Preached on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010 at the historic First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
John 20:1-18
Dedicated to the Euclid Congregational United Church of Christ; and always to the glory of God.
When Mary began her day on that first Easter Sunday, she knew exactly what to expect. When she prepared for her visit to the tomb where the body of Jesus had been laid on Friday, she had a good idea of what it would be like. It had been a week of dashed hopes and unexpected turns, but all that was over now. She would go to the place where his body lay to remember, to honor his life, and to mourn his death. It was a ritual of grief and love that brought her to the tomb.
In the same way, we all knew exactly what to expect of this morning when we awoke. You guessed the songs we might sing, you remembered feel of the early morning air, and you knew for sure the story that we would tell. Whatever the turmoil of this past year, whatever unexpected turns we took in our lives, or saw in the world, on Easter morning we know what to expect. And, like Mary, our worship is a ritual of love.
When Mary arrives at the tomb and finds the stone rolled away, her mind grasps the only logical, rational conclusion. Someone has taken the body. She rushes to find Peter and John and tells them so. Then they all rush back to the tomb. Peter and John have a look and then return home, partly understanding and partly not. Then Mary finally looks in the tomb and we are told she sees two angels there. But her mind has no room for angels (how could it?) and so she asks them if they know who has taken the body. Finally, she turns around and runs right into Jesus. Only her mind, so filled with what it expects to see that it cannot see what she does not expect, does not recognize him. She guesses him to be the gardener, and asks him where the body of Jesus has been taken.
We began this day like Mary, knowing just what to expect on Easter Sunday. But quickly we find that our lives no longer match up. Mary’s expectations are shattered. It takes a few surprises to finally break through her expectations, but finally she can see what has happened.
There are two possibilities to explain why our morning is different from Mary’s: that is, why we have not encountered the unexpected. On one hand, we are not surprised because we live on this side of Easter. Mary couldn’t have known what to expect, but we do. The resurrection that surprised Mary no longer surprises us. On the other hand, can we really believe that God is done with surprises? Isn’t it possible that our expectations about today and every day make us just as blind to what God is doing as Mary’s expectations made her blind to Jesus standing in front of her? Might Jesus be present in our lives, mistaken by us for just an ordinary part of our experience? Maybe we have seen grace and called it luck. Maybe we have seen beauty and been unimpressed. Maybe we have seen people whose lives have been radically changed and thought they seemed phony. Maybe we are sometimes just as unseeing as Mary was, set in our expectations.
What if you had come to the church this morning and found it empty? Would you check your watch? Would you think about when the time change was? Would you wonder if the service had been moved to another location? Would you, perhaps, call someone and ask where the service had been moved? And how would the story continue from there? How might you meet the living presence of Christ in a way that undoes all of your expectations?
When Mary realizes that it is Jesus, she calls him Rabbouni, which means teacher, and was what his followers had called him for years. And then Jesus says something strange: “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.’” It’s a strange thing to say because it doesn’t seem like Mary is holding on to him. In her book Bread of Angels, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that while Mary isn’t holding on to him physically, she is holding on to him in a different way. Rabbouni is what they used to call him. It’s his Friday name, but this is Sunday. It’s as if Mary is trying to hold on to the old Jesus, wanting to go back to the way things were before he was arrested and killed. Jesus explains that he is not coming back to her and the disciples like before. He is going to God. Jesus is going to God, and he is taking the whole world with him.
We have a tendency to want to hold on to Jesus right here with us. We’d rather keep him here, in the midst of our lives as we know them, where we feel comfortable. But that’s not the life of faith. We don’t hold on to God; God holds on to us, and takes us to the other side of the cross and out of the tomb.
Too many times, people have been taught that Jesus died as a substitution for us. Jesus died to pay a penalty on our behalf; he substituted his life for our lives. But that doesn’t cut it. Jesus died for us, yes, but not as a substitute. He died and rose as a representative. Jesus, who showed us who God is also showed us what humans can be. He showed us how we can commit our lives for the sake of love, conquering every fear, and conquering even death itself. He rose from the grave and comes to hold on to us, taking us to God.
It is as if when Christ died and was raised to life, that he showed us an open door that we may all pass through. He opened a door in the barricade of all that leads to death: violence and hatred, fear and selfishness, prejudice and everything else that has ever kept us from true life. Christ opened a door to the other side of all of that, and now he holds on to us, to take us with him. Take up your cross and follow me, he said.
In Christ, we die to everything in the world that holds us apart from God, and we die to everything inside of us that holds us apart from God. And because of Easter, we know that those powers are not nearly as strong as the power of God to give us new life. When we see Jesus on Easter morning, we discover not just something new about God. On Easter, we discover who we truly are.
