Beyond Certainty

 

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 

Part of the mystery of being a resurrection people is not only the tension that the beauty and brokenness, the grief and good news, sit side-by-side, but that Jesus is there too.  Note that initially, Mary doesn’t notice Jesus.  Mary has come to her own conclusion, and the jury in her mind has reached consensus: Jesus’ body was taken by tomb thieves or some cruel Roman trick or some other nefarious reason.  Oh, I have concrete conclusions too!  I know, just know, that those people are evil, don’t try to tell me differently, I shout.  I know, just know, that if we could all value diversity, the world would be a better place.  I know, just know, that if people would really practice their Easter-ing faith and see each person as beloved, I would be out of a job because who would need church!?! 

 

Easter disrupts and disturbs my certainty.  Easter surprises my concrete conclusions.  Easter messes with what I think is true beyond a shadow of a doubt by telling me something I never considered to be true: death can still be emptied of its fear; love can rule even alongside the free will to choose evil.  Pain and praise are both moments to encounter the Holy in Easter-ing ways.  Christ is there in the grief and good news, saying your name.

 

Speak aloud your name right now.  Go ahead, say it, and may you also hear Christ saying your name this morning.  Christ is so close you can feel his presence, and your skin can feel the wind of angels’ wings.  You, like the disciples, can still feel Jesus bursting and breaking into the walled-off rooms in your mind, heart, and soul, breathing on you, and saying, “Peace”.  Your life is infused and inspired by a grace that will never let you go, especially in the weeping before realizing what the empty tomb fully means.  Because we never fully know what we don’t know, we never fully exhaust all that Easter can mean.  Faith is mystery and marvel and meaning always evolving toward the One who knows and calls your name.  Do you hear it?  Do we dare to live this way?   Amen.

Holding Space

 

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 

We’ve wept with Mary.  We’ve stepped into the empty tomb and heard the echo that brokenness is never the last word.  We’ve explored and experimented with the contradiction of faith being one foot in the mystery/marvel of the empty tomb and one foot in the hurting world.  Today, I invite you to pay attention to the angels who ask, “What breaks your heart?”  Easter isn’t just some triumphant militaristic conquest of the world.  Remember, Rome still oppressed people after the first Easter.  Remember, crucifixion still happened after the resurrection.  Remember, Jesus comes back with the wounds of the hurt on his hands and body.  Easter can embrace the beauty and brokenness of your life, our community, our country, and our world.  When the angels asked, “Why are you weeping?” that wasn’t a challenge.  The angels didn’t hand her a tissue for her issue or tell her to get over it.  The angels did what Peter and the Beloved Disciple could not: hold space for hurt.  The angels made room for grief.  Some angels still do this for us.  Who helps you hold space and place for ache today?  Who weeps with you over our world, our brokenness, and heartbreak?  Who is the angel with you as you seek to be an Easter person in the world?  Take time not only to name names, but to connect!   The angels truly wanted to know what Mary was feeling, and so do angels to this day.  Connect, call, and be in community with those who listen and lean into your one wild and precious life in these days.  Amen.

The Easter Paradox

 

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 

Yesterday we wept with Mary over the state of our world.  Mary the Tower (which is what Magdalene means) stood at the juxtaposition of grief and good news.  Outside the empty tomb, in the presence of angels, is where we find ourselves every day.  Remember, during Lent, I shared the quote for Frederick Buechner, who said, “Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.”  This is where faith leads us ~ to a place where grief and good news are side-by-side in tension.  There are experiences and evidence of the terrible and the beautiful over the course of weeks and days in your life.  For me, I hold the realities of war, relationship ruptures, brash bullies, and social discrimination alongside places and people who are compassionate and caring ~ even when the two contradict and seem to cancel each other out.  Life is not some math equation we are solving, but an experience we are living.  I hold both the hurt and heart-warming truths.  I hold the tears and the laughter.  I hold the honest brokenness and beauty of friends and love.  Both are true.  Both are part of being an Easter-ing people.  Today, write down your griefs/pains and your experiences of good news of God’s grace and love.  Today, name and notice the shapes of your tears and the sounds of holy interruptions.  To be an Easter-ing people isn’t endless brass blaring, chocolate consuming, or lily aromas wafting in the air.  Easter-ing is the ability to hold together the twin truths of beauty and brokenness, saying, “Here I am, God.”  May this be our prayer posture today and in the days to come.  Amen.  

Mary The Tower Weeps

 

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”  “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 

