The Rev. Leah D. Schade
You can see the video of this sermon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n10XvC7krDc
“Were you there?” That’s the first line of the hymn we sang
last week and during Holy Week as we recounted the story of Jesus’ Passion, his
crucifixion. “Were you there when they
crucified my Lord?” The most obvious
answer is, no, of course we weren’t there.
That was nearly 2000 years ago.
And yet we try to recreate being there.
We read these Bible verses year after year, reenact them, give our
children coloring books and sticker sheets so that they can know the
story.
Even in our culture, there is a
great deal of effort made to recreate the story through movies, television
specials, documentaries, and Youtube videos.
In these last few weeks we’ve been seeing these powerful religious images
displayed not just in our churches, but on our television screens, movie
screens, and computer screens.
And yet, even with all this
religious imagery in our culture right now, it is still difficult to wrap our
minds around the resurrection. Because despite how much we long for God, no
matter how much we wish we could have been there, we sometimes we worry. We wonder how this story of the resurrection
could possibly be true. We look at the
world around us and think, maybe it’s not true.
Maybe it’s just made up to make people feel better. Maybe this is as good as it gets. Maybe there really is nothing more.
Having those kinds of doubts is
perfectly understandable. Even Mary
Magdalene – who was there – and who was probably closer to Jesus than anyone,
could not immediately wrap her mind around when she was seeing.
Just for a moment, put yourself
there. Be there with Mary. You can imagine what it must have been like
for her, approaching the tomb of the person she loved most in this world, and
feeling consumed with deep grief. She is
overwhelmed with weariness, knowing that after she anoints his body with the
fragrances she has brought, there will be nothing more she can do. She has been through so much, watched so much
mindless hatred, so much focused rage.
And it has all come to this – a tomb of death. Nothing more.
But when she gets to the tomb she
sees that the stone has been rolled away and she is confused – who could have
done that already this morning? And then
she watches as two of the disciples emerge from the tomb. It’s like they don’t even see her. They just wander off wordlessly, in a
daze. But Mary stays. She is crying, her grief welling up inside of
her and spilling over.
She bends down to look into the
tomb. She expects to smell the odor of
death. Strange – all she detects is the cool dampness of the cave
clinging to her skin.
Her eyes have to adjust a few
seconds as she peers into the darkness.
Then she makes out two figures sitting where the body had been, one at
the head and the other at the feet. Out
of the corner of her eye, she notices the grave clothes that she had helped to wrap
him in three days ago. They are folded
neatly to the side. And the cloth that
surrounded his head is rolled up a few feet away. She startles when one of the figures speaks
to her: “Why are you weeping?”
Her voice chokes, “They have taken
away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Suddenly she senses another presence
behind her and she turns. She stands up
and her eyes are blinded by the morning sun.
She sees the silhouette of a man standing there. He asks the same question, “Why are you
weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
Her eyes try to bring him into
focus. She confused and her mind races,
trying to place this man. It’s early in
the morning in the garden. It must be
the man who tends the trees and plants and looks after the tombs. He must know what’s going on.
And now she is feeling a surge of
anger along with her grief. His body is
gone! The body that suffered so much -
beaten and ripped open and hung to suffocate on that deadly cross. That poor body that she just wanted to gently
touch this morning and anoint with fragrances.
The body that she could not help in life, she at least wanted to honor
in death.
And now his body is gone. Like a cruel joke mocking her in her
grief. She watched him endure so much. They couldn’t even let his body rest in
peace?
With weariness and anger and tears
in her eyes, she accuses to the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away,
tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
There is a moment of silence as she bows
her head, realizing what a foolish thing she had just said. How could she, a lone woman, carry a man’s
body by herself? She feels embarrassed
and angry and sad all at the same time.
And then . . . he says her
name. She gasps – she knows that
voice. A sob rises up in her throat -
but not a sob of grief. A cry of impossible
joy. That man has spoken her name. It’s him!
And she says his name, the name she has
always called him: “Teacher.”
She is overcome with an urge to take
him into her arms and never let him go.
She wants to hold onto him, to embrace him like a lost child come
home. But very gently he says to her,
“Do not hold onto 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.’”
Now she knows – this was not the
end. There is something more! The next thing she knows she is running. Running so fast her heart pounds and her
lungs burn in her chest. She’s running
to find the disciples. She is running to
do what Jesus has told her to do.
Gasping from running so fast, she bursts into the room and says, “I have
seen the Lord!”
Were you there? As you listened to this, some of you may have
had a very powerful sense of being there, immediately being able to visualize
the scene. For others, you simply heard
my voice with very few images. And for
some of you, your mind may have wandered as you listened. Or you were thinking,
“Why am I sitting through this?”
