April 12, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18

      Let us pray.  Make us an Easter people, O Christ, whose name is “Alleluia.” May we, like Mary, rise in joy when you call our name.  May we, like Thomas, see and believe.  May we, like Peter, become bold and brave.  May we, like Cleopas, meet you in every road.  May we, like them, be utterly changed, in the victory of the love by which you left your tomb, and saved us forever from death.  In your name, O Jesus.  Amen. 
 

      Alleluia!  Christ is Risen! 
 

      I want to begin by sharing with you a little fable about how the sting of death has been taken away. Picture a small boy and his father driving down a country road on a beautiful, bright spring afternoon. 
 

      Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a bumblebee flies through the open car window. The little boy knows that he is deathly allergic to bee stings, and he becomes petrified with fear. 
 

      Almost without thinking, his father quickly reaches out, grabs the bee, squeezes it in his hand, and then releases it. But as soon as he lets it go, the young son becomes frantic again as it buzzes by his head and sails out the window. 
 

      The young boy’s father, seeing his son’s panic-stricken face, extends his hand. Pointing to his hand, he shows his son that there, still stuck in his skin, is the stinger of the bee.  
 

      “Do you see this?” he asks. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. There’s no more sting in that bee!” 
 

      While that is a somewhat simplistic view of how an individual can overcome the sting of death, it is probably more of an apocryphal story rather than real. 
 

      Those of you who have nearly lost someone near and dear will find the gospel today very much within your realm of experience.  In wartime, families with sons or daughters, husbands or wives on active duty in the military hope to avoid and yet they expect the knock on the door. When they answer the door, they are greeted by uniformed and grim-looking people who have come to announce that their loved one is missing in action or dead. 

      Others, many of you perhaps, have sat in one of those ambitiously cheerful hospital waiting rooms, expecting a surgeon to appear to inform you of the worst or perhaps the best. Time drags and seems to stand still. Hope comes and goes. Perhaps we pray or tell God off or both. Our companions awkwardly try to comfort us, searching for something to say that will take our minds off of the immediate situation. There’s always one person who is either brave enough or foolish enough to assure us all will be well.   We would really like to believe that it will, but Uncle Charlie always looks on the bright side and usually has nothing to offer but time-worn platitudes.

      When we hear that the young soldier is alive after all or has been found and is safe and well, we thank God. We affirm our belief in miracles. When our loved one is safely out of surgery and in the recovery room we think Uncle Charlie was right after all!

      Please do not believe for a moment that the disciples were so faith-filled on Easter morning that they expected to meet the Risen Jesus. First-century Jews were no more used to people coming back to life after death than we are. Many of them believed that at some future time the righteous would rise and inherit a new earth. Many, like perhaps some of you, didn’t really believe in life after death, let alone dead people coming to life. They went through life with no hope of a future life, and yet they worshipped God, perhaps hoping for a better deal now, or on the off chance that God had something great in store for them.

      The gospel records are all very clear that the disciples had absolutely no idea what Jesus was talking about when he said he would rise again. Simon Peter begged Jesus not to risk his life and was told “Get behind me, Satan,” for his troubles.

      Our lectionary gospel choices for this morning, one from St. John’s gospel and one from St. Mark’s, tell the same story in different ways.

      John concentrates on Mary Magdalene. She loved Jesus so much, was utterly downcast and grief stricken, crying her eyes out as she stumbled into the tomb and found it empty. She had seen Jesus die, really die, cruelly, on the Cross. She came that morning so that she could be close to him one last time, just as some of us have wanted a last look at a loved one in the funeral home. But even that is taken from her. She turns and senses someone close, probably a gardener up early. “Where have they taken him? Where have they put him?” she blurts out. She is sure that the religious leaders have removed him so that his tomb won’t become a site of pilgrimage, or perhaps the soldiers taken him away in one last, final act of cruelty for having disturbed the peace.

      It is only when the “gardener” says her name, “Mary,” that she knows it is the risen Lord. When someone who loves you speaks your name, there is something special, something wonderful about the way it sounds. Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him, but rather to go and tell his followers that he is alive.

      In the other reading that we just heard, Mark, in his usual hurried style, tells of a group of disciples going to the tomb. It is empty. A young man tells them to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is alive. They run back but then in fear, say nothing to anyone.

      Perhaps Mary does tell the waiting group of friends what she has experienced. Perhaps it is Peter and John, Peter the new leader and John the Beloved, who speak with authority and love. We really do not know.

      In both the John and Mark versions there is something important for us to grasp about Easter. Jesus warns Mary not to hang on to him but to go and tell the good news. So much of our religion is about us. We want Jesus to live in order that he may give us what we want, or keep us safe, or heal us, in this life. Even if we believe in an afterlife, our belief is vague and colored with images of “pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye”. We are rather like the people in Jesus’ day who go through the actions of religion with some hope of being rewarded here and now.

      Jesus tells Mary to go “tell” the news that something extraordinary has happened. Jesus is Risen. Jesus tells Mary that he has not completed the action yet. The Resurrection is not primarily about eternal life. The Ascension completes that part of the whole. The Resurrection is about new life, a new world, a new country. This new country isn’t geographical. It is made up of the dead, the living, and those who are not yet born, who in their lives “tell” that Jesus lives, and work in Jesus to lay the foundations of a new heaven and a new earth.

      St. Mark tells us that the disciples ran from the empty tomb and didn’t say a word to anyone.  Do you suppose that they were as embarrassed as we are to blurt out our faith that “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.”   So we talk about justice, and good works, and piety, and the outward things of religion. We become experts on how the liturgy should go, or what type of flowers should be in the altar, or how the parish spends its money. We say nothing at all about the essential core of Christianity:  Christ is Risen!

      All of those religious things in which we involve ourselves, justice and mercy, worship, and parish affairs are good in and of themselves. Yet without the presence of the Risen Christ at the heart of what we believe, we are, as St. Paul said, “of all people the most miserable.”

      Christ is alive.  He is Risen! Be glad, wipe away your tears and then go tell the Good News to everyone you meet.  Amen.