"Grace in the Wilderness"
March 23, 2008: Easter Sunday, Year A
The Rev. Caroline K. Murphy, interim senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org
Scripture:
"May God take these words and make from them a holy word for us today."
At that time,
says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and
they shall be my people. Thus says the Lord: The people who survived
the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest,
the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with
an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of
the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains
of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.
For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country
of Ephraim: "Come, let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God."
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."
Jesus said to her, "Mary!"
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher).
Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended
to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the
Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
"Friends, God is still
speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond.
Amen."
Sermon
Sleep had come only in fits
and starts. Scenes she would rather have forgotten were etched
against the insides of her eyelids, keeping her awake as she tossed
and turned on her thin palette. When sleep did come, it was disturbed
by terrible nightmares that showed her scenes of things that had happened,
or that might still happen. Over and over again, she would awaken
with her heart pounding. Would people try to steal Jesus' body,
or desecrate it? Finally, realizing that it was pointless to try
to get any rest, she arose in the darkness and made her way to the tomb.
In the quiet of the predawn hour, she could at least make sure that
it was undisturbed and pay her respects.
And so Mary Magdalene went
to the tomb early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark.
Everything that follows flows out of that dark moment: her report to
the disciples, Peter and John's race to the tomb, their discovery
of the neatly folded grave cloths, and finally Mary's exchange with
a cemetery gardener who turns out to be Jesus himself. "Mary,"
the stranger says, and in that moment when he calls her by name, she
realizes that this is none other than her dear teacher and friend.
Darkness has given way to light, death to new life.
It starts out in darkness,
this central mystery of the Christian faith, this thing we call resurrection
— in the darkness of grief, in the darkness of loss. Who among
us has not lived through nights that echo Mary Magdalene's sleepless
night? Perhaps you have spent a night tending a child who is seriously
ill, or wondering whether a parent or spouse will live to see another
day. Perhaps you have spent a night grieving the loss of a relationship
or a vocation on which you had pinned all your hopes and dreams.
Perhaps you have spent a night wondering how you will ever scrape together
the means to pay another month's rent, or to buy food for your family.
Perhaps you have spent a night wondering whether God has any reality,
or your life has any meaning. Who among us has not lived through
nights of fitful, wakeful darkness?
Easter starts out in darkness,
just as the opening notes of the entire biblical symphony had started
out in darkness: darkness covering the face of the deep, God's Spirit
sweeping over the waters, God's voice calling the world into being
with the words: "Let there be light." Resurrection, the dawning
of a new creation, starts out in darkness, just as it had in the beginning,
just as it has ever since.
The prophet Jeremiah steps
onto the biblical stage at one of the darkest moments in his people's
history. Writing in a time of exile and bitter grief, Jeremiah
refuses to mince words in naming the people's role in their own demise:
their terrible failures to do justice and to love kindness and to walk
humbly with their God. And yet, in the midst of all that darkness,
the prophet speaks words of consolation. He paints the picture
of a time when they will plant vineyards and play tambourines and dance
with carefree merriment. Like their ancestors in the Exodus out
of Egypt, they will find grace in the wilderness.
Lent, the forty-day period
leading up to Easter, is a wilderness time that comes to a climax in
the heart-breaking story of an innocent man — God's own beloved
Child — betrayed by one of his own and condemned to a painful and
humiliating death. The story of Holy Week takes us into
deep darkness. During this particular Holy Week, for many of us,
that story has been overlaid by other forms of darkness as well: by
the fifth anniversary of a war in Iraq that seems to know no end; by
the controversy surrounding a sister church of ours, Trinity United
Church of Christ in Chicago, and its former pastor, Jeremiah Wright;
by the uncovering, once again, of the racial wounds that run so deep
in our society. The words of Psalm 130 have seemed right and fitting
for this week: "Out of the depths I cry to you, my God" — and
even the words from Psalm 22, echoed by Jesus on the cross: "My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?"
This, friends, is where Easter
starts. This is where we start: in darkness,
in wilderness. Everything that follows — the brass and the lilies
and the joyful alleluias and the absurd, astonishing promise of new
hope and new life — all this flows out of darkness. The
darkness is real, and Easter does not simply erase it away or return
everything to the way it was before. Instead, out of the darkness,
out of the wilderness comes something new, something utterly grace-filled
and transformative. Therein lies the great power of the resurrection
— a power that may both inspire and confound us.
Mary Magdalene herself is confounded,
in a way. The Gospel of John tells us that, when she finally recognizes
Jesus in the garden, she joyfully cries out to him with the familiar
old name: "Rabbouni, my beloved teacher!" And then she stretches
out her hand to him — but at that very moment Jesus speaks to her
with a word of caution. "Do not try to hold onto me," he says.
In a beautiful artistic rendering of this moment, the Renaissance painter
Fra Angelico shows Jesus' head and one arm turned toward Mary, but
the rest of his body turned in the other direction. He seems to
be saying, "Don't expect everything to revert to the way it was
before. We are not simply going to pick up our old life
together — you and I and the rest of the disciples — as if the crucifixion
had never happened. Instead, we are now starting a new chapter."
I don't know about you, but
I tend to hang on for dear life to the people and places and even objects
that I have loved. Last June, when I was packing up most of my
belongings, and the belongings of assorted ancestors that have come
down to me, I grieved every book, every scrap of paper, every token
from the past that I managed to part from, and I must confess that I
ended up hanging on to far more than I should have, as my regular storage
bills now remind me on a monthly basis. Even in the best of times,
it is hard for me to let go of the past. I know all too well that
instinct of Mary Magdalene's to stretch out a hand and try to hang
on. And at times in my life when I have seemed hopelessly
stuck in a dark place, I have had trouble imagining that there could
be anything life-giving on the other side. In the midst of darkness,
it can be hard to envisage light — especially the light of new life.
At best, one may be able to conjure up faded images of what is past
and gone.
But then this thing called
resurrection comes along and beckons us to move into the future, into
newness of life. Resurrection comes along and asks us to trust
that, though the old may be gone, something new can and will spring
up: truth and reconciliation out of the ashes of apartheid in South
Africa; independence and hope out of the crucible of suffering in Kosovo;
new communities of grace where racism and sexism and homophobia once
held sway. Resurrection comes along and asks us to find forgiveness
and healing in a relationship that has been stuck, or the strength to
leave behind some form of personal brokenness and grow into a new wholeness.
Resurrection comes along and asks us to trust that even when a beloved
church dies or is torn apart, as some here have experienced in at least
a couple of different settings, its members may experience new life
in another place.
Easter starts in darkness —
in the darkness of despair for ourselves, for our community, or for
our world. Out of that darkness, out of that wilderness, comes
new life and grace. In the resurrection God has overcome the forces
of evil and despair; the power of love has proved stronger than death.
A friend of mine recently described
an Easter that he and his spouse spent in Greece:
We arrived on the Saturday
before Orthodox Easter and walked down from our hotel in Athens to the
vigil that turned into celebration at midnight. One of the men
at the hotel taught us the Greek Easter greeting.
One person says, "Christos anisti."
The other responds, "Alethos anisti."
He then translated:
"The first person says,
'Christ is risen,' and the second person says,
'He
really did it.'"1
In the beginning God's Spirit
hovered over the face of the deep, and out of the darkness came light.
During times of exile and wilderness, that same God sent prophets to
sing to the people of hope and grace and God's steadfast love.
And one sad, lonely morning centuries ago, Mary Magdalene rose in the
darkness, after a sleepless night, to find new life in the place of
death.
Christ is risen! He really did it! Alleluia! Amen.