April 16, 2006 - Easter Sunday - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Acts 10: 34-43
PSALM: 118: 1-2; 14-21
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
GOSPEL: John 20: 1-18

(Audience participation will be noted in bold print and italics)

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

O.K., you're getting there! You're getting there!

To some extent, that's how it was that Easter morning, because, though we, in the Church, move everything forward with this level of excitement, starting last night with the Easter Vigil, that wasn't how it was that Easter morning. That Easter morning, the disciples, and the women who were with Jesus - and the women who should have been called disciples, too, I think, because, for the most part, Mary Magdalene is the first one to give that knowledge of Jesus to anyone else - those disciples were with Jesus, and they went to the tomb. Did they go to the tomb because they expected that it would be empty? No. They went to the tomb, expecting the worst. They went to the tomb with their sure knowledge of the way things work in the world - that, if you get into a tangle with folks who are more powerful than you, they will win. If you get into a tangle with the powers that be, the institution of the Church, the government, whomever it might be - and, in this case, Jesus managed to annoy all of them - you end up dead. You end up gone. They expected the worst. And so, when they get to the tomb, are they ready to see that Jesus is risen? No. They are still thinking from that paradigm that says power will always win. Even as they go in and see the tomb is empty, their first thought is not, "He is risen!" Their first thought is, "Oh, my Gosh, He has been stolen!"

It takes so much for us to believe. It takes so much for us to get over the usual ways that we think things are going to be. A wonderful preacher, a powerful Christian leader, William Sloane Coffin, who died this week, said that Easter is the victory of powerless love over loveless power. I think that is a great phrase. Easter is the victory of powerless love over loveless power. It is a statement that, all these years later, we can look back at Easter, and we can say, "That's true!" But it is not necessarily the first thing that comes to our mind. It is something we have to work at and figure out.

The disciples did. The disciples got to the tomb. They saw that it was empty. John didn't go in, but Peter did. John saw what was there, and it says he believed. It is very much like several other folks throughout John's Gospel, who, though first doubting, came to an unexpected statement or saw something unusual and moved from a place of not-believing to being filled with faith. I want to know that it wasn't the top dog disciple, Peter, who did that. It was John. They came to believe.

And then we have this story of Mary, because, in many ways, Mary Magdalene, at the tomb, is like so many of us. Mary actually was able to encounter Jesus. It is interesting that the empty tomb didn't convince her. The message of the angels sitting there where Jesus had been didn't convince her. Even seeing Jesus didn't convince her. Not until Jesus spoke to her - not until that relationship that she had with Him, at one time, which she thought might be re-established. Jesus had been her teacher, so, when she recognized His voice, she was asking, "Lord, can we go back to the way things were?" And, perhaps, she even went to hold onto Him, at that moment; and He said, "You can't do that". There is a lot of speculation with biblical scholars about that. One way is to say that His risen body is different, so you can't really hold Him like you could. I don't think that's it. I think Jesus had a message for her. Jesus' message for her was that you can't hold onto Me, because I am not going back to that same relationship that I had.

Barbara Brown Taylor talks about it in this way. She says that, for the most part, when we want to hold onto Jesus, what we are really wanting to hold onto is the comfort of the relationship that we have. It's about bringing Jesus in to keep our life comfortable and smooth, the way we would like it. But Jesus tells Mary, and He tells us that "you can't hold onto Me because I am going ahead. I have not yet ascended to My Father". We have a desire to hold and to bring Jesus into that place of comfort, even when we have recognized the Resurrection, but Jesus is asking for us to do something different. Jesus is asking for us not to hold onto Him, but perhaps to let Him hold onto us; so that we don't stay back and bring Jesus back to where we have always been and where we are comfortable; but that Jesus might go ahead of us, taking us with Him, because His goal is to bring us to that great place that God has in store for all of us. The message of Easter is not that Jesus comes back and makes everything all right, just like it was, but that God is always out there ahead of us. God is never waiting behind to see what happens, but is out there leading the way for us, that we might follow with God to that glory that He has established for us from the beginning.

Easter is the victory of powerless love over loveless power, and it is the truth that God is not to be held onto and dragged into our comfort zone; but that God grabs us and takes us with God to the place that God is going out ahead of us; because God is always there before us and making a way for us.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!