Grace and peace to each and all of you on this resurrection morning: it is always my joy and privilege to stand with those who gather for worship on Easter Sunday. Because whether this is your first time here– or your 400th – the Easter message always challenges us to go deeper in life and faith and living and loving – and that includes this pastor as well as everyone else in this great hall, ok?
On Easter Sunday I often think of the old African American spiritual: It’s not my sister or my brother – not my father or my mother – not even the deacon or the elder – who’s standing in the need of prayer but… who? IT’S ME, right?
Easter almost forces me to sing: It’s me –it’s me – it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. It’s me – it’s me –it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother or my sister but it’s…
Let’s face it: Easter is the most counter-cultural worship experience of the whole year. In the Christian tradition we don’t worship bunny rabbits and chocolate eggs, right? And this day has nothing to do with “flower bulbs emerging from their winter sleep” or green blades rising in the fields. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Grinch about springtime – I love it – and cherish the daffodils and tulips in my yard as well as in the Sanctuary this morning – and I think chocolate bunnies are pretty cool, too.
But the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is NOT about springtime – or flowers –or birds or Easter bunnies. It is about God’s liberating presence within and among us that refuses to accept sin as the final word of creation. It is about the totality of a blessed love that is bigger than our good and bad times, deeper than both our celebrations and sorrows, stronger than the Cross of Good Friday and more shockingly salvific than anything we might ever create in our deepest imaginations.
So I don’t want to talk about incidentals with you today –fluff that would waste our time – or spiritual platitudes that would bore us all. No, I want to talk with you about the love of God – the peace of God – that passes all understanding. I want to talk with you about how all of life is different because Christ has been raised from the dead.
I want to talk with you about a grace that never quits no matter how sinful or stupid or stubborn we might act, ok? And in order to grasp the magnitude of this sacrificial, God-saturated and Spirit-inspired love, I have to tell you something about what God hates. Did you get that? We don’t often speak about what angers the Lord in our tradition – especially on Easter – but sometimes we can better understand things by looking at them in contrast. Sometimes a shadow can help us see into the light…
And when it comes to grasping the depth of God’s love that raised Jesus Christ from the grave we have to be certain that we don’t envision the Lord as some benign, doddering, heavenly grandfather who seeks to pat the world on its head and hand out blessings to everyone in the room. Some people today try to paint God like that – they think that if we can just make God sound more palatable and reasonable – more modern and politically correct – then people will get it and start to act with greater kindness in the world. But here are the facts:
The Lord our God, Creator of heaven and earth and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is NOT some generic, glorified heavenly social worker imploring individuals to just try to get along. No, the testimony of God in the law and the prophets makes it clear that the Lord HATES injustice: It angers God when people wound one another and oppress their sisters and brothers.
The great biblical scholar, NT Wright, put it best: “When God sees human beings enslaved… if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God.”
When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grafting and preying on one another, if God were to say, ‘never mind, I love you all anyway’, he is neither good nor loving.
(You see) The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures. And the Bible doesn’t tell an abstract story about people running up a big debit balance in God’s bank and God suddenly, out of the blue, charging the whole lot to Jesus.
No, the Bible tells a story about the creator God calling together a people through whom he would put the world right, living with that covenant people even when they themselves went wrong… allowing them to become the place where the power of evil would do its worst, and preparing them all the while for the moment when, like the composer finally stepping on stage to play the solo part, he would come and take upon himself, in the person of his Son, the pain and shame, and yes, the horror and darkness and tragedy of death.
Whooooah: I know that was a mouthful so are you still with me? Do you sense what I’m trying t?
If we want to know something about the deep, saving, game-changing LOVE of God made real on Easter, then we have to understand what God has hated and continues to hate today. Because that’s what the Cross of Good Friday shows us – it exposes everything that God hates – the sin and violence, the stupidity and selfishness, the fear and evil of self-absorbed and broken people like you and me.
They call that part one of the Easter story: the Passion and the Cross show us what God loves and what God hates. Part two of the Easter story goes on to show us that God’s love is so much greater than all the hatred. In fact, it tells us that God lovingly takes all the hatred of creation into himself in Jesus and offers us a whole new way of living. And in the Easter story set out for us today in the readings, God asks us to see what this new life meant for Mary Magdalene – and what it could mean for you and me, too.
