Sermon 3/27/05
Speechless - John 20:1-18
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I think Easter is the hardest Sunday of the year for me to prepare a sermon. This might sound strange to you, as it did when I shared this thought with my family earlier this week – what could be so hard about this day? After all, the resurrection is a central event to Christianity – maybe the central event for many. You can hardly get it wrong, can you? Jesus was dead, and now he has been resurrected. Isn’t that the Easter message in a nutshell? How hard could that message be to convey in a sermon? Still, I felt this week like I wasn’t getting it – I still wasn’t hitting on the message that needs to be communicated today. Maybe I’ll do a drama, I thought, a monologue – try to take on the role of Mary Magdalene as she comes to the empty tomb. But though I found several scripts written from her perspective, the scripts I was reviewing just didn’t ring true to me. I didn’t think I could act in the way they portrayed Mary as acting – I wasn’t sure that she would have been thinking and speaking the words these monologues were putting into her mouth.
That’s the problem, I guess: How would we react to the scene that Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple encountered on that Sunday? How can we explain their reactions? I think it is practically impossible for us to capture or recreate what the Mary and the others felt on that first Easter. It feels impossible to try and figure out why they act and respond the way that they do. As soon as you start digging into this text, things seem more complicated. Can we still find a place for ourselves in this story?
As our text opens today, Mary is coming to visit Jesus’ tomb, much in the way we might visit the tomb of a loved one shortly after his or her death. She immediately notices, of course, that the stone closing the burial cave had been moved away. She doesn’t go inside and check things out – if you’ve ever been alone in a cemetery, maybe you can understand that anything unusual going on might give you the creeps, as well as a desire to have someone else there with you. So Mary runs and finds Simon Peter and the ‘other disciple’. She tells them, “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid them.” Who does Mary think has taken Jesus? Those who crucified him? That doesn’t really make sense – after all, it was Pilate and the other religious leaders who feared that the disciples would try to snatch Jesus’ body, to make it seem as though he had risen from the dead. But Mary is so overwhelmed by the unsealed tomb that she’s just saying whatever words come into her mind.
So Peter and the other disciples return with her together. For some reason, they seem to race, literally race each other to the tomb. Who can understand the male ego, even at such a time as this, right? We read that the unnamed disciple outruns Peter and reaches the tomb first – but for all his speed, when he gets to the tomb, he stops short, and doesn’t go in. Peter, apparently not to be outdone by the disciple’s speed, boldly walks directly into the grave. Peter sees that Jesus is not there, that the burial clothes are laying there, empty. The other disciples comes in too, sees the same things. We read that “he believes,” but we’re not sure what he believes, since we also read that he and Peter “as yet . . . did not understand the scripture that [Jesus] must rise from the dead.” Then, after all that, they say nothing to Mary, nothing to each other, or nothing to anyone else. They go back home. Perhaps they are afraid. Perhaps they are in shock. They are numb, overwhelmed, confused. But whatever they are feeling, they go back home, and leave Mary, weeping outside the tomb.
Poor Mary. A lot of good it did her to get Peter and the other disciple, for all the help and comfort they were. She is left alone, crying, outside of where Jesus was laid. Finally, she looks into the tomb. And there, she sees two of God’s messengers, sitting where Jesus had been laid. They ask why she is crying, and she again says what she said to the disciples, “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” She turns around, and there has Jesus. But still, she doesn’t understand what is happening. Jesus, whom she had followed everywhere, she supposes to be a gardener. Maybe, she thinks, the gardener has for some reason moved Jesus’ body. But then Jesus speaks her name – she snaps out of her dazed confusion, and responds, “Rabbouni,” which means teacher. Finally, Jesus sends Mary on her way, and tells her to share what she has seen and heard. She departs, and tells the good news to the others, “I have seen the Lord.”
As much as aspects of this resurrection story can bewilder me or even amuse me, as a picture a huffing-and-puffing out-of-breath Peter, or perhaps even a smiling Jesus, when Mary suspects he’s hired help, I honestly cannot imagine how I might react to the events of this day. Something so unexpected – the last thing they expected to see at the tomb was nothing at all, no Jesus at all, or, even more so, a living Jesus. How would you react? Truthfully? Would you be able to put what had happened into words? To tell what you’d seen? To make sense of it? Believe it? Put all the pieces of the puzzle of the last three years you’d spent with Jesus together, and say, “Ah hah! I get what he’s been talking about all this time!”
What would be the thing that would give you the most joy in this life? You can’t live very many years on this earth, rich or poor, black or white, without losing someone you love, someone who is dear to you. Hopefully, most of the time when we lose a loved one, they have had the chance to live a long life. If we could bring them back, surely, part of us would want them to be with us again, but part of us would respect the cycle of life, respect our human mortality, and realize that perhaps our loved ones are in a good place, having lived a good and long life. But when we lose someone unexpectedly, too soon, too early, too young, before we feel they’ve really lived – if we could have them back, somehow bring them back to life – wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we think their life had been cut short? Jesus was probably in his early thirties when his friends and family watched him be put to death, in a cruel and hateful way. The last days of Jesus’ life and the few days since his death probably seemed like one big nightmare that just would not end.
No wonder, really, that the women and the disciples reacted in such strange ways to the resurrection story – on that first day. And even in the days to come, as we will hear in worship the next couple of weeks, they continue to be confused – to doubt that Jesus has risen, to not even recognize him when he is walking with them and talking with them. So unbelievable, so like a dream, so unexpected and un-hoped for is Jesus’ resurrection that it takes time before anyone knows what to do with their wildest dreams, their greatest joys, literally coming to life.
So maybe the message of Easter is that it doesn’t matter, really, what we do on this day? Who can be normal, react properly, get it all and have it all sink in on a day such as this? Today is a day we come instead and are simply in awe. Today, the best we can do is marvel at the beauty of the flowers, enjoy the sounds of the trumpets, sing that Christ is risen. But sometimes, I think that we, like Mary and the others, hardly know what to do with this day – whether to enter in or hover outside, whether to keep quiet or shout out loud. Today, we can be in a daze, marvel at all of it.
But tomorrow – tomorrow is a different story. What matters most about Easter is what we do tomorrow. If we return tour homes and don’t think about Easter again until next year, then we’ve entirely missed the point. If we don’t let what we hear and see today sink into our hearts and souls and minds, we needn’t have bothered to come today. Because the good news of resurrection works best when it’s believed, told, shared, lived. Today, be in awe, be still, be amazed. But tomorrow, be Mary, recognizing the one who is our Teacher. Be Peter or the other apostles, who begin to share with anyone who will listen about what God has done for them. Be disciples, and announce the news, “We have seen the Lord.” Amen.