Emily Schaming
Easter Sunday
What do you believe in?
Sometimes recently I have wondered if many people believe in anything at all. There seems to be a heavy blanket of cynicism heaped on our society. Magazine and newspaper columnists are skeptical about kindness and decency but quick to confirm unpleasant rumours or believe that a celebrity marriage is in trouble. And thousands of people read these columns and either agree with them or complain about them. I guess it's true- everyone's a critic.
Interesting then, that surveys have shown that around 90 percent of North Americans believe in God. Most people even believe that there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who died on a cross. But then comes the resurrection. And people become less sure, more cynical. Sure Jesus was a good man and a nice moral leader, but risen from death? Harder to swallow.
Mary Magdalene doesn't even consider the possibility when she arrives at the empty tomb. She is distraught that someone has stolen the body of her beloved teacher. There are multiple accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the Gospels, with a number of different tellings of the story. A common thread in these stories is astonishment- everyone who encountered the risen Jesus was amazed, and understandably so. This hasn't changed, when we encounter the mystery of the resurrection, we too are shocked and amazed. Each year we think about what resurrection really means. What kind of radical love, hope and faith it requires to be a Christian. And we realize that we too, can be transformed by God.
But how do we even begin to explain the resurrection?
There is a story about a smart young college student who announced to a group of friends one day that he would believe nothing that he could not understand. Another student, who lived on a nearby farm turned to him and said:
"As I was driving into campus today, I passed a field in which some sheep were grazing. Do you believe it?" --
"Sure", replied first student..
"Not far from the sheep", the second student said, "some cows were chewing their cud. Do you believe it?"
"Yes", the first student replied."
"And not too far down the road a gaggle of geese were feeding. Do you believe it?" the second student said.
"Don't see why not". said the first student.
"Well", said the second student, "the grass that the sheep ate will turn into wool; the grass that the cows ate will turn into milk, and the grass that geese ate will turn into feathers. Do you believe this?"
"Ummm, .. yes, I do.", the first student said.
"But do you understand it?"
"Not really", "the first student said, somewhat puzzled.
"You know", declared the second student, "If you live long enough, there's gonna be a heck of a lot of things you'll have to believe without understanding."
We live in a world where grass can become wool, or milk, or feathers. Trying to understand God's universe scientifically is still far beyond our capacity. Rick Warren once said it's not unlike an ant trying to use the Internet. Trying to understand the meaning and power of Christ's resurrection is a lot like the ant and the internet. We must instead try to understand the question being asked.
French
existential thinker Gabriel Marcel in his book, "The Mystery of Being"
distinguishes for us the types of questions people ask. He says there are two
kinds of questions, problems and mysteries. Problems are questions we have not
answered yet, but mysteries are something more. Rabbi Marc Gellman says,
"Mysteries are not problems that have not yet been answered. 'What is the
cure for cancer?' is an unanswered problem, not a mystery, but the question of
whether God is real or whether goodness is rewarded or whether there is a
purpose to human existence or why do fools fall in love or who put the bop in
the bop sh-bop sh-bop—these are all mysteries and they will not go away and
they will always be important and they will always define us by the way we
answer them with our lives and our hopes."
Resurrection is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery by which we can define
our lives.
Mary Magdalene's life and hope hinged on her love for Jesus. She went to the grave—not because she believed Jesus had risen, but because she had to be wherever Jesus was found. Mary was at his side in life, at the cross in suffering, and at his tomb in death. She is devastated that he is gone. Mary has come at the first possible moment, at the end of the Sabbath. All is still dark and quiet before dawn. She stands alone on the brink of that dark and empty space, with no friends, no hope, and worst of all, no Jesus. And she weeps. Four times in five verses, the Gospel mentions her weeping. Deepest grief stemming from deepest love.
Then,
she sees Jesus and, mistaking him for the gardener, she asks him if he has seen
the body. Then with one word, merely her name, the whole world is changed. No
one is ever ready to encounter Easter until he or she has spent time in the dark
place where love is the most painful emotion and hope cannot be seen. Easter is
the last thing we are expecting. And that is why it terrifies us. This day is
not about bunnies, springtime and girls in cute new dresses. It's about more
hope than we can handle.
