Scripture: John 19:40 - 20:18
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to
the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was
crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they
laid Jesus there.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the
tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to
Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They
have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were
running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent
down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then
Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings
lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen
wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the
tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the
scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the
tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying,
one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you
weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where
they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why
are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” 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). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me,
because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them,
‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary
Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told
them that he had said these things to her.
_________________________________________________________________________
I want to tell you something.
I know it’s Easter today, but the truth is that there is no point in the Christian year when I feel closer to Jesus, than I do on Holy Saturday.
It’s not the waiting, the anxiety, the lack of surety; the cognitive dissonance of hope and belief wrestling with the harsh reality of that broken body that once housed the Messiah.
I don’t…I don’t notice those things all that much, to be honest.
What I see, what I feel, sitting by the graveside of Jesus…is a kind of kinship.
You see, the trumpets and the cheers, the crowds chanting “Hosannah” on Palm Sunday, the miracles and healings, teaching crowds that gathered just to hear him drop pearls of divine wisdom; all that is an abstraction to me. I understand what it means, and it provides me with a wealth of good information and wisdom which I have based my life, and my career around, don’t get me wrong.
But while I can understand it intellectually, I can’t connect with it personally.
I don’t know what it means to be, even for a fleeting moment in the sun, the great and beloved fearless leader, respected rabbi, high school quarterback, most likely to succeed, or even just most useful in the moment. I don’t know these experiences beyond what one might see on television.
But if you sat with us for Good Friday, you might remember me talking about just how…utterly lonely, the death of Christ really was. How after hours of terrible suffering, after asking for water to soothe his dying organs; water he’d never be able to properly drink anyways…he simply hung his head and died. We talked about how in the book of John this Jesus Christ, magnificent savior and mighty son of God, passed away so utterly and completely alone, that no one even noticed that he had died until the soldiers came ‘round later to break some legs and speed things up a little.
Judas had betrayed him. Peter had denied him. The apostles all fled. The community that had praised him on Sunday stood surrounding him, calling for his neck on Friday. He was nailed to a tree, hung out to die and, before the end, even his mother had gone home.
Now I don’t know about you, but when I find myself sitting at the graveside of a Savior who had experienced that, I find myself much better able to understand.
Because I know what it’s like to be unwanted, to be a freak, a geek, outcast and alone. I know what it’s like to be last-picked for any given team and, for that matter, to be quickly shown the door of any team you’re lucky enough to sneak onto in the first place. I know what it’s like to have your friends betray you, your community reject you, and your enemies rise up around you and try to bury you.
In that space…this is a Christ I know. And in that moment, I can encounter a Christ who knows me too.
When we come to Easter Sunday, we often find ourselves waiting expectantly for that homecoming moment; the trumpets-sounding declaration of new life that is the resurrection. We want a do-over of Palm Sunday, done right this time.
Now the King has well and truly come.
Now the victory is at hand; victory over the grave!
Victory over death itself, if we just believe!
If we just….believe.
You know, in those times in my life where I found myself alone, outcast, and hated, I found my small measure of safety, a little bit of community, and my only real source of belonging in the church.
It quickly became my refuge, you see. When bullies rose up to attack, when life moved to strike down, I could always slink back to church and find myself welcomed there.
Of course, I say this knowing full well that this experience in itself reveals my privilege. Safety in the arms of great mother church hasn’t exactly been easy to find for people anymore, to say the least.
But I had just the right color of skin, just the right gender identity and presentation, and my sexuality was in line with the puritanical mores of those in power, so I landed myself a provisional seat at the table.
Of course, even as a cishet, white, American male, I began to notice that this seat didn’t come without preconditions. It wasn’t long before I began to hear that hauntingly, terrifyingly common refrain, like an unnumbered hymn we all keep singing, even though we can’t see to find it in the hymnal.
It’s a pretty simple tune:
“You can’t be a Christian AND something else.”
The first verse of this erstwhile hymn was, like a lot of actual Christian music, catchy and not really all that objectionable:
You can’t be a Christian AND worship golden idols like those folks id back in the Old Testament days.
Ok…that makes sense, I guess.
But as the song went on, the verses started getting farther and farther away from what made sense to me, but instead of throwing out weird “Thee”s and “thou”s, they started instead to add to the growing list of disqualifications:
You can’t be a Christian and a murderer.
Seems strict, but not SO wrong maybe…
You can’t be a Christian AND a criminal.
I guess…But what about the criminal who was crucified with Jesus?
You can’t be a Christian AND do drugs.
Wait…what kinds of drugs? Does medicine count?
You can’t be a Christian AND hang out with the wrong crowd.
Does God condemn us for making friends?
You can’t be a Christian AND believe in evolution.