All of those responses are
okay. Because what happened is that as
we heard this story we each had a very personal, individual experience . . .
and we had it together, as a community of faith. You were there.
Now, like Mary and the disciples,
you may feel confused. They knew they
had encountered something mystical that they could not explain. Yet it had a profound effect on their life
and the entire world. They knew they had
to share that story. But they also knew
how difficult a task it is to try to convey to people what they
experienced.
Some of us still have doubts. Because no matter how hard we may try to
imagine ourselves into the resurrection – to put ourselves there – it still
just doesn’t seem possible. And whatever
fleeting moment of imagined joy we may have had, we fear it will all be
cancelled out when we step outside this church.
Sometimes it is hard to believe in
the resurrection when nothing in our world seems to have changed. Let’s face it – crucifixions are still
happening around us every day. Think of the
images of death that come at us daily from the news headlines, the 5:00 news,
the Internet. Faced with these powerful
images of destruction and death, it is difficult to imagine that the
resurrection could possibly be true.
Not only that, but, like Mary, we
get weary, and you sometimes suspect that not only is the world cruel and that
the universe does not care about you, but worse -- it’s mocking you. It’s making fun of you. And when this happens, you can just feel
yourself shut down, the cynicism hardening your heart and mind. All of your hope feels like it is just
draining away, sucked out by this crazy world.
What do you do when you’re in that
moment of despair and you’ve tried everything, and all you hit are dead ends? You can feel your heart and mind curling up
in a little ball and cowering in the corner.
And, like Mary, you find yourself standing alone at a tombstone, weeping
because all of your hope is gone? You
feel that utter despair because your worse fear seems to be coming true – that
there is nothing more. What do you do
when you’re in that place?
I’ll share with you a story someone
shared with me a few years ago. It is a
true story a friend told me about a woman she knows whose mother was diagnosed
with cancer. The mother and daughter
were very close and they were devastated by the news. Early on in her mother’s treatment, the
daughter said, “Let’s make a pact.
Whoever dies first, if they discover that there is something more,
they’ll let the other one know. They’ll
send a sign that there is something more.”
Her mother kind of laughed, but she agreed.
Unfortunately, the mother did die
from the cancer. The grief the daughter
felt was nearly unbearable. And it went
on for months and months. She had watched
her mother suffer a horrible, debilitating death. And while people understood at first when she
withdrew from the world for a time, they could not understand why it dragged on
and on, why she was so devastated. But
for the daughter, it was not just that she missed her mother. It was that she had not received a sign. The pact they had made in life seemed to be
null and void in death.
She began doubting everything - herself,
her mother, her God. Her depression was
like a cold hard stone in her heart that would not be rolled away.
One cold winter day she was walking alone
along a beach in Massachusetts. She was
in a terrible, dark place, thinking, “God is a joke. The universe is a cruel joke.” She looked up
at the sky and yelled out, “Mother, if there is something more, you need to tell me now.”
She looked down, realizing what a foolish
thing she had said. Her mother did not
exist. God did not exist. There was nothing more.
Then, through her tears she saw a
piece of blue sea glass jutting out of the sand.
She picked it up. It was large, the size of a silver dollar,
which is unusual. Then she brushed away
the sand, and saw a word inscribed on the surface of the glass. The word was: “More.” And suddenly her grief was transformed into
impossible joy!
You know, it’s not something we talk
a lot about in our culture, much less in the church. But I’ll bet some of you in your own lives
have had an encounter with something mystical that you could not explain. Yet it had a profound effect on your life. Have you shared your story? Have you shared your experience?
This woman couldn’t help but share
her story. Not only that, but she had
the sea glass made into a necklace, and she began giving it to people whom she
knew were in deep grief. In fact, she
gave the necklace to my friend some years ago while she was mourning the loss
of her husband. And that piece of sea
glass became a symbol for her, a visual reminder that gave her just the little
bit of hope she needed to start imagining that life could go on, that there was
something more beyond the pain. That God
does love her and will never abandon her, and that something impossibly
wonderful awaits her.
Sometimes, like Mary, you simply
have to be there, in that place of pain, surrendering yourself to that quiet
moment of darkness. And in that place of your deepest despair and darkest pain,
God will come to you in a way that will surprise you with impossible joy. Whether you can only tentatively imagine it,
or whether the experience of it calls out your name and sends you running to
share it with the world . . . You’ll know for certain that there is something
more. Christ is risen. He is risen
indeed. Alleluia!
