EASTER SUNDAY, Year A
April 24, 2011
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-124
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Alleluia!
We say that every year on Easter Sunday when we gather to worship. And every year, before we gather to worship, I try to figure out what to say about what that might mean to me and to you – or rather, what might make it more meaningful, more sensible, more useable for me and for you. I think about it all through Lent and through Holy Week. And on Monday morning of this week, I woke from sleep early with a tune on my mind. A tune that gave me an idea of what to reflect with you on this Easter Sunday morning. Listen. (Play ringtone of theme of Close Encounters of a Third Kind)
The Resurrection! What is it all about? It’s about a “close encounter on the third day!”
All four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - give an account of the empty tomb. Of course, none of them agree who had the first close encounter, and none of them agree on the details of the encounter. But it was, in fact a very close encounter, because it changed the course of history and of millions and millions of lives since – and continues to transform people’s lives every day. That’s the good news of the Easter stories, conflicting in details though they may be.
This year’s reading of that first Easter morning is from the gospel according to John. John says: “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.” [20:1] So she runs to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved (and scholars have pretty much decided that was John), and she tells them: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” [20:2b] Stop there for a second: Why would she say “we?” “We do not know where they have laid him?”
Perhaps John had read Matthew, where Mary Magdalene is accompanied by “the other Mary.” [see Matthew 28] Or Mark who speaks of three women who went to the tomb: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. [see Mark 16] Or Luke, who speaks of “the women” who went, among them Mary Magdalene, Johanna, Mary the mother of James, and the “other women.” [see Luke 24] I would encourage you to read all four of these interesting accounts of a close encounter on the third day – take the time to do a comparison of the details in the stories. I think you will be amazed at what you find!
But this is the year for John’s account. And in that story, Mary Magdalene follows Peter and the other disciple, whom I will assume is John, back to the tomb. John gets there first and bends to look in. When Peter arrives he goes right in. Then John follows, and they see the linen wrappings lying there and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head rolled up in a place by itself. And the gospel of John says that when the other disciple (a.k.a. John) saw this, “he believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.” [v8b-10]
So what is it that the other disciple believed? I’m not so sure he believed that Jesus was risen! The one thing they all knew was that Jesus was not in the tomb. That was believable. So Peter and John go home.
But Mary Magdalene stayed there outside the tomb, weeping. Finally she bent over to look inside, and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. And they asked her why she was weeping. “They have taken away my Lord,” she said, “and I do not know where they have laid him.” And then, when she turned around, she saw Jesus. Except she didn’t know it was Jesus. She thought it was the gardener. And he asked her why she was weeping and who she was looking for. She begs him to tell her where Jesus’ body was so she could take him away. And then Jesus calls her by name. “Mary!” And at that point, Mary finally recognizes him. I wonder (from this account that takes lots of wondering) if she tried to hug him, put her arms around him – because he tells her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father.” And then he tells her to go tell the others. And she does.
That’s John’s account of Mary’s close encounter with her risen Lord.
Back in 2001, twelve of us from this church traveled to the Holy Land with Bishop Morrison’s Conference trip. We visited many historic biblical sites, among them the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is a large church built in 1810 by the Greek and Russian Orthodox. Not only does it claim to be the site of Jesus’ tomb, but also the site of his crucifixion on Golgotha, the Rock of the Skull. Here’s a few pictures I took of this place.
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| The domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem |
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| The alleged location of the Rock of the Skull, a.k.a. Golgotha |
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| The top of the rock is encased in glass |
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| Jesus' tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre |
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| A marble slab placed over the stone slab upon which Jesus' body was lain |
In 1883, the British General Charles Gordon, noticed a rock outside the old wall of Jerusalem where prisoners would have been crucified. It looked like the face of a skull, and so he began carefully excavating the site, finding some ancient stone tombs nearby – enough to convince him and many others that this could be the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
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| The Rock of the Skull, located outside the old city wall of Jerusalem, discovered in 1883 |
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| A garden tomb in the garden near the Rock of the Skull, unearthed by General Gordon |
So why is it so important to people, like the Christians who built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and like General Charles Gordon who excavated a long-buried archaeological site, to do those things. What are they doing? It seems to me they are doing what we humans do best. They are trying to bring something physical, something solid, something permanent to something that is like a wisp of fog or smoke that we see and then it’s gone. We humans have a hard time accepting things that have no hard physical evidence – things that are too mystical or ethereal.
I‘d like to show you a video I saved from YouTube. Your assignment, as you watch this video, is to count how many basketball passes the team with the black shirts make. Watch closely for the team makes their passes rapidly.
How many of you saw the Storm Trooper the first time?
We don’t always see Jesus right away either. But he is present – he lives – he lives among us and within us. He lives in our hearts and in our thoughts and in our souls. Sometimes we are so busy with our lives – like counting the passes in the basketball passing test video - so busy that we do not see where Jesus is present in our lives. But he’s there. Sometimes we try to deny his presence. But, deny him or not, he’s there. And that, to me, is what the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ is all about. He’s always with us, whether we know it or not, whether we want him or not. He’s there. And once we do "see" him - sense his presence in our lives - well, then it's harder NOT to see him - just like the storm trooper in the video.
We really know he is there when we love one another as he loves us. Running through John’s Resurrection story is a common thread of love. “Due to her love for Jesus, Mary Magdalene was able to see things that others did not, and I think the same can be said of us. Love is what makes truly seeing and knowing other people possible, and it is through the lens of our love for Jesus and his love for us that we are to look upon the world and those who live in it.”1 It is through the eyes of love that we see Jesus the Resurrected Christ present and active in our lives.
Christ is risen
He is risen indeed!
Alleluia! Amen!
1 adapted from Koontz, Lee A. First Look, a commentary for Easter, Year A, published on-line on April 18, 2011.
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© Carol J. Borland, Pastor Emeritus, Interim Pastor, West Danville United Methodist Church, West Danville, VT. Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011
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