He is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Before we engage the Gospel appointed for next Sunday, which talks about what happened Easter night, let’s spend a moment with what happened Easter morning. In John’s telling of the story, we start with a woman, Mary Magdalene, whom we last saw at the cross as they took down Jesus’ broken and bloodied body to lay temporarily in a borrowed tomb until it could be properly prepared for burial after Passover. As we know, that preparation never happens, because when Mary gets to the tomb before dawn, she finds the stone sealing the tomb moved and no body to be found. (However, we remember the dinner party in Bethany, when another Mary lavished nard, a burial spice, on Jesus’ feet, as if knowing there would be no need for it later?)
Mary summons some of Jesus’ male followers to investigate; they find the tomb empty. They all assume Jesus’ body has been stolen, though that scenario fails to account for the linen cloths neatly rolled up where Jesus’ body had been laid. (Which leads me to wonder, for the first time in my life, just what Jesus was wearing in all his resurrection appearances? I guess if his resurrection body could be visible at will, it could also appear clothed… or the gospels would have had even stranger tales to tell.) With no body to bury, Mary is distraught. The trauma and loss of Friday have been compounded by yet more loss.
Mary can only see this as loss. “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him!” So it is with us – so hard to see in tragedy and disruption a possibility for God to work in ways we cannot imagine. This past year of church has been instructive – when the world shut down the second week of Lent last year, we grieved our lost Holy Week and Easter services – and found even richer engagement in those observances as we did them online. And then through the year, my two churches found more opportunities to pray and worship together, a richer mix of liturgy in our hybrid live-streamed service, and international participation in our spiritual growth activities.
Now, with the pace of vaccinations in our area, we are looking at a disruption of the disruption – that wonderful unity crumbling into distinct groups of in-person worshippers at two churches and the remaining group online. It looks like loss to me… yet I recall God’s unexpected gifts last year and have to believe the God of blessing will pour new gifts on us as we navigate this next phase in our worship life. Can we take the same view toward other profound losses and disruptions of this past year, even Covid deaths and lingering illnesses; racial traumas; political enmities? Can we trust that Jesus is not missing, is perhaps even standing right in front of us, unrecognizable because it doesn’t occur to us that might be him?
Jesus tells Mary to go and tell his friends where to find him. She goes, the first apostle, first witness to the resurrected Christ, aware of how insane her message sounds, yet convicted by her experience of Jesus’ life. May we do the same.
Ten years ago, an Easter song poured out of me – four long verses exploring several of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, and one aimed at us. The Christ Churches will be hearing one verse a week for the next several, going with the gospels for those Sundays. Here is a recording of the first and last verse, about Mary, the garden – and you.
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