The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Easter Day
1 April 2018
Readings:
Isaiah 25:6-9
Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Please be seated.
This morning we join Mary in the primordial chaos of darkness as she makes her way to the tomb. Mary, whose own demons had ruled her life until Jesus set her free, who loved Jesus like family—as friend, teacher, and messiah—crept under cover of darkness to mourn at his tomb. Fighting the demons of despair, fear, emptiness, and regret, John’s gospel alone reveals the chaos of darkness in which all of those who loved Jesus most found themselves after his brutal death by crucifixion. There in the chaos of her own dark night of the soul, Mary comes to the tomb and is undone. The stone is rolled away. Not even his body now remains.
Fleeing back into the darkness, she goes to find Peter and the beloved disciple to share this new layer of horror added to the tragedy of losing the one in whom they had found themselves, found God, and found each other. Running in disbelief, the two disciples come to the tomb and find all that Mary has said to be true. And in the darkness of having now truly lost everything, they too are undone. They turn and go home, leaving Mary to weep alone.
Through her tears, she finds the courage to look into the tomb. Too numb to even be afraid when the angels address her, she speaks the words of her deepest pain—they have taken away my Lord.
Still in the throes of darkness, she turns and addresses the one whom she mistakes as the gardener.
Of all the gospel writers, the writer of John’s gospel most profoundly taps into the cosmic significance of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. He begins his gospel with Christ, present from the very beginning of time—“in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
Into that cosmic light and life, humankind reintroduced the darkness of chaos. We turned in on ourselves, cut ourselves off from one another and from God, and turned God’s good creation against itself. This Lent, we’ve studied how far God would go to break through our walls and reopen our hearts to the goodness of the world around us, to the immensity of God’s eternal and passionate love for us. God covenanted with us to never again bring the waters of chaos to cover the whole face of the earth, and to take the responsibility of teaching us how to be God’s children. Naming us, God tied Godself to the human family to be our God and the God of our children for all time. Rescuing the children of Israel from slavery, God became savior, provider, and king. When God’s presence proved too much for the people, God agreed to speak to them through the prophets. Allowing God’s children to grow up, God appointed kings in God’s place. Finally despairing of reaching us any other way, God took on human flesh to breath again God’s breath of life into the human family and was born into the world as Jesus.
And John’s opening continues, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Coming into the world as a human child, Jesus completed the work he began in creation with the cross. As we heard on Good Friday, what was begun with God’s love exploding into light, life, and the promise of relationship with all that God had wrought, and which had been disrupted when we placed a barrier between ourselves and that relationship with God, could only be completed by that same incarnate Word breaking that barrier and reintroducing us to a love that spawned the universe, spanned the eons, took on human flesh, taught us again how to be in relationship with God and one another, and paid the ultimate penalty for risking it all to find us. As John’s Jesus says in his final words on the cross, “It is finished.” The cosmic sigh with which these final words come is a sigh of God’s own breath again moving over the chaos of human darkness and perpetually, eternally, bringing from it the light of love and hope.
And from the darkness of Mary’s own chaos outside the tomb this Easter morning, God’s incarnate and resurrected Word speaks the word of a new creation to her by name: “Mary”
And there was light.
The light of the first day of creation was witnessed by none other than God. The light of this new first day, on which everything thought lost was not only returned, but returned eternally in Christ’s triumph over death itself, is witnessed by each of us called by name out of the chaos of our own darkness.
And as Jesus briefly teaches her in what had become for her the second garden of paradise, Mary’s exclamation of faith becomes her call to bring the good news to the rest of Jesus’ disciples and to the world.
God’s Word, God’s resurrected love, God’s good news is not to be held onto for ourselves, but shared. The tomb of selfishness with which humankind had closed ourselves off to God had accepted into itself the author of life—thought impotent and dead. Instead, it was God’s final card in bursting open that tomb with a light and love that the darkness could not overcome. Sent out from the garden into the dawn of the second first day, the Eden story becomes reversed. Selfishness would be to remain in the garden and not share the fruit of the knowledge of God’s ultimate good triumphing over evil. And so Mary, our second Eve, is sent out from the garden to overcome the banishing of the whole of the human family, and to bring us all with her back into the garden of God’s paradisiacal love in the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection.
As Mary leaves the garden to share the impossible news with the disciples that Christ is Risen, each of us is also called by name this day, to become resurrection people, to return to the garden, to share the fruit of God’s light, God’s love, God’s impossible abundance, God’s good news in Christ.
What does it mean to us to be resurrection people? Part of the great mystery of Easter is entering into the question of what resurrection means to us 1985 years later. And yet, baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, we continue to be a part of that resurrection community that began with, as John tells it, a single witness that grew to a global phenomenon.
While John’s gospel seeks to capture the cosmic significance of this mystery, Mark’s gospel, as we heard last night at the Easter Vigil, taps into the practical aspect of understanding of what resurrection looks like and means in the lives and hearts of those bereft of hope who are living in a toxic world that has told them they aren’t worthy, aren’t loved, aren’t enough. In that respect, our world remains painfully similar to that of Jesus’ disciples.
Sent out of the garden to cast out the demons of despair, fear, regret, and defeat, Mary is sent to resurrect the hope and spirits of the disciples, who in turn are sent to do the same for all those suffering in their growing communities. And nearly 2000 years later, we have been baptized into a resurrection uprising that continues to spread the good news in the midst of the chaos and darkness of our own world. God’s love and forgiveness are for all of creation. We are loved, not in spite of who we are, but because of who we are. No matter what the world may have convinced us about ourselves, God believes that we are worthy, that we are of infinite and eternal value, and that we are enough. As people of resurrection, we too are called to proclaim by word and action that good news to the world that continues to draw others back into life, back into hope, back into the Garden where humankind is resurrected with Christ.
“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
The light has returned.
Alleluia
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