April 8, 2007
Easter Sunday
Text: John 20:1-18
Leaving Death Behind
I thought of Mary Wiese this week as
I reflected on the Easter reading. Mary,
for those guests who did not have the privilege of knowing her, was a beloved
pillar of this congregation who died last month at what, for her, was the very young age of 91. I thought about her in part because of her
determination to be here in worship this morning. A few months ago she had even persuaded her
daughter to reserve a wheel-chair equipped van for this date so that they could
bring her. I don’t think it crossed her
mind to think that death might interfere with her Easter plans. Anticipating this day without the prospect of
seeing her roll in through the door has made me miss her all over again.
But Mary came to mind for an
additional reason beyond that. As
mentioned at the Memorial Service in her honor, Mary had gotten interested last
year in the Old Testament book of love poetry called The Song of Solomon and had gone so far as to write what she called
a “sermon” on the book. So when I came
across a biblical scholar drawing connections between John’s story of Easter
morning and the Song of Solomon I
couldn’t help but smile. Mary would have
loved that!
Consider, for example, this verse
from that Old Testament poetry:
The sentinels found me,
as they went about in the city.
"Have you seen him whom my soul
loves?" (3:3)
It does sound like Mary Magdalene’s
question to the one she presumed to be the gardener. And the very next verse in the Song of Solomon, which describes the
speaker’s joy when her search comes to a happy end:
…when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go. (3:4)
It sounds like Magdalene’s reaction, to which Jesus
responded, “Do not hold on to me, because
I have not yet ascended to the Father.”
Those kinds
of echoes and oddities would have fueled Mary’s wheels and kept them turning
for days!
But there
is another, more significant reason that Mary came to mind as I brooded over
this story – something more directly implied by the story, itself.
Let’s face it: this has always been a story laced with
almost equal parts of joyful thanksgiving and puzzled – maybe even skeptical –
curiosity. We don’t have a lot of
experience with resurrections, and so is it any wonder that, being presented
with such a claim, we furrow our brow?
How do we know that’s what happened?
How do we know, for example, that Jesus’ bones were NOT in that ossuary
discovered in an archeological site in Israel and featured rather sensationally
in the recent television documentary?
If you are looking for scientific proof, you are likely to throw up your
hands in despair. There is more than one
way, after all, to explain an empty tomb.
By John’s
description it looks like the disciples, on that first Easter morning, were
trying to sort out some of those possibilities, themselves. I don’t think I have ever before been mindful
of the busyness around this tomb. Did
you notice all the activity? First, Mary
Magdalene approaches, but seeing that the stone has been removed from the
opening to the tomb, runs back to report the news. Then Simon Peter and another disciple run to
check things out for themselves, one outrunning the other as if trying to be
the first to break the finish line ribbon.
Examining the interior of the tomb, they confirm its emptiness and then
– and I find this hard to believe – simply returned to their homes. What were they thinking? What do you imagine they did, once they got
back home?
Finally, as
if confident now that the coast is safely clear, Mary reappears, bends down to
look inside the tomb for herself. This
time the tomb is not empty at all, but occupied by two angels who, in an
amazing display of obtuse insensitivity, wonder aloud why Mary might be
weeping. “Well,” I want to answer on her
behalf, “it might have something to do with watching as someone you love is
shoved around, beaten, mocked, prodded gruffly through the streets with a cross
on his back, and then nailed to it and pierced with a sword. Couple those things with what no doubt were a
few sleepless subsequent nights and what you are likely to get is weeping. Duh!”
But suppose
Jesus had been raised. Has that ever
struck you as odd that Mary wouldn’t recognize someone so lovingly known, so
intimately familiar? “Well, she was
distraught,” you might say, or “She had other things on her mind.” And “who looks for the living among the dead?” Perhaps, but my experience with distress and
grief would argue toward the opposite kind of illusion. Think of that old standard “torch song” that
Frank Sinatra and others have made famous:
I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through
In that small cafe
The park across the way
The children's carousel
The chestnut tree
The wishing well
I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you
Think of the phantom pains of an amputee. I would venture to speculate that we are far
likelier, in our distress and grief, to see things that aren’t there than to miss things that are. Which goes some way, I
think, toward suggesting that whatever resurrection may be, it is more than
merely the same old body getting pumped back up with life. Something has changed in this “new Jesus”, if
you will, that has both continuity – it is, after all, really Jesus – and also,
somehow, difference.
The
important thing, however, is that Mary comes to believe, and as a result, comes
to be sent to the others, to tell them the truth of what she has seen. Who knows who all Mary Magdalene spoke to
when she left that garden, sharing her experience of the good news. And who knows what kind of impact her
testimony would have had, coming from someone who had seen Christ, spoken to
him, and touched him however briefly in the garden beside the tomb.
And that, finally, is what has
really had me thinking this week about the Mary I’ve known closer to home. Though distant in space and time from that
garden tomb and all its busy and blessed surprises, we are hardly left
bereft. We have our witnesses, too – “living
connections” of our own who “tie us to the ancient faith in the risen Lord”
(cf. Neil Elliott, New Proclamation)
– people who, in ways both common and profound, by the compelling power of
their own spiritual connection and depth, likewise tell us all about and
ultimately show us Jesus alive and transformed.
And while
they, too, have often left me speechless over the larger-than-life truth that
they exude, I give thanks to God for such divine witnesses in my own life and
the Easter morning of which their lives so plainly spoke…
…people like Mary Wiese and Ivyl Sims, Lowell and Evelyn
Gates in this congregation, and from elsewhere people like Nell Hensley, Grace
Orsbourne and Joe Floyd, Charlene Mayfield, Bea Pace and Charles Ballard, Emma
Perry and Royce Farnsworth – and parents and grandparents and more. But I want to be clear: these saints don’t come to mind simply
because they were, or are, warm and delightful people. They come to mind precisely because of they
way they vividly and personally reflected in their living their own encounter
with the risen Lord, and made it their joyful business to spend the rest of
their lives bearing witness.
It is the
day of resurrection, the day and then the season when we celebrate Jesus’
triumph over the grave. People might
argue about the details, and how to make sense of such a claim. And while I find such questions interesting
and worth their query, I leave them for another day. The wonder and the worship and the glorious
celebration are quite enough for my soul today.
The old gospel hymn wonders, “You ask me how I know he lives?” And I would love to leap up with the reply,
“He lives within my heart.” But while I
know that fact to be true, the larger truth is that I heard it and came to know
it most convincingly in the lives of witnesses who, like Mary Magdalene on that
first bright resurrection morning, told me first and subsequently about
it. Living links whose own first-hand
testimony made any doubts ultimately crumble.
Living
links to the risen Lord, among whom, now, are we; our privilege, now,
to go and tell the story…
…that he
lives.