Sermons

Toward Reserrection

Easter Sunday

John Wilkinson                                 Third Presbyterian Church  April 20, 2003                                           John 20:1-18

In the ancient church, this day was met by many rituals. It was, for example, the only day on which baptisms were performed.

It was also a day when a little antiphonal response was enacted. The leader would say “Christ is risen.” And the congregation would respond “Christ is risen indeed.” Nowadays, nearly twenty-one centuries later, if one types the phrase “Christ is risen” into one’s computer, that same computer will suggest that a grammatical error has been made and offer an alternative: “Christ is raised.”

Nonetheless, shall we echo our ancient forbears? “Christ is risen.” “Christ is risen indeed.” 

In increasing ways, we stand on similar ground with those earliest followers of Jesus. Though we do not face persecution like the earliest church, we do occupy a similar position in the cultural landscape. “Disestablishment,” the scholars call it. We will return to it in a moment, but for now, let us embrace it fully on this joyful Easter day.

That’s rather a long way to issue a welcome. Welcome to you all. Welcome if you are here today and today only. Welcome if you have not been here, or to any church, in a while. Welcome if you have been coming here for 50 years, 60, 70. Welcome seeker and believer, young and old, city dweller and suburbanite, welcome.

A minister friend of mine calls this the “big one,” and she is right. Welcome to the big one. Is used to be the big one for different reasons. Some used to show up on Easter Sunday to be seen, to pad some cultural resume, or, to have a nice place to go before brunch reservations.

Not any more. We have been disestablished. We come to the big one for other reasons these days. Perhaps we come for the music – in this place that’s certainly good enough reason to be here. Perhaps we come for the flowers. Perhaps we come for our children, OR our parents. Perhaps we come even for the sermon, though a truly honest preacher would not be nearly so delusional.

NO – in this post-modern, post-secular, post-Christian, disestablished, secularized, cynical, fallen and broken and warring world, we come to the big one to hear the story.

And so welcome on behalf of the story, the story that is timeless and contemporary, forming and reforming, provocative and comforting, the story that calls us here and sends us out as transformed creatures and redeemed children of God.

The story is like the most precious jewel we could imagine. Some of us have been hearing it our entire lives, and yet each time we hear it, another facet makes itself known and leads us forward to new discoveries.

For me this time around, such a moment happens in the middle of the story. Let us rehearse it a bit. We will remember that Jesus has been killed, executed, crucified on Friday past – an ignominious end to a kangaroo proceeding marked by political conspiracy and religious betrayal. In an act of true human decency, a follower named Joseph of Arimathea offers to place the body in a new tomb.

Saturday, the day of rest and Sabbath, is observed, and on Sunday morning, the first day of the week, John’s Gospel tells us that Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb. Each gospel tells the story in its own slightly unique way. Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us that a community of women went to the tomb, a point very much worth remembering. John’s gospel includes another episode.

Mary appears at the tomb. She sees that the stone has been rolled away, and she quickly fetches Peter and the unknown disciple, sometimes called John, sometimes called the beloved disciple. She reports to them that the tomb is empty and that the body’s whereabouts are unknown.

And then this extraordinarily human moment. I am not sure what the best metaphor for this is. Perhaps it is children scampering down the stairs on Christmas morning, or sports fans storming the field after a big victory, or two beloved ones running into each other’s arms in some romantic film or the other. Whatever.

Take that experience and multiply it by a million, and then picture two grown men, two followers of this crucified one, running to the tomb. Perhaps they ran because they could not believe the women. I think it is something more noble and profound than that. They ran to the tomb because they had no place else to run.

They ran, the story tells us, first one in front, then the other, then the other, like a scene from an over-caffeinated “Chariots of Fire.” Who knows what precisely they were running from – death, doubt, their own sense of failure and abandonment and despair. All of those things and more, to be sure.

And they ran to the tomb, with a kind of reckless abandon fro which we are grateful. The beloved disciple, who seems to be the teller of the story, is sure to tell us that he arrived first. It’s almost comical if it were not for the sheer humanity of it, the sheer truthfulness and grace.

Whatever their life has been for these past several days, they run from it and run toward this mystery, which, for the moment anyway, is not necessarily promised good news. Condemned by despair, they seek hope. Condemned by denial and betrayal, they seek forgiveness. Condemned by death, they seek life. Condemned by crucifixion, they seek resurrection, the redemption of resurrection, its liberation and freedom.

Even though they do not know exactly what they are seeking, or the nature of the resurrection they will find, they run toward it, faster even than their legs can carry them. Faster even than their imaginations can carry them. Faster even than their faith can carry them. It is semi-comical and fully poignant and altogether human. It is exactly what we do.

