April 8, 2012 - Easter Love, Actually Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris John 20:1-18 The Resurrection of Jesus 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. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary! She turned and said to him in Hebrew, Rabbouni! (which means Teacher).Jesus said to her, Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord ; and she told them that he had said these things to her. An Easter tradition here at Santa Monica First United Methodist Church is that as part of the sermon, I invite you to preach it with me in the classic call and response style. I say: Christ Is Risen! And you respond with the ancient greeting of the church: HE IS RISEN INDEED! Let s practice: Christ is Risen! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
We ll be doing that a few times throughout this sermon, so if you nod off, it ll be sure to wake you up. Or if you start day-dreaming about what you re going to have for Easter brunch in an hour or so, this will bring you back for a few more minutes to this time of worship and praise, to focus in, in your hearts and minds, on the truth and power of this day: Right! Focus in--so that we can each say with Mary Magdalene this morning: I have seen the Lord! And say with the whole church, all around the world this Easter day: I have seen the Lord. Good! He is risen, indeed! That s where the story takes us. But, if you re not quite there yet, not quite sure that you ve seen the risen Lord or just what it is that you are seeing.you re actually just like those disciples on that first Easter morning. You heard it in the story, so well presented by our folks you heard that what was for them the unexpectedly empty tomb did not immediately produce joy and delight, right? They were dumbfounded. They didn t know what was going on. They saw an empty tomb and immediately leapt to conclusions. they ve taken him away.we don t know where he is We humans tend to do that all the time, don t we? We hear a bit of a story and--snap we ve got it all figured out. Oh well, that s because of this or that or Never mind that all the evidence has not been examined. Never mind the presumption of innocence. Never mind that in every story there s always more than meets the eye. The disciples did it, too, that day. Their need to come up with an instant explanation kept them at first from receiving THE most astonishing truth--that they were about to be scooped up in the whole cosmic story of God s love, actually, the power of love. Listen: CHOIR: goodness is stronger than evil (men, quietly) That s it. That s what Easter is all about. That s what the Risen Lord reveals: Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours; victory is ours through God who loves us. OK. I grant you, it s a big leap from an empty tomb to that life-changing, world-transforming news. A huge leap. To be fair, put yourself in their place. It not only WAS dark early that first Easter morning, it felt dark in the hearts of Mary and the other disciples. Jesus had died on that cross on Friday. They had seen it all. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had claimed his body, and taken it away for burial in the tomb. They sealed up that tomb with a huge, heavy boulder. The devastated disciples had waited through that first night, and endured the horrible silence of Saturday, the whole day, and then through a second interminable dark night. You ve felt it, after the death of a loved one. The clock keeps ticking. Time moves forward, but it doesn t make any sense to you. All meaning has drained away. You have something of a normal
thought and then you remember, and all you feel is grief and your own heart feels dead and dark within you. Maybe by Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene just couldn t stand it anymore. She had to go, she had to be there. Or maybe something Jesus had said stirred in her memory. Maybe after another sleepless night she felt within her the tug of the dawning light. As singer, songwriter Paul Simon, says it: the light at the edge of the curtain is the quiet dawn The light at the edge of the curtain, the quiet dawn, beckoning her she went to the tomb only to discover something totally different from what she d imagined. She went expecting death. She went expecting what she thought she knew to be true. But she discovered just the opposite. The tomb was open and empty. What could she think, but that the horrible people who had crucified him had certainly stolen his body and taken it away. They ve taken him, she says to the others. A couple other disciples come and look in. They figure she s right and they go on back home. He s gone. The body is gone. The tomb is empty. But, we know that it s not that they have taken him away.it s God having the last word. CHOIR: Goodness is stronger than evil (women) Now here s where the story turns. Here s where we shift from the apparent fact to the truth of the Easter story. The other disciples go home. Mary Magdalene stays. And that makes all the difference. Choosing to stay put is what allows her, eventually, to hear his voice calling her name, freed now to proclaim: I have seen the Lord. Mary chooses to stay. She chooses to stay open. She chooses to pay attention. She chooses not to be misled by what she thought she knew or distracted by what those other disciples were doing. She focuses in and only in so doing does she have half a chance of catching on to what God is really up to here.for God is truly doing something at Easter that defies all odds, that confounds accepted truth, that inverts common sense. What a role model is Mary Magdalene is for us. She trusts that there s more to know. And so, she simply stays put, waiting, trusting, focusing in what Buddhists calls mindfulness. Oh, how we need to practice this, living as we do in a time when, as the experts say, we all suffer from what is now called continuous partial attention, distracted at all times, checking our email and text messages, reading the crawl across the bottom of the screen and missing the pivotal moment in the game. Getting to the truth of Easter which is pretty, totally awesome isn t it?!--requires something of us. It requires something to happen inside us. And to get there, we have to focus. We have to give this our full attention. Can we stay with this story long enough to hear its truth for our lives? You see, Easter is only partly about what happens on the other side of the grave. It s much more about what happens for us between now and then, how it changes our lives, how it makes all the difference in the world. Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!
