April 21, 2019 – Easter Sunday: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Some of you may have seen on our church Facebook page yesterday, an announcement about Easter Sunday. If you didn’t, I will share it with you now: “In the interests of biblical accuracy, all the preaching about the resurrection this Easter Sunday will be done by women.”
Now you all know by now I am not a biblical literalist, but one who understands that the bible is far too powerful a text to be reduced to such a limited framework. However, as I note each year, there is very little on which all four of the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John agree, except this: Jesus was crucified, Jesus rose from the dead, and the first to bear witness to the resurrection were women. Every – single – time. Mary Magdalene is also the only person named to be at the tomb in all four of the accounts. But it gets even better in this gospel.
When Jesus appears to her in the garden outside the tomb, he says to her “Mary!” And in that moment, she sees that it is him, and cries out “Rabbouni!” Let me say this again, because it is so important: He speaks – calls her by name. Remember in this gospel he says “my sheep hear my voice.” And she does, but here’s the thing – she didn’t call him Messiah or Lord as one might expect, but Rabbouni – My teacher. Something only a disciple int that time would call him.
She is his disciple. She is also now known as the apostle to the apostles – the one sent to preach to the others the good news of the resurrection. Yet, in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a gnostic text, a pitched battle apparently ensues post resurrection between Mary and Peter over leadership in the church. Many recognize that she is the chosen by Christ to lead, the one closest to him, but in that society in that time, Peter was having none of it. In the end, she is not only pushed to the side, but a Pope later misidentifies her as a prostitute, further demeaning this faithful apostle.
Knowing this, and also other scriptural and historical evidence showing women were leaders in the early Jesus movement, it makes one wonder how it is that for so many centuries women were excluded from the pulpit. Of course, there is a cartoon on Facebook about just that – isn’t there one for everything? Imagine if Facebook was out when the resurrection happened – the disciples would have just seen that Jesus changed his status from “dead” to “risen.”
Anyway, there is this cartoon I saw about the response of the male disciples to the Easter proclamation. They say “Ah, yeah…thanks ladies for being the first to witness and report
the resurrection. We’ll take it from here.” Do you wonder if Mary Magdalene and the other women left the house where the boys had been hiding rolling their eyes and saying “Yeah, okay boys – we, the ones who stayed at the cross rather than running away, who didn’t deny or betray him…we’ll just leave this in your capable hands.” Not likely.
For now, let’s get back to our Gospel reading, and to the scene just before Jesus meets Mary in the garden, because it reads a bit like a cartoon itself. Peter and the Beloved Disciple – let’s just call him Bob for short, are now running some weird sort of race to verify what Mary told them – that the tomb is empty. They are almost comical – one gets there first, doesn’t go in… the other passes him and goes in….not to be outdone, the other enters the tomb. I mean, it’s hysterical when you think about it – like two kids trying to beat each other out in a slog up a muddy hill. And, what do they do once they saw that Mary was right? They leave!
The text says about Bob that “he believes,” but about what? It isn’t about the resurrection, that’s for sure, because all that time, when Peter and Bob were going in and out of the tomb – they saw nothing but Jesus’ old laundry. It wasn’t until they left that God chose to make known what was happening. That is when the angels appear. That is when Jesus appears. The men who came to check out Mary’s story and left did not encounter the risen Christ in the garden. The angels could have appeared to them. Jesus could have appeared to them… But, it was to her, to Mary, that they appeared.
Now all this to say that, while we might enjoy poking fun at the patriarchy of the church in light of the actual gospels, this is not the point of the resurrection. No. It is the victory of life over death, of light over darkness, of love over hate. And that is why I love this version of Mary Magdalene receiving the good news most of all, because it begins in her despair. It doesn’t shy away from how she was feeling. It doesn’t mask who she was to Jesus either. And all of that really matters – then, and now – to her, and to all of us.
The text for today starts like this “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark…” If you were here at our services on Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, or Good Friday, then you know the power of that opening phrase, and how this gospel uses darkness and light to great effect. We heard “And it was night” when Judas left the others to betray Jesus. It was night when Peter denied Jesus. And it was dark in the shadow of the cross for Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the other women who did not flee, but waited there with him.
And it was dark that morning as Mary made her way to another dark place – the tomb. It must have felt like a journey deeper into the darkness of her own soul. Something I think many of us can remember feeling at one time or another. Perhaps you feel that way now. Despair has a way of over taking us, of shutting out all light from the world. Which can make you wonder why the angels would ask her “Why are you weeping?” For Mary – her world had been shattered – broken, pierced on that cross. Why shouldn’t she weep?
Why shouldn’t we? And we do.
