Readings
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18
Today is meant to be a day of celebration. It’s meant to be a time when we rejoice in the resurrection of our Lord and the hope it brings. But truth be told, I have struggled with what to say to you today.
We live in difficult times. Regardless of our political affiliation I think most of us can agree that there is ample economic, social, and political uncertainty to leave us hard pressed to be joyful or hopeful at this time.
But if we are attentive to the story we just heard, we may be surprised to see that we are not alone in our uncertainties and our lack of hope. We may well also be surprised to hear that the presence of grief or difficulty doesn’t preclude the in-breaking of God. We may well discover that Easter isn’t just about happy times.
Now removed 2000 years from the events of that day, it’s easy for us to focus almost exclusively on the message that Jesus is raised from the dead. It’s easy to simplify the story into one where the certainty of Christ’s resurrection means the certainty of our own. It’s easy to gloss over the finer points of the narratives we have been given about that Easter morning oh so long ago.
The truth of the disciples’ Easter morning, and especially that of the women who went to the tomb, is one in which the events of Good Friday are still a raw reality. They are in a state of deep grief. They are traumatized, and psychologically and emotionally wounded. We can only imagine the deep sorrow they feel over the loss of Jesus and the pain of once again encountering his lifeless body. For them, at least at the beginning of the story, there is little hope and absolutely no joy.
Now in the version of the Gospel we just heard, that trauma is only doubled when Mary goes to the tomb and finds the stone rolled away and the body missing. She goes to Peter and shares her grief and concern, and he and another disciple come to see for themselves. Not knowing that Jesus has risen, their pain, I am sure, was equally compounded.
The heartbreak is too much, and Mary simply stands outside the tomb weeping. Her hope is gone, her teacher dead, and now his body has disappeared. How could things get any worse?
To make matters worse, now a stranger, presumably the Gardner, intrudes upon her grief. She begs the man before her for help to find the body of Jesus. And then, surprisingly this man calls her by name. And at once Mary, for reasons not completely expressed, recognizes it is Jesus. At once what was inconceivable grief is turned to hope. What was overwhelming despair is turned to joy.
But Jesus tells her not to “hold on to him” and sends her to the disciples to tell them that he is ascending to God. And she goes and does so, telling them, after only shortly before reporting the body missing, that she has “seen the Lord.”
Despite all that has happened and the truth which she herself would have claimed as evidence of Jesus’ death, Mary has a living encounter with Christ. Not despite what has happened but in the midst of what has happened.
The temptation for us in the wake of such a story is to do one of two things. Either to turn it into a miracle story that we accept on faith alone or to allegorize it into a convenient myth to deal with the death of the one they came to recognize as God.
I think there is a third alternative, one which the authors of the Gospels knew intimately. Namely, when dealing with the resurrection of Jesus, and the idea of resurrection in general, we need to recognize that we are not talking about a simple resuscitation, but rather a transformation. Jesus died. When he was resurrected he didn’t simply get up, he was wholly transformed. And while there was much about this man that could still be recognized there also was a difference between how he was before and how he is now.
Remember that initially Mary did not recognize Jesus. It was only after he called her by name that she realized who it was. And remember too, that in the stories that follow, that experience happens more than once. Whether it is on a journey on the road to Emmaus or in a breakfast of fish on the beach, a transformed Christ appears to his disciples, recognizable as their Lord, but transformed nonetheless.
Now to go back to where we started at, I told you how I was struggling to find something to say because of the difficulty of our times, because of my own lack of hope, because of my own grief and lack of joy.
But then as I read these scriptures I remembered the fundamental truth of resurrection. Life is not ended but transformed. And this isn’t just about the death of our bodies and the state of our selves beyond that. This is also about the life we are living and the world in which we live it.
We need not look very far to see the truth of resurrection all about us. We need not be deeply reflective to see how every ending leads to something new, how every conclusion leads to new opportunities and new life. I look at my own life and can see that some of the most difficult moments when it seemed that all was lost became sources of significant transformation in me. With God’s help, I grew in the midst of those experiences and, in one very real sense, became a new person because of it. What had been passed away and what replaced it was, while still me, a whole new creation.
The truth, friends, is that resurrection is all about us, happening not despite the pain, but in the midst of it. Resurrection is the promise of God, made real in Jesus, that life is not ended, but transformed.
And so, if you are struggling with finding hope and joy, whether that is because of the present age or because of factors in your own life, know that God has not abandoned you. Know that the grief you feel and the pain which is oh so present is not the whole story. Know that even now God is at work in you and your life transforming you and the world about you. Know that Christ, who once was dead and is now alive, is with you filling you with his grace.
As we shout with joy our alleluias, proclaiming that Christ is risen, may we also claim that we, with him, are risen indeed.