EASTER DAY 2002

"Simon Peter...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." (John 20:6-8)

Two men, both of them as close to Jesus as anyone had been, Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved, these two men saw the same things, the empty tomb and the linen in which the body of Jesus had been wrapped, and, we are told, one of them believed.

Belief is a funny thing, isn't it? We can all see the same things and yet not get the same message as we interpret the data in our own ways. Of course, Simon Peter would come to believe, would come to know that Jesus had been raised from the tomb and is alive, would come to experience Jesus' love for him at even deeper level than ever before. But for the moment, there at the tomb, his faith had not yet been awakened. Perhaps it was because his heart and mind were still clouded with the memory of his betrayal on Friday morning. And so it was that while the disciple whom Jesus loved saw and leapt, quite amazingly, to believe that Jesus had been raised from death, it would take Peter a bit longer.

It does not matter much how long it takes us to come to faith; it only matters that we do. To come to faith, to have faith awakened in us as it was in the disciple whom Jesus loved, does not mean an end to our doubts and uncertainties. It does not mean that we understand everything, or, perhaps, even much of anything about what happened that first Easter Day. But what it does mean is that we come to know, perhaps without understanding, that something happened on that first Easter, that somehow, beyond all hope, the one who had died on Calvary's Cross was - and is - triumphant over death and all the power of evil. For the writer of this fourth Gospel, the victory was already assured as Jesus uttered those words of triumph on the Cross: "It is finished." (John 19:30) For the writer of this fourth Gospel, it was on Good Friday that we could see the victory of which he had written at the beginning of the Gospel: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:5) But here on Easter morn was the time for those had been his disciples, and would now be his brothers and sisters, to come to faith. Here on Easter morn was the time for that triumphant light to shine in those hearts darkened by sorrow and defeat, and to kindle there an Easter faith.

But even with the dawning of faith, the disciple whom Jesus loved was as uncertain as Peter about what to do next, and so they both went home, leaving at the tomb the one who had come there first, Mary Magdalene. She had come early, even before it was light, to finish the work of preparing the body of Jesus for a proper burial, the work that had been cut short at sunset on Friday. And when she had seen that the tomb was open, she had leapt to her own conclusion and had run and told the two disciples, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." (John 20:2) In death, as in life, Jesus was to Mary the Lord. This fourth Gospel does not tell us anything about Jesus' friendship with Mary Magdalene, although some have suggested that she was Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, the one who had taken "costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair." (John 12:3) But whoever she was, Jesus had awakened in her such devotion that even dead he was still her Lord, and we can imagine how frantic she must have been as she jumped to the conclusion that the enemies of Jesus had stolen his body, adding one more injury and indignity to those he had already suffered.

And when Peter and other disciple went home, Mary stayed, still believing that the body had been stolen, still intent upon finding it and completing the task for which she had set out before dawn. Mary stayed when the others had left and even the sight of the two angels whom she saw as she looked into the tomb did not change her single-minded desire to do what she had come to the tomb to do. And in what is one the richest and most beautiful of the Easter stories, we are told that Mary nearly bumped into Jesus, unable to recognize him through her tears, mistaking him for the gardener. I do not know what the writer of this Gospel intended by including that almost humorous detail, but I always pause for a moment when I read this passage and think of that first garden and of those first gardeners, Adam and Eve, who couldn't keep straight their relationship with God or with serpents. Adam and Eve who refused to let God set down the ground rules, but who let a serpent coax them into disobedience. And here in the garden of the tomb, Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Or, is it a mistake, for isn't that precisely what the Apostle Paul would later call him, the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), the one who did keep straight his relationship with God and with serpents, who was "obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8) and by his death defeated "that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan." (Revelation 20:2)

But whether we are meant to see Jesus as the gardener or not, Mary Magdalene did not recognize him and with that same single-mindedness asked him to help her find the body. And then he spoke her name and she did recognize him. How true to our experience that is, for how often it is that we know someone by the way they speak our names. And whatever had been the history of their relationship before his death, we are surely to understand that Jesus had spoken this name before, spoken it perhaps with such gentleness and understanding that she had been drawn to see herself in a new way, had seen herself not simply as someone's daughter or sister or wife, but as herself, as a person of great, even infinite value.

And that, I believe, is the second realization that needs to dawn on us, the first being that somehow, beyond all hope, Jesus has triumphed over every evil. But that first realization may seem too cosmic, too remote without this second. After all, Jesus may be victorious, while we're still left standing at the tomb weeping. No, what also needs to happen is that we come to share in that victory, that we come to know that in spite of our sins, our failures, our betrayals of love, that God loves us, forgives us, restores us to that wholeness which God intended humans to have in the beginning. And that realization comes as we allow Jesus to speak our names, as we allow Jesus to come into the very center of our lives.

That may not be as easy as it sounds, for it requires that we come there as well, it requires that we stop living on the surface of our lives, hiding from ourselves and from others the deep places. It requires that we see what is under the facades that we have so carefully constructed, the facades of success or politeness or always being right, that we see ourselves as we really are. We do not know what Mary Magdalene had to face beneath her facade, for the Gospel writer does not tell us, but I am convinced that in her earlier encounters with Jesus she came to see herself as she really was and to know that it was that person, and not the facade, whom Jesus loved. And so when he spoke her name, I believe that she experienced anew that love and acceptance that had led her to see Jesus, even if he were dead, as her Lord, and she knew him to be alive, and not simply alive, but alive for her, alive and present to love her and forgive her and transform her, and not simply that day, in that place, but always, in every place.

What happened to those first witnesses of the Resurrection, that dawning of faith in a Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus, needs to happen to us as well. We need - I need - to know that love which accepts us as we are and empowers us to be what God intends for us to be. We need to know that love which is triumphant over every evil and to let that love be triumphant over the evils in our lives. We need the power of that love to triumph over all those betrayals of love in which we have shared and which we know we will continue to share except by God's grace at work in us. We need the power of that love to shape the common life we share in this parish and in the wider community, to shape that life so that it may no longer be marred by our sin, by our hatred and cruelty, by our manipulation and exploitation and control of others, by our racism and sexism, by our contempt for those who are different from us, by our indifference towards the poor and those who suffer. We need the power of that love to shape our common life so that it may be a sign and an instrument of God's reign in human history. For make no mistake about it, the power of Easter is at one and the same moment both intensely personal and absolutely cosmic. The victory which God in Christ has won through his death and resurrection is for each of us, but not for us alone, but for all people, for all creation.

And so, like Mary Magdalene, we are called to allow Jesus to touch and transform our lives, to heal us and make us whole. And like Mary, we are called also to go forth from the garden, into the city, into places of conflict and fear and doubt, and to share with our brothers and sisters there the good news that we too have seen the Lord, that we too have come to know his love triumphant over death and evil, that we too have given ourselves to be witnesses and workers for the growing reign of God in human history, that we too live and work and pray for that day when "The kingdom of the world [becomes] the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever." (Revelation 11:15)

Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alelluia.