But
to our bewilderment, and certainly to Mary's, the risen Christ says, "Do
not cling to me."
I
don't know about you, but if I got to modify the script, I would have included a
big hug, followed by Jesus saying, "Let's go find the others and tell them
I'm back. Then maybe we can go grab something to eat." But Jesus doesn't
say those things. He says, "Don't cling to me."
Following
Jesus feels like an endless cycle of losing him the moment we think we have him
captured, only to discover him again in an even more unmanageable form. Every
expectation of Jesus is only another futile effort to get him back in the tomb.
But Jesus just won't stay there.
What
we long for, what we miss and beg God to give back, is dead. Easter doesn't
change that. So we cannot cling to the hope that Jesus will take us back to the
way it was. The way out of the darkness is only by moving ahead. And the only
person who can lead the way is the Savior. But not the old Rabboni we once knew.
He is one more thing that has to be left behind. Until we discover a new vision
of the Savior, a savior who has risen out of our disappointments, we'll never
understand Easter.
After the resurrection, things do not return to normal. That's the good news. It is basic to everything else the New Testament proclaims. After seeing a risen Jesus, we see that there is no normal. Now we can't even count on the darkness. All we know for sure is that a risen Savior is on the loose. Hope and faith are alive in the world.
Dr. George Sweeting tells of an incident in the early 1920s when Communist leader Nikolai Bukharin was sent from Moscow to Kiev to address an anti-God rally. For an hour he abused and ridiculed the Christian faith until it seemed as if the whole structure of belief was in ruins. Then questions were invited. An Orthodox priest rose and asked to speak. He turned, faced the people, and gave the Easter greeting, the same one we used this morning, "Christ is risen!" Instantly the assembly rose to its feet and the reply came back loud and clear, "He is risen indeed!"[1]
This great mystery of faith is one that is proclaimed boldly throughout the Orthodox Easter service and is repeated across church denominations everywhere as a statement of belief. The people in this small Russian town were being told by the government that their faith was dead, but they had a powerful response, hope that sprang from a mystery that the government couldn't solve with bribes or propaganda. They had hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This hope is our good news for the world. We must continue to seek Jesus so that we may spread his hope.
Perhaps we Christians have become apathetic in our search for Jesus. We have it all figured out already. There is nothing more to know about Jesus that we haven't heard in hundreds of Sunday School lessons, Bible studies and sermons. Maybe not. I can't add more to the gospel we have already heard this morning. There is nothing more to do than act on what we have heard. And there lies our apathy.
Pastor Darryl Klassen says that, "News that does not prompt you to act is just entertainment. News that is truly good will inspire you to find out more about it and talk about it to everyone you meet. Good news gets you excited and sends you running down the street like a crazed lunatic."
This morning we experience again the good news we already know so well. We are going to look for Jesus again. We need to find him because the tomb is empty and because the only way to break free from our apathy is to dry our eyes, to eliminate our cynicism and genuinely seek Jesus in this miracle.
What stands in our way of understanding what it means to follow the risen Christ? Our schedules? Our calendars? Our jobs? Our families? Our pride? This is why it's so hard to look for Jesus. It costs us everything. And so we stay put where we are most comfortable. As Annie Johnson Flint so ably put it in verse;
Some of us stay at the cross,
some of us wait at the tomb,
Quickened and raised with Christ
yet lingering still in the gloom.
Some of us 'bide at the Passover feast
with Pentecost all unknown,
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place
that our Lord has made His own.
If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,
His work had been incomplete.
If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,
He had only known defeat,
But the way of the cross never stops at the cross
and the way of the tomb leads on
To victorious grace in the heavenly place
where
the risen Lord has gone.[2]
The way of the cross never stops at the cross. We do not need to stand weeping before Jesus' tomb, because he is no longer there. We have the good news of God breaking through the bonds of death to show us how to love, how to hope, how to believe. Christ is alive. He is risen indeed.