The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=517293899
Włodzimierz Kohut, Jezus Dobry Ogrodnik[Jesus the Good Gardener], 2015.
Easter is a time for confetti and community and joy and abundance. It is a time when the things that have been sealed up inside impossibly burst forth into an outpouring of life and love. It is a day when hearts prepared to ache are surprised to find a soft embrace. It’s often a day that we bring the good plates out of the dusty china cabinet, put on clothes that make us feel special, take pictures among the wildflowers, maybe even wear one in our hair, and crack cascarones over each other’s heads with little concern for how we’ll be sweeping up colored eggshell bits off the bathroom floor for the next week(s).
Easter and the unveiling of resurrection are both beautiful and messy. The intersection of grief and hope are messy. Haven’t we been steeped in that truth over and over in these recent years through this pandemic alongside everything else in our daily lives? Haven’t we seen, all too closely, the hollow insides of literal and proverbial tombs? We have seen kindness and cruelty, laughter and loss, despair and hope. We have seen disappointment and redemption, exhaustion and refreshment, isolation and deep connection. Easter is the place where sorrow and new life meet and dance together. The dance is clumsy and weird, often unsure and maybe a little raunchy, AND stunningly beautiful. Resurrection doesn’t erase the valley of shadows we’ve been through, but perhaps it does change how we live through and beyond them.
As we’ll hear next week in the story of Thomas, even resurrected Jesus still bears the mark of wounds and pain. It will always be part of the story, but it’s not the only part. It’s not where the story ends.
This morning, the friends and followers Jesus woke up with the same burdens they went to bed with the night before. The dewy morning air was thick with tension as they went on living in a world of broken hearts, fragile bodies, political turmoil, and the ongoing threat of danger and disaster. Yet, somewhere in the depths of her soul, there still stirred a story of hope that lingered from long ago.
Mary is going about her day, trying to carry on in the midst of all these things, when she encounters the empty tomb…linens lying thrown to the side. She is struck with the panic of coming home to the doors unlocked and your belongings scattered everywhere. It looks like someone has broken in; the grave of God has been robbed. She fears the worst. She fears what experience has taught her is most likely…that people are cruel and the powerful worst of all.
She turns to her community for help and support. Two of the men come running toward the crisis, take it in for a moment, and then head home even before fully understanding what they’ve seen and heard. The men who were so quick to rush in, who raced to get their first…have already left the scene. But Mary remains…shaking, sobbing, searching.
She turns her gaze and the angels of God appear, as they often do in moments of great fear. She turns again to find she is no longer alone. She may still be afraid, but she is also persistent in pursuit of the way, the truth, and the life.
She misidentifies the person in front of her, but then her own identity is spoken allowed. Jesus speaks her name and she feels fully known, fully loved, overflowing with relief and joy. God comes to her in the midst of her morning routine. God comes looking like a stranger, a gardener, as someone fresh off yard crew truck, a laborer, a janitor, a table busser, as someone who makes the world go round but often goes unnoticed. God is alive and revealed in relationship. God shows up in the face of someone standing right in front of us, across from us.
Easter shows us the incredible unbound extravagance of what God can do – defying violence and death with peace and a new creation, turning tears of sorrow to tears to joy, expressing a depth of relationship in a world of isolation. Easter shows us the incredible unbound extravagance of what God can do, but it’s not only about what God does… it’s about what that does in us.
Resurrection looks like new and seemingly impossible life emerging from a tomb.
Mary the Magdalene shows us that resurrection also looks a lot like noticing what’s changing, what has already changed, what is different and what that might mean. It looks like an unraveling of things we’ve held before. It also looks like confusion, and worry, reaching out to others, drawing others in to make sense of the mystery together, and tears. It looks like believing, or trusting, or leaning into curious possibility more than understanding it. It looks like being seen, and known, and loved, and called by name. It looks like holding on loosely, even to that which is most dear. And that’s just what we see on the outside. There’s no telling the swirl of experience welling up inside.
We don’t have to pin down the mystery to see that this experience of divine love and resurrection causes her to respond. This woman, Mary, is the first to preach the Good News of the Gospel, to share the story of life’s victory over death, to announce what she has seen God do. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes that “If the women were all the time silent, then we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ.” She announces to the disciples and to all that resurrection has opened what was closed and is out in the world.
Communities like this one that boldly proclaim God’s unbound love not only in words but in the care of one another…
Each of you as you engage holy curiosity and tenderheartedness in the intimacy of your own being… Others who may never darken the door of this sanctuary but are out in the gardens and streets who dare speak of and serve goodness amidst everything else…
All this helps me see the risen and living God in the everyday moments of my day and the people of my city. When I wake up still in the shadows of Friday, I turn and everyday Easter Sunday stories arrive to announce the power of love over despair. When grief and white noise leave me in tears – feeling lost and alone, God shows up, calls me by name, puts a story of surprising joy on my tongue, and compels me to speak even in the midst of uncertainty or fear.
Christ is Risen, Christ is Risen in us. Go and tell what you have seen. Share the stories that don’t just lift our spirits but inspire others to speak and act. Alleluia. Amen.