You can’t be a Christian AND trust any science at all.
You can’t be a Christian AND vote for a Democrat.
You can’t be a Christian AND be gay. Or Trans. Or Bi.
You can’t be a Christian AND be in any way different.
And.
ANd
AND.
And…the list just goes on, like some terrible passage from The Message guest-written by Martin Niemöller. But whatever the “AND” of the week might be, whether it’s sexuality, politics, science, or something else, the refrain underlying it is exactly the same;
You can’t be a Christian AND do anything but just believe. Believe without question, without complaint, and without challenge.
As we let this idea become a part of us, we began to turn it against ourselves; to demonize our own connection to reality; to make heresy of our critical thinking skills, to turn our own curiosity into an enemy of the faith.
We convinced ourselves that our faith was our prejudices, and that anyone who did not share our prejudices didn’t believe.
And to find yourself as someone who didn’t really believe…well that way condemnation lay.
Those who didn’t believe were sent away, their questions treated as undermining the very fabric of our shared community. Those who didn’t believe were treated in the same way that antibodies treat an invading disease, and with much the same level of compassion. Those who didn’t believe were, and often still are, told that their faith and their curiosity are incompatible, that the quest for answers that burns bright in their heart is really the flames of hell nipping at their proverbial heels; that the word “why” was the worst word you could say in church, bar none.
But I always wondered why it would be that God would create in so many of us hearts that wanted to know more, to approach both faith and the world with a desire to take everything apart to know it better; to explore, rather than simply just to accept; why would God inspire us to always know ourselves better, to know each other better, to know creation better, but deem that desire to know and be known as an enemy of true and perfect faith?
I wondered. But then I looked.
And I saw Mary.
Mary the disciple, Mary Magdalene, who so many so wrongly called a whore, first to arrive at the tomb on Easter morning.
Did you see that she came while it was still dark out? Now, maybe it’s just because I have kids and therefore have’t gotten more than a few hours sleep in one go since 2010, but I can’t imagine the dedication it takes to get up that early just to go visit a grave. Especially in a time before alarm clocks existed!
And in the darkness before that Easter dawn she sees it; the stone, already rolled away.
And just like that, Jesus’ resurrection goes unwitnessed too, much the same as his death did a few days earlier. The Lord has passed back into the world just as he left it; quietly, and while no one was looking.
So Mary sees what has happened, and goes to get help. She goes to get help not because she believes in the resurrection and is excited, not because she believed that the savior had walked out of the grave whistling a jaunty tune, but because she saw the stone rolled away and assumed, quite logically…that someone had broken in and stolen the body.
Mary here is firmly grounded in reality. She’s not looking for what she wants to see and trying to interpret or shape reality to reflect it, she’s taking reality as it’s given to her, and trying to work with it in a holy and righteous way.
Would that we all could grasp that strength of spirit!
So she goes and collects the first few apostles she can find, and brings them out. She grabs Simon Peter, the “rock” on which Christ would build his church (and, incidentally, one of the best puns in the entire book; but that’s a story for another time) and along with another no-doubt equally faithful disciple, they make a beeline for the tomb.
And by the way, while it’s not really central to the point I’m making at the moment, I want to invite you to take a moment to look at what these disciples did NOT do when one of their female companions came bursting in with some information they’d probably rather not hear. No one suggests that she might have gotten the wrong tomb, or misunderstood how doors work, or something equally patronizing. No one suggests that she might have somehow overlooked the body because her ovaries blinded her silly girl-brain. No, the disciples simply take her word for it and head for the tomb.
Would that we all could listen like that, guys.
So they get there, and the guy-sciples find Jesus’ grave clothes neatly folded and laid on the stone slab, with nary a body to be found. They all saw, and all believed, it says. There’s no indication what they believed of course, and no indication that they had even the slightest inkling that Jesus had just set a record for respawn time that would stand unchallenged even until today, but they believed that this was something more than a case of corpse theft. They believed that it was important.
And in the strength of their belief, in the surety of their faith in Jesus great and powerful doing of…I dunno..something…they did what many of us all-too-often tend to do when we sense that God is at work on the scene:
They dusted off their hands, and went straight home.
You can almost imagine Mary just…standing there in confusion and frustration, right? I mean, she came here with a real, practical, logical concern that she needed some help dealing with, and these guys showed up, saw Jesus’ burial clothes neatly folded, declared that a miracle had happened, and just…left her there, with the problem of the missing Jesus still very much unsolved.
So Mary, with little option left to her, decides to head into the tomb and try to figure things out for herself. And, if I’m being honest, what she sees there does NOT reflect well on St. Peter and the guys, because the first thing she notices is two ACTUAL ANGELS just hanging out there in the tomb.
I mean…how exactly did the boys miss that?
(And if you’re feeling generous towards the recently departed apostolic gentlemen, and think that a couple of nondescript men in white pajamas might be easy to miss, please let me remind you that, in the Christian tradition, angels are giant swirling balls of madness covered in an objectively ridiculous number of unblinking eyes, shrouded in a half-dozen wings and usually completely on fire. That is what they managed to miss)
Of course, being a logical person, Mary just starts asking the one thing that any reasoning person worth their salt would actually ask in that situation:
Where did Jesus go? Did you take him? Can you help me find him?
And it is in this moment, to a woman who is asking questions and trying to make logical sense of the the world with which she has been presented, to woman who unlike the other disciples did not immediately jump to a place of blind and unproductive belief, it is to her that the Risen Lord Jesus Christ first appears.
If you were to go into any random American church, and ask whichever folks you might find there whether Christ prefers us to display pure and unquestioning faith in God or a bloody-minded curiosity that has us constantly question and challenge our own beliefs, hopes, and church leaders…what do you think those well-meaning church folk would say?
I hate to admit it, but a lot of us church folk would be quick to assume that God prefers, even rewards those who believe in God without question, who accept the message of resurrection, salvation, and new life right at face value, unblinkingly joining the chorus and singing praises to the almighty.
But the opening move of the Risen Christ isn’t to appear with messages of reassurance to those faithful few who believed and did not question, but to show himself to that one woman who came to the tomb absent of power and privilege but full of doubt and questions, the one person who tried to figure out what actually happened. The one person ho tried understand not just what had happened to Christ, but where Christ had gone; and where indeed he might be going.
Mary Magdalene was blessed to be a Christian AND someone with a questioning heart.
And Christ saw that she was both of these things, that Mary embraced her “AND”ness, and he did more than just appear to her. He made her the carrier of that good news of great joy, that where there had been death there was now life, and Christ had come again.
When I think about the “good news” of the resurrection, the great message of Easter, this is how I have always understood it.
Christ knew that feeling, that graveside loneliness of the freaks, the geeks, the losers, the outcasts, and all those that society has said do not belong. And when Christ came again, when he rose from the dead, he chose not to appear first to those who would leap directly to belief, because he knew that simply believing isn’t enough. He knew that when you believe without questioning, when you have faith without reason, it inevitably turns into isolation, othering, despair, and death.
After all, he should know, The Shammai pharisees did exactly that to him just last week.
So when the day of Resurrection came, Christ gave the good news to someone who was willing to question, and who wasn’t quick to jump to belief as the sole answer. Christ wanted someone who would think it through, who would search for the connection between the dark reality of the life with which we’re presented and the love-that-is-God whom we are called to serve. Christ entrusted the message of the resurrection to the one person who saw an empty tomb and didn’t immediately think about how it confirmed their existing beliefs, but thought about what might have to come next as a result.
My friends, this Unfinished Community is a brand new idea, a small community of questioning folks, looking and listening for God’s message of love and acceptance in the midst of a bunch of other folk who claim that God is anything but.
I wish I could speak to you today and tell you that all churches everywhere will henceforth preach the gospel of the resurrected Christ who loves all, welcomes all, and treasures you for your true, authentic self. I wish I could speak to you today and tell you that all Christians everywhere have seen the glory of the risen Christ and come to know that all people are beloved in the sight of the Lord, that everyone truly knows that the one great enemy of God in this world is the inexplicable belief that some people are lesser than others.
I wish I could say that, but the truth is that othering is a hell of a drug, and communities both secular and sacred the world over have long built that into their very identity.
But for our new community, small though it may be, I can tell you that here, in this place, we know that the gospel of the risen Christ is this:
You can be Christian and broken.
You can be Christian and healed.
You can be Christian and some Frankensteinian, stitched-together mess of broken and healed bits held together with creativity and prayers.
You can be Christian and be your authentic self.
You can be Christian and still be trying to figure out what your authentic self even is.
You can be Christian and make bad decisions.
You can be a Christian and make good decisions.
You can be a Christian and make decisions entirely at random, having no idea if you’re doing the right thing or not.
And.
And.
And.
You can be Christian AND you can be yourself. Full stop.
Because when you let go of the temptation of blind and meaningless belief, and start being your authentic self in the light of God’s mercy and grace, you’ll find yourself charged to bring the message of the resurrected Christ out to the world, the message that there’s space at the table for everyone, that never again shall there be no room at the inn, that the lost sheep will always be found, that those who hunger for righteousness will be filled, that the cross has fallen down and the stone rolled away and behind all of it, all of it, as a God who wants that none shall perish, but that all shall drink living water, and share in the gift of eternal life.
So let’s be like Mary, and go tell people that we have seen the Lord.
He is risen indeed.
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