Easter Day 2004

Fr. Dan Weir preached this sermon on Easter Day, April 11, 2004.

Alleluia. Christ has risen.
The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia.

"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.'”

Mary Magdalene stayed behind in the garden after Peter and the beloved disciple had "returned to their homes". For Mary there was no going home, for her there was no home now that Jesus was dead. All she could do is remain in the garden, weeping by the empty tomb. In death, as in life, Jesus was for the Lord, and she would not leave until she had found his body and seen to its proper burial. She saw the two angels and told them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  And not even waiting for an answer, she turned, perhaps sensing the presence of the One whom she sought, but not, through her tears, recognizing him and supposing him to be the gardener.

She was right, wasn't she? In the beginning of creation, God set Adam in the garden "to till it and keep it." God set him there to live in fellowship with God, to live in obedience to God's will. Adam failed, as we have all failed, to live lives of obedience, to live in fellowship with God and with one another.

But Jesus did not fail. He lived in such an intimate relationship with the one he called Abba, that he could say, "The Father and I are one." He did nothing on his own accord, but only what he saw "the Father doing." His life was one of perfect obedience.

And just as Adam was set in the garden to tend it in obedience to God, so Jesus came into this world to tend it, to care for it, to love it into wholeness and abundant life. And what the world in its disobedience - in our human sinfulness - did was to crucify him. The world heard the truth, the Good News of God's steadfast love, and chose, instead, from the supermarket variety available its own news. Perhaps the news of looking out for number one, of scrambling to the top of the ladder without regard for whom you step on along the way. Or the news of becoming a yes person and ingratiating yourself with the rich and powerful. Or that more religious news of believing that we have to earn God's love, that we have to obey all the rules and never step out of line, and that maybe, just maybe God would love us and we'd be alright. But as the Bishop of Atlanta, Neil Alexander, puts it so simply and forcefully, eternal life begins at the font and goes on forever. The world rejected the Good News as too good to be true and preferred a lie. The world rejected the One who spoke and lived that Good News and nailed him to the tree.

And the world thought that it had done away with Jesus once and for all. But the world was wrong. "God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses."

And so it was on that first Easter that Mary Magdalene was chosen by God as the first witness to the Resurrection. When Jesus spoke her name, she knew, knew that all that she had thought was lost on Friday was not lost, that she was not lost, that God had found her and would never lose her. She knew that somehow, beyond all hope, Jesus was alive - not that he hadn't died - but that he was alive. And perhaps she knew even then, in that first moment of awakening, that he was alive for ever more, that he would never really be absent from her, would never really be absent from us. And then Jesus sent her from the garden "and Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord.'"

We too have been chosen by God as witnesses, witnesses to the presence of the Risen Lord in our life together in the community of this parish, in our life in the world. Perhaps we do not think of ourselves as chosen witnesses. Perhaps we think that we have not seen the Lord. But look around you this morning. Look at the person sitting next to you, the person sitting across the aisle from you. That person has been claimed by God in Baptism and incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Church. In that person the light of Christ shines. In that person you can see, with the eyes of faith, the face of Christ, our Risen Lord. In that person - in you - God has won the victory - the victory of light over darkness, of life over death.

Alleluia. Christ has risen.
The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia