The Rev. Dr. Barbara Ewton                              

First Congregational Church of Verona

C: Easter                                                                                     

“Alleluia!”

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the disciple who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!"  She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."   Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

            Today’s the day to think about Easter eggs – bright colored ones or, even better, – dark chocolate ones. It is not the day to think about cracked egg shells, not that there’s all that much to think about cracked shells. They are only broken bits –  boundaries to a time of life that’s over. They can probably tell you a lot about emptiness and absence, but they don’t say much about the life they once held or about how it got free.

And that is what the first part of this morning’s gospel is saying, isn’t it? Early in the morning on the first day of the week, when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away, she found the cave functioning something like a cracked egg shell. All it could tell her was that Jesus was not there. Just when Mary thought that she’d lost everything and there was nothing more to lose, even Jesus’ dead body was missing.

Nor was any of this was making sense to Peter and the other disciple, John says, because no one understood the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. So by now, we know only two things: the actions of three frightened and grieving friends of Jesus’ and the evidence that the tomb had been changed. We don’t know what Peter thought, but we do know that the beloved disciple believed.

We don’t know exactly what he believed because John does not say. He simply believed, and without another word, he and Peter turned away and went back home: strange behavior, don’t you think? I wonder what they could have said or done once they got home. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could get back to sleep. Anyhow, at this point, we’re all pretty much still in the dark.

Mary, most of all. Even the presence of angels couldn’t penetrate her grief. Still focused on her sadness, John says that she simply repeated to the spiritual beings, what she had originally shared with the human ones: some unknown “they” had taken Jesus away and she doesn’t know where he is. Brokenheartedly, she turned to leave, only to mistake the risen Christ for a gardener.

Of course she didn’t recognize him. She was looking for a dead body, not a living being. But listen again for a moment to what she said. She might have said “There I was standing by the tomb, and some jerk, probably the gardener, thought he’d play a joke on me and called my name. It was cruel.” But instead, what Mary, the first witness to the resurrection, said was “I have seen the Lord.”

And now, at last, we can sense the extraordinary reality at stake here. The man she mistook for the gardener called her name and simply hearing his voice was enough to convince her that she had heard Jesus. From that moment on, Mary understood life in a whole new way. She knew, at the center of her being, that the very same Jesus she had known wandering the hills of Galilee was alive. That what this is about is that same Jesus recognizing her and calling her name.

“Mary,” he asked, “Why are you weeping?” and I have to wonder what this strange new spiritual body may have felt like to him. I have to wonder what it meant to him that she could no longer touch him. This church festival that we call Easter is mostly about a triumphant, victorious Christ who conquered sin and death and evil, but how did those first few moments feel to the Jesus who could call out to a friend, but couldn’t touch her hand any longer? He had a new and different life now and she couldn’t come along. So I have to wonder if acceptance of some sense of dislocation shouldn’t be part of Easter too.

Another part of Easter, another part we can’t know about, is what actually happened during that long dark night in the tomb. Everyone arrived after whatever happened was over. Two of them saw grave cloths. One of them saw angels.

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 – really knew deep inside – who he was.

And what does this Easter moment amount to us? Today, Easter is about more than the death and resurrection of Jesus. Of course, without that there would be no celebration, but we can get too involved in arguing about the factual details of an event that happened long ago. This year, the media seems to be most interested in the recent developments revolving around the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. New evidence seems to suggest that previous carbon dating could be inaccurate and that the Shroud could be the oldest historical document pertaining to the life and death of Jesus. Is the Shroud evidence of the resurrection? Possibly, but very indirectly. It’s fascinating to be sure, but the real point is that it’s not crucial to faith. Most Christians aren’t Christians because of a scientific acceptance of events that happened over 2,000 years ago.

            It is what is happening in their own lives that matters to most people. They may not understand exactly how Christ could rise from death, but they have a strong sense that he is here, with them today, very much alive and well. That’s what matters. If Easter is just an ancient story, to be brought out of storage, trumpeted for a morning, and then forgotten for another year, we’ve missed the point.

            We’ve missed the real focus of the Easter proclamation: the great call to freedom. It started with Jesus bursting from the bonds of death to the freedom of new life, but it doesn’t end there. Christians sometimes call themselves “Easter people”, but that doesn’t mean that some magic has been waved over our lives and our world. “Christ is risen, Alleluia!” but is our world risen and set free, the way that Jesus would want it to be?

            Being Easter people means committing ourselves to the long and difficult road to freedom. It means working to confront oppression in our own time, not just rejoicing over its defeat in the past. Being Easter people means learning to see the ways in which we are enslaved. It also means learning to see the ways in which we make slaves of others – forcing them to be like us, to meet our needs, no matter what the cost to them.

            Being Easter people means that we are people on a journey, not people who have arrived smugly at their destination. For the truth of the matter is that the center of the Christian journey isn't a hardened shelter of indisputable fact, but a still, quiet place where the courage to walk on is born of glimpses and guesses, yearning and hope.