harder every day. If there’s not a YouTube video to watch, it didn’t happen—right? No one has ever seen it happen, which is why it helps me to remember that no one saw it happen on Easter morning either. (Thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for this observation and the following:
“The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point.”

The point is life wins, God wins, the world wins and death—the eternal adversary and shadow which stalks all life—death loses.
The truth is not only that through Jesus’ death, death itself is destroyed forever, as wonderful as that is–no–the great good news is about what Jesus says to Mary at the tomb. Remember, she encounters the risen Jesus, but does not recognize him–perhaps her grief blinds her to the truth–she asks the man standing before her, who she thinks is the cemetery attendant, what happened to Jesus’ body—It is not until Jesus calls her by name, simply saying, “Mary”, as if speaking to a friend, does she indeed have her eyes opened and recognize Jesus before her. Jesus warns her from holding onto him, because he must ascend to the Father, “My Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

In those words to Mary, Jesus sums up the truth and meaning of his death—Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to God reestablishes a relationship that had been broken by death and the forces of evil that seek to dominate this world and our lives. Everything changed that morning: Jesus’ God is our God, Jesus’ Father is our Father. Not our sins or failings, not our human prejudice or ignorance, no evil force, not even death itself will be able to separate us from our God and Father, through Jesus Christ.

Then what happens? What’s the rest of the story? BBT: “The risen one had people to see and things to do. The living one’s business was among the living, to whom he appeared not once but four more times in the Gospel of John. Every time he came to his friends they became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him.
Those appearances cinch the resurrection for me, not what happened in the tomb. What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the gardener said, “Mary!” and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening — not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.”

Part of my family heritage is Irish. I visited Ireland a few years ago on a pilgrimage, of sorts. While I was there, I learned that in the Celtic tradition, there are places in the world and moments in time that are called “thin”, meaning that the usual barrier or veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is somehow not so firm. The Celts believe that in those holy places and holy moments, God is especially close by. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the ultimate “thin “ moment in history, where God breaks through our resistance, and breaks into our lives in a way that overcomes our fears and our tears of mourning, to proclaim a new way of everlasting life in relationship with God—a life that begins now—not after we die—because we will never truly die.
The resurrection of Jesus is God’s promise that indeed Life and Love are stronger than death. As we go through our lives, death is still a part of life, yet we can know with a certainty that is as stunning as the empty tomb, that death is not the end, but the beginning of life. With this certainty, we can choose to live everyday with fullness and joy, in relationship not only with God, but also in renewed relationship with one another. Jesus is Risen! Alleluia! Amen!

Powered by ScribeFire.

No Comments Yet

No comments yet.

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI