April 16, 2006
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the Edge of Jerusalem: Finished, But Not Over We are here today to celebrate this good news, the one who was dead, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ has been raised to life. Through human eyes, it looked like everything had ended in a heap of hopelessness. Jesus the teacher, healer, prophet, miracle worker had not led the rebellion many had hoped for; he had instead been put to a criminal’s death. It was finished, and it looked like Friday was the end of dreams. That day on a hill near the Jerusalem city dump, on the edge of Israel’s religious and political center, as Jesus died on the cross and it looked like everything was over. His followers were in great pain, feeling afraid, defeated, probably a little bit desperate to understand all that had happened to them, and most of them were in hiding. For a moment, on Friday, it looked liked the darkness had indeed overcome the light that had come into the world. After all, the witness of the gospels is that among the last words Jesus said on the cross are, “it is finished” (John 19.30a). Jesus cried out and gave up his spirit to God (Matthew 27.50; Mark 15. 37; John 19. 30b), and he said to God, “into your hands, I commend my spirit” (Luke 23.46). When he took that final earthly breath, a Roman soldier, on of the ones who had arrested and beaten and led Jesus up to Calvary’s hill and helped to nail him to the cross, one of the soldiers of the Empire makes his own faithful confession. “Truly this man was the son of God (Matthew 27.54; Mark 15.39); Luke’s gospel has the soldier declare that Jesus is innocent of the charges that brought him to a Good Friday moment of crucifixion (Luke 23.47). John Buchanan is the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, he is a former pastor of Broad Street Presbyterian Church. He reminds us about the Easter story that “We live in a Good Friday world. The story begins with weeping, grief, despair. Most of Jesus’ friends abandoned him after his arrest and watched in horror as he was summarily executed for sedition. They had actually begun to believe him when he said that love is better than hate, that forgiveness is better than revenge. They had begun to trust him when he said that the greatest good is love for God and neighbor and that the way to gain your own best life is to give it away. All of that died when his life ebbed away. “We crowd into churches to be part of worship because this truth is so big that not one of us is up to understanding it by ourselves; we celebrate with hymns because we can sing more than we can say, and with flowers, eloquent bearers of creation’s beauty. We gather to celebrate the goodness of life – of our lives and God’s gracious, unending presence with us” (www.christiancentury.org. John Buchanan, “Sunrise”. April 6, 2006, p.1-2). Jesus’ life as a human being may be over – but remember we celebrate at Advent and Christmas that he is Emmanuel. He is God with us, and his presence is with us in the promise of resurrection fulfilled. It is finished. But it is not over. It is not over because Easter is about God, it’s not evil, nor crucifixion, nor about anything else having the last word. It is not done because the resurrection of Jesus Christ show us that God is not done. “The resurrection of Jesus is more than a miracle; it is an event that makes possible a radical style of new life. Closed worlds are broken open, and old perceptions of what is plausible and possible are shattered. The future becomes a promise of sharing in the resurrection (I Corinthians 15)” (Texts for Preaching – Year B. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, p.268). That is what Mary discovered on that first Easter morning. She is there at the tomb because in those days, “people believed that the dead person’s spirit remained in the vicinity of the tomb for three days, so they would visit the tomb the first three days after burial. She couldn’t go on the Sabbath, so Mary had to wait until after Sundown, she goes first thing, before daylight on Sunday morning (www.lectionary.org/English/john p.2). Mary has come to the tomb early, perhaps for a time of private grieving, for beginning the slow, painful process of coming to grips with the absence of one she deeply loves. Her tears are right on the surface. The cemetery is an appropriate place to grieve. But she gets there, she is surprised, shocked, nearly undone by what she sees. The stone sealing the tomb has been moved, and the tomb is empty. The removal of the stone and the empty tomb disrupt what she is about and only create fear and frustration. Her mind moves logically to the conclusion that somebody has taken Jesus’s body. What other possibility might there be (Texts for Preaching, p.275). Mary goes to get Peter and the one called the beloved disciple, who is probably John. The two men race back to the tomb, look in see that the grave clothes are neatly folded where Jesus had been, and then they go home. They look, they see, they believe that something has happened, but they cannot absorb it and they do what we do when something is too much for us to bear. We just leave, we go away thinking about it, we ponder, we put off dealing with it till later. I wonder, did they forget? Did they forget that Jesus had told them that he would die at the hands of political and religious authorities, but that God would raise him up? Hadn’t they been with him when in previews of his own resurrection, he touched a little girls and gently raised her back to life, or that time when he met a funeral procession on the way to the cemetery and restored a widow’s son from death to life? It had not been all that long ago that Jesus stood at the four day old tomb of his good friend Lazarus with Lazarus’s sisters a crowd watching. With tears in his eyes Jesus called Lazarus out of his death chamber and back into life. Surely, if God could do those things through Jesus, what more could God do in Jesus? It is one thing to understand the concept of Christ’s resurrection. It is something else to believe it deep in your soul. Each of the four gospels tells the story of Christ resurrection. Matthew’s version is one of defiance with an angel sitting on the broken seal of Rome (28.16); Mark tells of reluctant messengers (16.1-8); and Luke proclaims life: “why do you look for the living among the dead, but he is not here, he has risen, just like he said he would” (23.5-7). John tells the story of a one on one encounter with Jesus. I like the way that John tells the story of the resurrection because it just feels real to me. Mary is a witness to the resurrection because, in spite of her confusion and anxiety, there is something in her spirit that will not let her leave that place until she sees Jesus. Because she stayed, she was there when Jesus showed up. If we just hang in there, we too will see Jesus show up. Mary sees him, but does not recognize him. She believes he is the gardener. How many times might we see Jesus and fail to really see him because we suppose he is the guy working for the landscape company, or the man or woman at the off ramp, holding up a sign, asking for a food or money, or one of the people who ring the church’s doorbell from time to time? Jesus might be the teenager whose pants hang too low, or whose blouse rides too high; we might say to him, “pull our pants up”, we might say to her, pull your blouse down, but we do so spiritually and with respect, because it might be him. He might be our political opposite, or the family next door, or the person in the pew next to you. Mary does not get who he is at first, and we don’t either always. But then something happens. There is something in the voice of Jesus, in the way he calls his own, in that tone of voice, at once knowing and reassuring that causes us to know who he is. All he says is “Mary”, all he does is call her by name, and everything changes. When he called her by name, Mary knew that it was Jesus, that all of his promises of resurrection were true. And because she knew the that the resurrection was real, she could say, “I have seen the Lord”. It is finished, but it is not over because the instant we are called by name by Jesus, who was crucified and dead, and now is risen, we are not the same. We have deeper faith, more spiritual confidence, an openness to listen to God and to each other more closely. We will know that we are called by name. I believe Mary may have left there humming an Easter song. Turn with me to hymn # 226 and let’s sing with Mary the first verse and chorus of “He Lives!” “I serve a risen savior whose in the world today. I know that he is with me, no matter what folk say. I see his hand of mercy, I hear his voice of cheer, and just the time I need him, he’s always near. He lives, he lives. Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with me, along life’s narrow way. He lives, he lives, salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart” (He Lives! Chalice Hymnal, #226). Because he lives in our hearts, it is finished, but it is not over. Easter, this day of resurrection means that we can claim the promise of resurrection the Mary way did. Let’s stand for a while in the places that confuse us and discern wait for Jesus to call us by name. Mary was not about to leave the tomb until she understood what had happened to Jesus. She would bury it again if necessary – she would do what was right. She helps us see that it is important, it is spiritually fulfilling to stay where we are sometimes and wait for the answers we need to come to us. We can like Mary, wait, and when we wait, we can witness God’s great miracle. The resurrection of Jesus calls on our faith and our spirit. It calls us to say that we are finished with fear and doubt, and shame. But that faith, and hope and deep satisfaction in God and the love of Jesus Christ are never done. It calls on us to face today’s realities and tomorrow’s uncertainties not with despair, but with eager expectation of what God will do for us. This invitation to share in the new life that God has for us means that we can worry less about what we do not have anymore, we can let it go. What we can do as we declare that we too serve a risen savior, is to count the blessings we have right now – willing hearts, people who have stayed, this building, and the Holy Spirit of God alive and moving in this place, and the risen Christ among us. God is yet working in us. We can continue to tell the story of the empty tomb because we are resurrection people who live in the glory of the risen Christ and in the promise of our own. And what is the story we tell? We can tell the story of how God was at work in Jesus, transforming the tomb into a changing room. There in that space Jesus was able to take off humanity, and mortality, and being earthbound, and death. He was able in that borrowed tomb to put on divinity, and immortality, and life forever with God and with us. We can say that while he said on the cross, “it is finished”. But there is that tomb/changing room, God says by the power of Christ’s resurrection, and by the power to raise up in each one of us new strength, new vision, a new song, a new way of hearing our name, indeed new life, God is not yet done. That is indeed the good news that is proclaimed to us and by us; it is the good news we received; it is the good news in which we stand, and it is the good news by which we are saved. This day of resurrection is the day that we are called one more time to trust in our God, and to proclaim Jesus Christ risen from the dead. This is the day to know that God continues to do great work in us. “He arose a victor from the dark domain, and he lives forever with the saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose.” (Christ Arose!, Chalice Hymnal, #224).The tomb is empty and our spirits are filled. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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