(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 1, 2018, Easter Day)
Loss
One of the little things that is
guaranteed to break my heart, is watching a young child lose or break a
toy. Before that tragic moment,
their face is alive with joy. They
are happy, as I believe they should be.
But then suddenly the toy is lost, and the child in disbelief begins to
cry. And somewhere inside I begin
crying too. Because they did not
intend for the tragedy that befell their toy. They did not deserve it. But it happened nonetheless.
And that is the way of life. The same thing happens to us, only with
things much more precious than toys.
We Are All with Mary This Morning
And so it is not difficult to
imagine where Mary Magdalene was this morning. Because we are all with her.
There is no escaping what Mary
felt early in the darkness. There
is no escaping the feeling of loss.
We all live with it. Maybe
it is the absence of a loved one.
Maybe it is the loss of an old way of life. Maybe it is simply the little things that we have tried to
let go of this Lent.
And when Mary walks to the tomb,
we walk with her. We return again
and again to the place of our loss, whether in an attempt to reclaim what is
gone or simply to cherish the last remnants of what no longer exists.
When Mary sees that the tomb is
empty, that the final remains of her beloved friend are missing, that there is
nothing at all left of him, she begins weeping. And we weep with her.
The way we might weep if a treasured photograph of a departed friend or
family member was lost.
Life, like Laughter
When the toy is lost, or is
broken, and the young child breaks out in tears, her mother and father come
running to her. “What is the
matter, little one? Why are you
weeping? There, there.” But the child is inconsolable. The joy that she held in her hands is
gone forever. She weeps into the
past.
And so for a time, she misses out
on life. Her parents have no new
toy to give her. There is no
magical restoration of what is missing.
But still they stay with
her. “What is the matter, little
one? Why are you weeping?” And then in a moment of inspiration,
they say the child’s name to get her attention, and they make a silly joke or a
goofy face or simply a smile that the child cannot defend against. And the child laughs. Or maybe that’s not quite right. The child wants to keep crying, wants
to hold onto the past, but the power of the joke is too strong. It overtakes her body, which trembles
despite itself in laughter. The
child does not choose to laugh.
She does not even want to laugh.
But she laughs all the same.
Life, like laughter, is not
entirely a choice. It happens upon
us. It bursts through us. It overtakes us. When we are weeping. When we are clinging to the past. When we are unwilling to recognize it. The gospel writer tells us that Mary “saw
Jesus…but did not know that it was Jesus.” Resurrection had happened, but she did not know it. It’s sort of like the joke had been
told, but she wanted to keep crying.
But even so, her body could not
help but laugh. Could not help but
come alive at the sound of her name spoken in love. Could not help but blurt out, “‘Rabbouni!’ (which means
Teacher)” (20:16).
Lots of Little Resurrections
What I find most curious about
the resurrection stories in the gospels, is that they never directly show us the resurrection of Jesus. The gospels show us his birth, his
baptism, his trials in the wilderness, his ministry throughout Galilee, his
entry into Jerusalem, the crucifixion—all the important events of his life,
they show us. But they do not show
us the resurrection. They only show us the result. They do not show us the moment that he
receives life back into his lifeless body. They only show us what happens afterward, when he gives
life.
Today’s scripture is a perfect
example. The only resurrection in
today’s scripture is Mary’s. She rises
from weeping to wonder, from crying tears to crying out the good news.
The gospels don’t show us the resurrection. They show us lots of little
resurrections, like Mary’s, or the disciples’ in the locked room, or Peter’s at
the shore. Which is to say, they
show us our own resurrection. It
is as though the resurrection of Christ only becomes real in our own
resurrection. Or to paraphrase a
favorite mystic of mine, Meister Eckhart, we might ask: what good is it if
Christ was raised from the dead, if we are not raised with him?[1] That is the whole point of Jesus’ life,
according to the gospel of John, which concludes its many stories with this
explanation of purpose: “So that you”—we the readers, we the audience—“may have
life!” (20:30).[2]
Our Own Resurrection
So that we may have life. We who are weeping like Mary. We who are clinging to the past. We who are uninterested in the stranger
before us.
The good news of the resurrection is our
resurrection! It is the good news
that no suffering, no loss, not even death—not even death on a cross—is beyond
the life-giving reach of God’s love.
The tricky thing about
resurrection, of course, is that it is not something we choose to do. It is something that happens to
us. It bursts through us. It overtakes our body. The best news of Easter, then, is also
the most difficult news: it is that we must trust the impossible gospel of
resurrection long enough to do what Mary Magdalene did that morning: to look
beyond our tears into the eyes of a stranger. To let go of the past long enough to see the present. And when our body begins to tremble in
spite of ourselves, in laughter and in joy, to recognize and receive the risen
Christ in front of us, raising us to new life, his resurrection becoming our
resurrection, even today.
Prayer
Risen Christ,
Raise us with you.
Where we are weeping
Or clinging to the past
Or unwilling to face the future—
Overtake our bodies
Despite ourselves
With tremors and trembles
Of your love,
Which brings life
And inspires us
To share it with the world.
Amen.
[1] Regarding
the birth of Christ, Eckhart asked, “What good is it to me if this eternal
birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within
myself?”
[2] Lest this
point be mistaken as an indication of the priority of individual or human
salvation over the salvation of the rest of creation, one might also refer to
the Pauline universalist proclamations (e.g., Eph 1:10; Col 1:20) and to the
inheritance of this thought in early church tradition, e.g., St. Ambrose’s
proclamation that when Christ rose, in him all heaven and earth rose too.
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