EASTER

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Jeremiah 31:1-6; Colossians 3:1-4; John  20:1-18]

It is not possible for me to ignore that I am in the last lap of my time with you as your priest; but I am glad not to have been overwhelmed by this fact – at least to this point.  I haven’t dwelt very much on sentimental things.  Yet, knowing that soft, Irish part of my heart as I do, the sentiment will have its day – arriving mostly unannounced.  And for the record, I share a secret with you about my sentimentality.  In my ten years with you, there have been countless times when I have been unspeakably grateful for our tradition of having a written liturgy available, because being with you in the truth of Jesus’ presence has often demanded that I swallow hard and fast, lest I dissolve and interrupt worship. 

So, given that my confession might leak out, I may have to kill all of you, lest it ruin my hard-earned reputation.  Yet, providentially, there is a non-violent alternative.  In this regard, the words of the poet, T. S. Eliot have come to mind, providing me once again an entrance into the new life that is Easter.  I offer them to you also, as an avenue to the reality of this day. 

Eliot famously has written:

What we call the beginning is often the end.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.[1]

The end is where we start from.  Facing an end together as you and I do, it occurs to me that we have the opportunity to encounter the reality of Easter life just when we need it most – and that this is something we also share with Mary Magdalene.  I am increasingly seeing the Magdalene as a guiding Easter model of our life between the endings and the beginnings.  Let me explain, as best I can.

In the faithful observance of their Jewish tradition, Mary Magdalene and her cohort of female disciples had observed Jesus’ burial in Joseph of Arimathea’s unused tomb.  Obediently keeping the Hebrew sabbath, they did no work once the sun set on that terrifying Friday.  Yet, with sundown on Saturday, they were free to return to where their hearts resided: namely, with Jesus in his death. 

In John’s account, all we are told about the timing and plans of the Magdalene is that even though “it was still dark on the first day of the week”[2], nonetheless, she made her way to Jesus’ burial site.  Like so many people who experience death’s deep and disorienting grief, the Magdalene’s sense of detail was not engaged.  Why else would she go to the tomb without thinking about how the heavy stone would need to be moved?  But of course, spying the open tomb quickly awakened her from her distraction and pushed her into an emergency mode.  

Trouble!  Clearly, this opened burial cave meant trouble – perplexing trouble in an already troubling situation. So, with raw instincts amuck, Mary ran to find the only people she knew might take her seriously and be helpful with such troubling news.  She ran to find Simon Peter and John, the Beloved.

“They took the Master from the tomb,” she breathlessly panted upon arriving at the place where her male counterparts were hiding out.  “We don’t know where they’ve put him.”[3]  At this unnerving news, Peter and John immediately jumped up and raced neck and neck to the tomb.  Outrunning Peter, the younger John arrived at the yawning opening first, and peering inside saw no corpse but rather Jesus’ burial cloths lying, not tossed away, but neatly separated and folded.  Soon thereafter, Peter arrived, sweating as hard as he was breathing.  With typical boldness, he went into the tomb and absorbed the same evidence: no body; neatly folded burial dressings, at which point John joined Peter and moved into the tomb.  Seeing the same evidence, the gospel text curiously reports that John “believed”, albeit this nescient “belief” was mitigated by the narrator’s observation that neither Peter nor John knew the scripture that “[Jesus] must rise from the dead”.  In any event and curiously without comment, Peter and John went back home, presumably to let the other disciples know the stunning new.  They also left the Magdalene alone at the burial site – not what any grieving person needs.

So, standing at the tomb’s opening, leaning against its cold rock rim, just this side of grief-stricken collapse, Mary Magdalene took one last glance inside the tomb.  Astonishingly, she saw two figures in white, sitting at either end of the stone burial shelf.  And before Mary could take her next breath, both angelic figures addressed her with a question: “Why are you weeping?” 

Why was Mary weeping?  What else should she do?  Standing as we do in Mary’s shoes, we ask: “What else could she do?”  Mary Magdalene’s response speaks a deep sentiment which is familiar to all of us: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” [4]  “They have taken what has been my life away.” 

That’s why she is weeping; and whether we are willing to admit it or not, we all weep with her at the brokenness of life, of our life.  And if we are afraid to shed visible tears because of those predatory voices among us that equate the honesty of tears as a sign of weakness and being weak is for “losers”, let us not be fooled or intimidated.  For honest tears denied get transferred to anxiety, anger and rage – and worst of all to exhaustion and despair. 

“Why are you weeping?”  The question posed by the two angelic figures is not as simple, not as obvious as we might like it to be.  For Mary and I think for us, the weeping stems not from there being no body in the tomb but from the awful fact that the tomb echoes with the emptiness that fills so much of our life.  “Why are you weeping?”

But in this devastating ending, Mary turns to encounter another figure, one she assumes is the caretaker of the burial garden.  In her blinding grief and desperation, she asks if he knows where Jesus’ body is.  But he is not the gardener, and this figure tenderly calls her by name: “Mary”.  And in that moment, the Magdalene recognizes Jesus, risen and alive and new.  “Rabbouni! (Teacher) she exclaims and leaps to embrace him as lost but now found.  But Jesus was never lost, even though too much of the world he remains to be found.  Telling Mary that she has new work to do: “… go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.’”  The gospel text tells us that Mary went to the disciples with her news: “I have seen the Lord!”

Now I have to admit that as stirring as this scene is, I wish there were more detail involved because on its surface the Easter scene can seem to be so linear, with an automatically sequential result.  In one moment, despair, in the next elation.  That’s a big leap.  The question it raises for me is what does it take to make the leap – the leap from death to resurrection?  The leap from endings to beginnings.  It’s one thing to say that endings birth beginnings, but we all know that birthing involves labor pains.  How do we get to the point of recognizing the risen One, especially being so familiar with both the tomb and the emptiness it contains?

In the reality of my ending with you, I am wondering how to get to the promised new beginning, when the temptation is so strong to hold onto what is familiar.  So it is that in the last couple of months, I have come across another poem that strikes me as conveying Jesus’ commenting on the meaning of these endings and beginnings and how to navigate them.  The poem helps me imagine what Jesus sees in me and in you, calling our names from beyond the empty tomb to his new and lasting life. 

The poem is entitled, “For a New Beginning”, and I offer it to you because I think that this is what lies underneath Jesus’ calling Mary’s name, so we can hear Jesus calling our names.  In a sense, I hear Jesus’ voice to us in the poem, with the risen One speaking knowingly and tender to us, using our names. Jesus is the poet.  The author is the late Irish poet, John O’Donohue.

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time [I] … watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

[I] watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

So, it is endings and beginnings.  The truth is that, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen.  Alleluia!”  Amen.

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[1] T. S. Eliot. Four Quartets: “Little Gidding V”.

[2] John 20:1.

[3] The Messge. John 20:2.

[4] John 20:13f.