Sermon Text

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
So What?
John 20:1-18
As I have been working on this Easter sermon over the past few weeks, I really struggled to get started. I’ve preached on Easter now for 37 years, preached about this Jesus, preached about his resurrection. How could I find a new twist, a new approach, a new way to look at things? What is there that’s new about the Easter story? How can I make it sound fresh?
After all, the rest of the texts of the lectionary cycle through at least a three-year rotation. It’s three years between times of preaching on the prodigal son, three years before talking about the feeding of the 5000 again. But this Easter story, told in slightly different ways in each of the four Gospels, comes every year, year after year.
Don’t you know this story by now? What else is there for me to say or for you to hear about it? In a blog entitled “preaching peace,” Jeff Krantz and Michael Hardin write, “Popular Christianity doesn’t know what to do with Easter Sunday, because while the average churchgoer may believe that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead, it really doesn’t have any significance for them except perhaps to provide consolation beyond death. Some use Easter morning as a proof that in raising Jesus from the dead, God sets the balance right after destroying Jesus with His wrath only days before. Others sit in the pews and fret over the idea of resurrection, preferring reincarnation instead. Many are just trying to stay awake! Resurrection, smesurrection, we hear the same old thing every year.”
Now, before you get excited that maybe, then, I won’t be preaching after all, never fear. It seems we are a hard-to-teach lot. We always seem to need to hear the story again – we never seem to get it or at least to get it all. Our lives, our society, our world is evidence enough that we don’t get the Easter message. We live as if we don’t know that God loves us; as if we don’t know that God’s grace is free to us; as if we don’t believe that God has plans for and demands of us. And if we don’t know any of that, if we don’t believe in God’s love, God’s grace, God’s challenges, then clearly, we need to read our stories, this story, again.
So, it’s Easter morning again. What will happen here today? The truth is, our actions, our behaviors, the way we act from Easter to Easter indicates that we don’t expect anything much to happen here today at all, because, the day after, we will be living our lives in the exact same way we always have. Maybe we don’t expect very much from Easter. Maybe for us it is just one more Sunday. Maybe Easter is just a day to celebrate with friends and family, to share in a good meal, to finally indulge in whatever we have given up for Lent. Maybe Easter is a day when the sanctuary looks extra nice, and we hear special music, and we dress up in new clothes, and new shoes. Maybe that is all we expect, and all we really want.
Because, the fact is, it would be awfully inconvenient for something more powerful to happen to us on the Day of Resurrection. If we came to the tomb, and found Jesus raised, and understood how God was working in this act, we might have to live differently. We might have to take to heart all of those things that Jesus taught during his lifetime. We might have to admit that his way was better than our way, that his idea of kingdom is better than ours, that his idea of living and loving was right after all. We’d have to change our lives, right now, starting today. But if our lives stay the same, if we live on business-as-usual, we’re saying we either don’t believe in the resurrection, or worse and probably more true: we believe – we just don’t care enough to let it change us.
On this Easter morning, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb where they had laid Jesus. She sees that the stone has been rolled away, and panics, thinking something must have been done – his tomb raided, or his body moved by the Romans, or something equally distressing. She runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple. They race, literally, back to the tomb with her. The first disciple looks in and sees the empty linen wrappings, and then Peter goes in and sees that the body of Jesus is gone. And we read that they “saw and believed.” And then they went back home. And that was that. They believed, but apparently their belief did not inspire them to share what they’d seen, to change their plans for the day, to even to sit and talk over these events with Mary. They just went back home.
But Mary reacts differently. She stays outside the tomb, weeping, overcome with all that has happened in the last few days. Finally, she, too, enters the tomb. Inside, she sees the messengers of God, sitting where Jesus had been laid, and then she sees Jesus himself. But, in her grief, she doesn’t recognize him – who would expect to see him alive after seeing him crucified? But he speaks her name – “Mary” – and her eyes are opened, and she responds, “My Teacher!” So Mary sees, and like the two disciples, believes. But instead of holding these things in her heart, she does not return home, but goes and finds the disciples, and declares, “I have seen the Lord!”
It isn’t that we don’t believe the Easter story. We might disagree about its details, wonder about the “How’s” and the specifics, but all in all, we believe that God is capable of doing this act in Jesus, that God can have the power of life win out over the power of death. We believe that, because some of us have been witness to what we can only call miracles, seen good win out against terrible odds, seen lives changed by God’s love, seen these things happen. We can believe the story.
It’s just that like Peter and the other disciple, our believing doesn’t always change anything. We just want to go back home, settle in, and take down the Easter decorations until next year, after a hearty meal with loved ones. It’s not that we don’t believe - it’s just that we don’t know what to do with our belief, or how to let it work in us.
But the empty tomb and the risen Christ are only part of Easter. Like that old quip, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – if Christ is crucified and resurrected, and no one tells it, and no one changes because of it, no one is transformed by it - does it matter? Life where death was expected – what else can God do to show us love? A beginning, where an end seemed certain – what else can God do to challenge us into action? Eternal joy where grief seemed victorious – what else can God do to show us grace?
So you’ve come to the tomb this Easter morning – what do you expect to see here? The tomb expected to hold Jesus is found empty. Death, expected to stop life, is conquered. Crucifixion, expected to finish Jesus’ ministry, ends in resurrection. Expect the unexpected – Christ is risen. Expect the unexpected, and let Christ’s resurrection work new life in you. Expect the unexpected – Christ is risen. He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia, Amen.