Easter: Life In A Graveyard

Easter: Life In A Graveyard

John 20:1-18
April 8, 2007

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 other 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.

Over the past 9 years of working in few different churches, I’ve never quite gotten used
to the moment when Easter arrives—and to be frank, you would think I would have, at
this point in my career. It always seems to be a surprise, and no matter how laid out my
Lenten plans may be, or how neatly I think I have laid out the Holy Week schedule, the
moment in which Easter arrives always still stuns me just a bit. I remember doing the
planning for Lent and Holy Week services for the first time in ministerial career years
ago in Spokane, Washington, and finding myself, a few days before the myriad of Holy
Week events, finding myself authentically surprised that Easter was truly right around
the corner. I had a mild panic attack on a street in Spokane during Holy Week,
probably because it was my first time being responsible for a set of Holy Week services
for a congregation, but, also, because the suddenness, the surprise of Easter is, I
think, just spiritually built into the day and into the story itself. I mean, Advent and
Christmas Day never catch me by surprise—you expect life to be born in this world, and
even death is an expected visitor, to some degree. Holy Week holds no surprises,
really, if you think about it—we will all die, we will all face death, that is the rhythm of life:
being born and then eventually dying, life and death, and we expect the story to end at
the end, don’t we? Death ends the story, or at least it ends the story in ways that are
recognizable, or tangible, for most of us. For me, I have hope that there is life beyond
death, but death still ends the story with that other human being in this world in ways
that I recognize—you know, I can only tell the story of my father’s life and his death—
the rest of the story is lost to me, at least on this side of eternity.

And so I don’t think we should be surprised that Easter is surprising moment, and
continues to be, because the moment, the event itself is a surprise—the story was
supposed to have ended by the time we get to this part of the narrative, with the death
of this would-be Messiah from Nazareth. Israel was riddled with the bodies of pretend
Messiahs, especially in the past 100 years before the death of this particular Galilean.
The male disciples, the 11 remaining ones, were locked up in a room, fearful to come
out less they too become victims of the political intrigue of Roman-occupied Israel. I
suspect that they were too ashamed as well to emerge from that room—Judas was the
one among them that had betrayed Jesus, but, really, hadn’t they all betrayed him,
these men who had sworn that they would not leave Jesus, nor ever disown him? I
mean, would you have done anything different if you were them, which was to lock out
the world by locking themselves away in some room, knowing that the world was quite
aware that they had failed their own words and their promises of faithfulness at that last
meal with Jesus were themselves empty and hollow.

And yet, it is Mary Magdalene who has the courage to do what the men in the story do
not have within them to do—to leave that locked room and go to the graveyard where
they have buried Jesus, who himself was locked away in a borrowed tomb. She goes to
the tomb to mourn the loss, all of the losses of the preceding days, certainly the loss of
herself—I mean, you can’t invest yourself in another person like she has, like they all
have, and not feel as if the death of this one is not also the death of yourself. You pour
your dreams into a person, and their dreams and visions and hopes become your
hopes, your dreams, your vision. She is done with surprises, the whole awful week has
been a incredible surprise—the tremendous welcome they received only days earlier,
the surprise of those crowds that thronged to hear this Jesus speak, the surprising
tension that rippled through these same crowds when it became apparent that this
Messiah was an altogether unexpected and unwanted Messiah—a man of peace when
the people cried out for war, who cried out for the sword upon those Romans whom had
wielded the sword so ruthlessly upon the Jewish people. The arrest, the betrayal, the
way that his disciples had failed him; all of it had been a surprise, a horrifying shock to
them all.

Mary was, I suspect, tired of surprises, and all she was hoping to find in that graveyard
was the body of the man who once embodied hope for her. She is expecting to be in
the presence of a corpse, a lifeless body, and she only wishes to end the story by
showing respect to this one who was once, for her, hope given a name, hope that was
given flesh and bone. Sometimes you just need to sit next to the one who has broken
your heart, and who remains for you forever loved, despite your deep disappointment
in them. She comes to this grave, this tomb, to grieve the loss of it all—and who hasn’t
been in her position before, a moment when we have mourned the lost of our dreams
and hopes? Maybe she cannot let go, maybe she needs to say good-bye, but she only
expects to find what one finds in graveyards—bodies, and a particular body buried
some days earlier.

But when she arrives in that field of tombs, she finds the stone removed from the tomb
that they had placed Jesus in, and she is so taken aback that she doesn’t even bother
checking inside—her mind immediately goes to the worst possible thought: that the
authorities have removed the body, that they have stolen the body, maybe as some
sort of humiliating last jab at Jesus’ followers. Or maybe it was to make sure that his
followers themselves wouldn’t steal the body—who knows, but in her panic at this
unexpected moment, she runs to get some of those disciples locked up in that room.
Some of them come rushing down and confirm that there is indeed a missing body—but
that is all they have confirmed: a body is missing, and their reaction is to lock
themselves back up in that room, perhaps fearing even more the political currents that
have led to this last humiliation by the Romans or the powers that be, this current would
swallow them up as well.

