"Easter Sunday"

A Sermon by the Rev. Amelie M. Sell

Preached at Pleasantville UCC, April 24, 2011

   On the first Easter Sunday, those who gathered at the tomb to mourn Jesus did not know that their mourning was in vain.  Jesus’ followers were living the agony and despair we each feel when someone we love has been abruptly taken away from us in death.  The people who loved Jesus were inconsolable in their grief.  Jesus had been the love of their lives, their reason for being, their sustenance and support, and he was gone…dead…permanently removed from their lives….  Or so they thought…

   I have known people who grieve so intensely they must visit the graves of their loved ones each day.  They feel closest to the one who has gone before them by being in the physical space near the remains of that person.  In the days after a funeral, many of us… feel the need to go and sit and pray at a gravesite.  On the first Easter morning, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb to sit and pray and be near Jesus’ body.  I can’t imagine how distraught Mary was when she realized the body was no longer in the grave.  Her despair is palatable.  To add insult to injury, Mary believed Jesus’ body had been stolen.  She rushed to tell her closest friends, Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loved….they would witness the reality of the missing body and grieve alongside Mary.  They would know what to do—perhaps, together, she thought, they could track down Jesus’ remains.

   When Mary’s friends entered the tomb, they had completely different reactions.  The “beloved disciple” immediately understood Jesus had resurrected.  Perhaps one of the reasons why this unnamed disciple was so special to Jesus was because his faith was the strongest of Jesus’ followers.  Poor Simon Peter did not get it….he saw the empty tomb and remained unenlightened to the reality that Jesus had resurrected.  Throughout the Gospels, it takes Simon Peter awhile before he figures things out.  And Mary, faithful Mary, just utterly despaired as she gazed into the empty tomb….not only did she not realize Jesus had resurrected, even seeing angels in the tomb did not convince her that a miracle had happened.  Mary was trapped in her grief—she was so devastated she did not even recognize Jesus when he talked to her.  Only midway through Mary’s conversation with Jesus did the poor, heartsick woman understand who Jesus was—her Lord loved his followers so much he came back from the dead to be with them.  Jesus returned from Hell itself to convince his followers they were living with a new word from God: the Good News.

   We are an Easter people.  If the resurrection had not occurred, the story of Jesus and his followers would have been recorded in the histories of the Jewish people as an extreme little sect who made the temple officials angry and were obliterated by the Romans.   But, on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus’ resurrection rescued his teachings and life’s work from obscurity and instead led to the Word of God and belief in Jesus the Christ spreading across the world.   If the resurrection had not happened, those of us gathered in this room would not have the opportunity to become an adoptive church “family” for one another.  Without the resurrection, the whole course of human history over the last 2000 years would be radically different.

 We have an opportunity to live our lives as “Resurrection People.”  We have an important story to tell others about: God came to earth embodied as a man, Jesus; lived in a manner that opened the door for outcasts and sinners to have a relationship with the Holy; died on a cross to take away the sins of the world; and then was resurrected to remind us that we are not alone, we are God’s people and God is always with us.  Our faith calls us to have a relationship with the secular world that is different than everybody else.  We don’t have to worry as much as other people about accumulation of worldly goods and all the “stuff” advertisements tell us we need.  We know no matter how much or how little we have, God is with us to support us, sustain us, and nurture us.  The point of this life is not that we must be like everyone else, but that we are trying to be like Christ.

   One of the ways Jesus was different than everyone else was that he lived out his teaching to love other people.  Jesus overlooked all societal prejudices against sinful and unusual people and loved them.  Jesus’ instruction to his followers to consistently love each other is one of the most difficult commandments to keep, but in the end, is one of the most worthwhile.  I recently watched a documentary about Mary Kay Ash, the cosmetics company founder, and one of the practices Mary Kay tried to live out was to treat each person she talked with as if they were the most important person in the world.  Mary Kay realized that if you behave this way, you sell more make-up.  If we treat each person we meet as if they are the most important person in the world, we have the opportunity to help more people come to have a relationship with God.  Jesus wants us to treat each other with love, kindness, and dignity because if we are able to do this, we will spread the message of God’s love for humanity to others.  God loves us, as flawed as we are, and we have the opportunity to love others and share God’s love with them.  The book of John quotes Jesus as saying: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”  Our love is the best advertisement for Christianity…period.

   On this day when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, we have an opportunity to remember that Jesus came back for a reason.  Jesus wanted to remind his followers of two-thousand years ago and his followers of today these important truths: God loves us and wants to have a relationship with us, we can all have a relationship with God no matter how many mistakes we have made and will make, we are to love each other and our God, and what is important in this life is not what the world tells us is important but is instead what God tells us is important.   We may rejoice because Jesus’ message is true for us today, tomorrow, and always.  Amen!