"I Have Seen the Lord!"

Easter Sunday - April 16, 2017

Text: John 20:1-18

Hallelujah, friends, Christ is risen! !El Señor resucitó¡ The cross that bore our Lord and Savior stands empty, and love has triumphed over the grave! This morning we cry “Alleluia!” and sing for joy because the dark night has passed, and at long last Easter morning has come! The strife is over, the battle is won!

Liturgically speaking, of course. This last week, Holy Week, we remembered and reenacted the events of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. We paraded into the sanctuary waving palms and crying, “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, we remembered Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, and we shared a meal together at Ranchos Presbyterian Church. On Good Friday, we heard Jesus’ last words cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” And this morning, Easter morning, we gather to raise our “Alleluias” and to give thanks that God has in fact not forsaken us, and will never forsake us. This morning we celebrate the ongoing truth of resurrection, of new life and joy where we thought death and grief were impenetrable.

Perhaps the Easter joy and Alleluias resonate with you this morning…or perhaps they don’t. In the Church, we go through this cycle of remembering every year, regardless of what is taking place in our world or in our personal lives. And so, some years, when we reach Easter Sunday, I am ready to shout Alleluia and sing for joy! But then some years…it just doesn’t feel right. Some years, it seems premature to say that the strife is over, to claim God’s victory in our broken, fallen world.

Some of you may be familiar with a quote by author Barbara Johnson, who says that Christians are “an Easter people living in a Good Friday word.” I like the sentiment of that saying, I really do, but if I’m honest with myself…that’s not how I’ve been feeling recently. I can definitely relate to the part about living in a Good Friday world. Look around us. Bombs are dropping; people are starving. Racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia seem to be gaining new strength in our own country. I see, and I know, that we are living in a Good Friday world.

What I’m struggling with – I’m a little embarrassed to admit this – but what I’m struggling with is the part about being an “Easter people.” I want to be an Easter person. Theologically, I have every reason to be an Easter person. I know that the good news of the Gospel that we proclaim this morning and every morning, is far more powerful than even the most painful circumstances of lives and our world. But when it comes down to it, there are many days when I simply don’t feel like a “Easter person.” It’s almost as if I’ve been living in a Good Friday world so long, that, well, it’s starting to rub off on me.

Which is why I’m grateful for Mary Magdalene in our story today. When she shows up at the tomb on Easter morning, she is not feeling like much of an “Easter person,” either. She is still living Good Friday. She was there, after all, at the foot of the cross. She watched as the one she had called Lord was crucified and laid in a tomb. As far as she is concerned, Good Friday has won the day. 

In fact, in the text we just heard, we don’t actually know why Mary comes to the tomb on Easter morning. In the other Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb accompanied by other women to anoint Jesus’ body with perfume and oil. But in John’s gospel, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus have already anointed Jesus’ body with myrrhs and aloes before they laid him in the tomb on Good Friday. In our story, Mary doesn’t have a task, a particular purpose for coming to the tomb that morning. She simply shows up.

She shows up, and she is upset by what she finds: the stone has been removed from the tomb. So she runs and tells two of the disciples, Peter, and the disciple that John’s Gospel calls “the disciple that Jesus loved.” They run to tomb, see Jesus’ graveclothes strewn about, and try to make sense of it all. And then, the text tells us, they do not yet understand, so Peter and the Beloved Disciple go back to their homes. But Mary…Mary is still there. The fact that Jesus’ body is gone, that things are not going as she expected them to this morning, does not deter her. She still shows up, and she stays.

And once the hubbub over the missing body is over and she is alone once again, she weeps. It’s as simple as that. Mary does not show up at the tomb on Easter morning expecting to witness resurrection. She has come, as far as we can tell, simply to weep. 

But of course, we know how the story unfolds. As she weeps alone outside Jesus’ tomb, Mary discovers she is in fact not alone. Two angels are sitting in the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. “Woman,” they ask her, “Why are you weeping?” She hears soft, slow footsteps behind her and turns to see a man who she assumes is the gardener, and he asks her the same question, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for? And in her grief, Mary cries out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!”

It is then, when to Mary all hope seems lost, that the Resurrected Jesus calls her by name, and she recognizes him. And in that moment, something inside Mary is profoundly changed.

She goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord!” She has seen what they did not believe was possible – what she did not believe was possible until she witnessed it. We can imagine their astonishment, their confusion. Hadn’t Peter and the Beloved Disciple just returned from the tomb? Their report was that Jesus’ body had gone missing, had been stolen.

But they went home, and Mary stayed. She stayed, not understanding what was going on, and her heart broke for it all. Her heart broke so deeply that when she first saw the Risen Jesus, she didn’t even recognize him! But she showed up, and she stayed – she stayed long enough to hear Jesus call her name.

And when she hears her Lord call her name, Mary’s eyes are opened, and she sees everything differently. She sees this man, this so-called “gardener” who is actually Jesus from a new perspective, yes. But even more so, as Mary leaves that garden, her perspective, her “seeing” of the entire world has changed in light the Resurrection.

She goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord! I have seen Jesus himself, and he spoke to me. I have seen death at its cruelest and worst, and I have seen life and love triumph over death in the grace of Resurrection. And now I see things differently – I see you differently, and me differently, and the whole world differently because I have witnessed resurrection. I have seen that goodness is stronger than evil, that in the end, love wins. And now I look at the world around me, at the pain and the grief and the confusion and the injustice, and I see it, all right. I know that it is real. I know that Jesus died – I was there, I saw it. But listen to me, because I have seen the Lord, I have witnessed Resurrection, and it has shown me that this brokenness we see around us is not what has to be. There is a new life and hope and way of being, for all of us. And I know this, because I have seen the Lord.”

Mary has gained what one theologian calls a “Resurrection perspective.” She looks around her at the same broken, fearful world that the disciples see. That you and I see. That she once saw. But now she can see the possibility of a new way, of new life out of death, of love’s triumph against all odds. She can see the seeds of the very Kingdom of God breaking into a grieving world. And because of that, Mary Magdalene becomes the very first witness to the Risen Christ. She can joyfully go forth from this moment and live toward the world she believes is possible, a world where love triumphs over hate, because she has seen it.

And lest we misunderstand, this is not because she is optimistic and Pollyanna about it all. Far from it. She has known pain and grief, and she spends most of our text this morning weeping. Mary didn’t show up looking for resurrection; she just showed up. She showed up outside the tomb where Christ was buried…and she wept.

It turns out that’s all it takes for us to witness resurrection. To show up to the places of grief and sorrow in this world. To stay awhile, and let our hearts break over it. And then, simply, to weep.

Friends, the Easter morning, we, too, are invited to show up at tombs where Christ is buried. Those of you who were here on Good Friday will remember that we looked at some of the places in our world where Christ is still being crucified today. Young African American men shot in the streets. Syrian children killed by gas and bombs and war. Immigrants starving to death in the desert. Ourselves or our loved ones living in the grips of addiction, or mental illness.

There is no shortage of tombs in our world, places where disaster has struck, and hope seems lost, and those left in its wake have nothing to do but weep.

Perhaps being an “Easter people” in the style of Mary Magdalene means that we simply show up and join them. That we go to those places of deepest suffering in our world and our community, and do something as simple and prophetic and seemingly unhelpful – and yet as beautiful as weeping.

Perhaps being an Easter people means being present, and making ourselves available to the suffering, feeling it as if it were our own – and sometimes it is. And then choosing to participate in resurrection. 

For friends, Resurrection – life out of death, hope out of sorrow – it is already there. That’s what we proclaim this morning: Christ is Risen, he is Risen indeed! Hope seems lost; and yet, Christ is Risen. Death breaks our hearts; and yet, Christ is Risen. The powers and principalities of our world drop bombs and flex their nuclear muscles, throwing our world into chaos and fear; and yet, Christ is Risen.

It doesn’t cancel out death, and pain, and suffering, that’s not how Resurrection works. Resurrection says, “I see the heartbreaking, death-dealing powers and realities of the world; I see them. But I have seen the Lord, and I know that the way things are is not the way they have to be. And in spite of all that is broken in this world, I am going to show up and live into that new world that I now know is possible. I showed up, and I wept, and I saw the Lord, and now everything is different.”

So friends, will we show up? Will we show up for the poor, the homeless, the strangers, the grieving? Will we show up for each other?

I hope so. Because there is one thing I know: when we show up to the tomb and weep,  the Resurrected Christ will meet us there.

Thanks be to God.