Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
“More than an Empty tomb”
Acts 10: 34-43 and John 20: 1-18

Let us pray.

 O God you are behind us and before us. Lay your hands upon me as I utter these words. And may we all feel your presence in our souls. Amen

   “Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark” is how our gospel passage from John describes the start of that first Easter morning. I can’t think of a greater understatement in the New Testament -- perhaps in the entire Bible. It was a time of complete darkness.  For all intents and purposes it was over. Jesus was gone – crucified on Friday; the forces of darkness had prevailed. Think of how you would have felt if you were in Mary Magdalene’s shoes or those of Peter. They had left their Galilean homes, families and livelihoods to follow this man, Jesus. They admired him so much – what he said and what he did. No one was beneath him. He reached out to all -- tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and Samaritans. He understood what was important – healing the sick, championing the poor and the oppressed – and not obsessively preserving the Sabbath or slavishly adhering to the other religious and civil rules that divided and separated God’s creation. But more than that he appeared to be the one foretold – the one the prophets had said was coming from God -- the Messiah -- who would change everything. And then it was all gone in his ultimate defeat through death on the Cross. 

Haven’t many of us faced our own crushing Good Friday’s, a boss coming into our office to tell us they don’t need us anymore, the receipt of a letter from an old and valued client or customer telling us that they have moved on, a call from a sibling that Mom or Dad has died or a call from the doctor with news we never truly expected to hear. For the disciples and the other followers of Jesus, it was over – another dashed promise – another beloved’s voice silenced. So it is not surprising that all Mary Magdalene wanted that morning was to make sure that Jesus’ body was treated lovingly and in accord with religious custom. And so in the beginning all was darkness on that first Easter morning.

But, of course, Easter is about light not darkness. Hear the first words of the gospel of John again,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all the people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We sing, “morning has broken”, and “Christ the Lord is risen today Alleluia”: yes, indeed it is Easter.  What, however, does that really mean beyond wonderful family gatherings, Easter baskets, new Easter outfits, and those chocolate bunnies that we all love? Why is this truly the day the light shines -- that changes everything and liberates us to be as God intended.

            First, let’s be candid – Easter is hard to get a hold of. Christmas in so many ways touches the familiar in our lives – a mother’s pregnancy, the birth of a child and the joy that surrounds it. They are all a part of our experience. Even Good Friday is understandable, if lamentable. We know about tragedy, unfairness and death -- personally and through the experiences of those close to us. But Easter is like nothing we have ever encountered. So it is not surprising that Mary Magdalene’s reaction when she sees the empty tomb is to assume that someone has taken the body. For you see the empty tomb proves little. It meant simply that the body was not there. A resurrected Jesus – the core of our Easter faith -- is never provable, certainly not by an empty tomb. It is at best experienced and trusted.

                        Look at Mary Magdalene in our text for today. She is so much like us. This is a practical woman – a woman who has lived in the real world, relying on her wits – depending on what she sees and knows. And, of course, she believes from the empty tomb that they taken away Jesus’ body. She persists in this view even in the presence of the angels. And then a stranger appears. Though she looks directly at him she does not recognize him but assumes he must be the gardener, asking him

Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where

you have laid him, and I will take him away. 

She is a thoroughly practical woman. Then finally there is that wonderful moment of recognition. “Jesus [says] to her, ‘Mary!’ she turn[s] and [says] to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’” Now you may be thinking, “hasn’t he just contradicted his point that faith can’t be proven but must be trusted in?  Wasn’t it only when Mary saw Jesus that she accepted the Risen Christ?”  Perhaps! But listen closely to what actually happened. It is not Jesus’ appearance that kindles Mary’s faith in the resurrection; it is in Jesus saying her name, “Mary”.  There are few clearer expressions of love in life than the naming of another. All of you who are parents think back to the joyous moment of naming your child. And think about our own lives. Are there any more intimate moments than those special times when we address another by name in love? Aren’t those the clearest moments of true recognition and connection with another? Mary recognized the Risen Christ, not because she recognized his body -- had physical evidence of his continuing existence -- but because in that moment she understood that Jesus’ love of her continued despite the horror of Good Friday.