And they discover the empty tomb, and even then they do not get it. And the story continues, with Mary as its focal point. Mary does get it, haltingly at first, then more fully, and Jesus charges her to become the vehicle by which the others will learn. “I have seen the Lord,” she says, and we would be nowhere without her.

But for this moment, might we be fascinated just a little bit more by those two who ran toward the tomb. They represent the group – surrogates for history, surrogates for we who gather here this morning – they represent the group that followed, that shouted “hosanna” just a week ago. They most certainly represent those who said but an evening or two ago that “we do not know the man.” They represent all of us who are scared and confused, whose future is up in the air because of the time and energy invested in this crucified one’s message, their future now seemingly as lifeless as whatever they would find in the tomb.

And yet they run, they run for history and they run for us. They run toward resurrection.

We come here this morning for the story, and we would do well to hear it in its fullest. We have spent the last generation or so wrestling with the words themselves, what resurrection actually means. We have wrestled with the “what actually happened?” question. It is, to be sure, an important one. This story is a complex one, worth every ounce of energy of the theologians and biblical scholars and the philosophers, even.

But more recently, even, there has been a new movement. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes that “the very elusiveness of historical certainty is significant as a reminder that the risen Christ is not a static object or a possession of the church.” (The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, page 618)

Another way to say that would be to go to the story itself, which says precious little about what happened, and precious plenty about what would happen, what was to come.

John’s Gospel later says that it was written so that we may believe and have life in the risen Christ’s name. The point of the story is life. The point of the story is resurrection, which is different, it would seem to me, than resuscitation or some divinely sanctioned magic trick.

Theologian Douglas Ottati writes that “For Christian believing, Jesus’ resurrection is part of a larger pattern…the chief possibility and destiny of human life is the new and true life of God’s kingdom. The truth is that,” Ottati writes, “after the disciples had lost him through crucifixion and death…Jesus still came to them (as) they encountered him as the teacher who continues to instruct, the leader who continues to guide, and the power who continues to empower…by raising Jesus from the dead, God gracefully lifted up God’s saving way with the world.” (Hopeful Realism, pages 51 and forward)

We need to focus on the way of the negative for just a moment, on the things from which we run. Choices we make. Commitments we harbor. Values. The people we are, our truest selves when we look in the mirror. And, the ethics we embody when we join all these things with others. Everything we confess every Sunday, whether we did those things or not.

Essentially, what we run from is death, in all its forms and ways, little and big, subtle and extreme. We run from death. That is enough to know and say – on this Easter morning and on every new morning – because the story is not, when the sun comes up in the morning, about running from death. It is about running to life. Toward resurrection.

It is about movement, motion, like the animals ambling onto the ark toward the promise of the covenant. Like the Israelite people crossing the sea into the promise of the covenant. Like any church, this church, moving through its history into the promise of the covenant, made new in each generation, made new in each new day.

Toward the people God would have us be, free and forgiven and joyful. Toward the people God would have us to be, committed to the things of Jesus’ ministry, peace and justice and reconciliation. Toward the kind of family members we are to be, partners and spouses, children and parents. Toward the kind of ethical professionals we are to be, whatever the profession. Toward the kind of neighbors and citizens we are most surely to be, committed to the common good and to those in greatest need.

Toward, absolutely toward, the church we are to be, that sings with joy and worships with exuberance, that teaches and learns, that gathers in hope in order to be dispersed for service, that welcomes with the very same hospitality with which Jesus welcomed. A community that moves toward resurrection, because to move toward anything else would not only abandon the story, but abandon what we know in our very souls to be the way and the truth and the life.

That’s an awful lot to place on the shoulders of those two rather fumbling followers, or even the women who traveled so hesitantly to the tomb on that first day. And yet Barbara Brown Taylor writes that “I remain grateful that Jesus did not say, ‘Be me.’ He said, ‘Follow me…’” (“The Derelict Cross,” from The Christian Century, from The Best Christian Writing of 2002, page 244)

Follow me. The movement of our faith, Easter faith, resurrection faith. Toward life. Toward life. Toward life. For we are welcomed into the rhythm of this great story, whose beginnings we cannot imagine and whose endings we cannot foresee.

But for a moment, for such a time as this, we are like toddlers, hitchhikers, moving, forward, moving, toward some destination, moving hesitantly perhaps, perhaps tripping over ourselves or our fellow travelers. And even then, the story that welcomes us and gathers us moves us forward, toward resurrection. We have seen the Lord, and all we can do is follow. Thanks be to God. Christ is risen indeed. Amen.