But Mary stays at the tomb—she doesn’t run to hide behind closed doors—and I
wonder if there is not now a mixture of anger and sorrow swirling together in her tears.
At some point the surprises and the unexpected become unbearable, and all she wants
now is to the end the story, to give the body of what was once hoped enfleshed for her,
the kind of respect it deserved. And when the two angels, whom she does not
recognize as such, ask her why she is weeping, she replies with only a request: “he has
been taken, and I do not know where he is” and then the story says that yet another
figures enters into the scene, the man whose body she is actually seeking, but for
whatever reason, she does not recognize him, it was a surprise that she could not have
even imagined at this point. He asks her the angel’s question about the reasons for
her weeping, but he adds another question: whom are you looking for?” Mary doesn’t
answer the question; instead, she gives this apparent stranger, this gardener maybe,
she gives him no name and maybe that is because at this point she is not quite sure
who or what she is looking for anymore. She only offers to take the body, if this
stranger was the one who took it. She is at her wits end, and all she wants is to put him
back in that tomb, and to give him some final dignity.

But then, her name is uttered, it is spoken out of the mouth of this apparent stranger.
The text says that she turns, again, she turns, so much turning in this text, it is almost
as if she cannot face the world anymore, her body is always slightly turned away from
people, she seems never to be facing anyone, or ever looking other people in the
face. But that one word, her name, it jars her memory, it unleashes a revelation, a
recognition of the one whose body she does seek. It is in the speaking of her name,
the familiar way he had always said her name, the hearing of her name that makes her
see the one before her. And the text seems to imply that her immediate reaction was to
grab him, to lay hold onto him, to never let go of him again. I know my reaction would
have been to back away, stunned, confused, but her reaction to fall forward towards
him, to hold him tight, to never let him get away again. And Jesus’ strange reaction is
ask her to let him go, to not hold onto him, perhaps because if she cannot let him go at
this moment, she will never be able to recognize him again in this world. Later, the
church would claim that to know the resurrected Christ would be to know each other,
since the church itself was now body of the Christ in this world. Still, it must have been
hard to pry herself away from him, to do as he asked, to tell the other disciples who had
locked themselves away in their own tomb, that he was not dead, that he was alive, and
because he was alive, they too would live. I have seen the Lord, are her words to
these men in the doorway, her breathe heavy from hurried trip to their prison, that room
they had gathered in, her voice trembling with excitement. I have seen the Lord…

This telling of the resurrection story from John’s Gospel remains a favorite of mine,
because it reflects my own experience of Easter—always a surprise, always a moment
that was so unexpected, so unplanned for, no matter how prepared I think I am for it.
No one in John’s story expects this to happen—and yet, the narrator in John is
constantly having Jesus drop hints throughout the his telling of the story, but the
disciples never seem to get it, for whatever reason. I’ve often wondered why the
disciples are often made out to be such incredibly clueless dunces, not only in John,
but in the other Gospels as well. Well, maybe one of the reasons is because no matter
how much you listen, no matter how much you are told that life, not death, is the end of
the story, that are some things that are simply not expected and never will be
expected—they remain a surprise forever, even if we have been told that it will come,
that hope is right around the corner—“its Friday’s but Sunday’s coming,” as the old
African-American sermon refrain reminds us. Sunday may be coming, the moment of
resurrection may be days away, but all we know for sure is that Good Friday is hell, and
it feels like this grave, this particular grave, is not one we’re going walk out of alive.

But I suspect, if we are honest, there could be no way to expect this moment—it
remains forever unexpected, no matter how much we think we can prepare ourselves
for it. The rhythm of existence is life and death—not life, death, and life again—the
disconnect remains, the breaking of the pattern is ever present. Mary, like us, knows
the game, and even as she was speaking to the one she was looking for, she didn’t
recognize him—it could not be, so it could not be recognized as such. And though I
want to say that we ought not to be surprised at the possibility of hope, I don’t think that
is possible. There is no way to prepare for the moment when the grave empty itself,
when we become new, and life is brought from that which was once dead in our own
lives. Maybe our work in this world is to prepare ourselves to be surprised at what God
is yet doing in our lives, when others and we ourselves had written off our very lives.
The resurrection remains forever a surprise, but maybe expecting the unexpected from
God is the only thing we can really prepare ourselves for. What that unexpected thing
is unknowable to us, and will forever be a surprise, as it was for Mary and the disciples
on that day thousands of years ago, but knowing that we will be surprised, that alone
we should expect. That has been my experience, and though I know not what horrors
the coming and inevitable Good Fridays will bring into my life, I also do not know what
surprising thing God will do with me on Sunday—all I can know is that resurrection will
happen, Sunday will come, and we will say, with others, or in the depths of our own
hearts, what the church has said each and every Easter Sunday for two thousand
years, “I have seen the Lord, and he is risen, and I too will rise again.” Amen and amen