            We, of course, will never see the Risen Christ in an upper room, on the road to Emmaus, or outside the tomb as Mary did. What strikes me about these stories of Jesus’ appearances is not only that there were a number of them involving a wide set of individuals but their effect. Think about how transforming they were. The disciples had fled and scattered, Peter denied knowing Jesus and the two disciples walking on the Emmaus road were beset by a fear for their lives that they might be suspected of being followers of Jesus.  But after the resurrection – after Jesus’ appearances – after the recognition that the prophecies were true and even more that God’s love for them through Jesus’ continued -- these individuals regrouped and moved mountains: Peter -- the “denier” – became the rock of the church and gave his life for his faith; so too Paul and Stephen and countless others who also were profoundly transformed by an encounter with the Risen Christ.   And think of more modern figures who have seen the eternal nature of God’s love in Christ – have trusted and believed in the Risen Christ -- from St. Francis of Assisi, to Mother Teresa to Martin Luther King Jr. The resurrection is for us quite clearly a matter of faith, but a faith supported by the expereince of those who have trusted and been transformed.

             And it is supported by our own experiences, too. I am reminded of a colleague who some years ago faced a series of tragedies. His professional and person life fell apart. There was no job, a long marriage was over, and he faced major and uncertain health issues.  In his desperation he turned to God – to the Risen Christ for support. Not to make things better but to share his heavy burdens. And slowly the days brightened. Not everything turned out as he might have wished but hope and joy returned.  He said later, “I know now what it means that Jesus Christ died and rose for me.” As Jesus says to Thomas – the great doubter, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen yet have come to believe.”  William Sloane Coffin said it well,

The resurrection is a willingness  ... to risk our

lives on the conviction that while we human beings kill

God’s love we can never keep it dead and buried. [1]

                                                x            x            x

            Often we associate Easter with re-birth. And Easter is transforming. But I think most fundamentally, it is the affirmation that what Jesus embodied did not die on the Cross. The light that gives life to us all was not extinguished by the darkness on Good Friday. Christ’s love of us, of tax collectors and prostitutes was not extinguished on the Cross nor in fact was life itself. The forces of oppression and tyranny did not prevail. Power lost out to love. The resurrection profoundly demonstrated that neither evil nor death does prevail. In the words of the Easter hymn, “the strife is o’er, the battle done; the victory of life is won.” While we do not and cannot know the contours of life eternal, we have in the resurrection (revealed in Christ’s eternal love) the promise to all that death is not the final chapter. On Good Friday we learned that God’s love for us was profound in allowing the sacrifice of his Son and (equally important) on Easter we learned in the Risen Christ that this love is eternal.

            But the power of Easter is not simply because it suggests that there is an eternity of tomorrows for us.   The power of Easter is that it allows us to live fully and faithfully today. Easter, if we let it, will transform our lives today. What is it that prevents us from living fully and faithfully each day – that is living, as God would want us to live? Indeed, in living as we in our heart of hearts desire to live? Reinhold Niebuhr, the great theologian of the last century, suggests that much of what causes us to fail to be the best we can be as children of God comes from our awareness that we are mortal and the fear and anxiety that engenders. In response to such fear and anxiety, we desperately seek to control our world. We place ourselves at the center of life -- after all we have only a limited amount of time. The divine gift of Easter – if we will trust and have faith in it – is that life for us as for Jesus does not end with death. As Gordon Forbes wrote, “[the] Resurrection does not eliminate death but transforms it. It liberates us from fear and moves our vision beyond death.”[2] Through the Risen Christ we are liberated from our fears of mortality and the sins those fears generate. So liberated we can truly and actively embrace Jesus’ teachings – the great commandment about loving others as our selves and the lessons that our neighbors include not simply those who are like us but most assuredly those -- who like the Samaritans – are different.

            But the resurrection does not simply free us to embrace Jesus’ teaching and life. No, it is more -- it is a command that we be active witnesses. There is a wonderful limerick that captures the opportunity and command that is Easter

Jesus shut within a book

Is not worth a passing look.

Jesus prisoned in a creed

Is fruitless Lord, indeed.

But Jesus in the hearts of men

[and women]

Shows his tenderness again. [3]

 What Easter does is free us through faith in the Risen Christ to be the best we can be, not tomorrow, but today. In the words of the hymn – “Soar we now where Christ has led, following our exalted Head, made like Him like Him we rise, ours the cross, the grave the skies.”  Happy Easter. The light truly shines, alleluia -- Thanks be to God