April 4 Sermon: Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
Holy Covenant UMC
Sermon by Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
John 20:1-18
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What a joy it is to be in worship with one another on this glorious morning when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
How right, how good, how normal it is to gather on this Easter morning. Singing the songs of our faith, wearing our prettiest spring outfits, anticipating brunch with friends and family, our mouths already salivating for the chocolate fountain that awaits us after the service. How normal it is to worship on Easter—the holiest day of the Christian year. Most of us have been coming to church on this Sunday every year of our lives…however sporadic our church attendance or whatever is going on in our lives, we know the right and good place to be on Easter is worshipping God together. It’s so normal that Christians all over the world are doing the very same thing, hearing the very same story right now. How safe and comforting to be with one another on this joyful day!
And yet, when we peer into this story from the Gospel of John, we find that it is anything but normal. That first Easter, 2,000 years ago, was entirely full of scandal. We have a scandalous story before us, one that should require us to wear seatbelts instead of dresses and ties, for we are on a wild ride.
What’s so scandalous about this resurrection story?
It begins with Mary Magdalene, a scandalous woman if there ever was one. We don’t know her whole story, but we DO know that she was a woman most people stayed away from. Not popular or acceptable or able to get married. People always kept their distance and spread rumors about just how scandalous she is. In the south we’d say “there’s just something a little off about Mary, bless her heart.”
But something changed for Mary when she was in her early 30’s…she met a man named Jesus, who treated her differently than anybody she had ever known. He loved her completely and she loved him back. She learned to trust and to love. And she felt valued…he didn’t care what she wore or how big her vocabulary was….he didn’t care that she was a single woman men were ashamed to be seen with…and she was captivated by what he taught: about love and justice and forgiveness and mercy; shunning violence and hatred; stopping a woman from being stoned and eating meals with tax collectors and prostitutes and even her. Jesus ate with this scandalous woman, and was killed for it, among other things.
We meet Mary, this morning, no longer in a place of comfort and acceptance, but in a state of deep grief. For she’s come, in the dark, to mourn the loss of her teacher, her friend, her savior. The only person to make her feel like she is a person, a beloved child of God, rather than a scandal. The authorities killed him on a cross for his radical teaching, and she witnessed every moment. While his male disciples were betraying him, denying him, and hiding, Mary stayed by his side so he didn’t die alone. Now, she’s coming to pray and keep vigil near his body in the tomb. Already weeping, she looks through her tear-stained eyes and discovers that the stone has been rolled away…she sees Jesus’ clothes stacked neatly in a corner with no body to be found. She wipes her eyes, thinking this must be a tear-soaked illusion…but when she opens them again she realizes the cold hard truth: his body his missing.
Her grief, her anger, her indignation is overwhelming…she weeps even harder for the injustice of it all…a man who preached peace was killed by violence; a man who includes all in his ministry…the lame the blind; women and men; the sinner the saint….had to hang on a cross all by himself; one who bravely faced his death instead of betraying God’s kingdom to save himself, now in his death, has his body stolen…they have taken away his last shred of dignity, she thinks. And along with it, hers. The scandal of this crime is too much for her to bear, and she weeps.
Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loves also come to the tomb, a little later. Mary tells them what has happened, and they run…run into the tomb and then run back away from the scene. Only Mary stays. The scandal of his missing body doesn’t change them; they don’t stay, with their seat belts on ready to face the ride that’s before them; they retreat to their normal lives.
It’s easy for us, 2,000 years later, to encounter this story like Peter and the beloved Disciple. We hear the news, not exactly sure what’s happened, skeptical, questioning, and then we run right back into our daily lives. Our normal, regular routines, not knowing that Jesus is alive and waiting and ready to appear to us. We eat brunch, we take a nap and then we face a new week. Our alarms will go off at 6am Monday morning and it will be as if our lives haven’t changed, even though we found the tomb to be empty on Sunday.
We wonder how much this scandalous story has actually changed us. Perhaps it’s because we live in a culture so full of scandal that we’ve become immune to it. From politicians to celebrities, churches to corporations, our world can feel like one big scandal. In fact, we hear about scandal so often, read about it on gossip blogs and twitter feeds…even hear it on CNN and in our lunchrooms at work….that we’re skeptical of scandal.
Skeptical of the truth in a world that tosses fact and fiction together so often that we can’t tell the difference between them. We’re a culture that’s skeptical of anything out of the ordinary, needing to be convinced that someone didn’t make up a scandalous story just to get famous or gain some publicity.
We come here to worship on Easter, like we’ve been doing every year of our lives, and we can’t help but enter this story with some healthy skepticism. Sure, we claim, as Christians, that we have faith in the resurrection. We shout “Christ has risen”….but do we really, actually, truly believe in the resurrection? This is a scandalous report, on so many fronts, and it’s easy to breeze through the account like Perez Hilton’s celebrity blog, dismissing fact as fiction, and heading back into our normal lives. We wonder: Did the resurrection really happen? What does this story about Mary have to do with us?
