Feast of the Resurrection A – April 20, 2014

Feast of the Resurrection A – April 20, 2014

The Feast of the Resurrection  A         April 20, 2014

 Luther Memorial Church      Seattle, WA

 The Rev. Julie G. Hutson

 Acts 1-: 34-43  +  Colossians 3: 1-4  +  John 20: 1-18

Grace and peace to you, beloved people of God, from the risen Savior, Jesus Christ.  Alleluia!  Amen.

It is always a great joy to be in church on this Sunday….for pancakes and coffee and warm fellowship.  For seeing folks we love and haven’t seen for awhile.  For flowers and music and trumpets and organ.  Oh, it is good.  And look at you all!  You clean up good, as my grandmother used to say!

When my children were young dressing them in Easter finery was so much fun.  To the chagrin of my now grown sons photos exist of them in matching short-alls with bow tie wearing geese on the front.  And my daughter has had many a frilly dress with a matching bonnet.  Just yesterday my own mother emailed me photos of myself at a much younger age with a snazzy Easter bonnet. I hope Easter bonnets will make a comeback some day.

It is the joyous news of the resurrection that brings us together on this and every Sunday.  It is because of the risen Christ that everything is made new.  And this is news that we need to hear over and over again.  It is news so wondrous and sometimes so hard to believe that it truly does call for us to come together and hear it spoken and sung, to taste it, to splash in it and to see it in one another’s faces.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen! (Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!)

I don’t know about you, but Lent, the forty days leading up to Easter, has seemed particularly long this year.  I was especially distracted from the usual Lenten disciplines of giving things up or taking on something new, by the news of disappearing airplanes and the earth giving way and ferries filled with school children sinking.  Add those events to a few more shootings and a cold war that appears to be warming up again, and Easter could not come soon enough for me.

No matter what is happening in the world, or what is happening in our lives, no matter what hurts linger in our hearts, no matter what fear the world may use as weapons against us, what God did on Easter changes everything. It is the reason we exist as the church.  The news that Mary Magdalene proclaims to the others  frames and reframes everything: I have seen the Lord!  Christ is risen!  Alleluia, indeed.

There’s one thing about the Resurrection story from John’s Gospel that has always puzzled me.  It’s this curious instruction from Jesus to Mary Magdalene, after she recognizes him as the risen Christ.  Jesus says “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.  But go to my brothers and sisters and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Of course Mary would want to hold onto Jesus.  She had been one of his ardent followers; she was with him throughout his ministry, so much so that there is always speculation about her.   We can only imagine that, upon finding him alive there in the garden, her natural instinct would be to hold onto him.  Why would Jesus tell her to do anything else?

Throughout his ministry, Jesus often took the opportunity to tell a story, or a parable, to make a point.  Recently I heard a story that might help shed some light on Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene, on this admonishment to her that she not hold on to him.

Christina and Dave had been married for thirty five years when he died.  Thirty five years, one month, six days, two children and three grandchildren to be exact.  They had met at work, both of them fresh out of graduate school, and they had built a wonderful life with one another.  Certainly they’d had their share of trials; certainly they’d marked the passing of time in the ways that long married couples often do….taking the days for granted, assuming that they would have many more.  But when Dave died rather suddenly, Christina found that she could hardly bear his absence.  She needed him, physically and bodily beside her in bed at night and as she greeted each new day.  She missed him at the table and in the car and she even missed the messes he made in the side of the garage he’d taken over as his workshop.

In the months after his death, Christina began to give away Dave’s things….his tools to his friends and his books to his kids and his clothes to the men’s shelter.  But she couldn’t let go of his favorite sweatshirt.  He’d had it for at least twenty years and every couple of years she’d threaten to throw it out and he’d swear that he would go and find it again if she did.  She’d threaten to take it to Value Village and he would threaten to buy it back again.

And now she couldn’t let go of the thing.  There it hung, on his side of the closet, alone.  It still smelled like him; she’d brought it up to the closet from the workshop.  Sawdust and sweat mingled together to remind her of her beloved one, whom she had lost.

As the days past she found herself wrapping herself in that grubby old sweatshirt, breathing deeply of it.  And as the months passed she found that she was having trouble engaging life again.  She didn’t have the energy or the desire or even the interest.

Christina and Mary Magdalene had both lost someone in their lives who had brought meaning and purpose to them.  I look out among you, beloved people of God, and I know that some of you know exactly what this feels like.  Some of you have walked this same path and journeyed through similar pain.  Some of you have journeyed this way since we gathered last Easter.

So can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary to recognize Jesus when he called her by name?  There would likely have been disbelief and hope and joy and doubt and fear and confusion all mixed together and experienced in one rush of emotion.

Of course she held on to him.  Who among us wouldn’t?

But Jesus’ words to her are not about what she is doing at that moment as much as they are about what he needs her to do next.  Her task, what Jesus needs, is not for her to stay there with him, holding onto him for dear life in the face of death.  Her task is to go and tell the others what she has seen.

Just as Christina’s task would at some point be to give that old sweatshirt to someone who was cold.

You see, we become known to one another in this:  in how we care for one another in the light of the resurrection.

Christ is risen!  It changes everything.

It means that we cannot simply cling to that which we so dearly love….like Mary we cannot love Jesus with all of our hearts and do nothing.  We too have to go and tell others.  We tell them not only with our words, but with our very lives.

Our lives shout Christ is risen when the hungry are fed with the food we had kept for ourselves just in case we might need it someday.

Our lives shout Christ is risen when we clothe the naked with the sweatshirt we’d been clinging to.

Our lives shout Christ is risen when we visit the lonely instead of staying inside our own homes and our own lives.

Our lives shout Christ is risen when we house those who have no homes.  Our lives shout Christ is risen when we do these things because the risen Christ has met us in the garden where we had come to weep.

And some days weep we must…over news of disappearing airplanes and the earth giving way and ferries filled with school children sinking and loved ones we have lost and miss with all our hearts.  Weep we must over our own fears and doubts and insecurities and the myriad of ways we fall short.  But rejoice and shout Alleluia with your lips and with your lives, beloved people of God….for Christ is risen and that changes everything.

Thanks be to God!  Amen!  Alleluia!