We weep for those we have loved but see no longer.
We weep for the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain in our lives, and those we know.
We weep for what has become of our country – mired in hate, violence, and oppression.
We weep for what has become of our world – where wars rage, terror looms, and creation groans from our exploitation.
We weep for the Christians in Sri Lanka whose churches were bombed this Easter morning
We weep. Mary weeps.
And so we too understand where Mary is in that moment. Yet it is then that the angels of God appear, and they ask her why she is weeping. Was it to give Mary a chance to give voice to her pain, to break open another tomb – the one Mary had forced all that darkness into, rolling the stone over it – the evidence now only in her tears when no one was around to see? We know that tomb well, most of us, don’t we? It’s how we get through each day when things get difficult to bear.
And, when Mary responds to their question – acknowledging her pain openly – Jesus appears to her there in the garden outside the tomb. That is the grace of the resurrection – that God meets us where we are, and most especially comes to us in the darkness, for light is most needed then, to show us the hope that is always there for us by God’s grace and unconditional love.
So what does this mean for us?
Well, remember the cartoon I mentioned earlier about the men’s response to the good news? While funny (and making a brilliant point about the church’s patriarchy) it is accurate about more than the mansplaining of the resurrection. They said “we’ll take it from here.” Well, in some ways, that is not a bad response, that is if it included the women too, because the followers of Jesus are to “take it from here” – all of them mind you, not just the men, not just those who have power, but everyone…and that means you and me too.
We need to take it from here – but take what…and take it where?
I heard a preacher once ask “Why did Jesus cross the road?…To get to the other.”
To get to the other.
The reason we need to understand that women were the first to receive the good news isn’t to just put a damper on the church’s zeal for patronizing patriarchy – fun as that might be – but to make it clear that Jesus came first not to those others might expect, but to the ones others might deny, betray, push to the side. And before we can proclaim the good news to the world, we need to give voice to the tears the church itself has caused.
She was the other to whom Jesus went first – not to Peter, Bob, Bart, James, Matt, John, Ringo, or any of the others – but to her. Jesus was always doing that – going to the tax collectors, the poor, the outcast, the sinners, the sick, the lame, the forgotten, the lonely, and in that time and place – the women. Jesus went to the other, and now we need to take it from here.
We need to cross the proverbial road to get to the other too- because the Lord is Risen – and there we will find him…there we will find Jesus…there we will find our salvation by living into our baptismal call as followers of Christ.
Today we will baptize little Isaac Sweet, and we will renew our own baptismal covenant. The commitment we make in those vows are about living the life of Jesus – taking it from here to get to the other – to get to him.
This is what we are called to live out in our baptism, and it is something we need to do today for all the ways in which we are like Mary – weeping for what has become of us – weeping for what has become of the world.
Our Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, put it this way: “God came among us in the person of Jesus to start a movement. A movement to change the face of the earth. A movement to change us who dwell upon the earth. A movement to change the creation from the nightmare that is often made of it into the dream that God intends for it. He didn’t just happen to be in Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday. He went to Jerusalem for a reason. To send a message. That not even the titanic powers of death can stop the love of God. On that Easter morning, he rose from the dead, and proclaimed love wins.”
Jesus, God incarnate, was starting something that could not be killed.
Love wins…God’s love most of all.
And that, my friends, is why the resurrection matters. Why we matter. Because we will leave the garden as Mary did – spreading the Easter message of hope to a world in despair. We will leave the garden as Jesus did – to go to the other, bringing forth light into darkness, breaking through the tears born of hate, of bigotry, of violence. Because that is the resurrection we celebrate – Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection – it’s about you and me – rising from our spiritual death into new life, and do we ever have work to do.
In the weeks to come, we will hear about the disciples encounters with the risen Jesus. And if you are fortunate enough to be here to take in these stories, you will see the way in which they began to understand the truth of the resurrection – that it isn’t about pointing back to something that has happened, but stepping boldly forward into what IS happening – through them in those first days – and now through us.
The Lord is risen!
And he is here! Calling us by name, calling us to move from our tears over the darkness of our world to see his presence in us, and all around us. Calling us to follow him out of these doors to the other – to him crucified today – to the trans teen bullied at school, the black man killed by police, the battered woman living in fear at a shelter, the child trafficked for sex, the migrant family ripped apart at our border, the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the victims of terror, the lonely, and the forgotten.
That is where we will see him clearly through our tears.
That is where we will most recognize his voice.
That is the hope and promise of the resurrection.
The Lord is risen!
Let us rise with him and change the world.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
April 21, 2019
Easter Sunday
1st Reading – Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel – John 20:1-18