Let’s go back to Mary…Mary who stayed around the tomb, searching out love and answers and truth. She says to a couple of guys hanging out in white inside the tomb: where have they taken Jesus? Just tell me and I’ll take care of his body. I just want to care for him, to give him back some of his dignity. She doesn’t know she’s speaking with angels…how scandalous, that God’s very messengers would appear to this very ordinary woman on the margins. But Mary’s not concerned with angels, she just wants to search out Jesus.
So she says to the gardener: Have you seen the body that was here? That belonged in these clothes? Help me, please, tell me where they’ve taken him. And the gardener says: Woman, why are you weeping?
But then this gardener, who we already know to be Jesus, stays alone with Mary in the garden and he says her name: Mary. Mary. Mary, my beloved, stop weeping.
Now, we have to leave our 21st century mindset and go back to their culture to appreciate just how scandalous this encounter is. For in their day, it was highly inappropriate for a man and a woman who weren’t married or related to be alone together with no supervision. To share in the intimacy of a conversation, of tears, of laughter, of mutual conversation. How scandalous that Jesus would first appear to a very scandalous woman!
And when he says her name, Mary knows. She knows he is her friend, her savior, her teacher. She says to him: Teacher! Shocked that he is alive! He is risen! She is unprepared for this wild ride, this event that shattered all her expectations. Unprepared for the scandal that Jesus is alive, come back from death. And appearing to Mary of all people, first.
Does Mary believe what has really happened? She did when she heard her name, and knew that Jesus is alive and loving her, even after his death. That death didn’t kill Jesus, that the powers of the world weren’t strong enough to overcome God’s triumphant love. That the government’s violence didn’t kill the peace of Christ. Mary knew, in the hearing of her name, that her life, the world, is forever changed; forever turned upside down.
Do we believe in the resurrection? Is this another scandal we dismiss, or is something that radically altars our routines? Our ways of being in the world?
For what’s happening here is truly a scandal: the resurrection turns the world upside down and transforms everything: weeping into praising, violence into peace, hatred into forgiveness, women into preachers, a tomb into a womb, retribution into justice, hatred into forgiveness, and ultimately, death into life.
For the scandal before us now is that we live, triumphantly, with the hope that we will never die,; because of the resurrection, we all have eternal, reconciled life with God.
But just as we live with that hope for our futures, when we’ll all feast together at Christ’s heavenly banquet, the resurrection is also about the here and the now. Because now we live with the hope that the Spirit of Christ lives and breathes and moves in our present lives, and we, like Mary, have the chance each and every day to encounter the living Lord.
How do we know, how do we experience Jesus, risen and alive, in our midst?? How do we know this scandal to be true?
We take our cue from Mary. All we have to do is, like Mary, search him out. Be unafraid to stay alert instead of running; Be awake for love and light to break through, and Jesus will call our names. The living lord will meet us and save us. For where there is hope and redemption and new life, there is Christ, present and among us. Saying, child, you are my beloved.
When we gather together as a community to worship, we meet around the table, where all are welcome, we break bread, and we know Jesus in the breaking of the bread. He says our names and we become the body of Christ.
When we wake up tomorrow and go to work or school or search for a job, numbed in our routines, Jesus calls our name and we see his face in those we encounter, radically reshaping our relationships..
When the world tells us that being a lesbian is unacceptable, when the church tells us that two men can’t marry each other, Jesus breaks in and calls our name, calls us beloved, and says: Where there is love, there I am.
When we are defeated by addiction, Jesus stands with us at that meeting, saying our name so we can say it out loud, and walking with us one day at a time.
When we are in the throes and shame of divorce, our identity shattered, not knowing who or whose we are, Jesus calls our name, and we know we remain a beloved child of God.
When we are defeated by violence on the news, in our neighborhoods….Jesus calls our name and inspires us, with the spirit, to work for peace and justice in his name.
And when the world says, you are dying of cancer and these are your last days, say goodbye, it’s the end; Jesus turns that tomb into a place of new life and calls our name, welcoming us home to a place where joy will never end.
Did the resurrection really happen?
Listen for your name and you’ll have your answer.
Mary did. And she was transformed. For once she knew that Jesus is alive, Jesus calls her to go out proclaiming his resurrection. She transformed the world by spreading this good news far and wide. Because Mary spoke, we believe. This woman, whom the world told over and over again to keep her mouth shut, spread the news of the transformation of the world. This religion, that has lasted over 2000 years, hinged on Mary’s witness that everything is upside down. Talk about scandalous.
We are called, then, to go out there proclaiming this scandal to all we meet, so that the news that death is dead never dies. So that we wake up tomorrow morning wearing our seatbelts, expecting to meet the living Lord.
Empowered by Mary, hearing our own names, confident in the scandalous news of resurrection, let us all go out of here shouting: Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia, Amen.
Tags: Kate
