Resurrection
Year B
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8
May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…
We learn… we grow… we accomplish goals… we reach milestones in our lives… like the tick marks on the kitchen door frame that record how tall we were at the beginning of each school year… and we call them good… but each and every milestone we reach… necessitates leaving something behind… each and every milestone we accomplish… changes who we are… and turns us into who we are becoming… we build one thing on another… and so each and every milestone involves the death of something… however small… that has come before it… turning our gaze from where we’ve been… and looking ahead to where we’re going… as Paul wrote in 1Corinthians 13:11… when I was a child… I spoke like a child… thought like a child… and reasoned like a child… but when I became an adult… I put an end to childish ways…
And because we grow… we can all look back on our lives… and jokingly ask ourselves… how could I have ever thought that… or believed that… or done that… how blind I was… or how silly… or how stupid… but if all we do is look back… we will miss one opportunity after another to learn… and grow… and accomplish… but if we turn our gaze around… we can look toward the future…
The Jewish Passover ends at sundown this evening… and at Passover Seders… Jewish families remember what God did… when God set God’s people free from Egyptian oppression and slavery… but it is not only a looking back… it is not only looking back at what happened to the ancient Israelites in ancient times… it is about more than just remembering their release from slavery… in looking back… God reminds us that the whole human family is also being called to a future free from any and every thing which keeps us enslaved… to things which constrain… which keep us believing that death has the final word… which keeps us from looking with hope toward the heavenly banquet described in Isaiah… ] and remember… in the first century… and even before Jesus was born… the Pharisees and other Jews believed in a bodily resurrection… and today’s reading from Isaiah… which was written about 800 BCE… affirms this belief… that on this mountain the Lord of hosts will destroy… the shroud that is cast over all peoples… God will swallow up death forever…
As we learn… grow… and accomplish the goals in our lives… we also do the work we are called to do… and we tend to the practices and traditions of our families… and communities of faith… Mary Magdalene… and James’ mother Mary… and Salome… went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body… as was customary… the stone… which they knew would be too heavy for them… had already been rolled away… that was amazing… and a man… presumably an angel… dressed perhaps in transfiguration white… told them that Jesus had been raised… look… that’s the place where they laid him… but he’s going ahead to Galilee… you’ll see him there… just as he told you… that must have terrified them… they saw Jesus die… how could he have been raised… the words this man spoke… had no point of reference for them… they could not make sense… out of what made no sense… and so they fled from the tomb… seized by both amazement and terror…
Death can do strange things to the living… in some of the conversations I’ve had with surviving spouses or children… they tell me they just can’t believe that their loved one has died… it’s a shock… the mind both believes it… and disbelieves it… people have told me that even though they knew that death was coming… that when it happened… it was as though there was no indication… no warning… no time to get ready… and so there’s a disconnect… sometimes a chasm… between what the senses experience… and what the heart can fathom…
These two Marys and Salome had been with Jesus… they used to follow him and provide for him when he was in Galilee… and the hope they felt in his presence… and in his words… the miracles they saw… or maybe only heard about… came to an abrupt end in his crucifixion… his death just made no sense… like Peter… they may have thought that greater worldly things were in store for Jesus… their minds must just have been reeling… ] and we can certainly understand some of their terror and amazement… we’ve had our own this year… far too many people… some who we know and love have gotten this virus and we wondered how bad it would get… and some of them have died… too often too suddenly… too often alone… and this pandemic has kept us from gathering and celebrating their lives according to our practices and traditions… and too often we say little to nothing about what we think… and how we feel because there’s no one to listen… or because we are afraid… and these women who came to the tomb were also prevented from following their own practices and traditions… and considering what and who met them… and how it made no sense… we can understand at least some of what they felt… and at least some of why they said nothing to anyone… for they too were afraid…
And let’s face it… resurrection doesn’t make sense… but in our human curiosity… we want to understand the nuts and bolts of just how it works… did the resurrection create a blinding flash of light from within Jesus’ body that simultaneously created the Shroud of Turin… like the light of the Big Bang… like the creation story in Genesis… light and life out of nothing… ] it’s beyond my ability to comprehend… and I’ve given up trying to explain it… because thirty chapters later in Isaiah… God says… my thoughts are not your thoughts… and my ways are not your ways… and the scriptures don’t try to explain it either… they merely proclaim it…
Peter Marty… editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine… writes… Easter is an ideal day for us to shake off nostalgic notions of faith… and get serious about God’s confidence in the future… in our future… one of our most unfortunate mistakes is to view the Bible mostly as a book about the past… it certainly contains an ancient record… but its direction is forward… not backward… it’s we who like to look backward… probably because retrieving or preserving the past feels more manageable than discerning an unknown future… we’re drawn to the rearview mirror… the scrapbooks of faith… the warm sentiments of childhood church… yet the God of scripture is always out ahead of us… leading into the future…
We learn… we grow… we reach for the milestones in our lives… but so many of us approach death with much more terror than amazement… death is the achievement almost every person I know resists… my sisters and brothers… we are in an amazing never-ending story of redemption and resurrection… with a lover-God who continues to enter into human history and disrupts our expectations… who lavishes such radical grace on us that we slosh around in it… such unmerited forgiveness that we could never earn… and such unconditional love that it brings us to our knees… and as Romans 6:3 affirms… that we who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death… and if we have been united with him in a death like his… then we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his… and since it’s sin that leads to death… and since this loving God remembers our sins no more… then the achievement that’s within our reach… the absolute gift… is nothing less… than a share in Jesus’ eternal life…
Happy Easter!
