John 20:1-18
April 5
David A. Davis
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I am standing before you to preach my 40th Easter sermon. To be honest with you, I’m sort of tired of listening to my own voice on resurrection hope. So I thought I would begin with a few other voices. “Too often”, one preacher begins, “Easter comes across very sentimentally, like a dessert wafer—airy and sweet. But there’s nothing sentimental about Easter. Easter represents a demand as well as a promise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty to the Risen One….I don’t see how you can proclaim allegiance to the risen Lord and then allow a life once again to lull you to sleep, to smother you in convention, to choke you with success.
Another preacher finishes the Easter sermon like this: “The gospel accounts of the resurrection tell us not to be afraid—because new life is frightening. It is unnatural. To expect a sealed tomb, and find one filled with angels, to hunt the past and discover the future, to seek a corpse and find the risen Lord—none of this is natural. Death is natural. Loss is natural. Grief is natural. But those stones have been rolled away to reveal the highly unnatural truth. By the light of this [Easter] day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be killed; and if we remember that, then there is nothing we cannot do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world!”
A preacher on Easter morning in Mark’s gospel, where the Risen Christ never appears in what scholars call “the shorter ending”; “If we could get our hands on Jesus, we would surely throttle the life out of him as did his contemporaries. But we can’t. Jesus is free, out of the tomb, beyond our control, and beyond death. That’s why the story is good news. He’s free so that he can make his way into our lives and actually liberate as God has planned since before the foundation of the world…. if God’s entire resurrection promise is little more than believing in a Jesus who has saved everyone in principle but never gets close enough to unsettle anyone in particular”, well, you may as well leave him in the tomb.”
These Easter morning preachers are attempting to shatter the domesticated gospel. They are challenging the “Hallmark-ification” of both the reality and relentlessness of death and the earthshaking power of resurrection hope. A domesticated gospel shaped to make you feel better, to help you achieve more, to justify all your opinions, and excuse your actions. A domesticated gospel is one where any hard edges are safely sanded down; edges that call for sacrifice, edges of discipleship that require investments of time and effort, edges formed by God’s call for justice and righteousness, edges of discomfort when one actually listens to the voices of those the culture has so long silenced. A domesticated gospel never challenges the rich, or speaks truth to power, or questions humanity’s lust for violence, or calls out the blasphemy of claiming to wage a war “in Jesus’ name”. Easter morning with the domesticated gospel clings to the sentimentality, and the finery, and a nice brunch, or a dessert wafer, airy, and sweet.
Mary stood weeping. She had been the first to see the stone rolled away. Convinced that someone had taken the body of Jesus, Mary ran to tell the others. She remained unconvinced by the disciples’ empty tomb conversion; they saw the empty tomb and believed. Mary was unmoved by linen clothes wadded up in a ball. After the two disciples ran back to their homes, Mary stayed. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. Every now and then, she must have bent over to look in, trying to see if the body was there, and she just missed it, to see if this ongoing spectacle of the empire’s law enforcement murdering her teacher would end. Not even the angels could comfort her. “I don’t know where they have laid him!” Even her first sight of Jesus, her encounter with the one now raised from the dead, even that didn’t convince her. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.” Mary’s first brush with the mystery of resurrection didn’t seem to spare her from her grief and broken heart.
That’s when Jesus called her by name. Then Mary knew it was him. “Teacher”. Mary says in response. Jesus says to Mary, “Do not hold on to me”. Do not grab hold here. Don’t cling to me here. Do not hold on to me here in the place of death.“I have not yet ascended to the Father.” There is no indication that Mary was going in for a hug. Matthew tells of the women falling to worship the Risen Christ and grabbing his feet. But here in John, Mary just says “Rabbouni”. One writer wonders if maybe the use of the title is why Jesus tells Mary not to cling. “Teacher” is his Friday name, but it’s now Sunday, the Day of Resurrection.
Jesus must have known that in some fashion Mary simply wanted to hold on to the way things were; hold on to her relationship with the Teacher who healed the sick and touched the outcasts and modeled for her and the others what a faith-filled life here on earth could be; caring for the poor, feasting with tax collectors, feeding the hungry, rattling the pious, and proclaiming the good news. Mary wanted to stop the weeping and hang on to her world. But resurrection power comes from the hand of God. The victory over the forces of death and darkness comes with Jesus seated at the right hand of God in all power and honor and glory. When the heavenly chorus gathers around the throne and starts to sing “Hallelujah…For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth”. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, Mary is not to hold on because Jesus is on his way back to God, and he is taking the whole blasted, broken world with him.
Mary wants to cling, but Mary’s world will never be the same. More than shaking off the grief that ripped at her heart and getting back to normal following in the Teachers footsteps and yearning to be faithful, more than that, this resurrection life is about ushering in the very reign of God; it’s about toppling the powers and the principalities that prefer darkness and unleash evil in the world, it’s about life conquering death, forgiveness stomping on hatred, generosity squelching greed, love overcoming bitterness and division, the first being last, swords being smashed into plowshares, the hungry pushing away from the table now full, the poor being lifted up while the rich stoop down to help with the lifting. Mary’s world will never be the same because Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
Years ago, a member of the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary died after a long illness. Professor Don Juel taught New Testament. He was the preacher I quoted earlier who said, “If God’s entire resurrection promise is little more than believing in a Jesus who has saved everyone in principle but never gets close enough to unsettle anyone in particular”, well, you may as well leave him in the tomb.” We had the funeral here in the sanctuary with the casket present. Dr. Juel’s roots were Lutheran. I led the service along with the Lutheran pastor from Abiding Presence Lutheran Church in Ewing. It still is the only funeral where I have celebrated the Lord’s Supper. After the service, the entire congregation went over to Princeton Cemetery. It was early spring, and the cemetery was rather a mess of melting snow and a bit of rain. At the reception afterward, everyone was warming up, continuing to celebrate and remember Dr. Juel with some light refreshments and plenty of wine. I remember thinking the gathering was sort of an extension of the fellowship with the communion of saints at the Lord’s Supper. A foretaste of glory divine. At one point, I looked down at my shoes and saw how they were still muddy from the cemetery. Then I looked around, and pretty much everyone’s shoes had mud on them from the cemetery. I was struck by all of Professor Juel’s faculty colleagues who taught bible and theology and church history and preaching and pastoral care and Christian education, all those colleagues who taught preachers like me about resurrection hope were celebrating life, abundant and eternal, with the mud from the grave on their shoes.
Standing in a Good Friday world and daring to live into an Easter one. That’s the call of the Risen Christ. “Do not hold on to me…here”. Yearn deep down to cling to that which you know and yet in the power of the Holy Spirit, be willing to point to that which God knows is yet to come. For Christ is Risen! Facing the onslaught of death over and over again and still, by God’s grace, reaching to the very depth of your soul to announce “I have seen the Lord”. For Christ is risen! Surrounded, indeed overwhelmed, by the grief and suffering and heartbreak that so mercilessly defines what it means to be human, and yet daring to live as Easter people who, clinging to the very promise of God, find the strength even at the grave to proclaim “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” For Christ is Risen! To stand up in a Good Friday world, daring to live into an Easter one inspired by the gospel we read, we hear from the lips of Jesus, and then begging, pleading, praying, working, even demanding “a more excellent way”. For Christ is Risen. To tread each and every day through the muck and mud of the world’s slush of darkness and death, and by nothing other than the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, still believing, still living, still serving because in Jesus Christ, our best days are always yet to come! For Christ is Risen.