The mystery and marvel of Easter can never be confined or contained within one day; there is a whole season of prayerfully seeking to be an Easter people.  For fifty days, we explore and experiment with what it means to “Easter” as a verb in our lives.  This is even more important as the memory of the empty tomb fades into the background and the world moves on.  Tending and keeping Easter is important, as each day the stories we absorb offer us more evidence of how far we must go for the resurrection realm to interrupt and intercede in our world.  The headlines you read this morning were more than enough to convince you that there is still too much brokenness in our world.  Wars.  Famine.  Dehumanization.  Political bickering rather than dialogue.  Systems breaking down, hurting people, and treating the earth as a means to money rather than God-crafted and created.  And you have evidence in your own life that resurrection didn’t magically make everything better.  Your own struggles and stress: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.  We want to shout, “Come on, God!  I sang with all my heart at the top of my voice, “Christ the Lord is risen today!”  Please!!”  I return to this image of Mary the Tower weeping outside the empty tomb.  Hold this.  Step into the scene.  Mary shows us that before we can encounter the mystery of resurrection, we are invited to be honest with our grief.  Grief can make us feel lonely, lost, and isolated.  Mary is alone.  Peter and the Beloved Disciples failed Pastoral Care 101 when they just left her there to deal with her own emotions.  It breaks my heart that two of the disciples of Jesus forgot their connection to Mary.  To be sure, part of the suffering in our world has always been our denial and dismissal of seeing each other as fully reflecting God’s image.  Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, economic oppression, and cultural wars are all based on a us-versus-them way of the world.  Much of our world and ways of being are based on scarcity, that there is not enough for everyone, so some of us have to, must, need to get ours while the getting is good.  What you read this morning is evidence of a world that worships at the altar of individualism.  Is the war impacting me and my wallet?  Is this famine close to me or do I have a comfortable distance?  Is it someone I love who is losing his/her/their rights? 

 

Mary wept.

 

I weep this morning for a world of disciples who continue to refuse to see that resurrection isn’t about personal belief, but about communal lament, healing, reconciliation, and living differently.  What griefs do you carry this morning?  Name, notice, and join Mary outside the tomb.  Reach out to me and others so that we might weep together.  May God’s love enfold and hold us as we continue to live into a life where resurrection and Easter-ing are what guide and ground us.  Amen.

Prayer

 

Still Pondering Easter

 

There is a mystery to the marvel of resurrection.  There is an unknowing-ness that we cannot fully understand; we are called to stand under.  No sermon can capture, no hymn fully expresses, no matter how many times we celebrate Easter, we keep coming back with curiosity.  We say to Easter, “Tell me more”.  Listen to these insights from Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor on Easter:

 

The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out, that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point. In the end, that is the only evidence we have to offer those who ask us how we can possibly believe. Because we live, that is why. Because we have found, to our surprise, that we are not alone. Because we never know where he will turn up next. Here is one thing that helps: never get so focused on the empty tomb that you forget to speak to the gardener.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

What did you witness on Easter morning?  Note this may not have been with your eyes, but with your nose, ears, sacred imagination, or shy soul.  Rewind and remember what you felt and carried out of Easter service.  Remember, I asked you the question, what are you searching for?  Has there been any glimmer or glimpse of an insight in response to that question?  What you witnessed might be different than what I observed and absorbed on Easter morning.  Maybe I was struck by the beauty of the sunlight that warms all the earth, regardless of whether the person can produce a baptismal card or pass a theological test.  Maybe I was amazed by the peacefulness I felt, or the color of the flowers, or the joy of singing in harmony for a few fleeting seconds.  Maybe this Easter didn’t stir your soul, maybe, like the disciples, you felt less amazed than last year or angsty because of the world.  Maybe the sermon wasn’t up to par, or the Peeps tasted different.  The truth is, every Easter is different because you are different every Easter.  Jesus doesn’t have to appear at 9 am and 11 am just because that conforms to our worship schedule.  This isn’t some play where Jesus misses his cue if you leave the building on Easter a little less enthusiastically.  Maybe the Resurrected One appears in the restaurant or at coffee with a friend or sitting outside today, letting the sun baptize your face.  The truth is, Mary initially wasn’t plotting and planning a resurrection…she was attending a funeral.  Sometimes God upends our expectations in beautifully baffling ways.  Maybe it is your lawn crew today who shows you the face of Christ, or the fellow volunteer, or a red robin pecking at the seed you left there.  Remember, you can’t predict resurrection; you simply are asked to hold the promise of God’s possibility that brokenness is never the last word.  Alleluia and Amen.

The Grace of Easter-ing

 

By now, the thrill of Easter with its trumpets and tympani has subsided.  By now, the joy of Easter is starting to lose its new car smell.  And by now, in the Bixby household, all the jelly beans are gone!  The hope so sure a few days ago as we belted out hymns now feels like it is on the clearance shelf next to the deeply discounted box of Peeps (why is that candy still around?!?).  We long for peace to rest and reside for more than a few moments.  We desire a grace that hovers so close but often feels elusive from our control ~ which is one of the fascinating and frustrating parts of grace.  Grace, like Easter-ing, isn’t interested in conforming to our ways.  Grace has her way of working in our lives.  Grace has her way of interfering and interrupting at the most inopportune times.  So slowly pray this prayer of blessing from Kate Bowler with me:

 

“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week… Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” —John 20:19, ESV

 

Oh God, we stretch out our hands to you in this early Easter darkness.
We need you to pull us up and set us on our feet again, for we are weak and tired.

God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Spirit, have mercy.

 

God, on that first Easter morning while it was still dark, one woman went alone to the tomb to do what could be done to honor you, though hope had drained away. Two bright angels met her there, and then – how is it possible? – you were there. fully alive, beyond belief.

 

Blessed are we who stretch out our hands to you in doubt and grief, in sickness of body and mind and spirit, our prayers not fully realized, rejoicing… anyway.

For that is what makes us Easter people: carrying forth the realized hope of the Resurrected One, singing our alleluias great and small, while it is still dark.

 

Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.