A Sermon for Easter Day

 

Mary 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.  

 

A couple of years ago, I heard a curious item on National Public Radio.  An air traveler frustrated by the frequent delays in that process, who also happened to be an astrophysicist, designed a computer model to determine the quickest way to get people onto a plane, their overhead luggage stowed and in their seats.  The results showed something rather odd --  it turned out that having people board completely at random was quicker than the standard method of boarding from the rear of the plane forward.  When I told my wife Judith, a very seasoned air traveler, about this, she said, “That doesn’t make sense.”  “It’s counter-intuitive,” I agreed, “but that’s what his model showed.  And I’m OK with counter-intuitive – I have to deal with it every time I preach in Holy Week.”  

 

What I mean is that everything about Holy Week, the whole story we’ve been living these past days, is counter-intuitive.  It just doesn’t make sense in the ways we’re used to.  Only centuries-long familiarity with this story keep us from seeing how counter-intuitive, how unexpected, how strange is the story at the heart of our Christian faith.

 

Take what I said in my sermon on Good Friday --  that if we ask, “Where is God today?” the universal Christian answer is, “On the Cross.”  Precisely where evil is at work, where people are suffering; where Sin, Satan and Death most seem to rule -- that is where God is.  We are all too familiar with evil, suffering, misery and death.  That these exist, that the world goes wrong very often --  that is not at all unexpected.  But that we should find God in the midst of evil, suffering, misery and death is not what we expect. We expect to find God where joy and wholeness and goodness and life hold sway – and, of course, God is there.  And we least expect God to be, in the places of evil, suffering, misery and death – yet that is what the Christian story says. 

 

That is counter-intuitive, and it has been since the beginning of the Christian enterprise.  Noted author Fred Craddock has written, "All the way to the cross Jesus kept trying to get people who believed [that], 'Where the Messiah is, there is no misery’ to see a new perspective, [that], "Where there is misery, there is the Messiah.' " [1]

"Where there is misery, there is the Messiah.'" And not just on Good Friday, but on every day -- here in our world today – in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti, in the dying children of Africa, the homeless children in America, in sick rooms and on death beds in every place. The Crucified God is there in those places of evil, suffering, misery and death.  That part of the Holy Week story is nothing if not counter-intuitive and unexpected.

 

This morning’s Gospel story has its own unexpectedness – and a double dose at that.  Early on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb.  She is come, surely, to mourn Jesus.  She had seen him die on the Cross.  She knew where his body had been laid.  Like those of you who have gone to put flowers on the graves of your loved ones this week, Mary has come to be as near as she can to her beloved teacher, dead and buried.  Only when she gets to the tomb, his body isn’t there.  The tomb is open, and empty.  

 

That the one she and others had thought was God’s Messiah should die a shameful, brutal death was unexpectedly awful enough.  Now she suffers a second, unexpected loss:  “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,” she tells Peter and another disciple, “and we do not know where they have laid him!”  Her heart is broken & she stands outside the tomb weeping as the men peer around inside.

 

And it is then that things get really strange.  Two angels in the tomb asks her why she is weeping.  She turns around and sees a man she does not recognize, who also asks her why she is weeping.  She thinks he must be the gardener – who else could he possibly be?   That it might be Jesus alive never crosses her mind.  Mary is used to the world we know in which things often go wrong.  She knows that mortals die, and are laid low; they lie down and do not rise again.[2]  The dead stay dead --  only, they don’t.  

 

Jesus calls her by name and the utterly counter-intuitive truth breaks through -- Jesus is alive, alive beyond any hope!  This man whom she saw die, whom she saw buried, is standing before her!  It is no wonder she didn’t recognize him --  it was too unexpected even to dream!

To see Jesus alive after death on Easter was as counter-intuitive, as unexpected, as to see God on the Cross on Good Friday.  This story at the heart of Holy Week, at the heart of Christian faith is, indeed, counter-intuitive.  

 

Now, if this were only a paradoxical story that preachers struggle to find words for, it might be of not much more import than the best way to get people onto on airplane.  But it is much more than that.  This counter-intuitive story tells us vital truths not only about God, but about our own lives.  Good Friday tells us that we will find God in the midst of evil, suffering, misery and death.  Easter tells us that because God is in the midst evil, suffering, misery and death, we will find life coming out of death.

 

And that matters.  For as Br. Curtis Almquist, SSJE writes:

 

“Life is full dying.  Everything we can see and touch, taste and smell, every person, every animal, every living thing has a life span, whether or not we consent to it. 

In the course of our own lifespan, we will lose many things dear to us.  That's life…” 

But, as Curtis goes on to say:  

 

 “Life comes out of death.  Resurrection for the here-and-now is the awareness life comes out of death.  The life cycle includes death, many times over.  Jesus says, ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will not bear fruit.’  He’s not just talking about the principles of gardening; he's talking about the ground of our being.  This is the way it is.  Understanding resurrection power in the here-and-now is not something that can be taught.  It's counter-intuitive; it's even confusing. . .  until you've experienced it. It's only when you have experienced how life does come out of death -  what could seem to just kill you proves to be the gateway to life - can you understand resurrection in the here-and-now.  Resurrection for the here-and-now is the awareness life comes out of death.” [3]

 

Another wise preacher has said;

 

It takes a lifetime of awareness to know that what is standing before you is God.” [4] 

 

It takes a lifetime of awareness to know that what is standing before you is God because God’s way are counter-intuitive, unexpected.  It takes real awareness to know that life comes out of death; It takes real awareness to experience the power of resurrection here and now.  Mary didn’t get it at first even when the Resurrection and Life himself was, literally, standing before her.

 

If we want that awareness, if we want to know that life comes out of death, we will need to work at it, to cultivate it, above all to pray for it.  Br. Curtis suggests a way to cultivate that awareness by reflecting prayerfully on our lives.

 

“[Look] backwards in your own life to the many deaths you've experienced, big and small,”  he writes.  “See where what had seemed your breaking has actually been your making.  This is a wonderful way to claim resurrection power.  Look backwards to remember what has led up to this present moment, which has likely included many, many deaths . . .  and likely many risings, nothing short of a miracle.  Extending that memory into the future is called ‘ hope.’ “[5]

 

To Curtis’ words about the future and about hope, I would add only this:  To be aware of God:

Expect the unexpected.  Look for the counter-intuitive.  Look for the Crucified God in suffering and death.  Expect the Risen Jesus to bring life out of death. Know that, counter-intuitively the two will often come together.  Do this, my dear friends --  cultivate this awareness the rest of your lives, and you will know the Crucified and Risen Christ, standing before you, always.

 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!  

 

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni, Easter Day, 2010