But what difference, still you may ask? What difference does the truth of Easter make for our lives? Tomorrow, when the trumpet sound has faded away, and the world looks pretty much like it does every Monday morning, what s going to remain in your heart about what this day is really about? What will you have seen? Last Sunday, Pastor Camille asked the children to read the Easter story during the week and share it with someone else. I wondered how they d tell it. What would they say that Easter means? I read a funny story about a little six-year old boy named Matthew who proudly told his Uncle Jim that he had been chosen to play Pontius Pilate in his church s Easter pageant. His main disappointment came when he learned that Pontius Pilate was not a real airplane pilot, but things moved forward from there. His uncle was concerned that this might be too serious a story for a 6-yr-old boy, so he asked him how it went, what he thought. Did the story make you sad? he asked. Well, Matthew said, it was a little sad. But everyone roses from the dead, Uncle Jim, and everyone lives happily ever after. Everyone roses from the dead! That s not a half-bad interpretation of the Easter story. Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed! But maybe little Matthew s best insight was his follow-up line: and everyone lives happily ever-after. Oh, I don t mean the superficial, jolly-jolly kind of happy, I mean the deep down inside kind of peace and assurance and strength and conviction that comes from knowing that God s love has already triumphed so that we can live in this world fearlessly and joyfully. We ve been hearing our choir sing the truth of the Easter story this morning in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who wrote this prayer while his country was still caught in the death grip of apartheid. It is his prayer, his statement of Easter faith, an affirmation that sums up the awesome power of God s love: Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Dear Child of God, he said, we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will never end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now--in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally.... Indeed, God is transforming the world now--through us--because God loves us. FULL CHOIR: Goodness is stronger than evil sing all the way through Victory is ours through God who loves us. Yes! What force is strong enough to roll away the stone? Only love. What force is strong enough to turn back the ravages of evil and hate? Only love. What force is strong enough to bring life out of death? Only love!
Easter is about love, actually, God's undefeated love for us and for this whole crazy world. Easter says that at the edge of every darkness, the dawn is breaking, the light is coming. Easter says to us all that we are loved by God and we are set free to live in that love today and every day ever-after. Easter says that sorrow and suffering never have the last word. Easter says to the world that evil and hate will never ultimately prevail. Easter says that the tomb is always empty because Christ lives through the power of the love of God. Easter is Love, actually. Can you see it now? Can you say: I have seen the Lord! Alleluia. Alleluia! Notes: Title from the film, Love Actually 2003, and an essay by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Jenny Gold: Hospitals Warn Smartphones Could Distract Doctors. NPR: March 26, 2012. Story adapted from James Martin S.J, Palm Sunday lessons from an unlikely Pontius Pilate, Washington Post On Faith, March 31, 2012. Patricia Farris, 2012. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved. First United Methodist Church 1008 Eleventh Street Santa Monica, CA 90403 www.santamonicaumc.org 310-393-8258