"Unfolding Easter"

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett for Easter Sunday

Preached at Pleasantville United Church of Christ, April 24, 2011

John 20:1-18;

“Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’  Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).”

Early in the morning, when the world was still dark, Mary arose before dawn to make her way to the cemetery.  She went to the place where the body of her beloved lay.  The gospel doesn’t tell us why Mary went to the tomb but we know why.  She did what most people do who have lost a loved one. She did what people around here do. She went to the cemetery to see for herself, once again, what she hoped would turn out to be just a terrible nightmare. Maybe she brought flowers.  She had to do it, because the finality of death is just that hard to take in.

She didn’t recognize Jesus as first.  She thought he was the gardener – the one who tended the graves.  You’ve seen them -- the gardeners I mean.  They gather up the old flowers and trim the hedges.  They mow the lawns and keep the place looking hopeful even amidst signs of grief all around.  She didn’t recognize him when she saw him.  She had to hear his voice for that.

John’s gospel is like that.  Easter unfolds gradually.

The resurrection stories that follow -- the ones we’ll read over the next few weeks -- are similar in this way.  Mary recognizes Jesus not by how he appears but by the sound of his voice.  Later that same day Jesus will come to his disciples who are huddled in fear, and he will show them his hands and his side where he bears the wounds of the crucifixion, and they will be amazed. 

But Thomas, the Doubter, won’t be there when Jesus appears.  He’ll be out doing something -- we don’t know what. Maybe he was visiting the grave. Maybe he brought flowers.  Whatever it was, Thomas won’t be there when Jesus appears, and he will later require proof that the Resurrection is real.  He will require the kind of proof that is accomplished by touching Christ’s wounds; by placing his hands in Christ’s side.  He’ll need to know for certain that this really is His Lord.  And so a week later, Jesus will appear to his disciples again giving Thomas the proof that he needs.

And then, still later, Jesus appears to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.  They’ve gone back to the business of fishing -- trying to move on with their lives now that their Lord is no longer with them.  Jesus comes to them there on the beach and they do not recognize him at first. He gives them some good fishing advice and cooks them breakfast, and when he has fed them he reminds them that the work of his disciples -- to take care of his people – must go on.

John’s gospel is so wonderfully rich in this way. The miracle of Easter unfolds gradually – even for those closest to the Master.

A voice in a garden;

the breath of the Savior;

patience for a doubter;

breakfast for his followers on the beach. 

No earthquake. 

No voice from heaven. 

No sudden shattering of the boulder outside the tomb…

Just this gradual, ordinary, earthy kind of unfolding…

Just disciples who have to be coaxed into recognizing their risen Lord, because it isn’t obvious to them at first....

Sometimes the miracle of Easter has to unfold gradually.

The Resurrection of Jesus is a strange story. The Christian author, C.S. Lewis, called it “the strangest story of all.”[1]  If you don’t think it’s strange – if you no longer feel the strangeness of it; if it no longer leaves you bewildered and silenced, full of questions and doubts, if its strangeness does not leave you amazed and in awe – then you are not paying close enough attention.  All you need to do to get back in touch with the utter strangeness of this story is to try to teach it to a group of 12 and 13 year olds – the age of most of our Confirmands. 

“Something perfectly new in the history of the Universe had happened.”[2]  And the gospels don’t even try to explain it.  There is just an empty tomb.  Jesus just “somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him.”[3]  He got up and he said things like: “Don’t be afraid;” “Feed my sheep;” “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”[4]  “Christ had defeated death.  The door which had always been locked had for the very first time been forced open.”[5]  It was the last thing the disciples were expecting.  It’s the last thing we are expecting too.

Sometimes the miracle which is Easter takes time to unfold.

Last week, as we gathered here for the great procession of Palm Sunday – we heard about what happened after Jesus rode into Jerusalem.  We heard how he went right to the Temple and without missing a beat he chased out the money changers and the dove sellers.  It wasn’t that what they were doing was in and of itself so terrible.  “The law of Israel required that people offer sacrifices in the Temple.  The merchants [were just providing] a service by selling the very doves [that people] needed to fulfill [the] sacrificial requirements.”[6] But the problem with all those kiosks was that they were set up in the Court of the Gentiles.  “This was the space set aside in the Temple’s design for non-Jews and others to come and pray to God.”[7]  Jesus chased out the money changers, not because what they were doing was so terrible, but because they were doing it in the house of the Lord, and that made it impossible for others to come in.

Making room for people was what Jesus did.  He hung around with sinners and ate with tax collectors, he healed lepers and cast out demons from those who were tormented, he blessed children and forgave those who had made great mistakes in their lives. He was always making room for others; that’s what Jesus did.

It’s ironic, when you think about it – because the world never made room for him.  He was born in a stable because there was no room for him to be born anyplace else, and he entered a world that did not acknowledge him; a world that did not receive him.[8]  The One who came to make room for us, never had room himself.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

When we are children, Easter has a far different meaning to us than it does as we grow older.  Each time I read the story of the Resurrection I hear something new.  Nowadays, I notice how slowly the story unfolded for those first believers.  Now, I notice the voice in the garden, and the breath of the Savior, I notice the wounds that force us to believe and the smell of charcoal by the seaside. Nowadays, I see how slowly our own faith unfolds, and how sometimes that’s just the way it needs to happen.

But what I see more clearly now than ever before is that what Easter proclaims above all else is that there is no despair so deep, no evil so overwhelming, no place so far removed from joy and light and love, that God has not been there before us – and where God cannot meet us there and bring us home.[9]

Sometimes the miracle of Easter needs room to unfold. Now the question is, will you make room in your heart so it can?  Amen.