You see, like many of us here today, Mary is heart-broken – disappointed – and confused. She knows pain, she knows shame and she knows the agony of feeling empty inside and out. Everything she has ever believed in has been taken away from her and she is lost, worn out and afraid.
Maybe that sounds familiar to somebody today? Maybe you know what I’m talking about? Sometimes, you know the Scriptures sound like they’ve been reading our mail. So if you know what it means to be messed up and in trouble, left out with the garbage and abandoned, hurt, alone and confused…keep listening.
Could be this story is talking to you because what happens next? What does Mary do in the midst of all her pain? She goes to the tomb. She goes to grieve… The Bible tells us she goes out to weep– she can’t put on a happy face – that would be a lie. All she can do is cry – and I don’t know about you but I’ve been in that place – it is horrible and alone. I hate it – and what I’ve come to sense is that God hates it, too.
That’s why we’re asked to read this part of the story on Easter Sunday morning: many of us – maybe even most of us – have been in similar places where we’ve come face to face with the fact that we cannot all fix all of our problems all by ourselves. And we hate that feeling – we think there’s something totally wrong with us – so we try to push it away or medicate it or distract ourselves until we forget.
But here’s the thing: that feeling you hate – that sick emptiness and fear – that is God calling to you – pleading with you to let go so that he can come close and embrace you. And here’s one more challenge: as a rule we Americans hate to face our emptiness: that’s why we’re one of the most addicted, sex-obsessed, over-worked, over-weight and stressed-out people on God’s green earth.
In something called the paradox of our time some old salt summarized our condition like this: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints… We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values…We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. For we live in a time of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and women and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.
In a word, as a culture and as individuals, most of us hate to face what Mary Magdalene faced. And the tragedy is that in this hatred we lock out God’s healing love. Maybe that’s why all four gospels tell us that Mary became the first apostle and witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When she went back to the tomb, you see she became a model for us: Mary let go.
She went to the tomb and wept. She let go – and when she did that something else happened beyond her control: Jesus came to her. Now we don’t have a precise time table here –there is no chart documenting just how long it takes for Jesus to show up after letting go – but the Bible tells us that at just the right time Mary noticed something besides her grief. She noticed two angels in the empty tomb… and someone she mistakes for a gardener.
Now for the longest time I thought that this was one of the goofiest details in the Bible: why in the world would John’s gospel tell us that Mary Magdalene noticed someone else in the burial grounds that she thought was a gardener? Sure we know from the end of the story that eventually Mary recognized him as Jesus –the God who comes to her in the darkness of her grief – but why does she mistake him for a gardener in the first place?
For the longest time I was clueless, but try this out: could it be that John’s gospel is telling us that when we let go and surrender like Mary – when we quit lying and distracting and avoiding the truth of our lives – then we can see God waiting there to meet us? And let me push that thought just a bit, because could it also be true that when God does meet us it feels something like a garden?
Remember: our faith tradition begins with a story in Genesis that says in the beginning, before there was time, in the primordial darkness “when "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” God’s spirit came and created order out of the chaos. And St. Paul grasped that, too when he told us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus we will all experience a new creation where "everything that is old has passed away and everything real has now become new!"
My limited but very real experience with meeting God’s grace and the healing forgiveness of Jesus Christ feels something like Mary meeting Jesus as the gardener: Mary has experienced Jesus “as the gardener who brings new life to this world” and welcomes us into a new creation. This is part of that great reversal of the upside down kingdom where the last are first and the outcasts are welcomed, don’t you think?
Back in the first creation story, what did God do after Adam and Eve sinned? Drove them out of the garden, right? But here – in another garden born of the hatred of the world and the love of the Resurrection it looks to me like God welcomes and embraces a broken Mary. What’s more, once the light and love begin to warm her from the inside out, she isn’t banished from the garden, she runs out into the world rejoicing.
Mary has found a reason to live and share life in a bold new way: so Jesus sends her out to tell “everyone that the darkness has not overcome the Word made flesh who has lived among us. Not only has Mary seen her Rabbi and experienced "the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." She tells us: "I have seen the Lord." (John 20:18)
Today I stand with Mary – one faithful servant – the first witness of the resurrection – who shows me that God aches to take all the hatred of the world and transform it by love into a new life. And that, beloved, is the good news for today. I have seen the Lord: He is risen!
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